His measure is not whether it is from the past, but whether these conditions have become better or worse over time.

Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull‐​wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony.

All these things can be measured. If they have increased over time, that is progress.

So isn’t that the past itself is bad, but that conditions were worse than now. If his conditions were to reverse he would have to say the past is worse according to his own measure.

Pinker says “We know that countries can slide back into these primitive conditions, and so we ignore the achievements of the Enlightenment at our peril.” So it’s not clear that these conditions need be consigned to the past, only to wherever the achievements of the enlightenment are gone, forgotten, or have never manifested. But it is clear he is not speaking about the past as such, only the barbarity that is often found there.

It isn’t me who is denying you your fundamental right to defend yourself.

They probably won’t invade with the US continuing to shoulder their defense burden. But should the US step aside, an unarmed populace will have to welcome their new overlords or hide in the outback.

Damned if I know why people believe in their guns more than they believe in Jesus.

Wait until someone invades Australia. Boomerangs won’t accomplish much. A defenceless populace is a servile one.

Not only are they using Ukraine as a proxy in their war with Russia, but now a scapegoat.

New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months.

U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials.

Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say

What if he does not want help?

You’re just playing word games. Dreamlng isn’t just something that is reported after waking. It’s something experienced. It’s the occurrence of visual, auditory, tactile sense data. It’s seeing, hearing, feeling.

It’s more the absence of sense data, in so far as sense data has any meaning. Lights, sounds, touch—what is given to sense—tend to wake us from sleep.

I would sell him the alcohol because otherwise he risks descending into withdrawal, which can be painful and dangerous depending on the severity of his addiction. I’ve seen people drink Lysol or Isopropyl just to avoid the symptoms.

In my mind the best thing would be to reason with him.

If the mind is the perceiver and the idea is the perceived, and the perceiver and perceived are separate entities, how can the mind ever have knowledge of the idea if the idea is forever separate from the mind?

It cannot.

If the perceiver cannot be found in either the mind or the brain, where exactly is the perceiver?

If human perception involves all of the components I have mentioned, the perciever is invariably a human organism, nothing more nothing less. Brains, minds, and so on, cannot be shown to perceive, and so are not perceivers.

The perceiver and what is directly perceived by the perceiver must be one and the same

The perceiver and what is directly perceived by the perceiver must be one and the same

There is X, the mind, the brain, the little man and there is Y, sense data, representation, idea. X is the perceiver and Y is what is perceived.

If the mind, the brain, or the little man can perceive sense-data, representation, idea, both the perceiver and the perceived ought to be able to stand in direct relation to one another, where one perceives and the other is perceived.

But when we take a mind, a brain, or the homunculus and place it in direct relation to sense-data, representation, or idea, perception cannot be said to be occurring by any single measure. At best we have a pile of decomposing organic material, and, well, nothing else.

What I wanted to do with this thought experiment was to take the idea of a perceiver as postulated by an indirect realist, and add to it the necessary components involved in perception, so that we can finally say "Yes, X is perceiving". If it is unable to perceive, it is not a perceiver.

A brain, for example, for instance in a jar, cannot be said to be perceiving. A brain needs vast quantities of blood, and therefor requires a circulatory system, so we add it. Still, all we have is a pile of decomposing organic material. Brains need oxygen, so we add lungs. It needs energy, so we add a digestive system, a liver, kidneys. Still no perception; still just a pile of decomposing organic material. We add the spine and skeleton so at least it isn't all just lying on the floor. We add neurons, visual, olfactory and auditory organs, but it's all just hanging there as if from a hat rack. So we add a skull, muscles, tendons, and so on. At this point he might be able to perceive, but all of it would be excruciating and our perceiver would be a poor soul indeed. So we add skin, eyelids, ears, and so on. Anyways, you catch the drift.

The point is, perceivers have most if not all of the above. Therefor perceivers are not brains, minds, or homunculi.

I'm not sure social constructs are a good way to think these issues, personally, because there are members of the society that had little to no input on how they ought to be categorized. Social constructs suggest a consensus and a collaboration, and I doubt such a thing has occurred.

One can understand the self-identification with a race, though, especially in America, where these distinctions have been pounded into our heads our whole lives, even after the unspooling of the human genome has discredited them. For many it was a matter of life and death. But nowadays it's just de rigueur.

It is a fact that people identify themselves and others with this nomenclature, and no one is saying otherwise. I’m only saying people ought not to. Race is not only the root word of racism, it is the conceptual and logical grounds for it. This isn't really novel or radical thinking, either, according to a brief look.

Stereotyping and prejudice begin from social categorization—the natural cognitive process by which we place individuals into social groups.

Principles of Social Psychology 1st International Edition

There have been a number of studies, all showing that the mere perception of belonging to two distinct groups—that is, social categorization per se—is sufficient to trigger intergroup discrimination favoring the in-group. In other words, the mere awareness of the presence of an out-group is sufficient to provoke intergroup competitive or discriminatory responses on the part of the in-group.

An integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict

Therefore, ridding ourselves of these concepts is necessary, and relatively simple.

Previous studies have established that people encode the race of each individual they encounter, and do so via computational processes that appear to be both automatic and mandatory. If true, this conclusion would be important, because categorizing others by their race is a precondition for treating them differently according to race. Here we report experiments, using unobtrusive measures, showing that categorizing individuals by race is not inevitable, and supporting an alternative hypothesis: that encoding by race is instead a reversible byproduct of cognitive machinery that evolved to detect coalitional alliances. The results show that subjects encode coalitional affiliations as a normal part of person representation. More importantly, when cues of coalitional affiliation no longer track or correspond to race, subjects markedly reduce the extent to which they categorize others by race, and indeed may cease doing so entirely. Despite a lifetime's experience of race as a predictor of social alliance, less than 4 min of exposure to an alternate social world was enough to deflate the tendency to categorize by race. These results suggest that racism may be a volatile and eradicable construct that persists only so long as it is actively maintained through being linked to parallel systems of social alliance.

Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization | JSTOR

None of this entails that we need to ignore racism, its history, and the atrocities committed in its name.

I am against what they say. I would call them “social impositions” because they were born of pseudoscience and imposed upon entire peoples. Besides, the pseudo-scientific justifications for applying these labels have long been discredited.

Racial categorization predisposes one to racial bias. It’s a collectivist impulse; we end up responding to people more as members of a social group than as individual people. In so doing you’ve immediately placed them into an out-group instead of integrating them into your in-group, predisposing yourself to bias against the former and preference towards the latter. Simply changing the categories can reduce the bias.

Travelling and exposure to others would surely help, no doubt, but once you alter your social categories the effects are almost immediate.

Again I could care less about any of your propaganda. Fact is, all these investigations and conspiracy theories over the years and he has yet to be found guilty of anything, despite your assumptions of guilt. But, like a true fanatic, you double your efforts long after you have forgotten your aim.

I honestly don’t care because everything to the anti-Trump brigade is a serious matter until one looks closely. Every conspiracy theory regarding Trump, whether it was Russia collusion or his tax returns, have been massively and comically overstated, and as a result has turned justice into nonsense, journalism into a joke, politics into circuses, and the US into clown world.

It’s gotten so bad that one can adopt a contrary belief without any evidence to do so and he’ll be right most of the time.

I also said “the boundaries between both X and Y are so unclear and amorphous that it could rather be the case that X is directly perceiving X.”

How can we perceive a concept that exists only in mind if our eyes point outward, not inward? If the tree is a concept that exists only in the mind, somewhere behind the eyes, that would place the tree at the tail-end of the causal chain.

Who cares? After years of Russia collusion, Covid propaganda, Ukraine warmongering, January 6th handwringings, and all the deep-state dinner theater news outlets have spoon-fed us these past few years, I’m now supposed to give a hoot over Murdoch disagreeing with Fox News anchors about the results of an election?

Even if it was true that trees are concepts that exist only in the mind, they are at the same place in the causal chain as the rest of the perceiver, as already intimated, and so are not intermediaries between perceiver and perceived. The perceiver cannot put himself before himself on the causal chain.

I’m only trying to argue that we ought not to use racial categories and to quit thinking with our epidermis. For me the fact that people use racial categories to divide human beings doesn’t entail that races themselves are true in any way, social or otherwise.

Remember when Rupert Murdoch was supposed to be some puppet master? He cannot even control his own employees. Another conspiracy theory turned nothingburger.

Racial biases are pretty much ubiquitous. They're built into the structure of our societies and therefore into the structure of our minds. The best we can do is recognize their reality, not feed them in our behavior but analyse and resist them.

You're conflating those who recognize their biases and potential prejudices (as we all should) with racists who embrace them and act them out.

They utilize and further the same superstitions, nomenclature, and taxonomies born of pseudoscience to guide their thoughts and behaviors. It invariably leads to hasty generalizations, racial affinity, and guilt by association where none ought to exist. It creates hierarchies or pits one false category against another. In the case of praxis here it creates implicit racial biases.

So intellectually honest are you that you like to lie about what I said. But at least you were honest enough to admit your racism. So kudos for that.

Everything I say suggests something for you except what I actually suggest. I love being told what I think.

Assuming that anything “within the mind” is also within the perceiver, then one is indistinguishable from the other (so long as it is not a foreign element). The perceiver cannot stand in the way of himself and the outer world, or be his own intermediary, or placed before himself in the causal chain of perception.

I bet you do not welcome racist biases at all and that it must pain you to have them. You have my pity.

I don’t really care how you think things look because you haven’t been able to portray with any accuracy what I’ve been saying and I’ve had to correct and clarify too many times to mention. A futile exercise apparently. Have fun.

However, it has not yet been shown that the world the perceiving agent is perceiving exists within the mind or outside the mind.

You’ve inserted another element or space within the perceiver called “the world inside the mind”.

To avoid question begging and to test whether or not this is an area where a world could be perceived, that it contains a world, and that a perceiver can perceive it, I suggested in the original post that we ought to remove this element from the rest of the man like we can any other part of the man (like any organ), put it on a table beside a perceiver (like we’ve been doing with a perceiver and a tree) for the purpose of analysis.

What is on the table? Who perceives what? What part of the man is perceiver, what part of the man is perceived? Finally, is perception still occurring?

If perception is not occurring, one does not perceive the other, and neither element is perceiver or perceived.

I don’t know what you’re stating, to be honest, besides that you harbour racial biases. That’s probably the clearest thing you’ve come up with. We can leave it there.

No, a racist, because you think the taxonomy of races is as valid as the taxonomy of apples and dog breeds, and you admit you hold racial biases.

And you were trying to explain why apple varieties and dog breeds were false taxonomies, and how they relate to anything we’re talking about. In so doing you’ve dug yourself into a racist hole, like Scott Adams.

You just pointed out that varieties of apples are cultivated by humans. :lol:

Would you compare human races to dog breeds?

One way subconscious biases are revealed is in snap judgments where there's no time for consideration.

So because of this you believe you hold a racist attitude towards certain out-groups.

I would avoid the equating of human races to breeds, or in your case, different cultivars of apples, because those arise through artificial selection, whereas human variation does not. We’ve cultivated the varieties of apples and the taxonomy reflects those varieties. The taxonomy of plants lack the influence of social, cultural, and political factors. Comparing human phenotypical difference to differences between breeds have historically been used to justify discrimination and cruelty.

No one said anything about intrinsic properties of evil. I explicitly said they were false, unjust, and pernicious.

I'm pretty sure that I have implicit racial biases, yes. Actually, I'm rather explicitly racist against Portagee's due to some young adult experiences.

How do you know you have implicit racial biases if implicit bias is unconscious, and you are unaware of them?

Banning "Latinx" and the rainbow flag on public property.

Public property is state property. The state decides the flags, like you get to decide what flags go on your property.

Both parties seek to ban “latinx” from use in official state nomenclature like they would any other offensive term.

1) When we perceive the world, how can we directly know the cause of what we have perceived when our only knowledge of any external world has come from the perceptions themselves.

If perceiving is an act of a perceiving agent, the act and the agent are one and the same. If they are one and the same, we can remove perception as some kind of intermediary between knower and the external world. If there is no intermediary, direct access to the external world is not only possible, but a brute fact. If we are able to directly access the external world, it means we are in the world, a part of the world. If we are a part of the world the knowledge is not circular, but open and relational.

2) How is it possible to know from knowing an effect the cause of that effect, when every effect is overdetermined by more than one sufficient causes.

I’m trying to grasp the question but am unsure what is cause and what is effect. Could you illustrate using our good ol’ tree?

Is this about banning CRT and LGBTQXN in elementary schools?

That's neither here nor there. Wounds heal on their own schedule. You can't force it by outlawing certain word combinations.

Outlawing certain word combinations… is that how you personally stop believing in something?

It’s not a sin to distinguish people by race. Is this a religious thing for you?

Did someone say it was a sin? I said it was false, unjust, and pernicious.

Realizing our implicit biases is self-awareness.

Are you implicitly racist?

Merely acknowledging race or "false taxonomies" is not the problem so if it were possible to be "color-blind" it would not solve the problem. Intentionally employing and furthering biases is done in order to manipulate the ignorant (racists who may lose more than they gain) and take or maintain the advantage over the disadvantaged.

The way to banish it is to realize what's going on and stop being manipulated, or stop being an asshole if you're one of the manipulators or one of the manipulator's bootlickers.

I said believing in it is the problem. Adopting it for good intentions or for whatever other reason doesn’t absolve one of it. It’s still false, unjust, pernicious. Saying it is implicit is simply an admission of guilt.

I don't think it works both ways. There are huge numbers of blacks still alive who remember when there was legal racism used against them. I can understand how that older group would have a negative opinion of their oppressors (Southern whites). I would be shocked if they didn't.

It works myriad of ways to those who are just. The use of these categories are unjust, and for the same reason it was unjust to use them in the past. Justice doesn’t demand that a man ought to forgive those who wronged him, but he ought not condemn with the same crime those who did not.