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  • The Musk Plutocracy
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    Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette (pictured) works at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group focused on reducing bureaucratic waste. He also happens to be blind. So when he criticized Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service in testimony on Capitol Hill last week, Musk unleashed an online attack Hedtler-Gaudette described as “surreal” in its juvenile bigotry.

    First, Musk retweeted a post on X noting that the “blind director of watchdog group funded by George Soros testifies that he does not see widespread evidence of government waste” and added two laughing/crying emojis. The tweet garnered more than 21 million views, and sparked dozens of hateful messages to Hedtler-Gaudette’s account.

    “He couldn’t see s--- … perfect excuse for being unable to perform your job,” one poster said. “The DEI blind guy can’t see fraud. U can’t make up this garbage,” another wrote. One person even called for posters to surface Hedtler-Gaudette’s bank account.

    The episode illustrates how Musk’s unparalleled online reach has given him a powerful tool to attack individuals who criticize DOGE, with one post able to spark hundreds of blistering responses from his followers.

    Last week, he amplified baseless claims about the judge who overturned Trump’s funding freeze on federal grants that named his government employee daughter. Musk has called for the dismissal of journalists who have written about DOGE, calling their actions “possibly criminal.” As he hunts for places to slash the federal bureaucracy, the billionaire has reposted the names and titles of individual government employees, insinuating they should be fired.

    Digital rights experts say the situation has created an unprecedented imbalance in power. Musk’s massive online following, his ownership of a social media platform where he can dictate content moderation rules, and his position heading a government entity with access to private data, give him a unique ability to threaten those who question him and chill dissenting speech.     — Washington Post

    This is becoming a pattern. Musk can dog whistle his 250 million strong following on X to ridicule, shame and belittle anyone who opposes or even questions his and DOGE's activities. And he often spreads outright lies, which of course the hapless victims are defenseless against, particularly when Musk is implicitly backed by The Emperor. As I said earlier on (but deleted), it's a juggernaut of mendacity (and this time it stays!)
  • p and "I think p"
    ↪Banno
    Save it for your crockery mate ;-)
  • p and "I think p"
    From another thread:

    Physicalism accounts for the world at large first, and after that focuses on whether the mind can fit that paradigm. It can account for the mind, but it's not in the terms we generally apply to mental processes.
    — Relativist

    What you think the 'world at large' is, relies on and is dependent on a great many judgements that you will make when considering its nature. You might gesture at it as if it were obviously something completely separate from you, but the very fact of speaking about it reveals the centrality of your judgement as to what the 'world at large' is. Science as a whole is always concerned with judgements as to what is the case in particular applications, but philosophy is different, in that it considers and calls into question the nature of judgement itself, not judgement concerning this or that state of affairs.     — Wayfarer

    It occured to me after I wrote this, that a bit of Rödl might have seeped in.
  • The Mind is the uncaused cause
    Physicalism accounts for the world at large first, and after that focuses on whether the mind can fit that paradigm. It can account for the mind, but it's not in the terms we generally apply to mental processes. — Relativist

    What you think the 'world at large' is, relies on and is dependent on a great many judgements that you will make when considering its nature. You might gesture at it as if it were obviously something completely separate from you, but the very fact of speaking about it reveals the centrality of your judgement as to what the 'world at large' is. Science as a whole is always concerned with judgements as to what is the case in particular applications, but philosophy is different, in that it considers and calls into question the nature of judgement itself, not judgement concerning this or that state of affairs.

    And where is that 'external world' grounded, if not in the mind?
    — Wayfarer

    It's grounded In the actual world. Don't you agree one exists?     — Relativist

    Of course it exists. It's just that we don't see it as it truly is. Nobody sees it as it truly is. You're starting from the assumption that the appearance, the phenomena, the world as it appears, is real independently of you, when your cognitive faculties provide the very basis for how it appears to you. If you want to refute this argument you need to understand what it is saying. It is not positing 'mind' as some objective, if ethereal, substance or thing.

    All of our judgements about the nature of the world, what its constituents are and so on, are themselves intellectual in nature. But then physicalism claims that these are the result of supposedly mind-independent processes. Nothing I’ve said suggests that the mind 'exists uncaused' - what I said was that we only recognize causal relationships because the mind imposes a framework of intelligibility on experience and so provides the basis on which judgements about causation are intelligible. In that sense, mind is prior to the physical explanations of phenomena, not in the temporal sense of pre-existing those phenomena, but in the ontological sense as being the ground of explanation itself.

    That our minds would reflect the reality that IS, seems reasonable because we are products of that reality. — Relativist

    I don't think the sense in which the mind is 'the product of reality' is at all well established or understood. We do, of course, have considerable understanding about the course of evolutionary development, but evolutionary biology was not intended as, and doesn't necessarily serve as, a theory of knowledge per se. As far as evolution is concerned, the salient features of any species are those which serve the purpose of species' survival and propagation. I think what drives the whole process is still very much an open question (and by that I'm not appealing to any kind of 'creator God').

    Reveal
    Materialism… even at its birth, has death in its heart, because it ignores the subject and the forms of knowledge, which are presupposed, just as much in the case of the crudest matter, from which it desires to start, as in that of the organism, at which it desires to arrive. For, “no object without a subject,” is the principle which renders all materialism for ever impossible. Suns and planets without an eye that sees them, and an understanding that knows them, may indeed be spoken of in words, but for the idea, these words are absolutely meaningless.

    On the other hand, the law of causality and the treatment and investigation of nature which is based upon it, lead us necessarily to the conclusion that, in time, each more highly organised state of matter has succeeded a cruder state: so that the lower animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the unorganised before all that is organised; that, consequently, the original mass had to pass through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened. And yet, the existence of this whole world remains ever dependent upon the first eye that opened, even if it were that of an insect. For such an eye is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, and the whole world exists only in and for knowledge, and without it is not even thinkable. The world is entirely idea, and as such demands the knowing subject as the supporter of its existence. This long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form till at last the first percipient creature appeared,—this whole time itself is only thinkable in the identity of a consciousness whose succession of ideas, whose form of knowing it is, and apart from which, it loses all meaning and is nothing at all.

    Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being, however undeveloped it may be; on the other hand, this conscious being just as necessarily entirely dependent upon a long chain of causes and effects which have preceded it, and in which it itself appears as a small link. These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time.     — Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea
  • The Mind is the uncaused cause
    This calls into question the grounding, but I think this can be plausibly accounted for in terms of the connection to the external world through our senses. — Relativist

    And where is that 'external world' grounded, if not in the mind? Of course it is true that the mind receives information from sensable objects, but then the whole process of apperception and synthesis swings into gear, and that generates whatever you understand 'the world' to be - including the accounts of 'the physical', the theories of which rely on the symbolic order represented by mathematical physics.

    And, for that matter, what is the origin of the idea of the physical? In Charles Pinter's 'Mind and the Cosmic Order', it is put like this:

    In fact, what we regard as the physical world is “physical” to us precisely in the sense that it acts in opposition to our will and constrains our actions. The aspect of the universe that resists our push and demands muscular effort on our part is what we consider to be “physical”. On the other hand, since sensation and thought don’t require overcoming any physical resistance, we consider them to be outside of material reality. It is shown in the final chapter (Mind, Life and Universe) that this is an illusory dichotomy, and any complete account of the universe must allow for the existence of a nonmaterial component which accounts for its unity and complexity. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics (p. 6)

    The whole problem with physicalism, and the reason I'm criticizing it, is because it forget, omits, or excludes the role of the mind in the construction of what we understand 'the physical' to be. And that's a natural consequence of the way in which modern science was originally constructed, with its emphasis on the exclusive reality of the so-called primary qualities of matter and the relegation of the remainder to the subjective domain. It is question-begging all the way down.

    Hence, to get back to the OP (which is terribly parsed, by the way) - how could mind be an uncaused cause? Well, damned if I know, but I think agree with Kant: we only recognize causal relationships because the mind imposes a framework of intelligibility on experience. Physicalism takes causality for granted as a feature of the external world, but it neglects the grounding role of the mind. Without this structuring role, causation as we know it would be unintelligible—mere succession without necessity (per Hume).
  • The Mind is the uncaused cause
    If mind decides to raise the arm, that intent has to somehow connect to the brain to cause it to occur. This suggests that either the mind has some physical properties, or the brain has some non-physical properties. Which is it? Either way, it seems problematic. — Relativist

    The problem arises because of abstraction - the division of 'mind' and 'body' as two abstract or idealised entities which supposedly 'interact'. This is the basis of the 'interaction problem' that bedevils Cartesian philosophy, but it only exists because of the idealised abstraction that gave rise to it. The mind and body is actually a body-mind with physical and psychic aspects that are inter-related, not two separate entities (not two=nondual).

    Consider what happens when I say something that shocks or annoys - all that has passed between us are symbolic forms, words. Yet these can have immediate physical consequences, raising of heart-rate or adrendal activity. This is because the reality is neither physical nor psychic, but embraces both aspects -hence mind-body medicine, psychosomatic effects, and so on. None of which are endorsed by physicalism.

    Meanings and logic are semantic relations, not ontological (except insofar as we make sense of things using our physical brains). — Relativist

    But nevertheless, they are constantly deployed to argue for what you consider to be physical. When you say that 'the physical brain' has causal power, you are relying on such semantic relations, which in reality underpin your entire 'thought-world'. Notice the contradictory nature of 'making sense using physical brains' - you deploy the word 'physical' because you think it 'makes sense', but that all depends on what is meant by 'physical'.
  • The Mind is the uncaused cause
    An unperceived event is not an experience. Perceptions entail physical changes to the brain. The experience is therefore a physical phenomenon. — Relativist

    Much of our cognitive activity depends on sub- and unconscious processes, which by definition are not experienced (otherwise they'd be conscious). These include personal factors specific to the individual, but also autonomic and parasympathetic processes, and cultural factors, such as language and beliefs.

    how can a brain (with all the various properties of material objects), be caused to do something by something that lacks all material properties (no mass, no energy, no charge, and no location in space)? — Relativist

    The mind has non-physical properties, such as the ability to infer meaning and interpret symbols such as language and mathematics. These acts are not determined by physical causes in that there is no way to account for or explain the nature of the neural processes that supposedly cause or underlie such processes in physicalist terms, without relying on the very processes of inference and reasoning which we're attempting to explain.

    Logical relationships exist without being physical (e.g., modus ponens or the law of the excluded middle in logic). Arguably, so-called 'physical laws' are themselves not physical, in that they rely heavily on idealisation (perfect objects and contexts) and abstraction (per Nancy Cartwright).

    Meanings are real, yet they are not physical objects, and furthermore, to arrive at any concept of what physical objects are, requires the use of definitions, rules of inference, and so on, which cannot themselves be regarded as physically objective.

    Per the hard problem of consciousness, the experience of "redness" is not itself a property of neural firings, even if those firings correlate with it. You cannot ascertain what it is like to see something red on the basis of the examination of neural data.

    A brain state may be correlated with an experience, but it does not contain meaning in the way that a sentence does. Studies of neuroplasticity demonstrate that there is no discernable 1:1 relationship between semantic content and neurophysiological events, as these vary unpredictably within and between different studies of brains (see this article on interpretation of results from fMRI scans.)

    Then there's the various forms of the argument from reason, which says that if thoughts and decisions were physically determined, there would be no room for rational inference, because reason involves moving from premises to conclusions because they are true. There is nothing corresponding to that relationship observable in the physical domain.

    Memories are lost when brains are damaged from trauma or disease, suggesting memories are encoded in the brain. — Relativist

    There is a large body of evidence concerning children who recall previous lives, suggesting memories may be transmitted by some means other than the physical.

    For all these reasons and many others, physicalist philosophy of mind fails to come to terms with what it seeks to explain.
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    Life may be common throughout the Universe, and H.sapiens may not be the only example of something that can judge the world around it. In which case, being able to judge may be a natural expression of the nature of the world. — RussellA

    But that's completely groundless speculation. Judgement is a cognitive function, exercised by an agent. And besides, even if it is true that other rational sentient life-forms have evolved, why would it not be the case that they too face existential angst as we do? (In Mahāyāna Buddhist mythology, it has long been accepted that there are other inhabited worlds, but that the same fundamental conditions apply there also, due to the principle of dependent origination.)

    Is it possible for a moral code to be intrinsically right, even though it may not give the individual the best chance of continued life and prosperity? — RussellA

    For example, enlisting to fight Nazism during WWII. On a smaller scale, every time an individual declines an opportunity to gain from an illicit promise of wealth.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    I think there are still enough votes in Congress to authorize more aid to Ukraine. — RogueAI

    Congress has not uttered a squeak about anything Trump has done since the election. Not a word, not a raised eyebrow. If Trump says jump, their only response will be How high?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    ↪ssu
    I’m wondering if the result of the US - Russia conference will amount to the US walking away from supporting Ukraine. The grounds will be a ‘peace’ proposal that Ukraine and Europe can’t accept, giving the US grounds for saying that they don’t want to end the war and it’s on their heads.

    It’ll become clear soon enough.
  • The Musk Plutocracy

    60 Minutes on the Woodchipping of U.S.A.I.D.
  • The Boom in Classical Education in the US
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    Since reaching middle age - well gone now! - I've become painfully aware of the deficiencies of my education in 'The Classics'. Reading philosophy and interacting on forums has re-awakened the interest - I feel that Greek philosophy and other classical literature is very much a cultural heritage, but one that has become largely deprecated in today's world. Mind you I'm also aware that had I had it beaten into me with a cane, the way many previous generations did, I would probably have hated it. But at it is, it feels more like a forgotten cache of wisdom.

    I am assuming that this trend is often connected to conservative thinking. — Tom Storm

    Indeed. And it is rather an inconvenient truth in some ways. The 'perennial philosophers' who hark back to the so-called world wisdom traditions are often arch-conservative, to the point of being reactionary. But then, so much of what is taken for granted - the new normal, so to speak - is wildly radical in their eyes, and we don't see it, because we're immersed in it. For myself, as a long-time critic of the materialism of modern culture, it makes for some odd bedfellows, so to speak. Although I do console myself with the idea that at least there is also a kind of 'traditionalist left' like Jacques Maritain, committed to social justice and effective democracy while also respecting tradition.
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    And I'm saying, that your beliefs are respectable. When have I disrespected you? — Arcane Sandwich

    Did I say that you were? There's nothing to be defensive about. I was responding to your comment simply to make a general point, I wasn't taking a shot at you.
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    ↪Arcane Sandwich
    It's a discussion, that's all. In the context, I was responding to RussellA's re-statement of the unparalleled brilliance of the Caledonian Crow.

    The point I'm trying to get it, is that while it's true, of course, that h.sapiens evolved from simian forbears, during the course of evolution, a threshold was crossed which makes humans very different from other species. But every time I say that, the response is, hey, caledonian crows can count! What makes you think we're so special? Which is what I'm saying is the 'blind spot'.
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    ↪Arcane Sandwich
    Of course it's true that h.sapiens didn't 'appear from nowhere'. But if you read up on evolutionary theory, the changes that accompanied the development of an upright gait and the comparatively large forebrain happened very rapidly in comparative terms. A complicating factor was that the pelvis and birth canal of hominids with an upright gait was dramatically more confined than in that of prior species, which is the reason the h.sapiens skull is soft at the time of birth and only gradually hardens during the first few years of infancy. A major consequence of that is birth is much more difficult and painful, and the rates of maternal mortality far higher, amongst h.sapiens than among their predecessor species (very low amongst chimps, for example). And it's difficult to see how the advantages conferred by the larger brain would immediately offset the higher female mortality rates. Almost as if a lot of sacrifices were being made to allow for the evolution of a species, the brain of whom is orders of magnitude more developed than any others. For what? So they can declare that they're actually not very different ;-)

    (Ref Why Us? How Science Re-discovered the Mystery of Ourselves, James le Fanu.)
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    Humans are animals after all. The human animal evolved from non-human animals. The human animal didn't appear ready-formed from nowhere. — RussellA

    H.Sapiens are different in a way that makes an enormous difference. The fact that this is something modern culture can’t acknowledge is a cultural blind spot. I think it's because what is described nowadays as philosophy doesn't have the foundational concepts required to comprehend why it's important.
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    ↪RussellA
    But if it did ‘make sense’ to you, nothing you’ve said would prevent you from so doing. You’re not describing a moral code
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    "Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for ‘large scale social deception,’” Musk proclaimed in an X post that has racked up more than 76,000 shares and 35 million views. “They’re a total scam. Just wow.” ...

    The contract was real, but the Orwellian phrase Musk seized on to suggest a shadowy conspiracy wasn’t what it seems. A slightly closer look would have revealed that the contract, signed during President Donald Trump’s first term, was for help defending against cyberattacks — that is, combating deception, not fueling it. And it went to a separate division of the company, not the news agency.

    Musk’s misinterpretation went viral, amplified by Trump as proof of corrupt ties between the “radical left” media and the “deep state.”

    The Reuters brouhaha was the latest example of what is quickly becoming a familiar playbook as Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sweeps through federal agencies for evidence of waste, fraud and corruption. However endemic federal misspending is, Musk has repeatedly misrepresented facts on X to bolster unfounded claims of wrongdoing. Like the U.S. Agency for International Development, Politico and others before it, Reuters has been cast as a villain in a narrative spun by Musk in which nefarious left-wing schemes lurk behind programs he targets for cuts — and those who stand in the way. The world’s richest man was tapped to lead the project on the premise that he would bring his private-sector business acumen to bear on bloated government budgets. But as the owner and most followed user of X, he has also wielded a social media bully pulpit and marshaled a crowd of online loyalists to disparage and discredit each agency, program and funding recipient he targets for cuts. In some cases, the truth has been collateral damage. ...

    When his DOGE employees moved this month to wrest control of USAID, Musk took to X to call the organization “evil,” “criminal” and “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.” Instead of drawing on a long history of bipartisan concerns about misspending at the agency, Musk popularized false claims that USAID and other agencies were spending millions of dollars to fund the news outlet Politico, promising that the gravy train would be “deleted.” (In fact, the agencies were paying far smaller sums for subscriptions to the outlet’s “Pro” products, which provide specialized policy news to businesses and governments.) ...

    With Musk using the social media platform he owns as a propaganda organ to promote his work for the Trump administration, “We’re seeing the emergence of state social media in the USA.”     — Washington Post
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    ↪Mww
    It's a work-in-progress. But I will call out a major source for what I've been researching the last year or so, namely, the first 15 or so lectures in John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. Also this page on the four types of knowing.
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    Even if philosophical detachment doesn’t presuppose the division, does it arrive at it through some form of logical inference? — Mww

    The point of departure for me was doing a web search on the phrase 'the union of knower and known'. If you click that link, just scroll down the page and see what is returned. All of the results are from perennialist philosophers, but it requires a very long view to discern the dialectics.

    The key idea is 'participatory knowing' or 'participatory realism'. That is a form of knowing in which the knower (subject, agent, actor) is completely at one with the object (act, peformance or doing). The dancer becomes the dance, so to speak. The general drift of the idea is that this was characteristic of pre-modern thought, and with the advent of modernity and individualism, knowledge becomes instead propositional and procedural (hence the 'cartesian anxiety'). The separation of knower and known was hardwired into Galilean science, with the division of primary and secondary qualities, subject and object. It's a big topic, well outside scope of this thread.
  • Quran Burning and Stabbing in London
    Are there good reasons, today, to burn a Quran? — flannel jesus

    I voted no.

    About five years ago, there was a bitter debate on this Forum about a case in Indonesia where the Governor of Jakarta Indonesia was jailed for blasphemy for allegedly insulting the Koran. (He was released in 2019.) That debate can be reviewed here. It got to be a very heated argument about whether Islam recognises the separation of church and state. I got a lot of heat for saying anything whatever about 'Islam', which was said to be a social construct or a form of stereotyping. So in that view, saying anything whatever about Islam was like a form of racism (indeed that comparison was explicitly made.)

    I think Islam sits awkwardly with liberal democracy, as it is basically theocratic in outlook. I don't think there's an easy way to reconcile them. But I also don't think making deliberately provocative statements or demonstrations like Quran burning does anything to help. It just incites further division, outrage and violence on both sides. It's important to try and find common ground rather than causes for further division.

    There is a certain asymettry in the relationship between believers and secular culture. For the secular, religion is a personal matter. Liberal democracy will protect the right of the individual to freedom of religion as a matter of principle. But at the same time, as it is seen as a personal matter, it can't have any claim to be true in any sense other than the personal. Whereas for the believer, it's a matter of life and death and the fate of the soul. There's a very deep, if rather long, reflection on the 9/11 terrorist incidents which explores these tensions, Terror in the God-Shaped Hole: Confronting Modernity’s Identity Crisis, David Loy, 2003. Worth the read.
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    In TLP 6.421, does Wittgenstein write "Ethics is transcendent" or "Ethics is transcendental"?
    What does Wittgenstein mean by "Ethics is transcendental"? (TLP 6.421)
    Why are ethics transcendental rather than subjective or objective?
    Why is conscience drawn to a transcendent source of ethics?     — RussellA

    In context, the passage in question is this:

    6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.
    If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

    What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
    It must lie outside the world.

    6.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions.
    Propositions cannot express anything higher.

    6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.
    Ethics is transcendental.
    (Ethics and æsthetics are one.)

    'If there is value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental'. Why is it accidental? Because it is contingent. It happens to be the case. Whereas ethics is a matter of necessity. Ethical maxims express what one ought to do or must do. They are maxims, irrespective of happening or being-so. Ethics is not an object of knowledge in the way physical facts are, but rather, it is something presupposed in our engagement with the world—it is "beyond" the realm of empirical description. Wittgenstein’s use of 'transcendental' is Kantian in this sense.

    The final remark—“Ethics and aesthetics are one”— suggests that both ethics and aesthetics concern a way of seeing the world rather than a set of factual claims about it. They both belong to the domain of the transcendental, shaping our perspective but not adding to the sum total of facts. Ethics is not another fact within the world but something beyond 'happening and being-so' —hence why it cannot be stated propositionally. Instead, it is something lived, shown, or experienced.

    As to why animals do not have a conscience - I don't want to express it as if it were a lack or a fault. But animals can't envisage that things could be other than what they are. The capacity to grasp what could be, might be, or should be, is what distinguishes humans from other species. It is also the source of our sense of separateness from nature.

    P1 Assume that within nature there is an objective judgment of good or evil.
    P2 Humans are part of nature.
    P3 Each individual's judgment as to what is good or evil is particular to them and is subjective.
    C1 As within nature there is an objective judgement of good and evil, yet only subjective judgments of what is good or evil within individual humans, humans are not aware of the objective judgment of good and evil.     — RussellA

    I'm afraid the attitude that you're describing is very close to that of a psychopathology. There's no reason for any action, other than what makes sense to me. Nature may have reasons, but there's no way you or I can know what they are.

    Evidently Wayfarer has found some sort of objective truth in the world as well as inside of his own brain. — Arcane Sandwich

    I question that the only criterion of truth is what can be considered 'objective'. I've written an off-site essay on that question, Scientific Objectivity and Philosophical Detachment, which is very hard to summarise down to a forum post. But suffice to say that it sees philosophical detachment as superior to scientific objectivity, because it doesn't pre-suppose the division between knower and known that characterises modern thought. The culmination of philosophical detachment is seeing beyond the ego-logical perspective, an insight outside the domain of self-and-other, subject and object, as understood in the various schools of the perennial philosophies.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    ↪Ludwig V
    Nothing about Elon Musk activities or demeanour are a source of relief. He is almost a Hollywood caricature, a Bond movie villain. But unfortunately, it’s not a movie.
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    ↪RussellA
    It was more the declarative nature of the text. It doesn’t present an argument or arguments, but a series of declarations.

    As I said previously, if everything humans are and do are all simply ‘expressions of nature’ then the term ‘natural’ really has no meaning, because it refers to anything whatever. In reality the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ is perfectly intelligible and has been spelled out, and the idea that humans live in a ‘state of nature’ fanciful. The human sense of otherness or alienation from nature is a fundamental fact of the human condition. As I said before, were you cast into a perfectly natural environment with none of the artifices and resources of urban life, I dare say you would find it very difficult to survive.

    Then you make sweeping statements to the effect that, because moral statements can’t be objectively justified, then they’re really a matter for every individual subject. ‘No moral judgement takes precedence over any other’. This is a complete capitulation to relativism, ‘whatever works for you’, depending on circumstances and your particular predilections, I presume.

    The basis of ethics is neither subjective nor objective, but transcendental. That is what Wittgenstein means when he says ‘ethics is transcendent’ (TLP 6.41) - objective propositions are what ethics are transcendent in respect to. Conscience is traditionally that faculty which is guided by or drawn towards a transcendent source of ethics, something lacking in animals for whom such matters do not arise.

    So, in short, and without wishing to be unfriendly, I disagree with practically everything about that post.
  • New Thread?
    In that case you will have to rename the existing "climate change" thread to be "climate change evangelism". — Agree-to-Disagree

    Part of the argumentarium of denialism is to equate awareness of the danger of climate change with religious belief. The Australian PM who repealed a working carbon tax in favorite of ‘planting trees’ did that. It situates it in the domain of personal belief rather than environmental science.

    Anyway - this thread should be merged.
  • New Thread?
    ↪kazan
    It’s not a philosophical issue. Purely empirical. The composition of the atmosphere affects global climate. The only argument is not whether that is happening but what can be done about it.

    But then, this has already become another climate change thread. Probably should be merged.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    ↪Banno
    What could possibly go wrong?
  • New Thread?
    ↪Mikie
    I agree but it should be called for what it is, ‘denialism’. Scepticism is the withholding of judgement concerning what is not evident, whereas denialism is the refusal to acknowledge abundant evidence.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    ‘Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.’ :yikes:
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    ↪RussellA
    Underlining declarations doesn’t make them valid arguments.
  • Ontology of Time
    Because otherwise we would have no possible explanation of how the watch functions. — JuanZu

    I don’t understand your reasoning. What you said was

    there must be an ontological continuity between the clock and those movements. — JuanZu

    Why must there be ‘ontological continuity’ between the clock mechanism and the movement of the clock hands? ‘Because otherwise….’

    Finish that sentence ;-)
  • fdrake stepping down as a mod this weekend
    Wayfarer knows how I feel about idealism very well. We argued about it for years! — fdrake

    Thems were the days….
  • Ontology of Time
    Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do. — Aeon.co
  • Ontology of Time
    ↪Banno
    In memory….
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    For years, Trumpists falsely accused the DOJ of being politicized, to provide cover for Trump's criminal behavior. Now they're overtly politicizing it — Relativist

    Never! Who would have thought?
  • Ontology of Time
    What I want you to understand is why the measuring device is necessary — JuanZu

    If understand that and did not say otherwise. I didn’t say anything about ‘collapse’ by which I presume you’re referring to so-called ‘wave function collapse’. My analysis of that is presented in an an offsite essay. You will see that I reject any idea of doing away with the observer.

    But there must be an ontological continuity between the clock and those movements. — JuanZu

    Why? What dictates that necessity?
  • Ontology of Time
    The observer is subsumed in this interaction in such a way as to make that interaction physical. So the observer is our measuring machines, like a clock, which makes the coherent state of an isolated system disappear. — JuanZu

    The observer is the engineer or builder who makes the clock and decides on the units of measurement. The interaction is between the object of measurement and the observer who takes the measurement. Were there no observer, there would be neither a clock, nor two systems that interact. It makes no sense to say that the observer is 'subsumed' by the mechanism, when the mechanism is the instrument made by the observer. And measurement is not just physical interaction, but an intentional act that requires an observer to define, interpret, and establish a measurement framework. Without an observer, a clock is just a set of moving parts—it is not measuring anything in any meaningful sense.

    By invoking "magic," you seem to be saying that the requirement for the observer somehow violates causality—perhaps that consciousness somehow directly affects physical systems. But this doesn't require consciousness to be a causal agent in that sense; it is simply that measurement, as a concept, only exists within an interpretative framework, and that framework is necessarily provided by observers. If no observer sets the terms of measurement, then the notion of measurement is meaningless —whatever object is being considered is simply undergoing change.

    Seems to me that your issue is that if measurement depends on mind, then it seems to entail that reality must somehow be "mental". That seems to be the core fear—that acknowledging the role of the observer seems to entail an idealist framework. Is that how you see it? Whereas, I see the attempt to depict the measurement as being something that takes place irrespective of any intentional act, arises from a fallacious division between 'material' and 'mental'.
  • Ontology of Time
    You can know stuff about the stuff about which nothing can be known? — Banno

    Kant's introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Vance says in an interview that America could put boots on the ground in Ukraine if Putin doesn’t negotiate in good faith. And also impose further sanctions. Now that is out of left field.

    https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/politics/jd-vance-us-troops-russia-ukraine-intl-hnk?cid=ios_app
  • Ontology of Time
    Again, how could you know this? — Banno

    Deductively, from the nature of knowledge.
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