Another way forward might be to find an instability within the enframing concept that sees humans within nature, or as always already inhuman. Human mastery over nature, seeing it as instrumentalised for us, invites a reverse position where we're (1) nothing but one type of its instruments and (2) thus have a duty of care for that which we're coextensive with. — fdrake

The whole thing seems to come around to a reassessment of priorities. I know I don't want techno-dystopia, and I know that certain human impulses lead directly to techno-dystopia, so I have to find a reason to keep not-wanting techno-dystopia besides the humanism that pushes us in that direction. A holism that includes us as part of nature is a step in that direction, but I sense something fundamental missing from this perspective. I suppose what I want is for our naturalness to coexist with our dignity, or at least not be at direct loggerheads with it.

Fantastic post! Thanks for clearing up that part of the problem space. I guess the question is, once we return to the concerns of dasein, what will we hope to have gained from our romantic excursion into Being?

Shouldwe focus on which one is realer and more effective, or on which one is worthier or more meaningful?

For what it's worth, I am in much the same situation as you are. And while I do not think that the solution for me personally is the same as the solution for humanity, they must be at least related, because I am a human.

Heidegger points out, in a moment of self-awareness, that you cannot treat technology as devilish because doing so is essentially falling prey to technical thinking. The question is, what integrates the inner monkey with the inner monk?

Heidegger captures something about us, perhaps. Marx is probably helpful too. Our practical behavior is more abstract these days. Quality is quantified. Perhaps I make low-quality or ugly things because they sell when I'd prefer to make quality or beautiful things. Maybe our dreary practical situation is especially ugly in some way lately, but it's hard to imagine being saved entirely from unromantic compromise. — jjAmEs

It's true that there are plenty of sighing Romantics who would love to sit around and pine for ages past, and it's true that Heidegger has some of that tendency. But dismissing his observations on those grounds is falling prey exactly to his criticism. This isn't about reaching eco-utopia, it's about avoiding techno-dystopia, which is a real danger right now. If you don't believe me, look at how China is presently governed. Ask yourself what happens when we're basically data-cattle for social media and government.

I can understand the temptation to say, "Whatever, stop living in fairy land. The world has always been ugly and we've always had to scrape the muck off of our boots." The issue, however, is the social consequences of a culture that no longer has a reason to scrape the muck off of its boots; what argument can be mustered against e.g. dystopian governmental policy, if there is no transcendental 'why'? Refer to my first post.

This does not mean some final articulation where there can be no further analysis, a completed metaphysics of some kind.

Okay, cool. I'll riff on that a little.

Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy, because full disclosure exposes philosophic thinking to enframing. Heidegger's thought is a dead end however because it sees no way out for thinking. The "new" kind of thinking he proposes is too garbled; in flight from enframing, he runs straight into the abyss.

I think there is more to it than a vague spiritual sentiment, however. We are in a bind because enframing, as the ultimate practicality, cannot be argued with on pragmatic grounds. In no concrete situation will you ever be able to argue persuasively against enframing because enframing can always establish its superiority by pointing at the numbers. In the big picture this turns everything (including us) into standing-reserve, but that vague, metaphysical, wishy-washy fru-fru spiritual-sounding claptrap can never be convincingly employed against a concrete instance of Gestell. That only works when you can posit a hard ethical limit, and those are increasingly hard to come by. Nothing seems to serve that purpose, or at least, nothing that can stop overcome the present and lead us into a post-technological age.

This is precisely the sort of reaction that Greta's parents would like her to provoke. If I have a political statement to make, and I have a child do it in the most controversial manner possible, I can guarantee a backlash. Which then makes my opponnents look like horrible people, attacking a child of all things.

Someone should also have offered the white person who thinks that their whiteness is harmful to others a cyanide pill and advised them to "do the right thing". — Bitter Crank

That's the interesting part. People are willing to say all kinds of absurd things in the name of social theory, but seem unwilling to follow those statements to their logical conclusion.

Of course, if you rationalize enough, you can make this sort of thing sound reasonable - that works on anything. Better to just ignore it, though.

Chinese Muslims aren't being persecuted. Uyghurs are. There are historical reasons for this.

Precisely. Mathematics is mind-dependent because it's not useful to say that it isn't, and "utility" is a worthwhile measuring-stick here because mathematics is mind-dependent. It begs the question, and you can see this as soon as you ask why "utility" should matter here.

Mathematical Platonism is either true, or it is not. Why would utility help us answer that question?

I'm afraid that wasn't an argument.

Ah, so you do have an argument! What is it?

I'll take that as a "no."

Do you have an argument?

Terminology is not terribly important. Instead of complaining that I'm being mean to the paper, why don't you respond to the argument?

Ah! I see the problem here. Platonism is a stance toward the reality of abstractions, so argument against Platonism is argument against the reality of abstractions. Thus the reason for bringing up the reality of abstractions.

I pointed out that your argument is circular. Do you actually have a response?

Okay, so how does my picture have little to do with reality? We need something better than question-begging here.

"I don't care if it's real or not; I'm not interested in reality." Well, okay, then.

So his argument is that the Platonic world of math doesn't exist because it is... uninteresting? :lol: — litewave

Lots of irrealists about math make this argument. "Well, it's not useful, so these abstractions aren't real." Of course, the reality of an abstraction would only depend on its utility to us if the abstraction were not independently real to begin with. Argument begs the question, everybody go home.

Okay, but that makes the KK principle vacuous.

"S knows that P" -> "S knows that S knows that P."
"S knows that S knows that P" -> "S knows that S knows that S knows that P"

This seems like such a basic point that I'm sure proponents of the KK principle have thought of it, but what's the reply? How does this not imply that, in order to know something, I have to know that I know that I know that I know... ad infinitum? And what would that mean? If it's supposed to be intelligible that I can know that I know something, then the whole regress should be intelligible, right?

I suspect that this misses the point somehow, that someone who holds the KK principle would mean something totally different by it. Is the second K a different kind of knowledge from the first K?

Thinking about it here, what is lurking behind my objection to this reasoning seems to be Hume's guillotine: that one cannot derive an ought from an is. So my objection is that one cannot go from the claim "being is intrinsically good" to "therefore, one ought to procreate." — Thorongil

If Being is intrinsically good, then Hume's Guillotine fails. In fact, Hume's Guillotine basically is a denial of the idea that Being is intrinsically good.

My take on it?

Would you take out $40,000 in loans to take a vacation for "personal enrichment?" No? Then why are you getting a fucking humanities degree?

As an addendum to my prior post, I will note that, in tension with my distaste for skeptical pretense, I have a certain suspicion of "commonsense" philosophy. There is no in-depth philosophy that does not do violence to common sense...

I have often thought that skepticism, given its typical rhetorical purpose in philosophy, can be profoundly misleading. It's all well an good to discuss evil demons and brains in vats, but when we refuse to admit that we don't actually doubt certain things, we get into trouble. I'm thinking of a quote from Peirce here....

You can sense the coyness when a professor says, "What? I have no way of knowing that I'm not dreaming right now..." which is fine, but he doesn't doubt for a moment that he's awake.

You said I cannot trust your source unless it's backed up by a left-wing source. — Baden

No he didn't.

I mean, I don't see any basis for legitimacy of that "fact check" website, but whatever.

Anyhow, on a note unrelated to that previous discussion but still keeping with the general question of the thread, deconstruction of the prevailing narrative always meets with a peculiar kind of doxastic opposition, which is that evaluative standards (and even intelligibility) are reciprocally determined by the status quo. Institutions play into this, of course.

Now respond to my post. — Baden

I did.

unintentionally ironic posts about circling the wagons and so on. — Baden

"Circling the wagons" is a social phenomenon. The right isn't circling the wagons, as evidenced by its steady advances. Also, I see no response to Thorongil's point about the Vox op-ed....

This is question begging. The reason you expect not to learn anything new is because of the biased nature of the compilers and sources of the information. Ergo, genetic fallacy. — Thorongil

Precisely. "This is an unreliable source, so I won't look at it, so I have no reason to believe it's a reliable source."

The Vox point is interesting as well. Vox is (strident) propaganda but it passes the sniff test because of the obvious left-wing editorial policy. One can high-mindedly expound on the virtues of critical scrutiny, but this falls a little flat when one refuses to critique anything from one's own side.

A good question to ask oneself: if I insist that the world works in a particular way, what happens if someone decides to dislodge my worldview by using methods that, according to my worldview, don't actually work? If the mechanism used by my ideological enemies is non-existent according to my view of how the world works, then I'm in for a world of hurt.

The wagon-circling has another component that leads to bad consequences, which is its tendency to shrink the solid base upon which a given ideology stands.

If an ideology has a high degree of sociocultural dominance, then massive retaliation against even moderate dissenters serves as a means of cementing that ideology's hold, because ideological dominance relies on the perception that the ideology is universal or near-universal. If you think that everyone agrees on X, you won't dare to contradict it, especially when you see even mild disagreement being quashed with extreme prejudice. This last serves as evidence that the given ideology (whatever it is) really is (near) universal.

Once this dominance is lost, however, attacking even mild dissenters is no longer a winning strategy, because the cat is already out of the bag; you're not going to convince anyone that your way of thinking is the default by viciously attacking all dissenters, because the jig is up and we all know that dissent is now socially acceptable. In fact, the massive retaliation against any and all dissenters now has the opposite effect, because it simultaneously vindicates those who claim to have been previously suppressed and makes people reticent to agree with you instead of compelling their agreement.

The sociocultural dominance of an ideology is self-sustaining when strong (perception of being the default --> nobody challenges --> stronger perception of being the default), and this reciprocal self-strengthening inverts into a spectacular meltdown once dominance is lost, since the tactics that formerly made it strong and became stronger with it now do the opposite.

Sorry, but have you two jokers ever even written a paper in your lives? You know where you need to provide evidence from a source that can be taken seriously. When your professor told you, you can't just copy-paste from anywhere on the internet. I'm happy to deal with this issue, so please get your act together, get some info from a source that's not polluted and we'll deal with it. — Baden

I just made an observation about the present behavior of the left. How does this response address that, besides proving my point by being defensive?

Refusal to engage doesn't win points. The suddeb loss of its sociocultural dominance has spooked the left, which is reacting by circling the wagons. Much like placing one's stones too close together in a game of go, this is a losing strategy.

It's curious the way you repeatedly use this strategy of pretending to be disappointed and sorry and so on about the posts of your interlocutors here. And I suppose you'll respond to this comment by feigning more heartbreak. Here, have a hanky in advance. Or even better, just answer the rest of my earlier post. Nobody's interested in your emotional state. — Baden

Well, a few of you told me I was being mean, so I apologized for it. And now you're angry at me for apologizing! You have invested considerable apparent effort into yelling at me for being a meanie, so the "grrr I'm too tough for this Mickey Mouse crap" thing comes off a little weird.

Also, why do you say you want to "agree to disagree" and then start arguing about the point you said you wanted to drop? This is inconsistent. I addressed the point you raised previously in the discussion with Maw.

Is this honest-to-God that complicated for you? It's astonishing just how far you are willing to bending over backwards in order keep up with this facade of ignorance. Trudeau tweets his support of the Women's March and that the Canadian Government will keep fighting for gender equality. Peterson's response: Is that the murderous equity doctrine? For God's sake, how is this not hyperbolic? Or are you just unable to accept that fact that Jordan Peterson is capable of saying stupid shit on Twitter? — Maw

Well, Peterson has a history of criticizing student activism of this kind so I imagine that's where his critique is aimed. I'd say the context makes that pretty obvious.

legitimately referred to as "a murderous equity doctrine" and whether that kind of rhetoric can be considered "hysterical". — Baden

Well, no, because Peterson did not specify which belief he thought was a "murderous equality doctrine." I went over this with Maw. You can read that sequrnce of posts if you would like to see how that discussion went.

We don't even have to argue over whether the left or the right is more unreasonable overall actually because it's not all that pertinent, — Baden

But you invited that discussion by saying that there were more conspiracy theorists on the right. This is what puzzles me: when I make an argument, you respond that you're not interested in a discussion, despite the fact that I was addressing one of your points.

Sanctimonious? Check. Self-righteous? Check. Hectoring? Well, there's a limit to the extent to which it can reasonably be claimed blatant sarcasm is just gentle ribbing, and so...Check. Sectarian? Check. Maudlin? Well, expressions of self-pity and claims of sad disappointment probably qualify, and so...Check. Blustering? Well, certainly indignant, at least, and the use of uppercase can be said to be "loud", so...Check. — Ciceronianus the White

I typed the words "woof woof" and got this in response. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, but this seems a bit exuberant in response to "woof woof."

To recap: we have a widespread hysterical reaction on the left, where you've got some harmless middle-aged psych professor telling people to clean their rooms and grumbling about the social justice movement, and the reaction to him is to cast him as some kind of harbinger of fascism.

We have a stubborn refusal to recognize the violent extremism of groups like BLM and antifa, and pointing out the violent extremism of such groups immediately makes you the target of ridicule (sans argument). Also, there is a lot of conspiracy theorism about Trump being a Russian puppet, shadowy right-wing fraternities controlling Austria, and so forth.

Several times in this thread I have tried to coax some kind of argument out of SLX and Baden. But at one point I (gently) made fun of SLX by typing "woof woof" and he took that as a reason not to defend his position. Meanwhile, I also (gently) made fun of Baden with a reference to David Icke, and he decided that that meant he didn't need arguments to support his point. I'm a little disappointed, guys.

It worries you that I think gender equality shouldn't be equated with a murderous equity doctrine? — Baden

No, my point was that calling yourself a "woman's equality" activist doesn't mean that what you are doing is good, or even that it has anything to do with equality; antifa, for example, call themselves anti-fascists, but really just engage in terrorism. Slapping a nice-sounding label on something does not make it a good thing, and I know you're not dumb enough to be fooled by that.

but you can't admit to that happening on the right even with blatantly obvious examples, and would prefer to distract with talk about hypothetical "reptoid aliens". Yawn. Same old boring tribal support mental block. — Baden

No, that remark was in reply to your assertion that there is more conspiracy theorism on the right than on the left. My reply cited three examples of widespread conspiracy theorism on the left.

Are you even reading my posts, Baden, or just skimming them and firing off a reply?

I don't see anything hysterical about the three points you mentioned.

Your use of "women's equality" is a bit hand-wavey, though. That's like claiming that antifa can't be a terrorist organization because they call themselves "anti-fascist." The fact that a group of activists canvasses what they do as "women's equality" doesn't mean that what they're doing is good, and your uncritical acceptance of their self-imposed label worries me.

As to tinfoil, I see more of that from established media outlets than from independent pundits. For exampl, the Russia collusion nonsense, the claims of Austrian politics being infiltrated by "shadowy far-right fraternities," and several news outlets blaming the Mafia for the Italian elections. Whenever one of these populist political changes takes place, all of the sudden it's because of Russia or the Mafia or Austrian fraternities or whoever. What's next? Trump is a reptoid alien?

That's a pity. I'd hope that a person as well-read as yourself would deign to post his arguments in this thread, if not for my benefit, then for that of the forum. I've enjoyed your posting on this forum and the previous one for years. It's a bit disconcerting that a little lightheartedness is such a turn-off for you. Hope you're alright.

You've engaged me for several posts so far. Why the sudden reticence? Your post made some assertions but with no arguments. I'm certain that you have arguments, though, so why not post them? This is a philosophy forum.