I can't resist this latest.

The BBC has learned that a delegation of shadow cabinet members tried to meet Mr Corbyn on Thursday to put forward their plan, but were unsuccessful.
Under the plan, potential leadership contenders would agree to pursue some of Mr Corbyn's key policies on issues including tackling inequality and making the party more democratic.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36692256

So basically, they'll follow him as long as he's not the leader. >:)

Well some people think it is all the machinations of Blair who wants to get him out of office before the Chilcot report is published. I couldn't possibly comment.

But what I want to ask you is 'Are goodness and decency a form of incompetence?'

Let me put it this way, he doesn't come across as hard or dogmatic, and Benn didn't characterise him as such. Such has been said elsewhere, but without much conviction - being left wing is not actually a dogma, but the position of the labour party.

But I'm ending up defending him, when I want to look at the general point.

If Jesus (or insert good man archetype of your tradition) came back to Earth would you follow him or crucify (or insert barbaric death penalty of your tradition) him?

My name is evidence, indeed. Powerful argument.

We appear to be talking past each other. Best to leave it at that. — Thorongil

It may look that way to you; to me it looks as if I have presented an argument supported by evidence that migration is a manufactured problem and you have responded with no argument and no evidence that it must be a problem because lol.

It's no to your fatuous straw man. I have provided evidence by examples that the tendency to blame migrants is closely associated with declining regional economy and also that where the economy is not declining, there is less blaming of migrants although there may be more migrants. I do not claim that one example proves anything. But these are facts that are better explained by reference to the regional economy than by reference to migrants.

I suggest to the contrary that migration stimulates regional economies to the extent at least of slowing the decline.

Migrants haven't traditionally been more educated. — Hanover

True. What migrants have as an advantage is hope; hope of bettering themselves. This is what living in a declining area deprives one of. Thus the second generation Pakistani has become native in outlook.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-oldham-idUSKCN0ZB0LU

It's all there, ironically expressed by the son of Pakistani immigrants. He is not the problem, it must be those others. It is frankly ridiculous to blame immigrants for the neglect of the infrastructure, the lack of schools, jobs economic activity. The mills have closed and nothing has replaced them. Local government is starved of funds and central government has done nothing.

Immigrants, the poorest ones anyway, end up in those places that are most deprived for obvious economic reasons; they don't create the deprivation or even add to it. Remove the immigrants from Oldham, and watch house prices further shrink, housing stock deteriorate, economic activity decline further and the place become a ghost town.

Er no, lol.

My thesis is that migration is not critical to any degree, but migrants are used as a diversion from real structural crises in society. The misery in places like Oldham, for example are in no way caused but rather somewhat mitigated by by an influx of migrants. The community is suffering from economic depression, unemployment, and the consequent loss of working class status and values. People feel useless, unloved, helpless neglected, etc. The decline of the working class has been evident for most of my life, and almost nothing has been done about it apart from the above evidenced scapegoating.

Instead, the scrap heaped ex-workers in coal, steel, shipbuilding, etc, who have lost their cultural and economic base have seen the migrants who are necessarily more adaptable, and often better educated and more ambitious, overtake them.It is because people have lost their place in society that they are in crisis, not because other people have found a place.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-oldham-idUSKCN0ZB0LU

It's all there, ironically expressed by the son of Pakistani immigrants. He is not the problem, it must be those others. It is frankly ridiculous to blame immigrants for the neglect of the infrastructure, the lack of schools, jobs economic activity. The mills have closed and nothing has replaced them. Local government is starved of funds and central government has done nothing.

Immigration reform is still necessary and the migrant crisis is still a crisis, despite the silly tabloids. — Thorongil

No, that is the lie being peddled. The crisis is the collapse of the manufacturing regions the mining regions, and the fishing industry. These are the regions so deprived they qualify for EU funding, and these are the regions that voted to leave, because they were taught to blame the migrants, rather than the failure of the government to regenerate. There is no migrant crisis in London, evidenced by the remain majority, although it is the most multicultural city in the world.

So does anyone know if the Daily Express is hiring? — discoii

Other newspapers are available.

“Jeremy’s causes are a million miles away from what concerns our heartlands,” says Lord Falconer. “He worries about foreign policy, in particular the Middle East, Trident [the U.K.’s nuclear submarine defences which Corbyn wants to scrap] and Syria. The focus should be on economic inequality since 2008 – our heartlands see pressure on the NHS, housing and school places as a result of more Eastern European immigrants.”

Whereas Lord F, private school, Oxford PPE graduate, etc, is best mates with the disenfranchised poor. Its a downright bald-faced lie, you see. Corbyn has more than doubled the party membership in a few months precisely because he is in touch with ordinary folks in the devastated industrial areas and the parliamentary labour party is not. He has spread a disease of political hope in the face of the overt and covert opposition of his own members and the chattering classes.

As if it isn't the crisis in the Middle East that has added urgent fuel to the inflammatory propaganda of immigrant hate peddled by the press for years. As if this propaganda is not being spread in preparation for the next world war.

What do you think of this one? http://www.thecanary.co/2016/06/28/truth-behind-labour-coup-really-began-manufactured-exclusive/

This is what we have been fed:



And this is what we excrete:



"The poor white remains on the caboose of the train, but he ain't to blame, he's only a pawn in their game."

Which is to say that devotion to democracy without truth is folly.

In this particular case, it does seem as if Corbyn is not a natural leader, and in a sense, that's why the electorate picked him; they distrusted anyone who had ambitions to lead them... — mcdoodle

The implication here, from your own words, is even more clearly that personal ambition is a necessary quality of a natural leader. It is one of those things that is true or false according to whether it is widely believed (known in the trade as a social construct). So perhaps the electorate - that portion that supports him - do not so believe.

Why assume he is a good and decent man? — Thorongil

I have made no assumption of the kind. I merely notice that this is how he is often talked about by colleagues, and that it is often said in an almost pitying tone, as if it is a serious weakness.

He's not saying that a good and decent man cannot be a leader. He's saying that this good and decent man cannot be a leader, — Michael

Well that seems just plain idiotic given that he is the leader elected with the largest mandate of any British political party ever. What the fuck does a good and decent man have to do or have that he lacks?

I realise that Hilary is not saying that a good and decent man cannot be a leader; I am drawing an inference that he would reject, obviously. But it is an inference that is supported by the popularity and success of a number of less than good and decent politicians.

So I'm asking whether it might be the case that we have a penchant for ambitious and unprincipled leaders, or whether it is the case that honesty and principle are a hinderance to leadership. I'm not actually that interested in Hilary Benn's philosophy, his comment is merely the provocation.

I don't like referendums, and i don't respect them or regard them as democratic.

What would be a good alternative? — JJJJS

There is no alternative to the social contract that is not poor, nasty, brutish and short.

I don't like referendums, and i don't respect them or regard them as democratic.

Typically , a referendum is constructed for political purposes and some questions are asked and not others. Take the devolution of Wales for example. The first time round the answer was no to devolution, so there was a second referendum. This time it was a marginal yes, and there will be no third.

One could have a 'true' democratic government by subjecting every decision to an online referendum; it would be a disaster, because what folks want is contradictory - low taxes and high government spending, for example.

In the case of the EU, it is assumed that Britain has the absolute right to decide to leave, presumably forever at any time. But Scotland does not, let alone Yorkshire, or the unenlightened household.

Democracy is a buzz-word, and and only starts to have real application when the constituency is already established. We decide, only when it is already decided who 'we' are. This makes a referendum on who 'we' shall be pretty much of a sham.

I have no clue what the hell feminism is supposed to be these days. You can't get an adequate definition without someone calling bullshit. — darthbarracuda

I have no clue what the hell philosophy is supposed to be these days. You can't get an adequate definition without someone calling bullshit.

If this counts as philosophy, I'm calling bullshit.

Un, Just to say this is exactly how I feel. Thanks for articulating it in a way I haven't been able to. I would say 'authentic' too but then I'm irretrievably stuck with Sartreian categories I mis-learnt about 45 years ago. — mcdoodle

Thanks. It's all stolen from Krishnamurti and rephrased. Psychologically, he says, the trick is 'learning without accumulation'; always learning in the present, and never knowing from the past about oneself.

I think I can improve...

Matches etc.

A miserable git sat in a railway cutting not far from the sea.

Well stick to Descartes if you don't like W. One talks of 'experience of' - an oasis, say - precisely to bracket off the possibility of illusion. The illusion of experience is a nonsense. One can have phantom limb pain, but not phantom phantom limb pain, except in the unlikely circumstance where one believes wrongly that one has lost the limb.

what is your answer to this besides that it is "no-thing"? — schopenhauer1

'Mind is an illusion' is not a legitimate position in philosophy of mind. Or did you mean some other question?

So "where" is thought endlessly reacting with itself the aether? — schopenhauer1

Where is where-ness is not a better question than what is what-ness, or when is when-ness. I could point to a place in your experience where your experience happens - 'the human brain'. Or more poetically I could say 'It's behind you.' Or I could simply and more usefully say it happens in thought, which is to say that it is not an event in the world. But even this is wide open to misinterpretation, because thought is a physical process; it is however not the physical process that is the content of the thought.

In any case, there is another voice which seems to speak through us at the same time we speak in it. I mean voice literally here, since this usually happens when speaking to another of something important to one. The type of talk where you find yourself saying things you never knew you actually felt or believed, but which you recognize as having felt and believed all along. I feel most like myself when talking like this, in my own voice, but it happens very rarely for me. — csalisbury

So much selves, so little consciousness. This is getting a bit off topic perhaps, but I would say that most of the time I am performing, conforming to an image that I hold onto and from that nothing new can come. But to be 'authentic' (is that the right word?) is not to make that division for a moment but to respond from the whole of what one is, and in doing so one learns - recognises -something of the truth of what one is. Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that the same process of thought immediately makes a new image of this, and one starts performing it.

It strikes me that there's a difference between the "I" that we might speak of as a transcendental condition, and the voice that one speaks in. — csalisbury

I hope I am understanding you here?

I would say that the voice that one speaks in is a construction of thought; of identification; an earthy, forceful illusion. Consider what one's condition is when there is no thought. Perhaps one has been shocked by a particularly insightful post that blocks for a moment the train of thought. There is consciousness, but it is silent. I don't know if you have experienced it?

There is a close connection with time again here. One might say that psychological time ends, (while physical time continues of course). No one (no-thing) is awake... Psychological time is the result of identification with the past and future, giving rise to fear and hope, suffering and pleasure. This is the sense of continuing, the stream of consciousness that is indeed the narrative voice. It is wrong perhaps to call it an illusion; it is real enough and fills one's life from day to day, yet it is a fabrication of thought endlessly reacting to itself. It is not a precondition of life.

In fact, it can be argued the most intimate thing as it is the very "you" that all other things become some-thing. — schopenhauer1

Not just all other things, but 'the very "you"' itself as well. In which voice one objectifies subjectivity, making consciousness an intimate thing. (Mumbles something about beetles in boxes...).

Or I could liken it to Kant's space and time, as a condition of talking meaningfully about thing-hood and therefore necessarily no-thing itself. One can talk of time being an illusion as well, but what is one saying?

The illusion itself has to be accounted for as something that "feels like" it is happening. — schopenhauer1

Indeed! At least to the extent that one is doing the accounts. I rather think that one is better off attacking the question than trying to answer it. Much as I dislike qualia-talk as the atomic theory of consciousness, the denial thereof is even more uncomfortable.

To ask what is consciousness is close to asking what is what-ness. One might say that consciousness is identical with its content - I am the world. And if it was something other than its content, how would one know ? But this is going to lead to foolishness too. As if what-ness is whatever one rightly answers a 'what' question with.

But in this case, the right answer, I believe, is 'fuck off with your meaningless question'. No thing, but not nothing. But I haven't the energy today to do the full Wittgensteinian exposition.

I'm with Descartes on this one; that one can be deceived about anything and everything, except that there is a subject of deception. That said, I would also suggest that one commonly is deceived into identifying the subject as something distinct from other 'thinking things', rather than as no-thing, having no characteristics bar emptiness, which implies that it is not individual or personal.

We knew this was coming.

It's the weather, dudes. It's just too fuckin' hot to do much of anything except go crazy now and then.

Perhaps one might ostensively define a philosophical zombie as something like one of those self-driving cars. It sees, it thinks, it decides, but it does not experience. Or so we might want to claim. The radical mechanist claims that we are all machines - it is a metaphor that pervades psychology and neuroscience at the moment.

So the notion of qualia seeks to reify (if you're agin'it) a substance of experience. Subjectivity is the soul of the irreligious. It's not that Dennett does not have legs but miraculously walks, so much as the legs miraculously walk without a Dennett.

A plague on all your candidates.

http://johnpilger.com/articles/silencing-america-as-it-prepares-for-war

Gender simply is the sex you're born with, end of story. — Agustino

End of discussion. I wonder why you even posted the thread?

But other folks find the story debatable and by no means ended by your pontification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction

It seems to me that a philosopher who wishes to consider such matters would do well to trouble to understand that other thoughtful people make a distinction between sex and gender and find it useful. Then one could make an argument that this distinction is unhelpful or unsustainable, instead of claiming that it it is an abuse of language confined to a small group of misfits.

So it turns out that men can breastfeed. One has to conclude that this nurturing behaviour is not, as it appears to be, part of the sexual dimorphism which is supposed to be so clear. Well it might be convenient to say that is is not part of the biological sexual distinction, but is culturally strongly gendered. It does rather make one wonder though why man-boobs are perfectly acceptable for public display, but woman boobs are not?

Ah, the hard science of toilets; I missed that bit of biology 101. If you define gender as identical with genetic sex, having no regard for disposition, orientation, bodily expression, hormonal balance, or identification, then indeed the modernist white western view triumphs as usual. Otherwise, it is going too far to say there are two genders, and mere scientism.

Augustino has been torturing me, and I have been obliged to agree that there is a cup although there is no cup. ( Don't tell him I said that last bit though.)

War is not an inconvenience to capital.

The EU is a capitalist club, but so is the labour party, by and large, and so is the Bullingdon club. It is largely a deckchairs on the Titanic thing for the left, which seems to find the GMC on its radical wing these days. :-$

https://www.facebook.com/theguardian/videos/vb.10513336322/10154112914426323/?type=2&theater

I'll be voting 'in' on the basis that the hated bureaucrats need strengthening against the hated capitalists, multinationals being larger than nations and corporate capitalism ruling the world almost unchecked.

But it's all rather tangental to any leftist movement, unfortunately. I'm not going to be empowered much either way. But at the margin, the EU is more democratic than Megashite Industries ltd, and Dodgy Dave's bullingdon bullies.

This is all a piss-take, right?