I think a lot of people are frightened by my brothers illness and are imagining how terrible it must be. But ironically he has not been depressed but I have. So essentially people can impose on both of us how they think we ought to feel. Mental health is a particularly difficult area because it has limited correlation with physical symptoms (although they have found a some brain region differences).

I think the whole ofones approach to philosophy can be about asserting ones self not just regurgitating old philosophers but learning how they explored their reality and how we can.

On the gay issue I think the more people have proper interactions with gay people the harder it is for them to assert their prejudices. So this is another example of the value of lived experience over theory. I think theory should always be treated as such and not made into dogmas or reified. That said I do suffer from a lack of decision because I haven't found a solid framework for being.

I think conformity is Okay if it is conformity that is in the interest of peoples welfare and not conformity solely to assert power.

The best defense against censorship is to speak up, speak openly, and speak often — Bitter Crank

It is hard work and there are some real threats. Also I think people individual conclusions can be incompatible. In a way it seems apathy is what presents us constantly fighting. Everyone relaxes their standards pragmatically.

I have recently become an Uncle four times over four years by my religious younger brother who petitioned against gay marriage in the UK on Facebook. I have to avoid getting into conflict and negotiate being a gay uncle who can't fully assert this. Negotiating can be exhausting.

Phenomenology doesn't have what it takes — creativesoul

I have spent long periods of time looking after my profoundly disabled brother. (I lived with him for a few years) Now he can only communicate by blinking. During the times I have been looking after him I have never assumed I know what it is like to be him or tried to enforce my my own regime on him. I just always do what he wants (sometime protesting).

I can't think of a better method of helping someone than listening to them. I think this is a fairly new model of health care now guided by the patients feelings and consent.

It is not a phenomenological analysis so to speak but it is respecting the phenomenology of others. How would feel about being paralysed? I don't know but I can't safely impose that speculation or model on someone else.

The integrity and vividness of a persons internal world is one thing that has led me to antinatalism. I don't see humans as a herd of animals to be directed but individuals with vivid inner lives.

Rather than frame it in terms of who can be an authority, why not frame it in terms of what mental states consist in/of? — creativesoul

I think phenomenological analysis is valuable where you give a detailed analysis of your experiences (this can even inform physics in defining who time and space etc appear).

I feel there is an excess of objectivity in academia and that is kind of dictatorial and negating experience and promoting conformity.

I think that it if we fully explore and respect other peoples inner lives we may have a more respectful society. I think defining mental states could be a process of objectifying them to make them tools for more societal persuasion or coercion.

However, we do not want to get "locked in" to our own subjective experiences. Your admission that you have ideas that you can't express to others is useful. We all have this difficulty at times, and by groping through the problem, we may discover the means to communicate what was previously "untranslatable". — Bitter Crank

I grew up in a strict religious household where you were never allowed to question. I suppose there was a notion of absolute truth as well. So I had a lot of private (solipsistic) reflection.

I think you need to create en environment where people can express themselves without censure. Free speech seems to be the first thing clamped down on by a dictatorship or autocracy etc.

But I think there are many forms of censorship and I think I have felt powerless or trapped for most of my life.

I think this issue comes up most prominently in issues about mental states and who can be an authority on mental states.

I also think trying to undermines someones confidence in their own judgement is unhealthy.

Eliminative materialism and Daniel Dennet's "heterophenomonology" are examples of this.

I agree with Thomas Nagel that "Objectivity is a view from Nowhere".

I don't believe induction requires the uniformity of nature.

I think you can replace uniformity with regularity. Induction is seen as a problem because of among other things the problems you state.

I think degrees of freedom is a good model. What possible arrangements are there to follow for a starting position. Is there a good reason to believe after seeing White swans all over England a pink swan will appear. I think induction is pragmatic not truth bearing.

It seems probabilistic If something stays the same for a large amount of time that increases the chance of a causal or law like status.

Knowledge of the future always seems problematic. But there seems to be a limit on what could happen to abruptly change a state of affairs.

Discovering a Black swan is the classic case but that is not a major difference from a white swan that would warrant a complete reappraisal of a law.

It seems to me that humans can think abstractly yet concretely about the truth and values.

So for example we have successful scientific theories that describe aspects of the world. So it seems quite possible to have an unbiased assessment of the conduct of humans.

It could be all subjective so that all that matters is one's own judgement of their experiences. However I don't think that when we talk about something like the Holocaust that it can simply be wrong based on personal feelings and otherwise neutral.

If you want a Darwinian account of everything then what is The Darwinian explanation for The Holocaust and Two World Wars.

It was reading the comments under this Daily Mail article that prompted me to start this thread.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4774574/Couple-benefits-furious-rejected-landlord.html?mrn_rm=rta-fallback

Except when a handful (just a few) are able to instigate a nuclear attack. (That might not end up being an all-out nuclear war, but it would still be a bad thing). — Bitter Crank

But some of these people were voted in by millions of voters.

I am depressed when dangerous or callous people get voted in but that also means people did support them.

I think there is a problem with shifting responsibility onto one person because it then means possible apathy or transference and so on. Scapegoating is a classic political ploy as well. How many leaders will say "You the people are the problem!". They are more likely to say "The work shy are the problem" or "I support the hard working majority" or "If you want me to fight against Gay marriage I am your servant"

I don't know to what extent North Korea is controlled by a few and to what extent it is group hysteria or something. I don't see it as representative of your average society though.

It is hard if you're not thick skinned.

In an ironic way it seems that misanthropes are interested in humans but being stoical might entail blocking out negative input to not confront the full spectrum of society.

I am a negative person but I find positive people I meet have limited interest in world news, inequality etc. It is not that they don't care at all but they are selective. I think sometimes you need to face a situation in stark detail however unpleasant to change it.

It is one thing say to give money to charity but then to never have seen a photo of a starving child. But yeah I probably over expose myself to misery lol..

Your situation is one kind of reaction among several possibilities — Bitter Crank

You seemed to go straight for the Misanthropes are arrogant position. Does that say something about your personality type that you would prefer to reject misanthropy and preserve a positive view of life?
Like you want to see misanthropy as a symptom of an individual not society.

I want to challenge my misanthropy but things in the news and on the internet undermine that. Some misanthropists might delight in a sense of superiority. But that seems a bit implausible because misanthropy is a dislike (or disapproval/distrust etc) of ones own species which embraces the self

Imagine a scenario where you are off work ill for a couple of months then you read an article criticising people who take long sick leave as idle scroungers and underneath a segment of people agreeing. How Would you feel about that? Knowing that at least a segment of society was ignorant and hostile towards you? Or If you read on line racism and so on. Even if these people are a small minority it is hard to put a positive spin on it or be uplifted.

It seems to only take a small or moderate group of people to bring society down. But maybe it is actually more what with overpopulation, climate change and so on.

'Donald Trump will plunge us into nuclear war' — andrewk

One person's aberrant personality is less reason to worry than a whole group of dysfunctional people constituting a society.

Is misanthropy a result of esteeming one's self too highly? So highly, in fact, that other people are blunt, dull, stupid, and ugly, and by comparison worthy of contempt?

It seems like misanthropy begins as a reaction by the individual. — Bitter Crank

What evidence have you for this? My own experience is I have always had low self esteem I was bullied throughout childhood, abused by my parents among other things. It took me quite some time to become misanthropic.

How much respect should we proffer for slave traders, racists, sexist and warmongers? There is a mass of cruelty in human history. You can have a low opinion of humans without thinking you yourself are exempt from negative traits.

A lack of misanthropy seems like a symptom of unwarranted optimism and rose coloured spectacles.

Evidence for or against misanthropy would have to be things universally found in Homo sapiens sapiens. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I think you could dislike any species. I think the problem with humans though is that they can act with the most deliberation and knowledge so their behaviour can't be solely attributed to instincts in my opinion..

I don't think I would be misanthropic if I thought all behaviour was just instinct and hormones but I think that would be a poor analysis or gross reduction of the whole of human culture.

This issue is around whether the beliefs causing Misanthropy are false. I am not talking about a matter of taste here. Someone might dislike humans regardless of their conduct. I suppose also I am asking here about what hope we can have in our species.

I have done CBT and part of that is challenging your thoughts so you have to evaluate whether you are responding appropriately to situations or something like that. But if you have negative thoughts and they are valid then what?

How many scientific studies does Judith Butler cite in "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution"?

Sex and gender are openly-debated terms in the scientific community — Thanatos Sand

So do you have a problem with the notion of a genetic male and female or that human reproduction requires males and females to exist? Sex has a stronger genetic physical basis then the category animal which is broad and abstract.

I think questioning the reality of sex and gender is very unhelpful and arguably harmful.

How can tell the history of women and the oppression of women in the light this selective oppression if we have no agreed on definition of a woman?

It seems selective what people are willing to call a social construction.

In the evolution thread I was challenging whether we needed the word animal at all and you were defending it's indispensability as a classification. Yet Judith Butler seems happy to dispose of the biology of gender or sex for viewing gender as a performance.

Do you support this stance in contradiction of your advocacy for a concrete definition of animal?

I defended the idea of words as power tools and constructs.

It would be helpful Thanatos, if you could present an argument from one the thinkers you mentioned and show how it will or could improve life.

I appreciate some of what I have read concerning Foucault but Has he been applied in a radical way?

I am not keen on what I have read from Butler Which seems to be typical left wing bias and word games.

And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life.
Aristotle, Politics

You have proved my point Thanatos Sand.

There are few things less intellectual or philosophical than judging a thinker, particularly a brilliant one, on one paragraph. — Thanatos Sand

I was not judging her whole output I was just highlighting the problem of the inaccessibility of ideas deemed radical (or otherwise). Continental philosophers have sometimes deliberately written in a convoluted manner as a stylistic choice.

If someone is starving in a poor country or struggling on the breadline in affluent country or behaving stupidly and damaging the environment and other lives how much time have we got to decipher this prose?

I am not saying these philosophers have nothing to offer or that they cannot be be profitably adapted and adopted but that doesn't mean you can't have campaigning and immediately accessible philosophy.

Moral philosophers never fail to disappoint me. I think moral nihilism should be the default position. Instead we get convoluted or simply weak attempts to cling onto norms and intuitions.

It seems non philosophers have been more powerful than philosophers at causing moral change. They simply demanded change and highlighted cruelty. It is easier to ignore or dismiss a position if it is presented in an elongated over analytic style.

Judith Butler was famously awarded a bad writing prize and other criticism for this piece of writing.

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler#Reception

To me a radical philosopher should say things that are logical and coherent and approachable to be of real value or motivation.

Life is complex, but there are easily criticised or examined values and claims. Also as they say actions speak louder than words. Peter Singer defends the idea we should give away all our excess wealth but says he isn't doing because other people aren't (or something like that.) I feel apathetic myself, infected by an atmosphere of apathy and fatalism and entrenched prejudices.

Why is the world so dysfunctional? I think bad individual and social philosophy is a big cause

Thanks Thanatos Sand. :o

I was aware of Foucault's power structures ideas which I think in the form I was taught it,are very compelling, in conjunction with discursive psychology. I think narratives are weak in the media and public life and need a discourse analysis by a philosopher cum Journalist.

I think people get caught up in discourse and power relations and are busy situating themselves somewhere in preexisting dichotomies and subject positions.

I suppose you could call me left wing but I never label myself because then you get dragged into a shallow debate of stereotypes. I think some of the aforementioned philosophers etc are too abstract and technical to make a quick impact.

To me philosophy should be focused around logic so that any position can be attacked for it's logical coherency. That way there shouldn't be a dogmatic philosophy but a constant scrutiny of claims.

I think some of the most problematic structures are norms. The idea then is that it is just politicians who are in the wrong or lawyers or businessmen etc. Change must have to come from each individual (I think Jordan Peterson advocates this) but norms allow complacency or helplessness imo.

This sounds a lot like Leftist Post-structuralist philosophy like you find in:

Gilles Deleuze
Jacques Derrida
Michel Foucault
Julia Kristeva
Judith Butler
Edward Said
Jean-Francois Lyotard
Louis Althusser. — Thanatos Sand

You have just given a list of names can you give some indication of what they were saying and doing? I think academic philosophers have a cosy Job and salary and can be provocative but without really campaigning for change.

I thought Sartre was someone who was seen more with the public living amongst the issues.

In the UK the most prominent philosophers are the most bland and they can make a lot of money out of it. Richard Dawkins isn't a philosopher but he has stirred up controversy but his main target has been religion. Jeremy Corbyn is quite radical and has made an impact but I think they are still working with in the current framework of dichotomies. The lack of philosophy of politicians in general is dire.

All right, but the very act of challenging foundational assumptions takes place in the present by someone in particular, — Bitter Crank

One thing I would challenge is land ownership and ownership in general and the notions of countries and borders. In the Israel/Arab conflict a lot of time is spent on saying who owned what land and who has what rights. It is a microcosm of the issue of what constitutes a country and borders. Countries are made by brute force and there have been lots of conflicts over borders.

My challenging ownership I am not advocating a free for all of acquiring things but a reasonable reflective stance and a cooperative approach.

I also think we need to challenge the considered right to have children and make the process of having children harder and more reflective and not a free for all. I also think crude moral notions pervade societies that need attacking vigorously.

I don't think science can cross the is-ought barrier. So I don't think you can select any human behaviour as an exemplar of how we ought to behave and our essence. This should give us a sense of freedom. But people seem to always cling to some form of labels.

I identify as gay but I avoid telling people I am gay over and over so it doesn't become my defining characteristic. Identifying as gay is important to challenge prejudice but it can also become a burden of expectations and stereotypes and defensive positions. On the one hand you can say "I am X Loud and proud but then that visibility leads to more exposure to trouble. I would advocate non self centered individuality where we see everyone as a unique individual not as a member of a group.

It seems to me that Philosophy is in the best position to challenge ideas and examine the logic of existing ideas.

It isn't case of taking sides but challenging foundational assumptions. Where are these radical academic philosophers?

When I studied philosophy as part of my degree I saw plenty of avenue for radical opinions but the course material didn't encourage this avenue. The course material raised some profound issues but then tried to fit them into the existing value system. For me philosophy is nothing to do with defending our societies and our actions now.

I'm in the UK I think we are still dominated by class hierarchies and stereotypical right-left divides/dichotomies. It is such a tired political scene leaving a sense of apathy. Trump has given some British people a false sense of superiority and colonial smugness

Wanting your genes to survive seems ridiculous to me.

Your children will die and your grandchildren and so on. You are unlikely to meet your great grandchildren and so on. So what is surviving is a bit of soulless matter.

Before genes were discovered people could not give this kind of justification for having children. But to now advocate just carrying on a piece of unconscious genetic material seems ridiculous. In the past people were believed to have souls and some people still believe that so creating a child was creating something transcendent.

The topic in general. As is this next comment.

I think people are being hopelessly naive if they think words are simply transparent and not power tools intended to defend ones own ideology. I don't think classification and conceptual division are neutral.

In terms of the word animal you can say things like.

"You were an animal in bed"
"You're worse than an animal"
"We are just animals"
"She was a party animal"
"He likes animals"
"Men are animals"

There are even more sophisticated uses of language in rhetoric, polemic and persuasion

I think all human behaviour needs explaining or fitting into the paradigm of what a person is. (if you are going to propose such paradigms)

All human behaviour is human behaviour. I don't see how you can claim some behaviour is more human or more instinctive/animalistic or evolutionarily valid.

I also think that if you want a theory of all reality you have to include all human traits as facets of that reality.

I am not sure where I suggested we get rid of the word "animal" or where I claimed we should not classify things. I said that words are used like tools but do not reflect reality transparently.

Par example.The word atom had been associated with lots of models of atoms. The word atom refers to whatever the current model of the atom is.

You haven't shown why we need use the particular word animal at all. It is clearly as I have mentioned a word that is applied selectively for different purposes. People can be described as animalistic or behaving like one animal or another.

The following article should give you some clue of this trajectory..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-africa/comparing-black-people-to_b_9345322.html

"Long before post-Darwinian “scientific racism” begins to develop, then, one can find blacks being depicted as closer to apes on the Great Chain of Being. Take mid-19th century America in circles in which polygenesis (separate origins for the races) was taken seriously. Leading scientists of the day Josiah C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, in their 1854 Types of Mankind, documented what they saw as objective racial hierarchies with illustrations comparing blacks to chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans."

If you want to get rid of classifications like "animals," you would have to get rid of all the words in our language as well. — Thanatos Sand

That is not true. We often get rid of words in our languages without having to abandon a whole language. We also keep words that refer to fictional entities.

In what situation is there an urgent need to describe something as animal?

But there’s an unnecessary, made-up problem of philosophy, (the Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness), — Michael Ossipoff

Any problem is hard if there is no explanation. The difficulty with consciousness is that it is only directly available to the person having the experience whereas a cell isn't , so obviously it is a harder problem than something a group of people can publicly examine.

Subjectivity is even hard to talk about but it is not the same as looking outside yourself at an object in the world.

Psychology and Philosophy of mind are serious disciplines that closely analyse the mind and cognitions and seek to give reasonable definitions. They are not trying to create mysteries. We have a global mental health crisis and huge widespread use of psychiatric medication up to 1 million suicides a year so there is a serious need and desire to accurately understand the mind.

I believe what he means is that despite having highly evolved intelligence, our initial drives and instincts, as well as everything we experience, are biological in nature. — CasKev

I thought he said we were nothing more than animals.

Which animal are we supposed to be comparing ourselves with? This has been a classic ploy throughout history, to compare certain types of humans or human behaviour to animals as a justification for assigning a particular status to them. But there is massive diversity among animals.

People seem to forget that words like biological and animal are human inventions not a transparent reflection of what is in the external world. We don't need to know about peoples genes or biology to successfully communicate with them and muddle along. Now people can say things like "My genes made me do it" because it sounds more scientific without making a rigorous causal theory.

Biological in the sense your now using it seems to be invoking a particular view of biology as uncontrolled hormones, ruthless mechanism and instincts. Humans have a lot of self control to exhibit far more drives and behaviours that involve "prehistoric" urges or brain pathways. Sitting around all day staring at a computer screen is hardly something we can be said to have adapted for.

Then share with us one piece of evidence that we're other than animals. — Michael Ossipoff

How are you defining animal?

We have Shakespeare, Einstein, Bach, Language, Mathematics, Science, Internet,Psychotherapy, Computer Programming, Schools, Cookery, Philosophy, Psychology, Art, Music, medicine...

I've already answered the homosexual problem - twice. — Harry Hindu

Sorry. Can you link me to these posts or quote them as I can't seem to find them.

I am using homosexuality as a case where people are trying to subsume homosexuality or other characteristics within an evolutionary framework and as a survival benefit as opposed to what you cite John Tooby claiming the evo psych modular position offers a lot of flexibility.

Trying to reduce homosexuality to its reproductive benefits is not offering a flexible model more flexible than the blank slate approach.

Also you linked to a Sapolsky video but he doesn't agree with Tooby obviously because he is a strong determinist. And as I point out determinism undermines any role for consciousness which is a position accepted in the related literature (epiphenomenalism)

So it seems to depend on which theorist you sympathise with or believe or what evidence you choose that informs the perceived ramifications of something we know.

But we know from history that natural selection ideas almost immediately had a negative impact propping up racist hierarchies and class hierarchies etc and was later invoked to defend genocide and the murder of the disabled. So it is not like the religious right just invented potential harmful effects of the theory . And so there is good rational reason to be careful about what positions you arise to in this situation and not try to cram everything in a paradigm for ideological reasons.