Comments

  • Bernardo Kastrup?
    ↪Wayfarer


    Yes, consciousness just isn't interesting because it ignores the logical definition of whatever we might be talking about in concepts. The consciousness argument is akin to asking things like: "Is a tree really a tree?" when no-one is thinking about it or looking at it.

    It doesn't respect how what we talk about has a definition in logic, a definition beyond the presence of our conscious experience.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    ↪gurugeorge


    You misunderstand. There is no question of "essences," just a defitnions of a particular instance social relation and significance. The a priori definition is nothing more than an understanding of the feature of the world being looked at. If we cannot distinguish a car from the road, we cannot observe it and understand it is there. The same of is true of these social relations.

    If we are to observe the particular relationships of significance and power in our society, we need to understand their definitions so that we can recognise when they are present. Without understanding this meaning, we won't be even be able to notice these social relationships when they are sitting in front of our nose.

    There is no circularity. The a priori definitions in question aren't the basis for "proving" what is true. They are the basic understanding of the definition of relationships of status and power which we need recognise if we are able to observe when they are occurring in our society. Just as I need to know what a book is before I can point out in observation, I need to understand the meaning of social relationships, statuses, power relationships, etc. if I am to make the dissection of where they are present or not.

    So in Marxism for example, I need to understand what constitutes an oppressive relationship, an organisation and control of capital, how is amounts to exploitation, before I can even observe instances where it occurs in the world. After that is defined in my understanding and observe whether or not a present society has those relationships. If it then so happens that I find those relationships are present (which Marx did) in society, it's a feature of the world as it exists, not some assumption of essence. The facts of those power relationships and exploits are defined in how that capitalist system is working, not by definition magic. If the capitalist system were to avoid those relationships, it'd got to step up and define a social organisation in which these facts of social relations are not present. Marxism is defining its position based on observation of what present capitalist society is doing.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    ↪gurugeorge


    Oppression isn't falsifiable in a relevant sense. The definition of a social reaction is a logical definition a priori definition which must be known before any analysis or observation of the social context can be performed. Before one can tell whether or not a sun is present, they need to know what a sun looks like.

    These are the definitions which Marxism, Feminism, etc. deal with. The a priori definition of an exploitative social reaction which we must have before we can even deal with the question of whether a given society is exploitative or oppressive. If we take Marxism, the "inherent exploitation" only goes insofar as the social context of capital is exploitative. Marx's point then being, within observed capitalism, there are these feature of exploitation, values expressed and power relationships. In these respects, they are descriptive of the social situation being spoken about, not independent notions which are true no matter how society might be defined, people might exist, etc.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    ↪Thorongil


    Privilege isn't an action done to someone by another, it's an aspect of social being, a meaning of states or actions present in society. In the context of the police, for example, this is defined in being of a racial groups associated with crime. Even if the police have no racist intentions, the mere fact of a society in which manifests (for various reasons), as association between race in crime defines the presence of other racial groups over this one. It's defined in the social situation of belonging to a race associated with crime, including in instances of just policing. (i.e. cops have no racist intentions, but people for that community are justly subject to police actions, as a result of acts of crime in that social context).

    The question of privilege is one of describing a social relationship, not just pointing out some act of injustice. Many acts of injustice are a part of it, but sometimes, maybe even quite often, privilege is a feature of states and actions that are, for that moment, just or valuable. In these cases, it not question picking out some individual action, telling people to stop and then killing home for it. It's about a wider social context. The injustice and change being the circumstances which produce the disadvantage in the first place (e.g. remove poverty within a community, so they don't turn to crime, etc.).
  • Does God make sense?
    ↪Cavacava


    That actually leads to refutation of creation ex nihilo (in the sense of saying there was nothing present form which the universe came) because God is the presence from which the universe comes-- it did not come from nothing, but rather from God.

    Any objection based on the assertion God must be nothing and so impossible only misses the point-- God is something and is that form which the universe springs.
  • #MeToo
    In my experience, if women are receptive to dumb pickup lines, it says something about their personality that I believe would likely mean we were incompatible. Again, this is based on my experience. If I find something completely stupid, and she finds it endearing, I feel like we wouldn't be off to a very good start. Say what you want about my reasoning in that regard, but you do me a huge disservice to put such strong words in my mouth which were never there. — JustSomeGuy

    It's all implied by the way you are using "the sort of woman" in question as some sort of rule which defines what an individual woman thinks. You are objectifying such women as necessarily shallow and stupid on account of being attracted to someone who used a pick-up line. It's a status judgment which has nothing to do with anyone you might b involved with.

    With respect to who you might be interested or compatible with, the argument doesn't make any sense. If you were to be with anyone who liked pick-up lines, you would be around them, encountering their wonder behaviours and personality. At no point will you be in a situation of measuring whether someone is worthwhile or interesting based on whether they are fine with pick up lines. It makes no sense to use this as a measure of someone's character.
  • #MeToo
    So you're saying that this is what MeToo is truly about? Because I was under the impression it was about unwanted sexual advances from men in general, not sexist discrimination in the workplace. I don't use Twitter, though. Everything I know about this is from third party sources. — JustSomeGuy

    It's not about asking for consent. It's about respecting women and whether they consent. Rather than about what a man might say, it is about whether a woman wants to be involved in some sort of sexual act or context.

    The act of asking for consent is only an action taken in some circumstances to aid communication. In quite a number of instances, the act of asking for consent would actually constitute sexual harassment-- e.g. walking up to a stranger in the street and asking: "Do you consent have sex with me?"

    This is the great irony of those who complain about "consent contracts" making counting stuffy and uncool. No amount of prior verbal or written agreement amounts to consent. It's about whether someone wants to have sex, a question of not of a stated agreement, but rather of someone's thoughts, feelings and wishes. Consent isn't about whether a man has asked. It's about if a woman wants to. (of course, this is true of everyone, but I'll keep the gendered aspect consider the context of this discussion).
  • #MeToo
    ↪JustSomeGuy


    Not wrong to have preferences, but you are using interest in pick-up lines as a measure of social standing, competence and slut-shaming-- i.e. those women who would be interested in pick-up lines are dumb and shallow.
  • #MeToo
    ↪Akanthinos


    The point is you are using a myth of generalisation to relate to a context of an individual women.

    If a woman is attracted to decisiveness, then it is her own. It isn't some sort or rule by which to obtain sex. In thinking about women in this way, you disrespect all of them.

    Instead of understanding any instance of attraction in terms of the individual person involved, you relate to in terms of a generalisation which supposedly reflects a own you might come across. You've failed to understand and recognise someone else, with their own thoughts and desires is involved.
  • Neither Conceptual Nor Empirical
    And Nietzsche was right. It was Christianity that first brought the scientific attitude into the world and justified it as understanding God's laws. It was Christianity that extolled reason and its supremacy over the passions - man the rational animal, most like God, who is rational. Christianity was responsible for the eradication of superstition, sacrifices, violence, and the whole plethora of means of keeping the world enchanted. Violence played a foundational role in human societies, and Christianity rendered this foundational mechanism impossible or worse - ineffective. Nihilism is now the unavoidable conclusion for those who reject the Kingdom of God that Jesus offered. — Agustino

    You'll make Nietzsche write another book from beyond the grave.

    For Nietzsche, nihilism is denial of the relevance of the world, the denial of metaphysic and value of the world in favour of a transcendent force which does the work. In this respect, Christianity is just a bad as the traditions which replaced it. While Christianity might have removed a plethora of traditions which held the scapegoating of the world, it still posits a similar denial of the world as found in various traditions with where a force in some other world is seen as the definition of the world.

    Nihilism is not a conclusion drawn from the rise of Christianity, it's the feature of transcendent metaphysics which has locked man out of understanding the world as responsible and meaningful in itself. Rather than an unavoidable conclusion, it is a grave mistake made many, many years ago, in the definition of a metaphysics which held meaning and value have to enter he world by a transcendent force. Nihilism wasn't a new world made by the abandonment of old traditions, whether it be in the shift from older traditions to Christianity or in the shift from Christianity to secularism, but rather those transcendent metaphysics traditions is themselves (the secular version being consumerism), which hold that meaning and value is defined by some other than with world.
  • The Ontological Status of Universals
    ↪Wayfarer


    Kant's point is to centre human knowledge back to human experiences. If we are affected by something, a phenomena, it is necessarily knowable to us, for it takes the conceptual form explicable in terms of us-- "North" is indexed to our spatial world, "space" refers to an expression of the states we encounter in our experiences, "time" is a manifestation of the world we understand, etc.

    In the context of metaphysics and epistemology, this is a significant move (or at least if you've not already made it with someone like Spinoza or maybe even Descartes) because it removes the transcendent force from our analysis of phenomena. With respect to phenomena, there cannot be a "hidden" realm which defines it. All phenomena is necessarily explicable in the form it takes in our experience.

    If we are dealing with phenomena, we can always get out of the cave (to reference Plato). We just have to find the exit (i.e. understanding of the relevant form).

    Here "subjectivity" doesn't mean "personal opinion" or "lack or objectivity." It just means that phenomena are "of the subjective" (i.e. given and explicable in experiences), rather than being of a different realm defined outside the context of what might be available to experiences.

    Strike two. ‘Percepts without concepts are blind’. — Wayfarer

    Kant is making exactly his point in noting the subjective nature of phenomena. If our percepts didn't access the objective knowledge of logical forms, we couldn't possibly understand any percept. Unless our experiences are a percept of understanding a logical form, we couldn't really be aware of anything.

    In fact, we have grounds to say we couldn't experience anything at all, for even the most basic observations of phenomena (e.g. "What is THAT?", an instinctual attention to something that moved,etc. ) involve conceptual form.

    The forms of phenomena must be a construction of experience, insofar as our experiences are concerned. Our experiences are us, not anything we might be looking at. We always have to do the work. The presence of something is never sufficient to amount to its presence in experience.
  • Transubstantiation
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover


    That sounds like knowledge to me, someone knows the meaning of something, not "faith."

    In this respect, people might well ought to call you Metaphysician Undercover in the situation you describe. People can fail to understanding meanings/ascribe the wrong one.
  • Transubstantiation
    ↪Sapientia


    ...but you haven't been arguing the opposite to me. When I responded about the issue with treating it as a matter of evidence, you insisted a claim to which evidence was supposedly relevant.

    They don't expect to see it, but they do expect it to happen. If you think otherwise, then don't just assert it. Back it up. I find what T. Clark says about his wife, who he says is a thoughtful Catholic, more convincing than what you're saying about Catholics. Are you Catholic? Do you have a Catholic wife? Where are you getting your views about what Catholics think from? — Sapientia

    Catholics cannot expect it to happen empirically. There is no separation between the empirical and how an empirical state appears to us.

    The underlying question here is: what does it even mean for it to happen? Since it is not empirical, what is even at stake in transubstantiation? What would it mean for it to be true? What would an expectation it was true entail? What does it even mean to say its true or false?

    These seem to be the questions you aren't asking and answering. Even as you accept Agustino's account that its unfalsifiable (which I missed, being in one of many quote trees), you keep talking in terms of some contingent event which would be true or false by some sort of evidence-- such that we would have to have "faith" it was or was not so, due to evidence not arbiting either way.
  • Transubstantiation
    ↪Sapientia


    I understood you position perfectly. You keep saying the Catholic has made a dubious/falsified claim claim about the blood and wine:

    Yes I do, in the sense that some evidence is much weaker than others, which is the sense in which I meant what I said. That's why I said that it's not real evidence, as in, it's so weak as to be effectively discounted. Think of a court of law as a point of comparison. Some evidence is inadmissible. Some evidence falls far short, such that winning a case becomes highly unlikely. Some evidence is like a smoking gun or being caught red handed — Sapientia

    My point is an account like this doesn't make sense because transubstantiation doesn't make any claim for which there is evidence. It rejects there is empirical the presence of flesh and blood, and the possibility of any evidence goes with it. In literal terms, the Catholic is holding: "This is not (empirically) the flesh and blood of Jesus, it's not the empirical state of his body which would appear to us."
  • Transubstantiation
    ↪Sapientia


    All I'm doing is pointing out what would be required to have a testable claim of Jesus's flesh and blood appearing. Since the Catholic doesn't make this claim, your objection doesn't make sense. They aren't even supposing the bread and wine are empirically Jesus's flesh and blood in the first place. You don't have an empirical claim of "flesh and blood" to falsify when only bread and wine are empirically present.

    My point is you are getting the science wrong. You are treating a claim without empirical claim like it is one-- much like how the very silly Russell treats the "unfalsifiable God" in his teapot madness.
  • Transubstantiation
    Take away the exaggeration, and take away the explanation. It is taken literally, meaning that the bread and wine really do become the body and blood of Christ, and, from what I gather, it is considered to be mystical, which suggests that it is inexplicable, except as an act of God. — Sapientia

    I'm not exaggerating. My example was what would have to be true if people believed bread and wine were "literally" flesh and blood, under the definition you were using. That would be our test for confirmation/falsification: have the bread and wine been replaced by flesh and blood from the person of Jesus.

    If this replacement it not held to occur, then no empirical claim of "bread and wine turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus" has been make. Without holding this exaggerated position, the Catholic is not making an empirical claim, so we would have nothing to dismiss on those grounds.
  • Transubstantiation
    I've read that several times now, and I'm still confused about what you're trying to say. For a start, bread and wine don't express meanings. That makes no sense. I feel like I need a translator when conversing with you. — Sapientia

    I mean there are different meanings of "literal." Catholics don't literally expect to see their bread turn into Jesus' flesh or wine run into blood.

    They don't think Jesus is locked in a room, sitting ready to have a finger lobbed off and blood run at a whim, to be teleported to the appropriate location every time some takes a piece of bread and sip of wine.
  • Humean Causation as Habit & Evolution
    ↪Agustino


    The trouble is Hume has an implicit and unstated a priori notion of things: that's how he indexes bundles in the first place. Hume didn't begin with undifferentiated impressions. He indexes them in distinguished objects. Otherwise, Hume would have no distinct bundles or impressions at all. He would just have a mess impressions which weren't distinguishable from each other at all (i.e. to say "the bundle of" would be impossible).

    In this way, Kant is starting with a misreading of Hume (though admittedly assisted by Hume's discourse) which spoils the party. He mistakes that bundles of impressions (as argued by Hume) could somehow be given without a priori understanding of the presence of a thing. In effect, Kant already pointing out something Hume (somewhat unwittingly) knows and is used in putting forward a bundle theory of states/objects and things-- i.e. there is this bundle, and there is that bundle, etc.

    On the surface this might not see like a big issue, what's wrong with talking about the logical notion of a "thing?" Surely, this could be a worth topic given the way Humean discourse would seem to discard it against reason? The problem is Humean discourse doesn't really discard it. In thinking it does, Kant sets up this schism between sense impressions and a priori definition of things, as if they had nothing in common. The impressions of "bundles" come to be seen merely as human experience, rather than meanings of things we encounter.

    We can see this all come to a head in analysis of the logic of sense impressions themselves. Is not anything we encounter in sense impressions equally a logical meaning? How will I recognise the phenomena of a tree if I lack the a priori concept of tree? If I do not have an a priori indexing of sense impressions, how will I even pick them out as of particular things? Our sense impressions are no less given by understanding than space, time or causality. No-one's senses (as distinct from understanding the meaning of what you sense) can give them an understanding of sense impression.

    In the same way that observation doesn't get us causality, it doesn't get us anything in sense impressions either. Any instance of awareness or understanding involves an a priori meanings of whatever is involved, whether it is a sense impression or causality.
  • Humean Causation as Habit & Evolution
    ↪Agustino


    I think there is a problem with this account of causality: the role of the states themselves is eliminated. We walk away saying causally is only in our minds, rather than recognising it inheres within the things we encounter.

    Kant talks about it in terms of our “minds” because it reflects a logical significance of the world we know. Causality is not some individual thing in front of we observe. Like other a priori significances Kant points out, such as space and time, causality is an extra logical significance not granted in the mere presence of an object. Insofar as this goes Kant is right, but I think it’s a huge mistake to assign this conceptual meaning merely to our mind.We should not be making the mistake of equivocating the a priori truths we know with our minds which are the knowing. Logical expression is not dependent on us to be true.

    If we didn’t notice the ball caused the widow to break, action of the ball and widow would still be a causal states. The ball and widow are doing the causality. To say our minds "add in" causality is obviously wrong, unless we were to equivocate our awareness of causality with the casual actions of state we are talking about.

    In this way, we might say that Kant denies causality is real, claiming it is merely something humans like to add in with their minds, rather than recognising it as a feature of things (i.e. not just our experiences and models-- the instances when we notice "causality"-- but a meaning inherent in the things moving about in causality) we've encountered.

    If causality is to have teeth, it cannot be merely our minds. Things, which are not the human experience of causality, are interacting and moving, forming the states of the world in relation to each other, defining when one thing bringing about another (as opposed to something else), etc.

    Otherwise we just have a pretence "causality" which has nothing to do without things interact.
  • Transubstantiation
    ↪Agustino


    Which makes "miracles" nothing more than unexpected events, whether by that's by present scientific theory or common experience. None of them were ever "impossible (shown clearly false, if one has happened)," only insisted to be "impossible" by humans interested in ensuring people thought the event in question couldn't happen.
  • Transubstantiation
    ↪Sapientia


    I mean it's taken to be a meaning of the bread and wine in question, rather than to be literally what the states in question are-- just as we might say how the world "really is a stage" because people appear to others, even though it's not a stage at all.

    Catholics don't think they are eating Jesus' fingers and putting a substance of blood in their mouth, no matter how much any of them say it's "literal." Any "literal" claim is distinguishing the meanings really are expressed by the bread and wine, rather than being a mere imaginary whim.
  • Transubstantiation
    ↪Sapientia
    ↪T Clark


    This is silliness. Transubstantiation is not an empirical state. It's symbolic, metaphorical, a necessary logical expression given by particular states of the world, within the context of religious ritual. In this respect, it's an a priori truth which isn't subject to any sort of argument about having evidence.

    Asking for evidence here is like claiming that an assertion "The world is a stage"has some evidence which make it so.
  • Humean Causation as Habit & Evolution
    ↪Marchesk


    Kant is mistaken because in making the argument causality must be equivalent to our thinking, he forgets causality is not our thinking.

    Our thinking only needs to reflect events of causality when we understand a causal relationship. In this respect, our insistence of what is causally necessary can be fucked by the world doing it's own thing.

    There might, for example, be a perpetual motion machine. All it would take is a state with an endless supply of it own power, a state which didn't draw on other energies to move, unlike we have observed so far. We cannot say there is no possibility.

    Our case against the perpetual motion machine only holds for instances of the world we have observed. Outside this context, we cannot say what the world is doing.We simply don't know.
  • Humean Causation as Habit & Evolution
    ↪Marchesk

    What is the "concept of causality" exactly?
    It seems to this sort of objection hasn't given it much thought.

    If it is our concept, then it is our experience, to account for it is to describe an event of experience of the person in question, nothing more than our "habit of mind".

    The "how" terminates there: it's the fact someone experiences a concept of causality which means it this there rather than not.
  • Humean Causation as Habit & Evolution
    ↪Agustino


    For sure: that's the issue. In both cases, "causality" is viewed as some sort of logical force, with Hume noting it's not apparent in empirical observations, so rejecting it as an account of the empirical.

    The problem is precisely that Kant doesn't view "causality" as as an empirical matter. In doing so, he supposes cause and effect functions by the means of a logical universal (rather than states just doing whatever they do at "random" ). It means he takes that logical universal (the model of the world) is doing the work of being the states in question, that those states are so by this logical rule rather than just in terms of the states themselves.

    Your account of Kant's epistemology/ontology is iffy. Kant doesn't take our models literally are the things with see. For Kant, our models are not constitutive of things we experience, of the things-in-themsleves. My model "the sun will rise tomorrow" is never the sun that rises. It's not that our experience of the sun constructs the sun, but instead that our experience of the sun is our construction (literally our existence, rather than anything we might be aware of).

    In his account of phenomena, Kant's is pointing out our experience is us, such that any account of secret knowledge which is both phenomenal (for us) but beyond us is incoherent. He's pointing out our knowledge can only be our own, not claiming our minds create the things we encounter.

    Unfortunately, this is not any sort of account of either causality or ontology. Kant's mistake (or maybe more so, the mistake of many readers of Kant) was to fail to properly recognise he was talking about us, about our knowledge, rather than the actions of things we perceive. Cause and effect does not need us to occur. Our minds, in the sense of being awareness of logic meaning, are not involved at all. It's other things which are doing it-- the sun, a ball thrown through a window, someone's body producing a state experience of a limb which isn't there, etc. The doing of cause and effect is another life entirely.

    Thinking about causality in terms of the things, we find Hume's rejection of "causality" is coherent. If other things are cause and effect, then they don't need our models to be defined. They will be what they are, expressing their logical relations on account of there own being-- a sun which rises will be so no matter what humans might think or model, same for a sun which does not rise. Neither state of a sun is defined by our models. "Causality" isn't needed to form causal relationships. The action of one state bringing about another, appearing as a correlation, is always enough.
  • Humean Causation as Habit & Evolution
    ↪Agustino


    Right... but that's the problem: the "causality" Kant is talking about is not an empirical state. We don't, as Hume was at pains to point out, observe "casualty" in the world. Our encounters are with the states.

    Kant is after more than this, some logical connection, some pure and infallible knowledge which amounts to a necessitating of a causal relationship, such they our not just states doing their own random dance. The empirically defined account, the presence of states in relation, is exactly what Kant finds inadequate and is seeking to get beyond.
  • Humean Causation as Habit & Evolution
    So I think Kant's point still holds. I see that the judgement does have absolute necessity, though it may lack universality. — Agustino

    That's an issue for Kant because his position ascribes the universal quality to it. Supposedly, it is the necessary connection lost between casual states in Hume's argument: the absence of a universality law which accounts for how they hold.

    Without universality, "causality" disappears. No longer can we begin with a rule of form (e.g. the sun rises in the morning) which will pick out a necessary event in existence. We might have a sun that does not rise, no matter how often we've seen one rise. Causes an effect are still so, but they are only present in terms of what the states themselves do, rather than an extra layer of "causality" where logic determines a necessary relationship.

    One is left with the Humean position Kant is attacking-- a world of interacting states which have no necessity by logical form. Only when existence is taken into account ( this sun, at this moment ) do the necessary logical expressions of state appear (e.g.the sun that rises necessarily rises. Outside of this, it is not defined whether a sun rises or not).
  • Inquisiting Agustino's Aristotelian Moral Framework
    ↪Agustino


    People enacted them. That is their origin. For the most part, they are not planned at all, but driven by an instinctual response to the presence or absence of a particular status. Would be kings are fooled into the scapegoating by their own instinct to dominate society. There must be an image to hang their power on, to generate and keep their interest above anyone else, regardless of any actual threat posed by a scapegoated community.

    But leaders do not get anywhere on their own. They must be believed by others. Contrary to your claim, it is not merely the in power who are at fault, but rather everyone-- those who would fall for the whispering of the snake, those who would raise the scapegoat to the powerful out of disgust or fear in the first instance, those who would take an image of morality rather than address morality itself.

    I don't assume this is the account people usually give. Indeed, it rarely is. Most people are caught up in the culture and traditions of their own rule. They will steadfastly deny their are any victims in the face of their traditions-- even someone like yourself, who is supposedly aware, don their Pharisee garb announcing gay people are immoral by their nature rather than recognising your argument as a scapegoating of them in favour of your traditions of power. Recognising the victims present in power reaction often hard won though effort and study.

    What's prior to a given structure depends on the states if the world prior to it's development. In the case of a particular issue, this may well be entirely different for the particular people in question-- e.g. gay people going about their business in whatever society before the new religious leaders come down announcing homosexuality is the scourge to be wiped out, indigenous populations holding property and being valued community members prior to being overtaken in colonisation, etc.

    These analysis of power are not myths. They are descriptions of the movement of values and structures in relation to populations. In any of them, the expulsion of the victim was only necessary to achieve the will and power of the dominating group. It's not merely the fault of the 1% in power at all. Such notions mistake the context of the structural analysis.

    These aren't causal accounts of structure, but rather accounts of being of structure and power. For any structure, there are a multitude of causes (leaders, masses, instincts, fears, circumstances of power, in some rare cases, deliberate planning by an elite, etc.), which are not addressed in this analysis. In this analysis, the point is about what is done to a particular people under structure, regardless of how it might have been caused.
  • Moderation Standards Poll
    I'm not sure what to say. In some instances, I think it has been too strict, in others, not strict enough (or at least things were allowed to spiral out of hand).

    So I'll think I'll just say "strict" or "too strict" is too reductive to give a proper answer to.
  • Inquisiting Agustino's Aristotelian Moral Framework
    You cannot even account for why mythology, ritual and prohibitions around things like homosexuality arose in the first place - according to you it must be because your ancestors were retards who couldn't tell their left hand from their right hand, and you're smarter than them. — Agustino

    The actual argument has to do with how people were position by the economic and social systems of control to be adverse to homosexuality-- it breaks the "natural" account people are automatically attracted to the opposite sex and destined to have a family. The issue isn't really that a certain section of the population will spend their lives with people of the same sex, but rather that certain social organisations cannot effectively assert power within the context of gay people being accepted.

    You lose, for example, the ability to spilt social roles in an exclusive dichotomy between men and women, the account that humans are destined to have a heterosexual relationship and children, etc. Gay people are the scapegoat for a concern for power and economics. So it's not that people in the past cannot see their left hand from their right, it is they are ignorant by their own greed for wealth, social power and domination. They would throw gay people under a bus to dominate others.

    The only reason being gay appears "unstable" is because those in power think and tell everyone so, such that a stable social environment it understood to exclude them.
  • Views on the transgender movement
    ↪Agustino


    I assume you mean in comparison to the "bodily self."

    Both are real. One the one hand their are logical significances of the self, such as what one means, how one should related to, what space someone fills in various discourses about being spoken or thought about, on the other three s the presence oft he body with its particular form.

    In the case of this trans person, they are aware of both, an identity of self on the one hand (i.e. trans rather than cis) and their body (their existing body isn't what they sense ought to be),which is why they are trans in the first place.

    If the real self (identity) was just a body, the trans person could not be trans, for they would have to mistake their body for what it was not, and so would just think themselves cis with a body they didn't have.

    In terms identity, the self is always real and with whatever body might be present.
  • Views on the transgender movement
    ↪Michael


    Having to with the self, it actually has a lot to do with metaphysics, perhaps more than bodies with respect to how someone is talked about or related to. Being trans (with disphoria about sex) is an identity which is regardless of whether or not someone's body changes, some don't want to or cannot alter their body.

    In these instances, it is about the body, but only insofar as the body goes. How someone is spoken about, related to or postion in society isn't the body. That's always a logical significance with respect to the self.

    With respect to this, even Augstino's metaphysics account is too defined by bodies, as if the logical expression of self was an an existing state. There is no opposition of the ""real" or "illusionary" self, only the real self and the existence of the body. Try to reduce the question to bodies, you end up reading in conflicts which aren't there.
  • Presentism and ethics
    ↪darthbarracuda


    By recognising the present.

    We might return to your initial question about going back in time to kill Hitler. If we were to send someone back, kill Hitler and prevent him from unleashing the Holocaust, would we prevent the Holocaust?

    At first glance it seems a basic causal relationship: take out Hitler (and the Nazis) and their atrocities would not be committed upon the world. We are so busy thinking about how the past made our future, we forget it events were present.

    With respect to our world, no amount of time travel and killing Hitler will prevent the Holocaust. For our world, it's already been a present state and faded into the past. Creating a new timeline without Hitler and the Holocaust won't change that. If we were successful, it won't change the presence of millions who lived and died in our Holocaust.

    The present cannot be negated or undone. We cannot ever alter the past or the future, only create new and/or different moments-- this mission to kill Hitler is literally pointless by these terms. It will not change anything about our past.

    In this respect, concern for a present is all ethics require, for any past or future, any possible world with a (im)moral outcome, is defined in a present event. To care for any past or future, is to be concerned about a present.
  • Difference between Gender and Sex
    One side is confused into thinking that in order to refer to a MTF transsexual as a woman (or to convince people to do so) we need to alter our scientific understanding and definition of what gender is. A typical reaction to this is to then point to things like chromosomes and bone density in order to preserve our current scientific understanding. (sometimes they go further and say things like "suicide rates stay the same among pre and post-operation trannys, therefore they should not transition" or "would you indulge the delusions of someone who thought they were Napoleon Bonaparte or who wanted to cut their arm off?").

    The way forward between sides is for the reactionaries (aside from the realizing that they're not doctors licensed to issue medical prognoses for gender dysphoria) to point out that they don't have an issue referring to people by the gender they present as (which would adequately assuage any/all bleeding heart liberal types). Jordan Peterson got famous not because he refused to use people's preferred pronouns, but because he refused to use people's made up pronouns (ze, xey, quay, etc...). The SJWs simply need to clarify their argument (it's about ethics, not biology): we can formally and informally refer to transgenders by their preferred gender without actually impacting our scientific understanding of sex/gender.     — VagabondSpectre

    Fear that scientific understanding will be destroyed is founded in doing science backwards, as if we were describing or understand bodies by finding a sex category ( "male" and "female" ), which then allowed us to see the presence of various physical features like chromosomes or bone density.

    Science doesn't work like this. In the observation or description of the body, we begin with the body, not some extra logical/identity order ("male", "female" ) which then determines when certain bodily features occur. The supposed disaster is absurd because in the unmooring of "male" and "female," it was never descriptions of the body at stake, only the identity and ethics of categorising bodies we do observe.

    The "SJWs" already know the scientific (by this I mean accurate description of bodies) understanding isn't at stake or threatened. Their point is what most people consider the "scientific understanding" is not actually a scientific account of bodies, but rather categorisation and ethic for sorting bodies which might be observed (and one which denies, rejects and discriminates against trans identity).

    People like Peterson aren't defending a scientific understanding of bodies. They are protecting an identity and ethic of essentially sorting bodies (which may or may not be described) in categories of "male" and "female," which then masquerades as "scientific understanding."

    "SJWs" have been clarifying their argument is about ethics and identity for decades . People like Peterson just don't see it because they equate their essentialist ethic and identity with understanding of bodies.

    It's simply not true. Just because someone is sorted into the "female" category, it doesn't prevent us from describing they have a penis, an absence of breasts, certain chromosomes or a particular bone density. We can even make such descriptions without using a gender of sex category at all.
  • What Does Globalization Do to Art?
    ↪Noble Dust


    I don't think so, to me it seems more like you are attacking the ease with which people can view, listen or know about art-- that there is so little work, commitment or sacrifice needed to look or hear many works of art these days.

    As such, I don't think your argument has much to do with quality or "high vs low art," unless you are going to make some argument that only art people could rarely access on special trips to the museums or concert hall was of greater quality than anything someone might see or hear somewhere else.
  • ATTENTION! Petition to Introduce Guidelines Against Slander
    ↪Dogar


    Half the people in question don't know what they are talking about.

    The tree is in front of them and they haven't noticed it. And then some of them think it's their belief of whether the tree exists or not that defines whether it does.

    *edit*

    No-one decides what's a correct definition of sexism. Like any logical meaning, it's defined in itself. There is nothing subjective about these meanings. In addressing sexism, we are describing something that's happening in society, not only cheerleading for someone's subjective viewpoint.

    All our experiences are "subjective perceptions" in the sense that are means of knowing about a truth or things is only our experience. This doesn't make the states and truths we know any less objective. It just means (objective) truths and states are known in experiences.

    *edit*
    what sort of definition of 'consensus' is that? Who has an objective understanding of the issue here - how is this not a matter of he said versus she said? Why is it the person crying sexism has been given the upper hand in such proceedings? Have you ever heard of tyranny of the majority? Or tyranny of the minority? — Dogar

    The tyranny of majority/minority just isn't relevant. Sexism is a logical expression which is given regardless of whether anyone agrees or disagrees and whether it's considered acceptable or not.

    In terms of who gets the upper hand, the objector to sexism does because our ethics considers sexism unacceptable. Sexism is described, and since that's an ethical problem, the sexist if shamed and/or punished. (One is, of course, free to argue a different ethic, that sexism isn't ethically objectionable, but take issue with the normative significance of sexism, rather than whether sexism is there).
  • ATTENTION! Petition to Introduce Guidelines Against Slander
    ↪Beebert


    Only if you are commit about three equivocation fallacies, such that you equate criticising sexists with attacking women. At least in most cases.

    There is a point where they intersect. Since women can be as sexist as men, sometimes situations arise where women could be rightly criticised for being sexist, yet an attack of no quarter would amount to ganging up and bundling a woman out of discussion.

    In this situation, there can be a sexism. If some concerned men were to go into a group sexist women and run them out of town, it would qualify as sexism-- men would be rejecting women and anything to say and denying them a place, etc. It would be more or less the same sort of sexism Augstino is displaying in his attacks on Mongrel and Timeline, only directed at woman who were sexist.
  • ATTENTION! Petition to Introduce Guidelines Against Slander
    ↪Beebert


    My point was never that there was a universally understood concept of sexism. Just the opposite, that sexism is a logical expression objectively defined, and like anything, may be misunderstood or not known by someone at all.

    As is the case with people thinking about Paul in the past. Many people didn't understand how he was sexist in the past (and maybe some did; after all, the text and the culture of the timearen't the extent of human thought).
  • ATTENTION! Petition to Introduce Guidelines Against Slander
    ↪Dogar


    Sexism is an objective phenomena. If your are treating women as lesser, that is an objective expression of the world. If you are specifically attacking women who criticise you, that it an objective expression of the world. And so an so on.

    Sexism isn't subjective. it an objective expression of our thoughts, statements, understandings and action towards other people. There are no mental gymnastics at all, just a respect for how are actions mean something in relation to other people.
  • ATTENTION! Petition to Introduce Guidelines Against Slander
    ↪Buxtebuddha


    My observation was about the way Augstino treats two prominent female posters who disagree with him. He seems to attack them with more fervour, like there is something wrong and dangerous about how they are mistaken or criticise him, in comparison to men.

    The point being that in his behaviour towards women, that is what place he thinks women thoughts and opposition have in the discussion of philosophy, he is sexist. When men "slander" him with whatever, there's a brief intense conflict and everyone moves on. If a woman does it, he goes on about it endlessly, like some great slight has been committed on the world. He doesn't seem to view "women" (that is anyone who belongs to the category of "women" by them blessing to the category of "woman") as intellectual equals. By his behaviour, it would seem he gives a respect to men in opposing him or making arguments he does not give to women.


    "Consensus" is only a measure by the authority of knowledge persons. We can only trust because those talking have an understanding of some issue we are talking about. It's only really rhetorical. In the situations where it is used, there is actually an argument of description going on, which is the reason to accept to reject an argument-- e.g. these twenty people saw this person go into a store, so we have evidence they did and a claim they disn't go into the store is falsified.

    So the answer is: no. Just because people think there is no sexism doesn't mean there probably isn't. They might just not notice it. Strictly speaking, the "probably" argument doesn't even work here because sexism is a description made of only present states. When someone claims sexism, they aren't proposing some state of the world we don't know whether exists. Rather, then are suggesting an existing state is sexist.

    Someone might be wrong about a state expressing a sexist relationship, but there isn't a potential for some unknown state of the world involved, so it's not coherent to approach the presence of sexism like it were a claim about whether a particular species of bird lived in the forest.

    We aren't the one's who define what's sexist. At least, no more than we define what's a tree, a house or a falling rock. Any of them are logical meanings expressed by the world. It's not popularity or whim that' define them, but rather there logic itself.
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