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You can start it where you want, but I think you’re making the wrong case. Fascism is a simplistic explanation, which mostly ignores or misreads rather than properly addresses his work. The best philosophical arguments connecting his ideas and his political actions I’ve read come from Derrida and Levinas , both of whom avoid oversimplified notions of fascism. — Joshs

You know the 'Heidegger makes ethics subservient to ontology' line then, do you feel like it's that much of a stretch from there to fascism? I don't, I think the technology stuff is a fairly big enabler for his Naziism. Here are some breadcrumbs from QCT.

The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has
the character of a setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging forth. That challenging happens in that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed, what is
transformed is stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed,
and what is distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking,
transforming, storing, distributing, and switching about are ways
of revealing. But the revealing never simply comes to an end.
Neither does it run off into the indeterminate. The revealing
reveals to itself its own manifoldly interlocking paths, through
regulating their course. This regulating itself is, for its part,
everywhere secured. Regulating and securing even become the
chief characteristics of the challenging revealing

(QCT) - a 'setting upon' and 'challenging forth' instrumentalizing all of Being for calculated purposes characterises enframing. That this is a deeply troubling thing for Heidegger, troubling enough for Heidegger to devote a large part of his later years to thinking around, I'll leave uncited. How old is enframing, how far back in our conceptual genealogy do you have to go back to get to it?

From the intro blurb of the Question Concerning Technology version I linked, since it's making this connection better than I could:

The dominion of Enframing as the essence of modern technology and the concomitant presence of the standing-reserve are
most clearly seen in the realm of machine technology, where no
object has significance in itself and where the "orderability" of
everything, from energy and statistics to machines and persons,
is all-important. It can be found also, Heidegger says, in the
sphere of science, namely, in modern physics. There again, the
object, otherwise the hallmark of the sciences, has disappeared.
In its stead the relation between subject and object comes to the
fore and "becomes a standing-reserve" to be controlled

In metaphysics too the rule of the essence of technology appears. Perhaps rather surprisingly, Heidegger finds in Nietzsche
the culmination of the movement of modern metaphysics begun
in Descartes and carried forward by subsequent thinkers. Standing within the modern metaphysical outlook, Nietzsche, in asking
concerning the reality of the real, found the will to be fundamentally determinative. The self-consciousness of the subject,
which Descartes established as normative, is raised in Nietzsche
to full metaphysical expression. Self-consciousness is here the
self-consciousness of the will Willing itself. The will to power,
fundamental for Nietzsche, is no mere human willing. It is the
mode of Being now ruling in everything that is, which must find
accomplishment through man

A long time (modern physics), and it's also intimately connected with the the centrality of will and freedom; on one side of the seesaw of modernity you have the objectivity of scientific inquiry and on the other you have the subjective aspects of self determination and subjectivity. That this self determination is a making something of yourself as you choose is to see yourself as a standing reserve to be manipulated by your own calculus of self determination.

The essence of freedom is originally not connected with the
will or even with the causality of human willing.
Freedom governs the open in the sense of the cleared and
lighted up, i.e., of the revealed.23 It is to the happening of revealing, i.e., of truth, that freedom stands in the closest and most
intimate kinship. All revealing belongs within a harboring and a
concealing. But that which frees-the mystery-is concealed and
always concealing itself. All revealing comes out of the open,
goes into the open, and brings into the open. The freedom of
the open consists neither in unfettered arbitrariness nor in the
constraint of mere laws. Freedom is that which conceals in a way
that opens to light, in whose clearing there shimmers that veil
that covers what comes to presence of all truth and lets the veil
appear as what veils. Freedom is the realm of the destining that
at any given time starts a revealing upon its way.

(Heidegger again)

So you've got enframing being an ancient spiritual danger... How do you overcome it? Poetry and old things - go back in history before modern physics geneologically, go back in conceptual priority through art:

What, then, was art-perhaps only for that brief but magnificent time? Why did art bear the modest name techne? Because it was a revealing that brought forth and hither, and
therefore belonged within poiesis. It was finally that revealing
which holds complete sway in all the fine arts, in poetry, and in
everything poetical that obtained poiesis as its proper name.
The same poet from whom we heard the words
says to us:
But where danger is, grows
The saving power also.
... poetically dwells man upon this earth.
The poetical brings the true into the splendor of what Plato
in the Phaedrus calls to ekphanestaton, that which shines forth
most purely. The poetical thoroughly pervades every art, every
revealing of coming to presence into the beautiful.

And you better really devote yourself to it because it's a planetary philosophical struggle for humanity's eternal soul:

Only when insight brings itself disclosingly to pass, only when
the coming to presence of technology lights up as Enframing, do
we discern how, in the ordering of the standing-reserve, the truth
of Being remains denied as world. Only then do we notice that
all mere willing and doing in the mode of ordering steadfastly
persists in injurious neglect. In this same way all mere organizing of the world conceived and represented historiographically
in terms of universality remains truthless and without foundation. All mere chasing after the future so as to work out a picture of it through calculation in order to extend what is present
and half-thought into what, now veiled, is yet to come, itself
still moves within the prevailing attitude belonging to technological, calculating representation. All attempts to reckon existing
reality morphologically, psychologically, in terms of decline and
loss, in terms of fate, catastrophe, and destruction, are merely
technological behavior. That behavior operates through the device of the enumerating of symptoms whose standing-reserve
can be increased to infinity and always varied anew. Such
analyses of the "situation" do not notice that they are working
only according 1;0 the meaning and manner of technological
dissecting, and that they thus furnish to the technological consciousness the historiographical-technological presentation of
happening commensurate with that consciousness. But no historiographical representation of history as happening ever brings
us into the proper relation to destining, let alone into the essential
origin of destining in the disclosing coming-to-pass of the truth
of Being that brings everything into its own.
--All that is merely technological never arrives at the essence
of technology. It cannot even once recognize its outer precincts.
Therefore, as we seek to give utterance to insight into that
which is, we do not describe the situation of our time. It is the
constellation of Being that is uttering itself to us.

And that constellation of being; the 'world-picture' which we inhabit; does not contain a god who puts calculation back in a nondestructive place:

But we do not yet hear, we whose hearing and seeing are perishing through radio and film under the rule of technology. The constellation of Being is the denial of world, in the form of injurious neglect of the thing. Denial is not nothing; it is the highest mystery of Being within the rule of Enframing.

Whether the god lives or remains dead is not decided by the
religiosity of men and even less by the theological aspirations
of philosophy and natural science. Whether or not God is God
comes disclosingly to pass from out of and within the constellation of Being.

Let's take Levinas' 'subordination of ethics to ontology criticism' as just true, and now consider the claim that Heidegger sees a humanity destroying catastrophe as unfolding as technology tightens its grip on the human spirit in tandem with it. In the same way that the subordination of ethics to ontology 'made room' for fascism, a strong driver in what made it so urgent for Heidegger to advocate was his diagnosis of the catastrophe eroding the human soul.

I think the above lays the groundwork for the claim that something old and mythical and poetic fit the bill, I'll leave it unevinced that building an ancient (nation) myth and reclaiming what was lost (our - whose? - humanity) are strong unifying themes between Heidegger's malaise with modernity and the mytho-poetic structure of Naziism. I'm sure Heidegger noticed that resemblance, he really cared about how the presentation of norms contained 'primordial' structure.

Anyway, as you can see the story's long enough when you don't start at B&T, and this post is just one work with a pretentious reference to another thrown in.

Do you see any hints of mythical nostalgia or fascism in his distinction between inauthentic present to hand and authentic Dasein in that book? — Joshs

I see a clear connection between enframing in QCT and inauthenticity in B&T, and a clear connection between 'Only a God Can Save Us' and enframing, yes. I see a less clear conceptual connection between 'Only a God Can Save Us' and fascism, but I'm fairly sure we've both read things that make the case. In all honesty, I've no interest in going down the rabbit hole, especially if you feel it needs to start in B&T.

You seem to be suggesting that this is not "true" or absolute objectivity, because the examining and analysis is always from a subjective point of view. — Janus

Yes, this is what I mean. — Angelo Cannata

I felt stuck, in my reflection, about the subjectivity being condemned to be impossible to prove, impossible to find evidence, impossible to share. — Angelo Cannata

Besides the usual dead horse about the subject/object distinction and Heidegger (which @Xtrix has I think rightly continued to flog here), there's actually a similar concept to what you're describing in Heidegger's text The Question Concerning Technology, called enframing.

In terms of Heidegger exegesis, enframing is a modification of how being is disclosed in societies that have technology at their centre. Disclosure is Heidegger's word for how people encounter the world as it is. To throw more words at that concept; disclosure is the a see-through veil of perception, the perspectival aspect of belonging to an environment and that aspect's ability to be true. Neither of these things are the exact concept, but I think they will do for now.

So disclosure is the practice of entering into relationship with an environment by means of forming a perspective within it. Enframing is a flavour of that, a type of way of entering into a relationship with an environment. In enframing, the elements of the environment are viewed in an instrumental, calculative and objective aspect; weighed, measured, found wanting. Enframing is not a mode of perspective which imbues the environment with a pathos of its elements, it instead imbues the environment with its cognizable trajectories of development; the eye of an engineer and not a poet.

In enframing, the cognizable trajectories of an environment's development are highlighted - when that same searchlight is turned upon a person, their personhood is fragmented into a kinematics of their behaviour. A person becomes a diagnosis of what they're going to do; everything is replaced with its operational definition, even you. You are what you can be represented to do.

In a sense, then, for (later) Heidegger, we can now only talk about things as if they are only objective. What would it take to change that?

SPIEGEL: Obviously, you see a world movement -- this is the way you, too, have expressed it -- that either is bringing about an absolutely technical state or has done so already.

Heidegger: That's right.

SPIEGEL: Fine. Now the question naturally arises: Can the individual man in any way still influence this web of fateful circumstance? Or, indeed, can philosophy influence it? Or can both together influence it, insofar as philosophy guides the individual, or several individuals, to a determined action?

Heidegger: If I may answer briefly, and perhaps clumsily, but after long reflection: philosophy will be unable to effect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all purely human reflection and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinknig and poetizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god, or for the absence of a god in [our] decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline. — Heidegger, The Spiegel Interview

(linked here).


Only a god can save us. But we have a choice in how we are not saved - the principle he expressed there of return to a poetic and spiritual sensibility (@Wayfarer), or the one he embodied in practice, or, not to put too fine a point on it, a forceful politics of nostalgia and mythical reclamation. The poetic violence of fascism.

SPIEGEL: Fine, that is understandable. But we seem to perceive a new tone in your rectoral discourse, when, four months after Hitler's designation as Chancellor, you there talk about the "greatness and glory of this new era (Aufbruch)."

Heidegger: Yes, I was also convinced of it.

SPIEGEL: Could you explain that a little further?

Heidegger: Gladly. At that time I saw no other alternative. Amid the general confusion of opinion and political tendencies of 22 parties, it was necessary to find a national and, above all, social attitude, somewhat in the sense of Friederich Naumann's endeavor.

You will be missed, @Streetlight.

Anything with lots of tasks that have fuzzy boundaries or ill defined specs will resist automation strongly. Being a doctor or nurse, childcare, support worker, anything engineering related, plumbing, construction, joinery, carpentry, law.

Why? You need to tell an AI what to do and how to learn, they're poor at transferring learning in one problem space to another, poor at recognising 'new' problem spaces. And this is with as much data as they need to learn.

I believe they also aren't great at knowing why something is the case. They might be able to infer that someone who has gone to a Slayer concert is more likely to go to a Megadeth concert, but from that they couldn't learn of the underlying construct 'metalhead' without input.

Underlying all of this is access to data. Any data stream which somehow resists digitalisation, storage and propagation will be difficult to automate tasks using AI within. Transience is anathema to beings of repetition.

,

I voted no, I'm suspicious of this line:

Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end, there must always be time on both sides of it.

The interval of real numbers (1,2) has 'no number on the right', as it does not contain its least upper bound ( 2 ), you'd need to look 'outside of it' (in the real numbers themselves) to get that. So in that interval you get a length (moment = length of time?) with no first largest time point within it... The only way to give that interval a maximum is to bring the real numbers themselves (an underlying continuum) into the picture. In effect, this conjures the eternity of time 'the moment' is embedded in into the moment, without showing that such an operation is valid.

To me it looks like three different duration concepts being conflated with each other - bounded intervals, intervals which don't contain their end, and the underlying set that end exists in.

I doubt these concepts are as Aristotle intended them to be interpreted, though. Maybe his argument is valid when understood closer to his own terms.

I'm slightly confused because while the debate of physicalism is not uninteresting, but it does not strike me to have such importance of a philosophical topic to be this dominant in general discourse. Surely, other subjects even within metaphysics itself like time or mereology are just as relevant as that topic — Kuro

Both I think. There's some (2009) evidence about this from Philpapers survey metaphysics questions, here. If you need me to write something on factor analysis, I can. As a summary, those factors in order split philosophers on what they disagree about the most. Naturalism/non-naturalism (physicalism/non-physicalism) comes out as the strongest contrast of philosophical opinion over topics. It would thus be a strong promoter of debate. So it isn't surprising that it is a prevalent discussion.

As for why it's 'so' prevalent... It could equally be that the userbase splits along the axis particularly strongly, or that the contrast between naturalism/non-naturalism is of broad enough scope to touch on almost everything.

The study population for philpapers' analysis is professional philosophers though. We're not represented well by it I think, so our drivers may be different. I would guess that the breadth and centrality of physicalism/non-physicalism conceptual tensions make it simultaneously easy for amateurs like us to wander into a discussion about and also easy to intuit strongly, thus spilling more ink.

God talk's popular, I think, for the same reason.

Every number is an exact number. If you approximate pi with 3.14, the number 3.14 is exactly itself. The number pi is exactly itself, and the difference between them is exactly (3.14 - pi). Those are numbers as mathematical objects.

When you represent a number using another number- eg pi as 3.14 - that representation is called an approximation. You know that 3.14 is within 0.01 of the true value of Pi. Approximations have errors, that's what makes them approximations. Nevertheless, the number you use to approximate another number is still exactly itself.

If Pi had a last digit, say it were 3.141... Then you would be able to write it as 3141/1000, and it would be a fraction. But you can prove that Pi isn't a fraction - it can't be written as one integer divided by another -, so it doesn't have a last digit.

Pi not having a last digit, and further that it can't be written as one integer divided by another -, means that any way of writing digits down for Pi will be an approximation of Pi. So long as you're just writing digits, there will only be finitely many, and Pi has no last digit, so you'll always be off by the part of Pi you don't write down.

3.141 is off by 0.00057...

When you tell a computer to represent a number, it behaves like the kind of approximations above. It will only be able to represent a certain number of digits at once, because infinity doesn't fit inside the computer.

What is the content of a proposition? And is it propositional? — bongo fury

A good question.

I'd not put too much emphasis on "mental state", so much as on explanations for behaviours. It is not that there is always a thing in the mind that is a belief. Your belief that folk in Darwin can sometimes buy shoes is not a discrete state of your mind. So it's not quite my view. — Banno

Aye. I don't think you like 'mental furniture'. I wanted to bring that out with the argument.

I think this needs cleaning up. Belief is a relation between someone and a statement such that the statement is held to be true. We can loosely call the statement the content of the belief. But in (9) you want to have some sort of transitivity relation here. I can't see how it would work. — Banno

The first relationship might be called intentional content, the second might be called semantic content. The belief is in relation with the statement (statement is intentional content of belief), the statement is in relation toward the world (the world forms some part of the semantic content of the statement). It seems necessary that there is some transitivity condition implied. If X believes that the snow they are seeing is white, then it would be strange if the semantic content of "snow is white" was consistent with the intentional content of non-white snow. If you believe snow is white, that places constraints on whether you can mean something black when referring to snow in a usual context.

If a person is holding the statement P true, they are also committed to P's semantic content in a manner that a person would be surprised if the world wasn't consistent with the semantic content of P. I believe thats snow is white, I'm not just committed to the statement, I'm committed to its truth, and what that truth says about the state of things.

Perhaps you are poking at "Snow is white" being extensional but not "Fdrake believes that snow is white". — Banno

I think that's a related issue, yeah. What kind of event fleshes out the truth of the claim "fdrake believes that snow is white" - I know you can disquote it, can you give me a disquotation which isn't a redundant one? I want to know what the belief means, not just that I was accurately said to believe snow is white.

I have a cat for the pigeons.

( 1 ) Beliefs are dispositions (Assumption)
( 2 ) Every disposition is a mental state (Assumption)
( 3 ) Beliefs are mental states. (1,2 modus ponens)
( 4 ) Beliefs are mental states in which a statement is held to be true. ( Assumption )
( 5 ) The content of a belief is a statement. ( Seems to follow from 4 by how content is used )
( 6 ) If X is a state, the content of X is part of that state. (Assumption)
( 7 ) A belief's statement is part of that belief's mental state. (5, 6, instantiation)
( 8 ) A statement's semantic content is part of that statement ( 6 )
( 9 ) If X has content Y, and Y has content Z, then Z is part of X'd content. (assumption)
( 10 ) "This snow is white"'s semantic content is external (assumption).
( 11 ) "This snow is white's" semantic content is part of a mental state (if someone believes it and 8)
( 12 ) The semantic content of "This snow is white" is equivalent to the white snow. (assumption)
( 13 ) The white snow is part of a mental state.

( 13 ) is absurd.

Therefore 1,2,4,6,9, or 12 is false.

( 1 ) is easiest to assume true I think, ( 2 ) is granted by the discussion, ( 4 ) is @Banno 's thingy (up to wrangling regarding distinctions between propositions and statements), ( 6 ) seems hard to argue against, ( 9 ) holds true for pies and parthood so it looks like an uphill battle to claim it doesn't apply to content, ( 12 ) is close to a thesis of direct realism.

My picks are either ( 2 ) is false or ( 12 ) is too ambiguous to use as a premise (equivalent in what sense?).

You'd be better off asking on a mathematics forum or a student forum. My knowledge is outdated, but I recall E-Kreyzig "Advanced Engineering Mathematics" has exercises/explanations on all standard undergrad calculus techniques for computing integrals and derivatives.

Since it's still called calculus rather than "analysis", I suspect you won't need Principles of Mathematical Analysis for at least one year. :P

No but try this.

@SophistiCat - do you still keep this updated?

I didn't mean to imply the processes you and I described were the same. I was using it to show that the way I was presenting things was not limited to just one kind of knowledge. — T Clark

Ah I see. Sorry. Do you have a reference for a Site Conceptual Model?

I don't think my list starts far back enough to be a general guideline. Most questions aren't even precise enough to get numbers associated with them!

From my perspective (an old mathematician) philosophy people looove to talk and write, sometimes going on for paragraph after paragraph elaborating upon a concept that I would have described in a couple of sentences. But I see that as my fault, being too concise, failing to expand and not enjoying writing as much as others do. The writing on this forum can be very impressive in both quality and content, but I fade away after reading a few lengthy paragraphs. :yawn: — jgill

Density of conceptual content is inversely proportional to required message length. Fine distinctions with caveats, more words.

And for context, you don't need to look far to find that at least the linguistic framing of the issue is contentious, see this bit from SEP article on belief:

A number of philosophers have argued that our cognitive representations have, or can have, a map-like rather than a linguistic structure (Lewis 1994; Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson 1996; Camp 2007, 2018; Rescorla 2009; though see Blumson 2012 and Johnson 2015 for concerns about whether map-like and language-like structures are importantly distinct). Map-like representational systems are both productive and systematic: By recombination and repetition of its elements, a map can represent indefinitely many potential states of affairs; and a map-like system that has the capacity, for example, to represent the river as north of the mountain will normally also have the capacity to represent, by a re-arrangement of its parts, the mountain as north of the river. Although maps may sometimes involve words or symbols, nothing linguistic seems to be essential to the nature of map-like representation: Some maps are purely pictorial or combine pictorial elements with symbolic elements, like coloration to represent altitude, that we don’t ordinarily think of as linguistic. — SEP, Belief

It's not an all-and-some. — Banno

Seems to be. 'Every belief can be put into propositional form' = 'For every belief there exists a statement such that that statement expresses the belief'.

If there are beliefs that cannot be presented in propositional form, give us an example. — Banno

Normally when there's an all and some statement, 'for every belief there exists a statement such that...' someone argues for it, no?

Yes, but if I understand correctly, Smith is interested in the particular form in which profit upon alienation takes under imperialism. To the degree that profit upon alienation is redistributive, he notes that Marx outlined three such ways in which such redistribution could be maximized: by lengthening the working day, by increasing productivity, or by deceasing wages. Smith contends that Marx only examined the first two mechanisms at any length, because he (Marx) figured the labour market would always equalize wages via competition anyway - but he never contended that capital would go HAM in restricting the free movement of labour, which makes the third mechanism particularly relevant in the conceptualization of imperialism. It's worth quoting Smith on this point actually — StreetlightX

Super interesting, thank you.

I know dictionaries are shit for philosophy, but I don't see a better way to broach this. Definition of sacred.

devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.
entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy.
pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to secular or profane):
sacred music;
sacred books.
reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object:
a morning hour sacred to study.
regarded with reverence:the sacred memory of a dead hero.
secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right:
sacred oaths; sacred rights. — Dictionary.com, Sacred

Someone dies, their profile is left on social media. Facebook has a category for this:

Memorialised accounts

Memorialised accounts are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away. Memorialised accounts have the following key features:

The word Remembering will be shown next to the person's name on their profile.

Depending on the privacy settings of the account, friends can share memories on the memorialised timeline.

Content the person shared (e.g. photos, posts) stays on Facebook and is visible on Facebook to the audience it was shared with.

Memorialised profiles don't appear in public spaces such as in suggestions for People you may know, ads or birthday reminders.

No one can log in to a memorialised account.

Memorialised accounts that don't have a legacy contact can't be changed.

Pages with a sole admin whose account was memorialised will be removed from Facebook if we receive a valid memorialisation request.

They're digital spaces of remembrance. If you think they are not sacred in the secular senses underlined in the definition, I invite you to go on one and start badmouthing the object of worship.

The big distinction that he makes - which is the thing that I think is going to leave a lasting impression on me, no matter how much else I forget - is that between value created and value captured. For him, the North captures value, even as it is created in the South. It's this distinction that is papered over in bourgeois economics, which only has an eye for value-added as a matter of exchange rather than production. — StreetlightX

Do you think the division between political north and south tracks the division between the two sides of 'profit upon alienation' in Theories of Surplus Value? And furthermore that profit upon alienation is strictly a redistributive mechanism of value, rather than a creation of value.

The vestry is private, the church isn't so maybe it's "it's OK to molest boys when hidden but we should protect the innocent when in view". — Isaac

To see if I understand, the idea is that you've articulated a coherent narrative which describes the different contexts that the 'tendencies to act as if' arise in. That itself gets interpreted as a belief, because the priest does have a tendency to act (X in context A and Y in context B). It doesn't matter who made the belief, all that matters is how accurate the description is. On this account someone can believe something they are not aware of. Even if the priest doesn't think, articulate, realise, become consciously aware of their tendency to act as if X, that's counted as a summary of their belief, and thus is what their belief is.

The 'and thus' there follows because all there is to a belief that or in X is an accurate summary of a person's tendency to act as if X.

Seem right?

When people are looking for these stories, they'll more readily pick one off the shelf than make one up themselves. The myths and narratives that a society offers matter a lot to the kind of society that results because of this. It' my belief that a contradictory mythology such a Christianity offers - with the sort of contradictions Lewis is highlighting - offers a narrative which allows for such horrors as priestly child abuse, much more readily than better mythologies might, precisely because of these underlying themes (that God's actually something of a git himself. That he sees the rites, cassocks and prayers as more important that the behaviour...). — Isaac

I understand that this drives a distinction between a person's post hoc rationalisations and their tendencies to act as if? For example, someone can make a rationalisation of their behaviour which inaccurately summarises their tendencies to act as if, and thus the resulting rationalisation does not reflect their beliefs as defined above.

I don't think that interfaces directly with the argument either. If I can reconstruct your argument, it seems to go something like:

( 1 ) Christians act as if X is good.
( 2 ) X is bad.
( 3 ) If someone acts as if X is good when X is bad then their judgement should be questioned.
( 4 ) Christians' judgement should be questioned.

Which is a perfectly valid argument. I don't think it's currently sound though, as premise ( 1 ) seems insufficiently justified. The reason being that despite the sophistication of the belief account you've provided, there currently isn't an articulated link between why worshipping an entity which approves of X means acting as if X is good.

Edit: eg this illustrative quote from the Screwtape Letters:

It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very 'spiritual', that is is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rhuematism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards are her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother--the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment's notice from impassioned prayer for a wife's or son's soul to beating or insulting the real wife or son without any qualm. — CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

An additional point is that cognitive dissonance makes this argument on particularly shaky ground. If I've understood it right, the unified narrative for cognitive dissonance is: one acts X in context A and Y in context B, where X and Y are 'contrary'.

So ( 1 ) would be true for Christians act as if X is good, but under the assumption that a unified narrative would need to imply that in the aggregate the Christian acted as if X was good, this gives a strange conclusion. If a Christian acts as if X is good in church, but not at home, being able to substitute in 'Person act as if X is good' because they do in context C into ( 1 ) from the unified narrative makes you able to question the Christian's judgement. EG, hypothetical secret gay rights advocate in a Christian community worshipping the God preached in a gay bashing Church still gets their judgement questioned about the gays in the same way as the rest of the congregation.

I don't think that conclusion is tenable, so it highlights that one cannot take the constitutive elements out of the unified narrative and throw them into the argument. And if that is true, the necessity of coming up with a unified narrative in cases of cognitive dissonance blocks the argument from applying to any specific Christian without a theory of when you can rightly judge that someone in the aggregate is acting as if X is good. IE, a theory of accuracy for the unified narratives.

Why then and not then? It's like the 'interpretation' argument. — Isaac

I agree that 'why then and not then' is part of the crux of the issue, it's the psychological bit. There's also the normative bit regarding 'tendencies to behave as if' - a person can have a tendency to act as if X and a tendency to act as if not X, just in different contexts. If there is a notion of aggregate tendency which accurately describes the person's state of belief, there's a question of how you form the aggregate based on the contradictory belief components.

Does an abusive priest have a tendency to behave as if abuse is wrong? In some respect, they could very well preach against it and otherwise be compassionate. Therefore it would be true to say that they have a tendency to act as if abuse is wrong. But it would also be true to say that they have a tendency to act as if abuse is not wrong.

There's so much wiggle room with 'tendency' that you can probably make it mean whatever you like. Priest has a tendency to act as if abuse is wrong in context C, priest has a tendency to act as if abuse is not wrong in context D. We know you can't quantify over all contexts there since it's rather uncharitable, but what operation takes the priest's actions in C and the priests actions in D to their state of belief and who does the operation? Is it an impersonal process? Is it a bodily one? Is it both and neither?

I think it's fair to say there will be a salient distinction between someone else's summary of the priest's actions, and an accurate summary of the priest's belief state. IE, it could be true that 'priest acts as if abuse is wrong in context C and priest acts as if abuse is wrong in context D', nevertheless the priest may not have a distinction between C and D to hand, or even an evaluation of actions as acting as if abuse is wrong/right in either context.

I think we'd still need the meta construction in either case. — Isaac

I agree you need the meta 'unified belief'/'unified tendency to act as if' concept, it just isn't clear how to spell it out without making it so loose and arbitrary anyone can be construed as believing anything. Not a criticism of the approach or an attempt to block it, I'm trying to inquire how it could be done.

What characterises a tendency? How do you use actions to evaluate a 'tendency to act as if' on those states? What scope of behaviours does any particular tendency require for its evaluation? And finally - how does the answer to those questions interface with the argument?

The absence of those answers I think interfaces very clearly with the argument - the lack of answers makes it ambiguous how a believer acts as if (stoning is good) based on their worship of a God who in some context of evaluation approves of stoning. It isn't clear how to get from a tendency to act as if God is worthy of worship to a tendency to act as if stoning is justified.

Yes, I'd forgotten that. I'm suspicious of certain forms of cognitive dissonance though. It's not going to be easy to explain why without going into great detail about my theories of beliefs systems, but I'll try to be brief. Say if someone had a belief that one should exit the house by the back door, and also a belief that one should exit the house by the front door, and contextually they continued to switch between the two with a suppressive dissonance each day. If we model beliefs as propositions then we have a model including dissonance - but as merely propositions, where's the tension? At t1 the proposition is x, at t2 the proposition is y. Tension arises when we expect a person to act according to these propositions (and they can't act according to both). So we could look at what it is that they act as if were the case. They act as if it were the case that sometimes the back door and other times the front door were the most appropriate doors to exit the house by. Now we have a statement of their belief which is consistent with their behaviour. What we now need is an understanding of they post hoc rationalise that belief. In the case I described (and the priest, in your case), it's their post hoc rationalisation that's flawed. Instead of rationalising a perfectly consonant story involving context, they've rationalised it as two stories which cannot both co-exist in a unified narrative. — Isaac

Maybe I'm missing context, but I don't see the difference in perspective the two accounts provide in thread. If what matters for the purposes of the thread is:

( 1 ) In order for a person P to believe X, P must act in accordance with X.
and ( 2 ) P acts in accordance with X at some times (contexts etc) but not others.

We're left with that either 'acting in accordance' doesn't need to occur in all times and contexts - and P's believing X is preserved. Or alternatively a violation occurred in ( 2 ), and P can no longer be accurately described as believing X.

It seems to me that if ( 2 ) being true automatically removes P's belief that X, that opens up a can of worms. If you require that someone follows X at all times or contexts in order to believe X, then contexts in which X is irrelevant and even momentary lapses in judgement suffice to remove P's belief that X. A less absolute position, that in the aggregate P acts in accordance with X is required for belief seems necessary, but it has rather a lot of wiggle room and doesn't seem to help with the puzzle.

The puzzle being when it's appropriate to transfer judgement from worshipping a God who is believed to have a murderboner for stoning to the moral character of the worshipper? (@Hanover - you seem to be taking on an easier version of the problem where a believer doesn't believe in the horrible bits of doctrine, which isn't the target of the OP's article)

As an attempt towards a solution, let's imagine that there are a collection of relevant contexts/times C in which P's believing X can be tested against their conduct. Ergo if P fails to act in accord or violates X in a context/time not in C, it doesn't remove their believing X. Conversely, if P fails to act in accord or violates X in a context/time in C, P's belief that X is removed by their conduct. P can still claim to believe that X, but they don't believe in practice.

I suggest that when we're talking about cognitive dissonance, we're imagining a context in which the believer's worship is present with the horrible acts of the object of worship. Like people in Warhammer offering prayers to Khorne for butchered innocents. I imagine that for the believer, the scenario of worship is less like 'blood for the blood God, skulls for the skull throne' or equivalently 'Praise be to the god who cursed humanity never to communicate adequately again", it's directed towards God as a placeholder in the context of their immediate concerns and general associations. If they manage to keep the literal horrible bits out of mind, or out of their faith entirely, I don't think it's right to say they worship a God who stones, curses etc.

Even if they believed in bible study that God approved of stoning, I don't think they'd have to worship the entity as if they approved of stoning. Albeit this comes with the price of making God's definitive properties, opinions and dispositions towards them depend upon what the believer is doing at the time.

With that in mind, the contexts in which P's believing X could be assessed would therefore be dependent upon P's state at the time of assessing their believing X. In other words, which contexts count as relevant for trialling P's accord with X vary with how P is and what they're doing at the time. There is a drought of neutral epistemic space for the contexts and beliefs to be assessed within.

It therefore seems plausible that a unified narrative over these is in principle impossible, but maybe that lack of unification is part of the structure of faith.

they've rationalised it as two stories which cannot both co-exist in a unified narrative.

Or alternatively they have not rationalised it and live in the space of the open question?

That internet mods are increasingly ruthless tyrants or that TPF has a pretty decent mod team? :wink: — Artemis

TPF has a pretty decent mod team?

That one.

First time I'm hearing anything about that!

Hence our problem (well mine anyway). I can't see a way in which a priest, considering a little 'extra-curricular choir practice' with the boys would actually think "I'll be tortured in hell for eternity if I do this, but at least I'll get my rocks off for a five minuets - whatever, I'll do it". No-one's thinking that way. Which means either a) they don't really truly believe the punishment they claim they do, or b) they really do think it's all about doing the rites properly and not about sin at all (even worse), or c) they're super psyched for choirboys and are prepared to face an eternity of torment for the pleasure. Of the three, I think the former is the more likely. The idea of an eternity of torment for any transgression is just as implausible to them as it is to us (parsimony again, if I can explain their behaviour with beliefs we could share, rather than incommensurable ones, I'll do so). — Isaac

What role do you think cognitive dissonance plays in all this? I think maybe you've missed a fourth option that the expressed beliefs are put by the wayside contextually, no matter how hard one's current conduct contradicts the suppressed belief. I don't think there's anything about belief that requires such a contradiction to be felt without also feeling the connection between one's horrible actions and one's noble beliefs - suppressing the connection between the two seems precisely a form of dissonance.

The role I think that possibility plays is that it actually seems to block the direct transfer of a moral Black Spot from believing in the horrible crap in the bible to conduct, since someone very well could have the expression of of belief in the horrible crap occur in completely different contexts than it would be acted upon. The commitment to the belief is manifested in worship, rather than doing something tractably horrible.

But that still doesn't address the relationship that @Banno seemed to be gesturing towards regarding holding a belief and that belief imbuing a propensity for action to someone. Albeit a downgrade from 'believing in Hell is a sin' to 'believing in Hell is a little sus'.

It's tricky because the matter of what's moral is something we all have a legitimate stake in - and so becomes something I think it's fair to interrogate. But the consequence of concluding 'no it isn't' is judgemental in that first sense. I honestly don't see an easy way out, but if something seems immoral, my gut feeling is that our legitimate interest in that question, as a community, trumps any concerns about the consequences of the discussion. We have to have some way of being part of that discussion. — Isaac

Yes. The mentalist approach is upside-down. Banno's belief analysis is incomplete; "I believe in justice." does not mean that I believe justice is real, or prevails, or is even possible. It is a commitment. Action flows from the commitment, and belief summarises action rather than guides it. — unenlightened

Also at @Srap Tasmaner - it seems there's some broad agreement regarding a Christian's faith, even when it doesn't behave like a system of statements linked by logic, can be summarised by beliefs. If we imagine that ascribing a belief to someone, including yourself, is ascribing a summary of that person's actions and commitments, what actions and commitments would be ascribed to a Christian by them:
( 1 ) agreeing with the statement "Sinners ought to burn in Hell forever"
( 2 ) worshipping a God under the aspect of a doctrine committed to ( 1 )
?

It seems, further, that such an ascription can misfire. If a person's commitments and actions are not summarised by the belief, then perhaps the ascription can be inaccurate. IE, someone can claim to believe whatever they like, but that claim is only accurate when it summarises their actions.

That seems to present similar issues to before; if someone who claims to believe in a God under the aspect of a doctrine, but doesn't share in its commitments. By that metric, they wouldn't believe in the doctrine, they would only claim to.

However, if the analysis was reframed to someone who really did believe that sinners ought to burn in hell forever, what would their conduct look like for that belief? Does it need to look like anything more than repeating the doctrines?

this definiteness assumes that the believer can articulate the nuances of their own beliefs in a way that makes them coherent and understandable to the unbeliever. Even competent philosophers are incapable of articulating their beliefs so unambiguously. — unenlightened

I agree entirely here. It seems to me if you look at anyone's beliefs (closely enough), they're all smeared and ambiguous. Beliefs seem to me to be mostly conjured in their articulation, rather than an expression of a statement someone has held to be true for some time. Making the assumption that anyone can make anyone else understand something so personal might be implausible in itself.

I think this is especially true for those with faith - when someone says 'God is love', they've thereby rendered it very insensible to treat their beliefs like a system of statements with an underlying logic. Which isn't to say that their faith is incoherent or unintelligible, it's to say that it's more like a way of life than a logical structure.

Going down this avenue of thought, however, makes it difficult to distinguish the systems of belief of the believer and the non-believer, even though we have some (provisionally) fixed doctrines to pin to the former and the latter. In that regard, the doctrines which are commonly believed and which are criticised here perhaps don't fit into that deeply personal category above - some doctrines are mutually intelligible enough to be 'dogma' etc, and those are largely what's being considered.

I think it's true that the place that those items of dogma play in a believer's worldview can be incidental - and so stops the belief from being a mark on their character. But I don't think what would make them incidental is clear.

If sufficient ambiguity or consternation with a doctrine's proclamations is enough to make a faithful person's belief in those doctrines incidental in the above way, that makes a lot of sense, but it raises the issue of how you'd apply that selectively to the believer and not everyone.

That selective application is maybe what I was gesturing towards with the spicy 'faith is a marker of a transformed mind' take. Even then, though, that's talking about the presence of faith and not particular doctrinal commitments.

Let me pronounce a thread heresy: everlasting =/= eternal.

If one supposes that the temporal world is created form 'outside', then one can reasonably imagine that it has a purpose. Humans are inclined to make themselves central to such a purpose, and being human myself, I don't have a major problem with that idea. So the Christian understanding is usually not one of reincarnation, but a one time chance to form a moral being through time. Death completes the process of moral formation, and the moral being is 'solidified' into a realm outside time and space, as an eternal being.

So if that is how things stand, it is necessarily the case without time, that whatever one has made of one's life for good or ill in this world is what one is stuck with - timelessly, eternally. Hell is being Hitler, or being unenlightened, with no more chance of reformation or redemption. It's not everlasting, because lasting is what time does, and there is no time. "It is what it is." "I am what I yam." "Before Abraham was, I Am." — unenlightened

What relationship do you see this as having to the thread's argument that belief in Hell is a mark on their character or moral judgement? What application of a moral Black Spot does it block?

Click on my name above this post, it should take you to this page. You should hopefully see "send a message" below my profile picture on the left of the page.

Send me one to test, and report any issues.

I think something important to distinguish here is 'judging' as in being judgemental (acting harshly, ostracism...), and being free to interrogate a belief (including even the morality of it). I realise it might sound like the cliché of an self-distancing academic, but I think there's a difference. — Isaac

I agree with the distinction, I think the point made in the article in the OP (and argued by @Banno) is closer to judging Christians though. Namely because once their beliefs are interrogated, it is arguably a sensible decision to take their ethical intuitions and reasoning abilities with, at best, a large pinch of salt. Something is definitely found wanting in the believer due to their belief, here.

I agree entirely with the sentiment, but the danger is the unfair treatment of those no less traumatised, but whose trauma lead them to a different, less well-labelled moral failing. I don't think 'Christian' is a very useful label for this, we should be aware all the time that people which are unduly touchy about having their beliefs interrogated may well be using them as crutches for surviving trauma. This is, in the main, my reason for the distinction above. — Isaac

I don't understand this. What is the unfair treatment and the less well labelled moral failing?

I know not everyone agrees with this, but... the overwhelming majority of our beliefs are justified post hoc. The justification isn't to arrive at the belief, it's to check it. We don't start with a blank slate and work through an algorithm to fill it. So the fact that two of the Christian's beliefs don't match doesn't mean we have to pick which one to judge, it means that we interrogate the post hoc rationalisation that results from the two. — Isaac

How about looking at their actions to see if they believe that instead of worming our way to it via a logical argument? — frank

I'm saying that the distinction one might want to make for religious beliefs doesn't seem to apply if those beliefs are ultimately derived in the same way as any other belief. — Isaac

From 30,000 feet, that's kinda reasonable, but you can't add any detail to this picture at all. God doesn't even bother with your brain; He speaks directly to your soul. Or so I've heard. — Srap Tasmaner

Spicy take warning:

One thing which makes me believe that religious people ought not to be judged so harshly, or given some leeway, for what they believe (especially if it doesn't translate much into practice), is that you hear things like that. It's a special relationship with a private entity, inculcated usually from very young, embedded in people's childhood developmental contexts - some people have a religious temperament because they were tempered into it. So I have quite a lot of sympathy with your 'doxastic involuntarism' view Srap, but maybe not in a nice way. I want to exclude from discussion here people who've picked and chose a consistent story from the Bible, and focus entirely on those who are 'otherwise lovely' but believe in the rightness of eternal torture etc.

There are a few characteristics of faith based moral belief that make me quite suspicious of it:

( 1 ) Doctrines are internally inconsistent - people pick and choose.
( 2 ) Over and above ( 1 ), what people pick and choose is extremely hodge-podge and highly emotionally charged. You're really putting a dagger into someone if you criticise their faith. There's often combination of capriciousness in what people say they believe (emotive post-hoc) and what they say in other contexts.
( 3 ) That makes the domain of application of faith in someone's life seem compartmentalised.
( 4 ) Belief (or at least acting in accord with it) can be and often is tied to social inclusion and access to institutions while growing up, if you're in a religious community, if you're not religious in the right way you can have a real bad time.
( 5 ) Losing one's faith is extremely difficult, wrestling with the internal inconsistencies of doctrine can be actively painful - that seems to confirm that religious belief grows in minds that were encouraged to accept it. If you lose your faith, maybe your mind is in the wrong shape for the more secular thought it can have. Loss of self, community, identity etc.

To my mind, the above makes religious faith something like a symptom of trauma? Disordered, highly charged experiences, sufficient challenge can lead to perceptions of loss of identity and self, extreme touchiness about the issue, often the beliefs are tied up in how the person experiences attachment. Or if not traumatic, being able to have a faith maybe requires that one has been shaped in this way by one's environment, and it seems that rarely this can be something someone chooses.

Perhaps it does not reduce culpability for acting on horrible beliefs, or even for believing in them, but pragmatically it makes it somewhat understandable. Ergo, forms less of a mark on their character because they have a good excuse.

I don't think something so basic was seriously disputed. It just looks like you've tried to demonstrate that people can be justifiably judged on their beliefs, not why Christians should be judged for their belief, or whether Christian faith counts as a belief in the sense you've dealt with (an attitude towards a statement).

Are you planning to link this account to the OP or a claim like "A belief in the Christian God is a bad mark on someone's character"?

What are you trying to get to? — Banno

I doubt more words will help at this point. I suspect you know approximately what I mean?

Christianity is not coherent. — Banno

Great! So how do you judge what the beliefs and practices which form part of an incoherent system say about someone?

I cordially invite the thread to up its game. — fdrake

It seems more than a little like special pleading to say that Christians have some incommensurable world-view which makes sense of these contradictions when, in everyday life, we know full well that we personally juggle a half dozen contradictory feelings and urges every day. Why would we assume the Christians have somehow got it all beautifully stitched together when we can't even make a consistent choice between the ease of driving to the shop and the harm of additional greenhouse emissions? — Isaac

There could be dissonance involved. — jorndoe

Also at @Srap Tasmaner.

So one response seems to be that it's (bad for some reason) to judge Christians for worshipping an entity they believe torments sinners forever after death assuming that the Christian doesn't really 'do anything about it'. The idea is like privately holding a prejudice vs acting on it, some peoples intuitions are that so long as someone keeps their prejudice quiet and doesn't discriminate it doesn't matter. Similarly, if someone kept their adoration for an entity which they also believed tortured people forever quiet, it wouldn't matter.

A challenge for that view is that it elides the distinction between worship/veneration/admiration and intellectual belief. If I hero worshipped Mengele, it says something highly negative about who I am - I might be confused on the specifics about who Mengele was ("an uncompromising great scientist"), I'd still be worshipping a cruel torturer. If I worshipped all that he did, I'm sure all of you would find me a monster. What would put that hero worship on the rap sheet of my character but wouldn't also apply to someone who really believed in some of the most unpalatable things God has done? Even if I privately wrestled with Mengele's... inherent tradeoff... between an uncompromising pursuit of science and the atrocities he committed, should I really be excused for my hero worship because of my own ambivalence of commitment?

I'm genuinely interested in how people see the dis-analogy between those cases, it's not intended as a 'checkmate theists' since I genuinely don't have a definite take on the matter.

The second flavour of response is that Christians who believe that sinners go to hell don't really believe that God tortures people forever in hell. Which could be true for a couple of reasons - they don't see it as torture, they privately wrestle with it, they don't see 'it' at all for whatever reason, or maybe that the 'really believing' something is quite a different beast from holding something to be true.

The privately wrestling one is asked about above - why should privately wrestling with discomfort over God's unpalatable acts and neglects make less of a mark on their character?

I think the other reasons are related to the discussion that Christians don't 'really' believe in Hell etc. Let's take the ones who 'really don't' believe Hell exists out of the equation - the kind of Christian that gets disgusted by the very idea of Hell, or otherwise rejects it. They're not particularly interesting to talk about in this context I think, since they don't believe God even sends people to hell or has done those things. Let's focus on the ones who believe in it in Hell and eternal torture in some regard + worship the entity that tortures - regardless of their attitude towards it.

@Isaac and @jorndoe seem to have made points in this quarter.

I find it quite plausible that they don't 'really worship' or 'really believe in' the God that tortures, but I'd struggle to spell out why. If you boil it down to the level I believe @Isaac has done, where no one has reliable access to their beliefs and culpability itself is a process of social branding, I think that makes the issue disappear as well as renders and assignment of culpability/blame arbitrary by that standard. To my mind that move can be made in too broad a sense which 'sweeps the rug from under the discussion', we have to be able to play the game of culpability to get the current discussion off of the ground. And if we can't in principle play the game, then it seems we can't do most of the moral flavour chit chat we tend to.

In this case, I'd be interested in what, if anything, distinguished the Christian's 'lack of access' to their own belief states regarding their object of worship to the arbitrary lack of access we have moving around the room. Maybe that's where cognitive dissonance comes in; perhaps the object of worship is not the same as the object of intellectual belief, even if both are held to be identical in some discursive context. If called to defend Christianity, the God of worship and the God who punishes are the same, in practice perhaps they are not.

There's also arguing from something close to the article's position, which I believe @Banno is doing. In which the object of the Christian's faith is the same as the object of worship as they share a common referring phrase, and all the beliefs and entailments hang together as a system of propositions. It is a strong argument if you grant that 'hanging together as a system of propositions and entailments' accurately describes faith, like faith is rational intellectual system, but the main points of productive disagreement with this track seem precisely to be rooted that everything 'holding together' in this way is a poor model of how faith, worship etc work in practice. I'd invite Banno to reconstruct the system of propositions and entailments that connect belief in God to worship of an entity which tortures without assuming that because they seem to be referred to in the same way, they are the same entity. That coreference appears to be in dispute.