Why this resentment towards the most natural drive imaginable?

It’s pure, reactionary fanaticism. The idea that people aren’t living their lives according to the fanatic’s own ideology is repugnant to him. They must be brought, through force, to conform, so meddling becomes his idea of good and compassionate conduct while not meddling is the height of evil.

He willingly turned them in a decade later. What a hero!

Rousseau implies this point when he takes pain to differentiate between the “general will” and the “will of all”. His contrast between these two sets of interests serve well as a primary distinction between collectivism on the one hand and individualism on the other. Unlike the “will of all” the “general will” refuses to take into account the private and particular interests of all individuals involved. It excludes them. Instead, it takes account of something called the “common interest”.

We can figure out the common interest through a sort of calculation. It is the sum of the differences left over after we subtract from the wills of all “the pluses and minuses that cancel one another”. “The agreement of all interests is formed by opposition to that of each”.

Arguably, even with the most exhaustive census a calculation of such magnitude would not be impossible. So inevitably we get the factions Rousseau warns about.

That is the error of Mussolini, Mao, and Xtrix: they pretend that their good, their interests, are found at the end of this calculation, which they never make in any case.

I agree that individualism is a personal belief, but so is collectivism. And it is no collective decision if others accept either of these principles. These are personal, individual decisions made by real, flesh-and-blood human beings, not arbitrary and abstract groupings.

Any collection of people is a collection of individuals. Each of these individuals adopt beliefs and principles on their own accord, and not by any collective agreement.

It’s not true, I accept any individual to have his own beliefs and interests, and defend his right to have them, whether communist, fascist, theocratic, or any collectivist doctrine. What I do not accept is any individual to infringe on the rights of another individual, and this is the direct result of individualism, not collectivism.

You seem to be confusing empirical and absolute truth. Since thinking is only known to be practiced by (some) entities it is a plausible conclusion that wherever thinking is occuring there will be an entity doing it.

But this is a truth of dualistic thinking. Since entities are formal collective representations of dualistic thinking and since we can say that reality is not beholden to suvh thinking, from the 'perspective ' of non-duality there is no thinking and there are no entities.

I think from the perspective of non-duality the activity (thinking) and the entity (the thinker) are one in the same. There is no difference between a backflip and the one that performs it, for instance. The entity is the backflip. It's entity all the way down and any action is just the movements and contortions of that entity. So it is with consciousness.

Collectivism and individualism are protean political terms and are always subject to debate, so the notions of "true individualism" and "true collectivism" are not true in any sense. A collectivist interpretation of individualism are those that come from the mouths of collectivists, like Rousseau, Mao, and Mussolini, so we can take them at their word.

But if the individualist regards the individual as the primary unit of concern in any political society, he necessarily regards each individual in that way. He affords each individual primacy, rights, and as such a certain dignity. If the collectivist regards the individual as subordinate to the collective, he necessarily disregards the individual as the primary unit of concern, does not afford him rights, and denies him a certain dignity.

I’m not sure any sort of affirmative action is needed. The surest way to corrupt the youth with Communism would be for the government to outlaw it, and McCarthyism served that effect. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx appears more in university syllabi than any analytic works. Had McCarthy and his ilk left it all alone we might have been rid of it long ago.

You didn’t mention the length of time Biden had them for, and that Biden was only Vice President when he took the documents and did not have the sort of declassification powers Trump had. Biden’s history with others who took classified documents betrays his own actions with them.

https://theintercept.com/empire-politician/biden-and-jimmy-carters-cia-nominee/

I didn’t say I was unsure about the practice. I was unsure about the answer to your quibbling question.

Does “effective” entail being easily controlled?

So, for example, if you declare a particular universal right you are expressing your primacy? Wouldn’t everyone need to agree with whatever right that you declare and also agree to your primacy?

You are expressing every individual’s primacy. If you realize the primacy of the individual you afford him rights and defend those rights against infringement. I’m not sure everyone has to agree to that.

It’s true. I just don’t know the answer to that question for those particular arraignments.

Right, I’m curious how this works out in practice. Can you not give an example?

Any declaration of universal human rights.

Though I can can see a benefit in both, the question of what happens to those who do not wish to conform to those ideals remains a problem.

If everyone is an individual, and the individual is given primacy, it follows that no one is excluded.

Not to mention the wars on the First Nations, colonialism, manifest destiny. Collectivism, through and through.

I suspect through family and kinship.

If true, you should be able to give an example of this in practice.

Chairman Mao makes this explicit in his diagnosis of The Party discipline, of which he sees the failure of the minority to submit to the majority as one of its primary defects. A minority is a faction. A majority is a faction. Either way the interests of each and all are subordinated to the interests of the Party.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_5.htm

Strictly speaking, no. A collective of some sort is required for the defense of civil rights.

But collectivism isn’t.

It means to me that individualism is more inclusive, that it concerns itself with more human beings, even all human beings, whereas collectivism is exclusive, that it inevitably pits individuals against other individuals.

I cannot see from your picture that a lack of collectivism leads to might means right.

Yeah. I think one satisfies the desires of both, while the other is incalculable, leads to factionalism, is self-contradictory and dangerous. One is just and the other isn’t. For these reasons I would choose one principle rather than the other, and I cannot see myself wavering between them.

“What’s best” is what concerns me. For the individualist one would violate another’s rights if he violates the rights of an individual. For the collectivist one would violate another’s rights should he violate the rights of the group.

Rousseau suggests that the “general will” is paramount, and that the “will of all”, which is the sum total of particular wills, should conform to it. In order to determine what the general will is, though, Rousseau has to make absurd calculations in order to determine “what’s best”.

So “what’s best” in your eyes?

collectivism, any of several types of social organization in which the individual is seen as being subordinate to a social collectivity such as a state, a nation, a race, or a social class. Collectivism may be contrasted with individualism (q.v.), in which the rights and interests of the individual are emphasized.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/collectivism

Yes. Men afford others rights and they also take them away.

That was a good read, Baden. Thanks for sharing it.

The freedoms we afford to other individuals.

with one you’ll be violating someone’s rights while with the other you won’t.

Sure, all biology is ultimately reducible to molecules bouncing around, but you won't get anywhere trying to describe it in those terms.

I agree with this, big time. Even reducing intentionality or consciousness to brain activity is a step too far. In every single case, Intentionality and consciousness is the activity of the organism as a whole. Physicalism has done itself a disservice by looking for some amorphous locus inside the head.

I think it's interesting to advocate libertarianism from an evolutionary standpoint. If homo sapiens needs governments and enforcers of the law to promote its own welfare, then it's a moot point. In other words, are governments and police forces inevitable from an evolutionary perspective? Is the question incoherent or is there any sense to it?

I don’t think there is anything evolutionary about governments. They’re just there, the technological remnants of predatory men, who have long ago devised the means to exploit the vanquished and protect their interests.

Look at the Islamic State, for instance, which we got to witness form itself not too long ago. No social contract, no sense of community, nothing emerging as if a colony, just pure imposition.

Accordingly, 100 people who contribute to producing something automatically incur a debt to the rest of the world for the value of the resources they have appropriated to themselves, and the damage they have caused to other resources, ie the environment. Thus every fenced off field owes a debt to wilderness, as does every cut down tree, every mine and quarry, and every factory. This unpaid debt is now being called in by way of climate change and environmental degradation.

Every time a bird puts a twig on his nest he is incurring a debt to wilderness.

You probably remember what you did and what has happened to you in the past. That 'set of experiences' is probably the closest you will get to what your body can report.

Most of it I do not remember. Memories are fleeting.

I understand the folk psychology of “experiences”, but I don’t actually imagine I carry a “set of experiences” with me wherever I go, so I never need to appeal to them. All I have is my body. You have one too, I wager.

I object only to postulating something within us that isn’t there. I bestow rights upon what is there, not on what isn’t.

It’s a strange question because wages are decided and agreed upon before the worker makes a single product. These wages are determined by the market, literally by looking at the market place to determine what others are paying their employees, all of which is effected by the law of supply and demand. Pay too much you risk workers costing more than their contribution, resulting in lower profits, even losses. Pay too little you lose any competitive advantage. Even so, the profit should not go towards this or that worker, but towards the business at large, because the business is providing income to everyone involved.

I don’t see it—that’s the problem. I’m aware of the arguments. I’ve just never found them in any way convincing. But I’m hindered from the get-go. I have yet to understand what “phenomenal consciousness” is, I’m afraid, so I draw a blank upon hearing it. Nothing is caused, nothing arises, nothing emerges, that is worthy of the term. And that we can have two distinct accounts of one phenomenon does not suggest to me that there are two distinct phenomenon occurring in there.

... though I think he would have left God out of it.

“ For if I tell you that to do as you say would be a disobedience to the God, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue…”

I think you don’t have any evidence and are holding out for some odd reason.

I do not think he was a martyr for his beliefs as much he was a martyr for refusing to hold his tongue. He stood up to censorship, stood by his God-given right to speak, and proved he’d rather die than to submit.

I am willing to change my mind upon further evidence, but there isn’t any. I can only observe and conceive of what it is that you are talking about, and all I can see and all I can conceive of is the biology. I try to find anything else upon which I can pin the phrase “phenomenological consciousness” and come up empty. If you can only pin it on nothing than nothing is what you are talking about. If p-zombies are missing nothing then they are not p-zombies.

How do you know that?

We’ve looked.

Chalmers has a couple of thought experiments that show that the two are logically distinct. One is the p-zombie. This shows that we don't know apriori that the two are equivalent. We need evidence to show that.

Do you find p-zombies convincing? I don’t even find them conceivable. I can’t even think about how such a being could be possible.

And you take this to show that phenomenal consciousness is equivalent to biological states? Could you explain how? Because I'm not seeing it.

For the simple reason that phenomenal consciousness is not equivalent to anything else. There is no other entity in the universe onto which we can affix the label "phenomenal consciousness" but the biology. The biology is speaking about itself, as we can observe and by its own admission. "I'm hurt", "I feel pain", "I'm hungry" says the biology. So we mend the biological state, console the biological state, feed the biological state. At no point need we concern with anything else.

So what would you take to show that they are not equivalent?