I don't pretend to deep thoughts but I think that there are some themes that structure public discussion in very strict way. If you, say, ask what democracy is you will get the very specific set of arguments from public. That's how I understand violence (violence of discourse). I think In discussion if you don't want to produce violence, you should not to support discourse yourself. In practice it means to consciously avoid some obvious arguments and lines of thought. — disspeach

That's a bit dispiriting. If we cannot discuss without violence, then it seems unfair to complain that Freud and Jung cannot manage a talking therapy without violence. You seem to make it endemic in all social relations.

But consider this. When I go to the dentist, he pokes about in my mouth and causes me discomfort. Yet I do not consider this intrusion an assault, and undergo it willingly. So I wonder if violence is the right term to characterise human relations in general and psychoanalysis in particular?

On the other side, though, I do see the potential for violence in the relationship that inevitably examines the faults, failings, madness, disorder, of the client, from the point of view of authority, sanity, and expertise of the therapist. It can be violent, but I don't think it must be.

Oh right. I start to see what you are getting at. Now can you say something in words about the nature of the violence, and how it hopefully differs from, say, this discussion? To be a little more specific, if you and I have differing views, as I think is to some extent the case, can we engage in a non-violent way?

It seems to me that Freud and Jung represents not only two ways of thinking but two "scenes" — disspeach

Well I will tell you very very briefly why I prefer Jung to Freud and see if it matches in some way your 2 scenes.

It seems to me that Freud is limited in his theory whereas the psyche is unlimited. Freud is in some sense the originator of the scientific approach to human nature, although his theories are largely discredited in scientific psychological circles. Jung, also largely discredited, but surviving in 'personality types', seems to me to present a more person centred, relational, and thus open approach. The archetypes are not mechanical. I am not a fan of scientific psychology, for reasons that you can explore in my recent threads.

I'm created this videos for discussion. — disspeach

What do you want to discuss?

I found the videos dull, and didn't bother to comment. I don't see the connection to Jung and Freud, but in other news, based on my understanding of their understanding and definitely not your videos, I prefer Jung. Now what?

It is strange and disconcerting to disconnect the idea of consciousness from free will.

What other beliefs or types of action do people have no excuse for? — Nils Loc

I don't like the notion of free will. But it seems obvious that consciousness and the ability to think confers a great freedom of response that blind mechanics lacks. Why deny it? I guess because freedom means responsibility. Much more comfortable to blame the mechanical other.

I wonder if folks would be interested enough to lend an ear to Adrian Piper, artist, feminist, philosopher, harridan.

It does not matter whether the it is "motivations" or for some unthinking mechanism- it does not destroy the argument that it is doing something DUE to a thing outside the individual (mechanism or otherwise). — schopenhauer1

What argument? There is simply a declared globalisation of 'mechanism', itself another analogy that suggests, again, an agency, this time called a 'mechanic' that is 'using' us. The denial of agency is justified by its projection onto 'the blind watchmaker'. It's really poor philosophy, motivated by bad psychology. Mechanisms are unthinking, but people have no such excuse.

But it is still a gene-centred view of what life actually is — tom

And therefore an imaginary view, since genes do not have eyes or a viewpoint of any kind.

Genes and memes really exist! — tom

But they do not really have a will to survive, a desire to propagate, or a purpose of their own.

Dawkins had his "gene-centered" view. — schopenhauer1

Even Dawkins himself admits under pressure, (and then ignores) that the selfish gene is a mere analogy; that genes have no will, no desire, and no view. And certainly nothing remotely like a purpose.

Memes are an analogy of the analogy, and the same applies only even more emphatically.

... so who cares? — schopenhauer1

Only living beings care.

But they should be more accentuated in the one than in the other. — Agustino

Yes, that's what I thought. That is what patriarchy stands for, as you said. It is the male view that it is right for men to dominate, for men especially to dictate what is right for men and for women. So respect is more of a virtue for women, and arrogance is less of a vice for men to take one of your examples.

Why should they be more accentuated in the one than in the other?
— Michael
Because by their nature men and women are so constituted to complement each other. — Agustino

And the circle is complete. It ought to be so because it is so, and if ever it isn't so it ought to be so because it is so.

It is immoral for a woman to be and do what it is a virtue for a man to be and do
— unenlightened
Right. So decency is immoral for a woman because it is moral for a man. great — Agustino

I understand you to be saying that womanly virtues are different from manly virtues in their expression; that women should behave differently than men. Have I got that wrong?

What does this practically, in concreto, mean? Does it mean that women are encouraged to be decent people and take into account the feelings of their families? Does it mean that women are encouraged to be respectful instead of arrogant? Does it mean that women are encouraged to be chaste, instead of promiscuous? — Agustino

And there you have it. It is immoral for a woman to be and do what it is a virtue for a man to be and do. And that is why, when you look around, you find that women hardly ever do x, y, or z, while men do them as much as they can.

What patriarchy really stands for is discipline, respect, devotion, love and filial piety.
— Agustino

No, patriarchy "is a social system in which males hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property."1

I don't see what that has to do with your claimed virtues. As if an egalitarian society leads to chaos, cruelty, and disrespect... — Michael

What patriarchy is and what it stands for are entirely different things, in the same way that I stand for all the virtues, blah, blah, although I embody all the vices.

Yes but it's still another area of study that should be approached normally, — Agustino

It's the norms of study that I have a beef with, along with the norms of training that come from them. The fact is we do mind being different, and we mind others being different even more. That is why we want to measure and classify each other all the time.

studying the existence of obvious differences ... — Agustino

... is a bit of a waste of time, like studying the existence of obvious differences between chalk and cheese. One might wonder at cheesemongers bigging up the statistics on how much calcium there is in cheese.

Marcuse has long been on my ban list, but there is something odd in the title. It is almost as if there is something else that we are doing with language than play games, and only Wittgenstein and his pals are playing.

what are the practical affects or effects of seeing language as a language game? — Moliere

What is the alternative? What is the duck to the game-rabbit? Not seeing language at all, but only seeing through it? Or perhaps locating it as the immutable structure of thought or the world? Which is more or less the same thing.

'Game' is a way of looking at language, linguistically, as you say, like a special pair of spectacles for looking at your spectacles. I'm not sure if this is quite as liberating as I'd like it to be. It doesn't actually liberate one from language - only silence can do that.

This is very true, but it does nothing to further the inquiry, — Emptyheady

Indeed. My vain hope is to block the enquiry completely.

Furthermore, stereotypes can be true. We are actually quite good at them. — Emptyheady

They can indeed, and that is why science confirms them. But this does not make them innate.

Your statistics would be relevant and possibly even correct if stereotypes were not communicable diseases.

Ascribing everything to discrimination is scientifically completely unsound. — Emptyheady

Well I have a general critique of scientific psychology, as some will have noticed. There is a fundamental problem with all the statistics you bring forth above. which is that their truth does not necessarily support the hypothesis of innate differences as is generally supposed. There is a pressure to conform to stereotypes, there is stereotypical treatment, and there is internalised stereotype identification.

I have already suggested that a woman might well find Murray's courses uncongenial, and that they might not even get fair and equal treatment. They may have been given barbies to play with and not lego, they may have been made subtly or unsubtly aware that clever women are unpopular, that mathematics is 'unfeminine', that competing with men is more dangerous for a female.

In short, the stereotype does not just tell you what you are, it demands that you be that. Psychological understanding changes the psyche, and this undermines the 'innate truth' of psychology of all kinds because the theory creates the phenomena.

Kant was a woman.

And here's a link for anyone who hasn't quite seen the connection between my threads, or whose paranoia level is a little low.

https://antidotezine.com/2017/01/22/trump-knows-you/

Suppose one agrees. So what?

There have been no significant women genocidal dictators. Does this reflect an innate moral superiority, a universal female incompetence, or the structural dominance of the male?

My own bias tells me that Murray is not pointing to a curious fact in need of careful investigation and analysis, but attempting to justify the gender disparity as natural and inevitable rather than constructed.

Imagine the student asking is female. Is there not something of a self-fulfilling prophecy at work? You are a woman, therefore you are not worth my time teaching or listening to; I think I would be thinking about changing courses - and another great woman philosopher is lost to posterity.

I have no points to be taken off in this game, so I am quite happy to call Murray sexist, and @Emptyheady sexist. And as a great philosopher once said, "None of what I said are insults. It is a simple observational fact having read your post."

That's really the point. We can talk about artificial flowers and toy guns and so we might be able to talk about false facts. And as mentioned in the American Heritage Dictionary (referenced earlier), we do talk about false facts. In each of these cases we have something that appears to be one thing (a flower, a gun, or a fact) but actually isn't. But it doesn't then follow that we can dismiss the terms as being contradictory. "Artificial flower" is an acceptable term, as is "toy gun". So why not "false fact"? — Michael

It's a free country, you can say what you like. But if you talk crap it muddies the waters, and since there is enough muddy water already, that's a waste of time making more. In the end, people who cannot or will not abide by a clear distinction between what is said and what is the case are best disregarded. It drains all meaning from the language.

Just want to know who decides? Who is nominated to decide what is a fact based upon their observations? And how is this communicated? Very fundamental. Very simple. — Rich

Ok, I decide, and I tell you and you have to accept it. This is not the case is it? No one decides the facts, people find out the facts, or sometimes they don't. Quite often I have no idea where the cat is. But your silliness is boring me now, so I'll duck out.

I won't be offering you much more than some statements and maybe a question or two. If you were sitting on a mat within range I might kick you.

One can observe cats. one can notice where they are, on or off the mat. What's all the nonsense about?

Then who decides is the whereabouts of the cat? I cannot see how a fact can be divorced from the uttered fact. — Rich

My experience is that cats decide for themselves to the extent that they are at liberty to, and that they do this without uttering.

Agreed. So facts are just beliefs since there is no way to decide what is a fact without decisions. — Rich

That's not the way I have proposed talking at all and seems very confused and confusing. If I believe that the cat is on the mat, then I believe that "the cat is on the mat" is a true statement. I might be wrong, and the statement might be false, in which case my belief is false. Whether is is a true or false belief, and a true or false statement depends, not on any decision of mine, but on the whereabouts of the cat.

I take it that the cat is somewhere or other, and we might be able to locate it. If this is not ever the case, then there is no world, no state of affairs, no fact, and no truth. Nothing left to talk about.

We should have some sort of agreement. — Banno

I propose the following rough scheme, which I think is acceptable to most philosophers, even though common usage may deviate at times.

Factual statements are statements of fact, where facts are states of affairs.
Statements of fact are true or false according to whether the stated state of affairs obtains or not.
Statements are true or false; facts obtain.

Thus the statement "the cat is on the mat" is true whenever the cat is in fact on the mat, and otherwise false. The facts themselves are simply the way things are and cannot be true or false, but 'the facts as stated' (and this is slightly looser talking, more strictly, 'the statement of facts') can be, and is, either true or false.

This handily avoids any talk of knowledge or belief or senses or memory or experience, which can be discussed another time. Thus you may have an alternative statement (of fact), such as "The cat is not on the mat.". In such case, we have alternative statements of fact which are contradictory, and one statement or the other is necessarily false, because the facts themselves cannot be contradictory any more than they can be true or false.

That's American football, the sort where you can use your hands. — Hanover

Hands are alternative feet, presumably. Or alternative balls?

Thanks for the links. It's nice to know that I am not entirely alone in my lunacy and ignorance.

... try to understand how it comes to be the way it is. — Mongrel

I tell you what. I'll do my best to completely ignore you in future. What the fuck do you think I'm doing with this thread? That's a rhetorical question; I'm trying to come up with an understanding of how it comes to be the way it is.

You know me so well. Too well in fact. The problem I have with you in all these discussions is that you don't respond to what I say because you are too busy pathologising. Whether I am awake or not is entirely beside the point. My self congratulation is beside the point. Your critique of my personality is beside the point. Talk to me as if I'm saying something that might be right or wrong and stop treating my posts as symptoms all the time. It's particularly ironic that your doings so exemplifies the objectification I have been criticising in these last 3 threads.

I don't know what to add. — mcdoodle

I'm not sure either. But perhaps I could just direct attention to the title of the thread, for a last thought. The economy is not a person, and does not treat people as persons. In this respect it is like the weather (or the climate). If it had a psyche, it would be psychopathic, in having no empathy or consideration for another. And perhaps here can be seen the connection with my other recent threads. The economy is being put above humanity by humanity.

It is as if we are playing a giant game of monopoly, and are close to the end of the game. The eight richest have more wealth than the poorest 50% we are told. Well when all the wealth is in one place, the game is over. There is nothing for it but to collect up the pieces and do something else, or redistribute and start again.

This is the moment to awaken to the fact that we are not talking about tokens on a board, but people on a planet. There is no getting up and walking away, we go bankrupt and die, or we change the game. But I am not expecting the incredible winners to be changing it, not even the clever and philanthropic ones.

The best way to have a revolution is to pretend it has already happened. — Jerry Garcia

The way to awaken people is to talk to them as if they were awake, to respond to them as if you were awake, to reclaim the authority of the subject, and reject the objectification of the other. I don't think politics can help if we don't do this. But once we are awake, the solutions are almost trivial.

Governing bodies are not always national, not even always local,so it seems to me that talk of preserving borders is not primary. It might also be the role of even a national government to divide itself as with Czechoslovakia or amalgamate with another country, as with East Germany.

Government consists in the organised exercise of power. I would say that its primary purpose is the restraint of power. See for example the operation of a governor in a steam engine, or a thermostat in a heating system.

Thus one arrives very rapidly at the notion of checks an balances, such that the power of the government itself is also restrained. In this way, a government distinguishes itself from a Mafia - hopefully - by subjecting its own workings to the restraints it imposes externally.

Which leads to the restraint of justice on power. It becomes the role of government to keep the playing field level, to prevent abuse of the weak by the strong, and so on.

After that, there is a further role to organise and regulate certain conveniences, like money, the rules of football, which side of the road will be driven on, or whatever.

These are just first thoughts on the topic, and rather abstract and incomplete...

Un didn't mean people couldn't do any of those things when he said they were "helpless." He was talking about how people are "helpless" in the face of the freedom of others. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The relevant sense of 'helpless' in my argument is that people are helpless to actually change the basic institution. Because it is only the non-persistence of a basic institution that affects it's so called legitimacy, according to the thesis. Plenty of people have opposed the institution of property in thought, word, and deed. That it persists does not imply acceptance, except the acceptance of the facts s something to be opposed, and the failure to effect change does not imply legitimacy, except the legitimacy of habit. As if we cannot have been getting things fundamentally wrong for thousands of years. Opposition is not proven illegitimate whenever it is ineffective.

The argument about whether slavery or property or the nation state or smallpox is or isn't a basic institution is an irrelevance to my argument, because it arises as a post hoc apologetic to allow change and illegitimacy to have some limited purchase,given the argument of longevity implying acceptance, implying legitimacy. But my argument is that that argument doesn't run for anything at all, not basic institutions, not non- basic institutions, not superficial habits, not natural phenomena, not anything.

Should America give a shit about Eastern Europe? No America should give a shit about itself. You know what Eastern Europe is for America? A pawn on the chess board of global politics. — Agustino

That's bad chess strategy right there. Pawns are important, pawns are valuable, and the player who sacrifices them for no or little advantage will quickly lose.

One might say that oases and mirages both exist phenomenologically, however, only one will quench one's thirst, and this is a significant difference. The whole trouble with mirages is that it looks as though there is an oasis where there isn't one. Gods that exist only as illusions are a pain.

...their digital clone can live happily ever after, freed from their meaty existence. — Marchesk

It would have to be more than just a scan of a brain; a fully working model that 'processes'. And then, if it isn't going to model total sensory deprivation, which I don't think would be a 'happy' state, it would need some complex input that would model a body and an environment on an ongoing basis moving forward.

It wouldn't have to be exactly the same as the meat, but it would have to have some considerable similarities to provide input to all or at least most of the sensitivities. Something like a complexly sensing avatar in a virtual world.

One can draw a line round the brain as processor and model just that, but it cannot 'live' without a world of input, and the input has to make sense,which for sure means modelling the arms and legs too and an environment in which they can operate. Unless happiness is total paralysis and total sensory deprivation.

The argument can be stated roughly as follows:
1. The endurance of basic institutions is in part a function of their ‘factual’ legitimacy, i.e., their actual acceptance by the population they regulate (in other words, endurance and factual legitimacy are correlated). — The actual paper wot I have looked at an all

If the population regulated is helpless to reject the basic institution, as is nearly always the case, then their 'acceptance' as evidenced by the endurance of said institution has no value and no legitimacy, because everybody necessarily 'accepts' what they can do nothing about, however repugnant and illegitimate it is.

It is a complete travesty of an argument from the first premise.

What grates is the proclivity of those outside education to set themselves up as arbiters. No other profession has so much external interference. — Banno

No one is outside education, unless you think it is a matter of teachers doing their thing and students conforming and performing.

If you come to service the boiler, I will leave you to it, but my daughter is not a machine, and is not to be serviced like one.