Last year, after 20 years in Afghanistan, the U.S. signed an accord with the Taliban agreeing to withdraw American troops if the Taliban severed ties with al-Qaida and entered into peace talks with the government. In these talks, Taliban leaders emphasized that they wish to grant women’s rights “according to Islam.”

Now, this may not mean gender equality by any stretch but it is better than nothing and in particular, it is better than what the previous crop of Taliban ever did in the 1990's. I have argued elsewhere that the Afghans I know well, the rural type, have rejected modernity several times during this and the past century. They are among the very few non-European people to never be colonized. They are firmly pre-modern, to this day. Even though they now own machine guns. But in a sense, rural Afghanistan is also pre-Islamic: the harsh tribal code known as pashtunwali predates Islam; it is HARSHER on women than the Shariah. (Let that sink.) No heritage for girls for instance, when Muslim law grants her half of their brothers' inheritance. Islam was pro-women back in those times, it represented progress for them, including in Arab tribal society. The whole Arab renaissance is made possible by the radical modernity (pro-science and to a degree pro-women) of Islam, back in the early days.

In effect, by still going by tribal law, rural Afghanistan rejected the modernity of Islam. It was only superficially converted.

Mohamad said: “The best amongst yourselves treat your women the best, and I treat my wives the best.” And he did.

I say: take them at their word. "Treat women according to Islam". Grant them inheritance, for a start.

you have a simple definition I would be interested to hear it? — Pop

The shape that things take.

The lack of self-awareness is so worrying. — Ignance

Generally speaking, materialists have very poor self awareness. Which I guess is logical since they don't believe in self awareness.

Yes. To be historically complete, there was a first brush up with modernity during the reign of Amanullah Khan in the 1920's. It also led to a popular revolt. The recent attempts by the Americans were equally unsuccessful.

most people with an education in Afghanistan got it from a madrassa, ie a coranic school. — Olivier5

Let me add that many of these madrassas are funded by one Islamic party or another, and are often used as ideological training grounds, as PoMo would predict. Textbooks such as this are not uncommon:



Afghanistan's brush up with modernity happened in the 70's with the Daoud regime and the early days of the communist regime. The tribes revolted Jehad-type against the whole thing circa 79/80.

So perhaps you don't need to be modern first in order to become postmodern, since the Afghans have skipped the modernity phase almost entirely, and yet display postmodern tendencies re the malleability of truth.

The literacy rate in Afghanistan is now 43% and over 10 million Afghanis [sic] are illiterate.

Now with this kind of voter population, you think a functioning democracy can be created with voters following politics and choosing better candidates from others? — ssu

The problem with Afghans is not their education level. One issue is that democracy is totally foreign to them, who tend to decide things by consensus (among males). Another is the religious mindset spread by education, as most people with an education in Afghanistan got it from a madrassa, ie a coranic school. As a result, they see political leaders as being either from God or from the Devil; their political world is still "enchanted". Yet another issue is tribal law and tribal politics that trump any national sentiment.

Philip Ball is no fan of many worlds. He notes:

As DeWitt put it: ‘every quantum transition taking place on every star, in every galaxy, in every remote corner of the universe is splitting our local world on earth into myriads of copies’. Recall that this profusion is deemed necessary only because we don’t yet understand wavefunction collapse. It’s a way of avoiding the mathematical ungainliness of that lacuna.
— Phillip Ball, Too Many Worlds

Which is just how I see it. Again, for what it’s worth. — Wayfarer

Good quote.

@Isaac's problem is that he needs to eliminate something, otherwise he can't pretend to be an "eliminative materialist", but he doesn't know what to eliminate... He cannot eliminate conscious mental life, since that would eliminate science as well. He cannot eliminate concepts, such as numbers, for the same reason. He has to eliminate some other stuff, so why not tastes and emotions? Those things have no place in a laboratory anyway... :brow:

His kind of "eliminative" materialism is not in fact self-contradictory, as would be the more radical eliminative claim that minds don't exist. It is merely tasteless.

You're not much of an eliminativist...

Okay so your version only eliminates the good things in life, like tastes and smells and music, but not some tasteless, emotionless version of mental life. As long as it happens in a lab.

What exactly do you attempt to eliminate in your "eliminative materialism"?

Why, the human mind gets eliminated, but not the productions of the human mind?

The part where certain mental notions get eliminated is the entire canon of cognitive science for the last few decades, do you expect me to reproduce it all here? — Isaac

Isn't the entire canon of cognitive science part of what gets eliminated, and if not, why not?

My model of the pub being at the end of the road is 'true' if, when wanting to go to the pub, I walk to the end of the road and find it to be there as I would expect if my model were true. — Isaac

Correct.

Suffice to say I consider them to have presented a number of situations in which assuming a neural-based model of models has yielded the results we'd expect if that model were true. — Isaac

That reads like mumbo-jumbo. I miss the part where anything mental gets "eliminated". Who are "we", if not some selves?

The definition I'm using of eliminative materialism is the SEP one...

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist and have no role to play in a mature science of the mind.
— SEP — Isaac

Look, my intuition-based, ordinary model of myself and of my non-eliminated mind works really well. Why should I adopt another?

Do you require this of all models then? If a physicist comes up with a new model of atomic decay do you say "that's all very interesting, but what is truth?" — Isaac

He might have no particular problem with the default definition of truth, as the adequacy between a representation (or model) and what it attempts to represent (or model). But if he says something like that:

[My] model is just a relation between the data from sensory receptors and the behaviour appropriate to it to reduce the uncertainty involved in any interaction — Isaac

... I might start to enquire.

Why would a model of how the mind works need to first define what 'truth' is? — Isaac

It does, if it pretends to be possibly true.

Whatever attracts me to particular models might draw me more toward ones which are true than whatever attracts you to models. There's no reason at all to assume an equivalence. — Isaac

For one, there's no reason to assume any particular truth because truth remains undefined in your model. What you spoke of was just better fit / control offered by some models, not truth. For two, whatever attracts me to particular models might draw me more toward ones which offer better fit than whatever attracts you to models. It cuts both ways, and thus the probability that your neuronal noises are right(er) is the same as the probability mine are right(er).

How does that mean it couldn't possibly be true? — Isaac

It has the exact same chances of being true than any other neuronal noise, like @Wayfarer's or mine...

I'm not seeing the purpose of your line of enquiry. Are you just confirming your understanding of my position, or do you actually have a point? If the latter, could you just get on and make it. — Isaac

The point is that any model for the human mind needs to be compatible with the possibility of its own emergence as a possibly true model. Let us call this the reflexive challenge, because it is about human thoughts being in theory able to explain human thoughts.

Unfortunately, eliminative materialism fails at this challenge because it literally ELIMINATES its own emergence as a possibly true model. The best shot you can arrive at is (in summary): "my neurons made some model of neuronal operation (eg Matter did it), which they kinda liked, and others will make other models (eg God did it) which their neurons will kinda like".

It seems that your neurons are not good enough to understand what they themselves are saying...

You explained that your neurons created an eliminative materialist model that looked good to your neurons, but that other neurons, e.g. mine, might create other models, which would not look good to your neurons but look good to mine.

So your model is some kind of noise generated by your neurons, which sounded good to your neurons.

What's 'it' in that sentence? — Isaac

Why, your eliminative materialist model generated by neurons in your brain. What else? If it looks good to your neurons, then it's good for you, but it doesn't look good to my neurons so it's not good for me.

If you have different criteria for what makes a good model, then different models are going to seem good to you. — Isaac

Okay, so it all depends on what looks good to you.

What's the difference between a person who looks around and concludes God must have made it happen, and a guy who looks around and concludes matter must have made it happen? Both develop a model, right?

It's generated by both the membrane potentials of particular neuronal populations and by the probabilistic mechanisms of neuron firing rates. — Isaac

So your eliminative materialist model is generated by neurons in your brain, like some sort of 'woo'?

So models arise in the same way as they might in most approaches to cognition. — Isaac

And how would that be, if you don't mind explaining?

"Kantian principles ["System of Principles"] are nothing more permanent than the presuppositions of eighteenth-century physics, as Kant discovered them by analysis. If you analyze the physics of today, or that of the Renaissance, or that of Aristotle, you get a different set" (179). — tim wood

So Collingwood treated Kantian a priori principles as examples of presupposition.

:100:

The song was indeed popularized by Billie Holiday.



It has a long history though.

"She's Funny That Way"[1] or "He's Funny That Way" is a popular song, composed by Neil Moret, with lyrics by Richard Whiting.[2] It was composed for the short film Gems of MGM in 1929 for Marion Harris, but the film was not released until 1931.[1] Harris sang it as "I'm Funny That Way".[3]

A torch song, according to Philip Furia and Michael Lasser, the "song begins self-deprecatingly—'I'm not much to look at, I'm nothing to see'—but "at the end of each chorus, it affirms the lover's good fortune: 'I've got a woman crazy 'bout me, she's funny that way'". ...

The song has generally been covered by female artists as "He's Funny That Way". Thelma Carpenter recorded it in the 1930s at the age of 19, "handling the vocal like a seasoned veteran" according to Dave Oliphant,[5] but it is most associated with Billie Holiday, who first recorded it in 1937.[6] Holiday later featured it on her 1953 album An Evening with Billie Holiday.[7] It was later covered by Mary Osborne with Mary Lou Williams,[8] Etta James for her 2001 album Blue Gardenia[9] and Liza Minnelli.[2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/She%27s_Funny_That_Way

The extent to which I'm an eliminative materialist is entirely a model-based one. — Isaac

How do models arise in an eliminative materialist model?

It implies to me an importance in remembering that it's not just what I may know, but the system and framework within which it is know — tim wood

Which connects with structuralism, and PoMo, although Collingwood's philosophy is more logically structured than that of the err... French structuralists.

Ok so things exist. Among those is logic. These are trivial presuppositions, trivially true. The non-trivial presupposition is that human natural logic works.

Andrea Motis is my type of trumpetist:



Never had nothing
No one to care
That's why I seem to have
More than my share
I've got a man crazy for me
He's funny that way

When i hurt his feelings
Once in a while
His only answer is one little smile
I've got that man crazy for me
He's funny that way

I can see no other way
And no better plan
Than end it all and let him go
To some better gal
But why should I leave him
Why should I go
He'd be unhappy without me I know
I've got that man crazy for me
He's funny that way

Though he loves to work
And slave for me everyday
He'd be so much better off
If I went away
But why should I leave him
Why should i go
He'd be unhappy without me I know
I've got that man
Mad about me
He's funny that way

You know how these things are, highly subjective I mean. My type of girl, she's not your type and vice versa. Which is great as it means there's a type for everyone.

I often wondered about that, about the mystery of this chemistry (literally) between humans that we call physical attraction. I wonder specifically if our genes are speaking to one another through pheromones and even through facial / body types. Reproduction is a dialogue between genes after all. Are genes seeking their complement, their difference, their missing ingredient -- rather than their sameness, which is what a racist theory would say -- by actively shaping what we find subjectively attractive?

I believe in the wisdom of poems and lyrics, but also of proverbs and such. A French saying about love: Il faut trouver chaussure à son pied. Find a shoe fit for your foot.


"Ma préférence" by Julien Clerc



Je le sais
Sa façon d'être à moi parfois vous déplaît
Autour d'elle et moi le silence se fait
Mais elle est
Ma préférence à moi

Oui, je sais
Cet air d'indifférence qui est sa défense
Vous fait souvent offence
Mais quand elle est
Parmi mes amis de faïence
De faïence
Je sais sa défaillance

Je le sais
On ne me croit pas fidèle à ce qu'elle est
Et déjà vous parlez d'elle l'imparfait
Mais elle est
Ma préférence à moi

Il faut le croire
Moi seul, je sais quand elle a froid
Ses regards ne regardent que moi
Par hasard, elle aime mon incertitude
Par hasard, j'aime sa solitude
(bis)

Je le sais
Sa façon d'être à moi parfois vous déplait
Autour d'elle et moi le silence se fait
Mais elle est
Elle est ma chance à moi
Ma préférence à moi

Which in turn presupposes that some things exist, I guess
— Olivier5

These seem along the right lines. — tim wood

Ok. Then in ECG fashion we should ask what is the question that this supposition answers. And that would be: is there something? But this question is self-answered in the positive, since the question itself: "Is there something?", this question exists as soon as it is asked. So the answer is always: "yes, there exist something, at least the question "is there something?".

Not sure where that leaves us.

Which in turn presupposes that some things exist, I guess.

Dear Amity, you've been the most active contributor here; much appreciated. I'm so very glad you like this thread. :-)

Interesting, and yes I know a little musical theory, and appreciate odd tempos. I played the bass on an African cover of the Mission Impossible theme in my crazy youth, and that was in 5/4 too if memory serves.

If you like big ensembles, here is something you may like, a French band with an American singer:

Good find. Who are these guys?

Thanks to and for posting the full lyrics of their entries. I had never got the sense of Chapman's song for instance, never knew what it was about, and you made it talk to me. This is what this thread is about: not just good music, but good texts too, with an existential dimension.

This said, I don't always post the lyrics of my own entries, sometimes because I don't care, other times I trust that people know the words already, so please don't take this as a reproach. Just saying it's nice to discover good lyrics once in a while.

There are also APs about space and time. Eg "the arrow of time flies one way only".

My absolute presupposition would be "my sensations reflect truth (reality)." — god must be atheist

Indeed, this is another one. I would say express it as "my senses don't lie, most of times". "Most of times" is to allow for (rare) observation errors and hallucinations.

Do the 'laws' of logic count as presuppositions?
— Tom Storm
No. They count as a formal system of transformational rules. — 180 Proof

However, the supposition that "logic dependably works", that one can trust logic, is an absolute one. You cannot prove that logic is true or efficacious because you would need logic to do so.