Fair enough.

Right, we can store information in books rather than in our brains. I’m not sure what that has to do with politics.

The state isn’t an organized society. The state is the organization of political power and exploitation within a society.

Where an action begins, that’s where it was determined, chosen, decided upon. If nothing else can be shown to begin an action, nothing else can be shown to determine it.

So long as the state grows freedom and liberty doesn’t. Our political sort in life will invariably be decided upon its whim and fancy.

What do you mean exactly by "directly interact" ?

We experience the outer world directly rather than indirectly, like through some subjective Cartesian theater. We don’t experience “consciousness” or “subjective experience”; we experience independent things. If we pick up a rock, for example, there is nothing between us and the rock, and therefor nothing prohibiting us from confirming its independence. It seems to me the idealist has yet to prove what this prohibition is.

His only crime was publishing information. Any detractor or hater or persecutor is such because the information was not to his liking.

Plutocrats, commies, you name it.

State intervention in the service of plutocrats.

Your solution: abolish or minimize state intervention; keep the plutocrats.

My solution: abolish or minimize plutocracy. Keep and strengthen democracy.

I don’t have solutions, mostly because I don’t claim a right to tell others how to live their lives. Though I would abolish those who claim such rights.

Monetary expansion, demand-side stimulus, supply-side contraction, the great resignation. There is too much printed money floating around, not enough things to buy with it. Most of it is caused by state intervention.

Very interesting. But with claims such as these I am always reminded of Moravec’s paradox: “it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility”.

I believe these sorts of ventures depend on a very limited and arguably wrong sense of sentience or consciousness, namely the computational theory of mind. So not much to worry about, in my opinion.

Idealism assumes a kind of theater, that instead of observing a material world we are observing our own minds. All experience of the world is indirect for idealism. But we can watch others directly interact with things, and so need not assume that this is untrue of ourselves.

We directly interact with the world. There is no veil or space between a man and the rest of the world, and therefor no place to project and observe the contents of our minds. So rather then shedding doubt on a material world, experience confirms it. We can directly witness the coming and going of people and confirm that the world is largely unaffected by it, and therefor is independent.

A sober analysis, Relativist. Respect.

Understandable. But someone who cares about free speech might forgo the authorities and take a different approach, for instance reasoning with the speaker.

In general I sympathize with that principle. Let's test it. Imagine a progressive professor who starts referring to all of her students as 'she.' Would you have a right to complain?

Yes. Free speech goes both ways. But one should never seek to censor her.

Any word affixed with the suffix “ness” is usually a descriptor of things and is not itself a thing—redness, consciousness, happiness. Nothing, though, is a noun, so it get’s weird when you add the suffix. It still means the state or quality of nothing, I guess.

That’s fair. But as far as I can tell charity and helping isn’t common to the domain of socialism. It’s more about economics.

A rather misanthropic, defeatist viewpoint imo.
You can surrender to the dictates of the oligarchs if you want to. Meantime, we socialists will try to save you from your despondent hellish vision of ‘real life.’

Many of us do not want your help. A moral busybody is never a welcome addition to politics, and one who believes he can solve the world’s problems through political tinkering and is mad.

I made the allusion to the book The Captive Mind by Cezlaw Milosz, which described the intellectual cowardice of writers and artists in communist Poland. There are parallels worth noting.

Someone is sour that others are talking about things he doesn’t like.

It’s amazing how a simple question can strike such reticence and confusion. They likely understand that an answer that runs afoul of certain ideologies could end in forms of ostracism or even assault. It’s the captive mind.

Show us on the doll where the capitalist touched you.

If the cells are a part of me, and if sound affects the cells, and if speech is sound, then speech affects me.

Hah, nice.



Censors throughout history have pretended words have the sorts of causal effects you pretend they do, and used it as justification to murder and maim. It’s no surprise you are of that ilk.



If I was a lawyer I wouldn’t show my face, especially with any sort of pride.

So? According to your account of causation as explained above, I pulled the trigger, the gun fired the bullet, and the bullet killed the target.

If I didn't cause the window to break in the previous example then I didn't cause the target to die in this example. But if I did cause the target to die in this example then I did cause the window to break in the previous example.

Well yeah, a bullet tears through flesh, ceasing bodily function, which kills the target. So you’re right.

I don't consciously control the actions of the hair cells in my ear. Their actions are determined by the sound waves that reach them.

The cells transduce the waves to nerve impulses. The cells are a part of you. So you transduce the waves to nerve impulses. Consciously or not, you do it.

Right, so I'm not causally responsible for breaking the window when I kick a ball into it. The extent of the causal power of my kick is the ball moving; anything that happens after that is the responsibility of the ball.

The ball broke the window. You kicked the ball. Sure.

Why does that matter? It's the same principle whether the material is organic or metal.

It was designed for someone to pull the trigger and set off the mechanisms which ultimately shoots the bullet.

Neither are the hair cells in my ear. I don't know what you're trying to argue here.

The cells in your ear are a part of you and I’m pretty sure you’re conscious.

So? The sound waves cause the hair cells to move which cause the nerve impulses to fire.

The movement of hair cells. That’s the extent of the causal power of words.

The irony here is that your account of causation would entail that it is guns, not people, which are responsible for murder because it is the internal mechanics of the gun that cause the bullet to fire, not me pulling my finger on the trigger, and that the gun wouldn't fire if something inside it was broken.

Biology isn’t a machine or built like a gun, though. Guns aren’t conscious or able to control their actions.

But hair cells transduce vibration into impulses.

This is like saying that because plastic melts in fire and tungsten doesn't then it's not the fire that causes the plastic to melt but the plastic causing itself to melt.

It’s nothing like saying that. Do you think mechanical soundwaves convert themselves to nerve impulses?

It is not only legally bollocks it is philosophically quite untenable too. I should not be surprised though.

I guess it’s a good thing I don’t respect your opinion.

That was a good read, Bitter Crank. Thanks.

All that soundwaves trigger is the delicate biology of the inner ear. After transduction it’s all you. The biology—you—does all the work. It causes your hearing; and if any aspect of the biology is messed up along the way, it doesn’t.

I’m sure it’s the other way about. People act upon words. We hear them, read them, learn them, write them, speak them, use them. They do not affect us more than any other sound from the mouth or any other scribble on paper because they are hardly different in physical constitution and energy.

As you said yourself, we are predisposed to act upon certain sounds and images because we’ve learned and trained ourselves to do so.

You said they were a part of the cause and played a causal role. You also brought up counterfactual causation.

“Chris played a causal role.”

“…the circumstances were a necessary condition for the act of hitting to take place - that means it is part of the cause.”

Now we’ve moved to “connections”. It’s too confusing, friend.

This is false. A transfer of energy is how hearing works.

Finally, something physical! Sound waves do affect people. Words are not sound waves, though.

All I remember of counterfactual causation is the lectures I attended on it over 20 years ago, much of it criticizing Lewis’ idea (Suzy or Lucy and the glass window, etc.)

Myself, I don’t have a theory of causation, so I appreciate the debate.

I never said I don’t use the word. It’s that I’m suspicious of the physics of it.

Correct.

Influence: the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/influence

Are we not talking about the same word?

It’s not connected to anything.

Conditions are connections now? I don’t think so.

The birth of Will Smith caused the slap on Chris Rocks face. You heard it hear first.

I do disagree because it’s also consistent with the criticisms of counterfactual causation. Will Smith would not have slapped Chris rock had Will Smith had not been born. If will smith’s birth was the cause of the slap, I cannot agree.

You made a good case for Smith's moral accountability, which I never disputed. You have not shown that circumstances are not part of the cause.

I’ve said Will Smith caused each of his movements. There is no transfer of energy from any other circumstantial object to Will Smith, and therefor no other causal force animating his movements. I cannot say any other object or activity in the environment animated his biology in such a way that they can be considered causes.

That's what's known as 'influence' in this context.

I think the idea of “influence” is the sort of magical thinking I’m talking about. It implies an action at a distance I’m very uncomfortable with.