I have never asked a fellow human "Are you conscious?" Nor have I ever asked myself that. But it seems clear to me that talk of "evidence of consciousness" doesn't have much to do with either case. Interestingly, I'm able to say the preceding with a fair amount of confidence in spite of my inability to clearly define consciousness. My knowledge of it is apparently more in the "know how" department.. that is, the ability to correctly use the word. — Mongrel

When dealing with a casualty, the first-aider will typically squeeze an earlobe quite hard to see if they respond to pain. A response is taken as evidence of consciousness. One never needs to ask, because any reply is always sufficient evidence - 'no' serves as well as 'yes' to confirm consciousness, and any question will likewise serve to elicit a response 'what's your name?' for example. Similarly, non-verbal responses are evidence of consciousness (or perhaps you prefer the term awareness here) in an animal such as a dog.

None of this is obtuse philosophical speculation. If you know how to use the word, it will be perfectly understandable.

In one's own case, there is likewise never a need to ask oneself. To be conscious is to be aware of being aware. If one asks oneself any question, one is already aware of being aware, and that question is therefore entirely superfluous.

Again, I am not telling you anything you do not already know perfectly well, and it makes me suspect your motives in your reply. One does not need to look for evidence of one's consciousness, because looking for anything is evidence enough. I don't generally need to look for evidence that it is raining, either; it makes itself evident.

This was directed at anon's evolutionary theory (which is accepted by a fair number of pretty intelligent people). — Mongrel

I am not a democrat of the understanding; many intelligent people have held to all sorts of nonsense.

"Imagine that we inhabit a two dimensional space and that we ourselves are two dimensional. Consider how it would seem to us if a spoon passed through our world. Perhaps we would eventually evolve to the point of being able to discern the truth that is beyond our powers of perception."

-- the adherent to "special insight" — Mongrel

Nowhere have I suggested that evidence cannot point beyond itself. One does not need to imagine another world; footprints in the sand point to unseen feet. A A Milne's seminal work goes into this in the chapter 'Where the woozle wasn't'.

If anything is real, consciousness is... — anonymous66

I'd add to that a pseudo-cartesian 'If anything is unreal, consciousness is real.'

So Searle, I guess.

I know I am sometimes mistaken too. I have the evidence. I just painted the garden wall, thinking it was going to continue dry and sunny, but now it's raining. Damn. I know I was mistaken only because it is indubitably raining, and I have indubitably just painted the wall. There can be no evidence for radical skepticism, because it radically undermines itself.

That I am always wrong must be wrong. Therefore my sophisticated realism is that I trust the evidence until the evidence tells me not to, at which point I trust the new evidence. Thus I can say that I was wrong, but it makes no sense to say that I am wrong; that would be equivalent to saying nothing, which is what the genuine radical skeptic and solipsist should do - say nothing.

Can you say where the gaps are in my argument? I might be able to fill them.

Not at all. I'm giving my opinion. But evidence is evident to consciousness; evidence of consciousness is evident to consciousness. Therefore consciousness is evidence; evidence is consciousness.

What I was saying before is that one needs evidence to doubt evidence, and there is no other place to obtain it but experience. To doubt the reality of experience one needs the access to reality that one seeks to deny.

the reality is that... — anonymous66

So, perhaps there is a "real reality", but whose version should we accept as "real"? — anonymous66

Not yours.

I think the evidence suggests rather that our sense organs are such that they give us the ability to see the world in a way that is beneficial for the survival of our species, not a completely accurate one. — anonymous66

Why believe the evidence that the evidence is not to be believed?

Can "consciousness" even be described by the conscious entity? How do we exteriorize ourselves to our own consciousness so that we can observe it, and still be conscious? — Bitter Crank

This is what consciousness consists of: the interiorization of itself. Thus it is always exterior to itself. One is conscious of being conscious whenever one considers the matter, and that is the description that one can give - the experience of the subject of experience. The illusion, therefore, is that there is some division between experience and the subject of experience such that the subject can be outside or inside.

Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. Can this be applied to philosophy? — darthbarracuda

Is asking questions truth conducive?

It depends who you ask, and it depends whether the question is sensible.

Is it sensible to ask what questions are sensible? Well yes, I think it is, but it is probably not sensible to expect a universal formula, as it is not probably sensible to expect a formula for wisdom.

Oh, and Einstein didn't say that, he said the opposite. Sensible chap. Asked himself good questions - new questions.

It's straight one-nation conservatism. — jamalrob

They have that slogan - 'To each according to his means, from each according to his needs'.

Just because he talks bollocks doesn't mean he's grown them.

But the suggestion of this thread has been that testosterone fuelled politics is something we would do well to stop lauding. Testosterone never laid down a weapon, never went for consensus, conciliation, never spent its time looking after its demented granny.

Indeed... but Dennett clearly isn't just doing that, for he also talks about the presence of our experiences. — TheWillowOfDarkness

One might say that experiences are the content of consciousness. One might then continue that one can (or even that one necessarily must) experience consciousness. But this experience, being purportedly an experience of the container, is not the container but the contents, by previous stipulation. Which makes it an illusion.

Please do. :) — Moliere

Dimensionality.



Here is a two dimensional construct of political views. There are other possibilities, but according to this way of looking, everyone is located somewhere on the map, and their position identifies the essentials of their politics. The assumption is that there are two independent variables, lets call them 'left/right' and 'hard/soft' and this can be confirmed if one finds people distributed all over the map. But to the extent that one finds, say, that everyone left is more or less soft, and everyone right is more or less hard, one's view turns out to be one-dimensional after all.

A one dimensional view of politics gives one a limited understanding of the various alliances and conflicts and movements. Perhaps a three or four dimensional view would be possible?

Here is a 4 dimensional construct of personality. Folks will be familiar with it. This is a full-blown psychological theory of some respectability in it's own right, and this illustrates the way that construct theory is metapsychology. Jung was a three dimensional theorist; Briggs Myers a four dimensional theorist.

God, according to some, is a one dimensional, or worse, a simple binary theorist of personality, there are the saved and the dammed.

What's your theory? Suppose someone has internalised both of the above examples. The techniques of construct theory can be be used to overlay the personality and political theories and determine the combined dimensionality. It could give a six dimensional result, or it could be that some of the dimensions are not orthogonal but aligned - that softies are more or less always intuitive and or extroverts are always hard. In such case, the number of dimensions would be 4 or 5. It could even be that although one subscribes to the theories in principle, in practice one thinks about people in a one or two dimensional way.

Distance' between oneself and one's ideal

Personal identity is where one places oneself on one's own map of however many dimensions one has. This is typically some distance from where one feels one would ideally be. And these two locations are both interesting as is their relation. Are you in the middle of your own map, or off in a corner, and where is the best place to be? Such considerations give rise to a metapsychological construction, but since one does not have a meta-identity, they feed back into dimensions of one's personal constructs. One might label them as dimensions of self-satisfaction ( distance from the ideal) and normality/extremism (distance from the centre).

I'll stop here. I think it's probably confusing enough already.

... it strikes me that big P Psychology might be a whole matrix of everyone's theories about other people. — mcdoodle

Yes, or perhaps I could say that everyone has a psychological theory, and the big P stands for Power; the power to impose my psychology on others.

But on a deeper ontological level there's a need to at least examine the possibility that there is an anonymous self that precedes the narrative. — photographer

One can readily observe what I will call a 'personality'; in dogs for example, one is nervous, one is profligate with affection, one is suspicious of strangers, and so on. Such dispositions are persistent through time, though modifiable through experience. Such are the identifications we might make of dogs, that have an ontological, behavioural basis. We can make them of humans as well.

But there is nothing much different here to the identifications we might make of a rock or a tree, that it is hard or heavy or graceful. It is the reflexive turn to self identification that I think is the topic. One has, or better perhaps, one is a personality, that is semi stable, and semi developing, but one makes a self-identification of that personality which becomes one's identity.

Identity is made of memories. 'I didn't like those greens' becomes 'I don't like greens', with the implication that I won't like them tomorrow. and this is no longer a mere habit, not to eat greens, but who I am, and therefore a matter of life or death. To eat greens is to become someone else and so to die.

I'd rather die than lose my identity. And so the world of thought and memory becomes more important than reality.

Personal Construct theory was never very popular, in large part, I think, because the statistical analysis of repertory grids is fairly horrendous for us soft-scientists. But its mere existence as the formalisation of metapsychology is interesting in this context. It concerns itself with the analysis of the conceptual foundation of the individual's classification scheme for themselves and others.

Two particular aspects are particularly significant for questions of identity: (1) the dimensionality of one's schema, and (2) the 'distance' between oneself and one's ideal.

I can say a bit more if anyone is interested, but it is the 'meta' aspect that I want to draw immediate attention to. To identify is to differentiate; to have an identity is to identify and distinguish others also. It is, therefore, to already have a theory of mind.

I wonder what kind of historical parallels this might dredge up. — Nils Loc

Trade Unions.

Philosophers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose.

I assume you are acquainted with hypothetical questions? Or are you just dodging mine? Such evasiveness ill suits you, Un.

(As for your foolish "White lives matter" statement, I'll ignore that, except to say, as BitterCrank pointed out, American blacks slaughter each other at astronomical rates, and so they can look to their own for the bulk of their oppression in the 21st century U.S.) — Arkady

I assume you are acquainted with direct questions? Or are you just dodging mine?

I assume that folks have reasons and justifications, and I assume that the social situation, including the political rhetoric that prevails are influences. Just to be clear, at no point am I seeking to justify acts of terrorism or mass killing, or even a single killing.

American blacks slaughter each other and American whites and American police slaughter blacks. There is a reason for this slaughter, which is that there is a social construction of blackness that devalues black lives. Am I being controversial here? Are you wanting to say that blacks are inherently more violent? Feel free to ignore the questions.

My position is that this social construction affects everyone, black and white, and that it is an immoral social construction that ought to be resisted personally and socially. This moral and as I understand it legal obligation to treat people equally has a particularly urgent application to law enforcement officers.

Is a black police officer who murders a restrained white subject less culpable than when a white officer murders a black one? — Arkady

So here is the hypothetical question. And the answer, of course is that he is more culpable. The only question is whether he is more culpable because he doesn't even have the social construct as a partial excuse, or whether he is more culpable because the social construct is true. This, of course on the assumption, possibly wrong, that your hypothetical relates to the status quo of American race and not to a hypothetical reversed social construct, in which case it would be identical to what happens every other day except for the inversion of the races.

My favourite topic; it's all about me.

By identity I mostly mean the psychological phenomenon where we, as humans, feel like we are this or that category, or the kind of person who does such-and-such, or expresses in particular ways ... — Moliere

A great start. It follows that we are not talking directly about character as nature, or the facts of being. A stone has hardness and crystalline structure, a unique shape and size, etc, but no psychology and hence no identity, though we can identify it.

I prefer generally to talk about 'identification', something we do, to ourselves and to others, which becomes what wethink we are; note that I might think I am a jolly fine fellow, when in fact I am an arsehole, (or vice versa).

It is also important to distinguish personal identity and social identity. The writ of personal identity does not always run: I identify as a philosopher, but if the admins disagree, I don't get to philosophise here.

There is an interplay between the social and the personal identities that is crucial. This has been discussed elsewhere on the site as it pertains to race and gender. There are facts of skin colour and reproductive organs and DNA, which one would be wise to accept as part of one's personal identity. Furthermore, there are social implications of those facts that one cannot ignore; it doesn't matter how jewish or un-jewish one is or feels, if Hitler says you are a Jew, you'd better take it seriously. But in this case, one can certainly and legitimately resist the social identification becoming a personal identity. Thus one can accept the fact of a penis, and the social necessities thereof, but still identify as really a woman. One can still proclaim that black lives matter, even though it is quite apparent that they don't in the society.

What would, for instance, ISIS or Hezbollah do if they had at their disposal the military of France (never mind of the United States)? — Arkady

What would poor people be like if they were rich? Like rich people.
Similarly I would expect Hezbollah to be like Israel if they had the power, and ISIS like an extremely unpleasant military power if they had the power. Nazi Germany maybe?

Which is to say that humans are not different in kind from one ethnicity to another, but are all and always susceptible to greed and fear and violence

Why should one be less culpable? — Arkady

They're both murder. Why should one be less culpable? — Arkady

I already said:

...
oppression counts as provocation, a mitigating circumstance. — unenlightened

Is a black police officer who murders a restrained white subject less culpable than when a white officer murders a black one? — Arkady

Find me the report of such an event or better the film, and that question might become worth answering. But given the news that I see day after day, you are starting to sound like a 'white lives matter' merchant, trying to misdirect attention away from the rampant racial oppression that is happening. Why would you be doing that?

There certainly is such a thing as oppression, but the virtue of the oppressed is not therefore superior. — Bitter Crank

In the court of judge unenlightened, oppression counts as provocation, a mitigating circumstance. It does not make a virtue of a vice, and is certainly no virtue itself. So I agree that there is no superiority.

I thought "we" referred to the West and its allies, implying that, say, the U.S. and French militaries were more barbaric than, for instance, ISIS and al Qaeda. — Arkady

Yes, but let's include the British, please. But only in the sense that technology empowers barbarism. Which does not mean I am anti technology, only anti the technology of death.

It also seemed as if you were taking an apologetic stance towards the Nice terrorist's actions, by suggesting it is we who are at fault for trying to help him out of his despair. — Arkady

Again, yes. But only in the relative sense that the invader, the aggressor, the comfortably empowered, have no excuse whatsoever, whereas the suffering have their suffering.

Terrorism, as generally understood, is the action of the disempowered attempting to gain power. When the same tactics are employed by the already powerful, it is usually called something else. Thus the shooting of an already subdued black man by the police is not called terrorism, whereas the 'retaliatory' shooting of police officers more likely is. And yes, I am saying that the former is more culpable than the latter. Not that I support either.

...we could pick any number of formerly impoverished lumpenproletariat — jamalrob

You can pick anyone you like; no one does what they do not have the power to do. The 'pawns in their game' are responsible for their own moves, and the players are also, and more largely responsible.

I think one can oppose Western militarism and oppose Islamism and Jihadism at the same time (and incidentally I don't think the latter are a reaction to the former). One can seek to ensure that people have something to lose without at the same time treating Jihadist or Jihadist-inspired murders as inevitable, and without indulging the ideas of self-appointed conservative representatives of Muslim communities. — jamalrob

I largely concur, but I seem to recollect that the radicalisation of Islam was nourished and promoted by Laurence of Arabia, back in the day, and thereafter supported by the West as part of the cold war in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Try some old wisdom. The oldest book. Am I going off topic with talk of yin and yang?

http://www.downloads.imune.net/medicalbooks/I%20Ching%20-%20Introduction.pdf

"But the yi the title of the book points to is not primarily the regular change involved in the cycle of day and night, in the succession of the seasons or in the organic growth of living things. Yi refers in the first place to unpredictable change. We find an expressive description of it in another classic, the Shu Jing, Book of Documents:
When in years, months and days the season has no yi, the hundred cereals ripen, the administration is enlightened, talented men of the people are distinguished, the house is peaceful and at ease. When in days, months and years the season has yi, the hundred cereals do not ripen, the administration is dark and unenlightened, talented men of the people are in petty positions, the house is not at peace.1
We have yi when things are off track, when chaos irrupts into our life and the usual bearings no longer suffice for orientation. We all know that such times can be very fertile – and extremely painful, disconcerting and full of anxiety. Modern chaos theory pays particular attention to these murky transitions, by which forms transmute into each other. Life itself arises at the boundary between order and chaos: it requires both, it is a daughter of both. On the side of perfect order there is only dead stability, inertia, symmetry, thermodynamic equilibrium. Nothing very interesting can happen there: everything is too predictable, it resembles death more than life. But the side of total disorder is not very interesting either: forms appear and disappear too quickly, there is a total lack of symmetry, everything is too unpredictable. It is on the edge between order and chaos that the subtle dance of life takes place: here the real complexity arises, here forms bend and loop and transmute and evolve."

I particularly like this bit : " ... the administration is dark and unenlightened, talented men of the people are in petty positions ..." Who's this 'dark' character though?

Vinay Lal says watch out for the hidden imperialism there. If you are responsible for my terrorist actions, then you have the qualities of an adult (responsible and able to choose), while I am like a toddler (lashing out reflexively, too immature to be held accountable.) Lal says adult/child is one way dominion is expressed and justified. — Mongrel

I agree. I am an adult, because I have renounced the gun and the bomb, and and those who lash out on both sides are children. Therefore I am responsible, and they are not.

Do you see what I did there, with the word responsible?

Here's the topic I'm addressing.

So now the question is: what is the appropriate social response? More drones and Hellfire missiles? Nukes over Fallujah? Boots and Robots on the ground? Bombs, bombs, bombs? Or something completely different? Clever infiltration? Better propaganda? Systematic hacking of propaganda systems? Totally unexpected actions? — Bitter Crank

I'm making very general observations, which you have concretised in the most uncharitable ways possible. Actually, I have said nothing particularly original or even controversial. But I'll expand a little, since you are interested.

Of course the dominant economic and military power (formerly my country, currently yours) bears the dominant responsibility for the consequences of its interventions in foreign parts. No power, no responsibility. That's not hard to understand is it? I'm not saying that the US is entirely or solely responsible for anything or everything. Nevertheless the greater responsibility in general lies with the greater power.

As I write, I see another tragedy reported; three police officers gunned down in the US.Not Muslims I assume, but one of those other others in despair. One can perhaps be forgiven for making the connection between eight dead police officers, all innocent by definition, and one filmed black man shot while on the ground and well sat upon by police officers, guilty by definition. The perpetrators are dead, but there are always more desperate people.

It is a matter of the purest pragmatism and not requiring my lily-livered morality to observe that a man with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous of men. And therefore, as a matter of pragmatic, hard-headed policy, both domestic and foreign, it makes sense to ensure that everyone has something more than their mere existence to lose.

Why do you bother to make up shit I'm not saying and then ridicule it?

And when did you stop beating your wife?

I say that each person is responsible for each other's actions. I hit you, I am responsible for you hitting me back, or you hitting another. I refuse your need, I am responsible for your despair.

Hmm, so, for instance, Osama bin Laden attacked the United States because we bombed Saudi Arabia? — Arkady

No, because you armed and supported a corrupt regime that did your bombing for you.

Etc, addressing other straw men.

...some foolish, kumbaya nonsense... — Arkady

That's the song of the happy natives under colonial rule. Not quite my theme tune. :’(

In what way is this state of mind which
a. sees the world run by a tyrannical, exploitative, monstrous cabal
b. sees any means of resistance as morally defensible
not itself rather like the Nazis? And where is the "within" wherein the poisonous regime might be dismantled? — Bitter Crank

It is rather like. As we are rather like. And we are alike in our refusal to understand the humanity and morality of the other. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lays down his life for his friends, and takes a few of his enemies with him. Our morality is his morality.

It really isn't difficult. Stop bombing my country, and perhaps I will stop driving trucks into your parades. To stop a desperate man, help him out of his despair instead of making it greater. First let's take the hatred and violence out of our eyes, and then we will see better how to remove it from IS.

Count up the innocent deaths, and you will find that we are way ahead in the race to barbarism. I find all this outrage highly inappropriate; "How could they?" "How can they be stopped?" are the wrong questions. Replace 'they' with 'we'.

I find these acts morally indefensible ... — Bitter Crank

When our boys give their lives in our cause, they are heroes. When our bombs indiscriminately kill civilians, we call it collateral damage, a price worth paying.

It is not that hard to understand the state of mind that sees the world to be run by a tyrannical, exploitative, monstrous cabal equivalent to the Nazis, against which every and any means of resistance is morally defensible.

There are only two possible solutions; dismantle the poisonous regime from within, or else the final solution. So far, we are going for the second.

The clue's in the name. It's a middle class social-worker's rag that tries to teach the working class not to keep coal in their bath, and generally do us good whether we like it or not.

Identity is violence.

Don't try this at home, kids. Roadrunner is a trained professional, (and total fiction).

I would think that happiness is more a relation than a condition or attribute. Thus I find I am not happy or unhappy in a vacuum, nor in an absolute, unconditional way. Rather, I might be happy with this post, and at the same time unhappy with the general level of debate.

Likewise I could sensibly claim that plate tectonics matters to evolution, or the distance of the moon matters to the tides; meaning it has an effect. This by way of depersonalising a bit. Mattering also being relational.

So when the op says:

...really nothing matters... — David

, I feel entitled to ask what or who it doesn't matter to? And there is no possible answer, because everything is on the other side of the relation.

The emotive aspects of human thinking and behavior don't allow for the abolition of either "follow the leader" or "lead the following". It isn't that individuals can't be dispassionate, it's that they can't be dispassionate enough to still be dispassionate in groups. We're stuck with leadership and followership, like it or not. — Bitter Crank

Well let's start by not liking it. Even the most tyrannical despot is a follower of an idea. This I think, is what Benn meant when he said that Corbyn is not a leader - that he is not a follower.

This being so, it is possible not to be a follower, and if everyone stops being a follower, there will be no leaders. This does not mean that one cannot make a decision in a timely manner, or that one must arrive at a consensus about every damn thing.

When I want to install a new boiler, I take the advice of a heating engineer; I do not become his follower though. In the same way, it seems to me that I can take Corbyn's advice on political decisions, on the understanding that he has experience and expertise that has been demonstrated over years, without becoming a follower.

I'm groping towards something here; the most important attribute of a leader, I would say, is that (s)he is going in the right direction. That surely has priority over charisma, or the tally of followers. Otherwise one might have to acclaim Hitler or the Pied Piper as a great leader. And goodness and decency seem pretty much definitive of the right direction.

It seems to me that we are still struggling with images of manhood and notions of leadership and loyalty thereto that should have been replaced in the wake of WW1. The image of the virtuous foot soldier following his leader into the path of the machine-guns day after dreadful day should have vanished, but has not. It was characterised with great sympathy in The Remains of the Day surviving to the outbreak of WW2.

A good and decent man cannot nowadays be an uncritical follower. He must only follow another good and decent man, and only so far as he is deemed to be holding to the path of righteousness. But this is not to be a follower at all, it is simply to be moving together. Leadership and follower-ship are overdue to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

The two sets of qualities that you mention are distinct and not mutually exclusive, so that one can be good and decent and yet be lacking in the department of leadership skills.

I don't think that this is true of Jeremy Corbyn, however. — Sapientia

Agreed. And with the Chilcot report, one can see that the great labour leader was great in a way that we would have preferred him to be less great, and Corbyn was even then heading the right way. So it's well past time for the PLP to turn about face and start following him instead of Blair.

This is open-ended, but... — David

If I deny I am in denial, I am in denial. But if I affirm that I am in denial, I am in denial. The end is not open; I deny it.

Anyway, every schoolboy knows that matter does matter, and nothing noths.

... why we shouldn't act in an attempt to make any kind of divine force happy ... — David

It's hubristic folly. Give God the credit for creating things (and 'us') the way He wanted them. Otherwise He's a douchebag failure that doesn't deserve our consideration.

How did you get to the conclusion that the rise of Trump lead to the Left to die? — Saphsin

Other way round. The end of heavy industrial work leads to loss of power for the working class, which leads to the take over of left political parties by corporate interests. And that lack of political voice leads to Trump. The irony is that to the extent that capital still needs labour at all, if the wall prevents the migration of labour, capital will simply migrate to where there is cheap labour.

Oh no, I'm all for small steps and even crawling, and keep on greening for sure. My indifference to the EU is only relative. Think global act local, you know. We don't have to go to hell, but avoiding it requires correctly identifying the problems and looking where we are going. That's why I'm bothering to blather on about things. There are folks that I think we should make life more difficult for, but they are not those generally thought of as migrants.

Even if you think that people shouldn't blame immigration, you have to listen to them when they do, and give them a meaningful response. Negotiating a reduction in European freedom of labour movement will be a meaningful response, and to me it has to happen, whatever my own more liberal views about migration (Reader, I married an immigrant). — mcdoodle

Well actually, I don't think it will be a more meaningful response than pulling all someone's teeth out is a meaningful response to their complaint of toothache; . It will only hasten the decline of the health and education services, the value and hence quality of the housing stock and the availability of work.

But by and large, the EU is an irrelevance, as it is run on the same lines and with the same economic ideology as the British government whichever party is in power. Oldham will continue to decline until it has an economic function restored to it, and no one is making any serious suggestions in that direction.

I'm struck immediately by the similarity of Brexitry and Trumpery. It seems to me that the Left has died. This is the neo-Marxian analysis; that the power base of the left has always been the factory floor, where labour has the opportunity to organise collective resistance to the dictates of capital. Robots do not have such interests, and so the 'liberal left' has become in practice a rhetoric without content. The left is now the right with added sentimental nostalgia. No one is responsible, it's all determined by historical necessity.

I would supplement this gloomy view with a psychological concept due to David Smail - of a personal event horizon. One looks to explain one's life in order to improve it, but one has recourse only to one's own experiences. Thus if one suffers loss of job, status, power, stability, one looks for the causes in one's own life and one's own community. Whereas the real efficient causes often lie far beyond the horizon on individual experience. One has no experience of the games of fund managers and the like, and it is hard to see how they result in one self-employed carpenter finding less work and less pay for the work he does. It 'must' be factors within his experience, or there is no hope for him. Hence the idea, readily endorsed by those 'efficient causes' that the migrant worker is responsible.