Well let me ask you if you think the your experience of a red firetruck is a passive affair, that its givenness is the content of your experience of it, that any statements you make about it just make this explicit,
or
do you think the red firetruck is your representation of what is out there, and any statement such as 'it's a red firetruck' is the only content of that experience, that we are in fact responsible for how we take things?

Why not? Is it not objectively true that you are on the moon and have a vantage point from on the moon, and experience colors and feelings of weightlessness?

It is objectively true that you are on the moon, but I don't think whatever could possibly comprise that experience, or for that matter any experience, can be fully reduced to objective description. I think there is subjective reality and it is part of what it means to experience anything. To say things are separate/independent of the mind, I think is problematic, since a mind is needed to posit them.

A basic example would be a student helping her friend cheat on a test. Her intention is to help her friend get a good mark but as a consequence her friend doesn't fully understand the subject.

Do you think that being a friend confers certain responsibilities, duties, which you do not owe strangers. Will you feel guilty if you do not help your friend. Is a parent more responsible to their family than non-family? Don't you claim ownership and responsibility for your actions, in so far as you are acting as a free agent.

Beyond intention and consequences lies human agency, without which neither intentionalism nor consequentialism make moral sense. The person who acts morally, acts in tune with their conscience, with actions that can be either be consequential or intentional, depending on what is being decided.

For example, I've never been on the moon, but I've learned indirectly to know what it's like to be on the moon by reading other people's descriptions, seeing pictures and so on. On the moon I would hardly need to learn how I ought to experience what it's like to be on the moon.

But isn't this the point of the Mary's room thought experiment: the subjective experience of being on the moon cannot be adequately described objectively.

I don't think your experience of being on the moon could ever be reduced to physicalistic interpretations such as neurons firing.

Astronauts go through extensive training to do just what you say " you hardly need to learn"

Hi and thank you for your reply. Most of the information I read suggest that the main components of what comprise life will probably have to come together all at the same time in an emergent formation. I think this means that there may be no set formula for achieving life, and probably the zillions of micro chemical/physical events will have to be just so for it to emerge. Scientists may be able to make it, but that is different than being able to explain how it ends up emerging. I speculate it might not be possible to explain.

Studies of people, born blind, who then suddenly become able to see (such as those who undergo cataract surgery), suggest they have to learn how to interpret what they see, learn how to coherently construct objects in space, which takes them months. A child has to learn that the toy truck is red, just as Mary has to learn that what she is experiencing is red, but she still experiences it, its experiential reality is prior to its determination, prior to knowledge.

Ok, couple of thoughts.

If I claim the X is the case, and that it entails that X is independent of thought, how did I get to X in the first place if not by thought. Sounds like a sort of contradiction.

I think Mary's room argument is an ontological argument, not an epistemological argument. It is not about some newly found ability, it is about experiencing more than what can be described as some sort of physical manifestation.

I can't see your pain, I can only feel mine, so how do I know it is the case.

No, physicalism has no monopoly. It's just that realism entails mind-independence, whatever the ontology of that reality is. Subjectivity isn't mind-independent.

So the hammer is real, but my pain when I hit my finger is not?

Realism means mind-independence. Physicalism is an objective ontology. Yes, it does need to account for subjectivity, and that's a problem.

So physicalism has a monopoly on the meaning of being a realist? I think Subjectivity has just as much a claim to ontological reality as what is mind independent and but subjective reality cannot be fully reduced to objective/physical reality.

1. Color realism

Number One would mean that our visual system is reproducing the color that is out there in the world, or somehow directly perceiving it. Thomas Reid is one philosopher who has defended such a position.

Why isn't the position the color is inside and not outside is not a realist position. as in objective vs subjective realism. Are you saying our subjective reality is not real?

(Y)

What is the media?

Thinking more about this, I recall that infanticide was common in certain cultures, and not just ancient cultures.

Anthropologist Laila Williamson notes that "Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule."

Wikipedia

What is considered Normative Behavior, varies from society to society, but some of the major distinctions between what is considered normatively moral or not, seem to be diminishing worldwide. The horrific gassing of innocent people in Syria was condemned by most of the world. The united outcry against this act, suggest the shared conviction by the majority of the world's societies that it was immoral act. I think this valuation assessment is part of a trend has to do with the way the world's societies have become enmeshed and interact with each other since the end of WWII.

Rational duty is an empty/formal concept, it was part of Kant's attempt to establish objective foundation for morality. Moral duty, I think, only makes sense as a reasonable, and intensively felt cause for action.

The Will and the Whale: Glory and the Horizon of Defiance in Melville's Moby Dick

Hanaà Berrezoug
Dr Moulay Tahar University
2014

I continue slowly working my way through bars & pubs in South East Florida. One of my occasional haunts is the Blue Front BBQ. Interesting art deco building built in 1945. Unfortunately their food is inconsistent. I've had nice dinners there and others that sucked, but it does have the best happy hour around and my favorite local beer on draft "Due South Caramel Cream Ale". So all is forgiven. Ryan is the friendly bartender here:

The article you reference says that secularism is increasing based on polls and other studies around the world currently, but it also projects a return of the religious uptick by 2050. The Pew Research report "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050"

What does it mean to be conscious? Consciousness is synonymous with awareness. To be conscious is to be in a state of awareness. And in order to be aware there are two requirements: the being that is aware, and the subject of the awareness. To say that I am aware of the hands in front of me, is to acknowledge myself, and the existence of my hands.The same is true for anything else.

I don't think consciousness is synonymous with awareness. I think consciousness is reflective awareness. We observe all sorts of creatures that appear to be aware, but I would not ascribe conscious intent to that awareness, that mosquito is not out to get me, it is driven by hunger alone. Scientific studies seem to show that awareness has a greater scope than consciousness, that we are aware of more than we are conscious of.

Logic has important but limited value when it comes to experience, it cannot account for what you are trying to make an account of, in my opinion.

Not intending to start a flame war (the world outside is already on fire enough as it is), but every time I hear anything about gender, capitalism, money, sex, beauty, masculinity, femininity business and power, the recurring theme I hear from critics of the identified norm is "Western Culture," and I have to ask: Western, as opposed to what? Eastern, Southern, Northern? Where's the point of reference, and whose culture is the "correct" culture, according to those who oppose "Western Culture"? What's the metric for defining what "Western Culture" is, short of the misnomer of conflating it with "Modern" or "First World"? I feel as though it was an umbrella term created to strawman all American and European ideas into being considered "bad" or "wrong".

The West has expanded over the years, to the point where its ideology now regularly clashes with the East in all the ways you have itemized. Ideologically the Prime Meridian continues to shift with some narratives overlaying others.

China and Russia were at odds with the West shortly after WWII. The West put them and a few others behind an 'Iron Curtain'. The essence of the dispute was ideological. Forms of capitalism were posed against forms of communism. Reality under these two ideologies was described in very different terms.

What one side saw as colonialism, the other side saw as indoctrination. What both side saw together was the importance of technology for the advancement and safety of their respective populations. This emphasis on technology has a lot of different costs, which include huge financial and academic expenses. These costs dissolved many of the apparent ideological differences by creating technology as a 'common cause' which each could adopt as their own.

Technology became a kind of Point Meridian, I think it's still holds its position, but its being challenged by cultures with great moral/religious traditions, societies whose architecture is built around a religious ideology, one which is far more integrated into everyday life than in either the East or the West. These cultures also value Technology, but it is subservient to their religious/familial values.

Many clubs have presidents, and/or other people who make necessary decisions for the club as a whole. I suspect that it is due to undesirable behavior that rules are formed, and that only a strong president, a sovereign can make an exception to established rules.

Hey thank you for your kind comment.

It's not really about 'buying into' anything. As with all scientific models, it is only a model, and its value is in how well it helps explain states and events.

(Y)

Religion is like opium. Too much opium can leave one dead in a ditch, but just the right amount can return function to the pain-crippled. I wouldn't say that this is hard and fast rule, but I've come to expect it: religious people handle adversity better than atheists, and I think it's because of the functionality-returning gift of anesthesia.

Religion thrives on the fear of "dead in a ditch". It transforms fear into hope for the faithful, for a life of bliss, a fetishized hope for eternal life. The faithful transubstantiate enduring present suffering as a means of achieving future bliss, this transubstantiation becomes the structure of the self.

The atheist does not escape this process, it became the structural bias of the future over the present in Western culture which is incorporated into our concept of progress. While the atheist does not have a transcendent escape route, it has science which it relies on to save it from suffering.

"Ditch" is an interesting word, it can mean a trench carved into the ground, or something we discard, or throw away, or an escape. A ditch almost like a wound to the earth as demonstrated in Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial, where the discarded names of the dead, enable our sentimental escape from their horrible realities.

(Y)

Thinking is always being,
being is not always thinking

Perhaps there are just definitions.

The artist's idea, the artist's conception for the work is outside of the work and all artworks are political. Works of art cannot not be politically derived from culture. The main tension in any work is between the form (which contains its social aspect) and the matter, but it does not end there: form + matter does not equal the work of art. The artist's idea, the narratives that any good work of art illuminates, and its observers all are intergral parts of any work of art . Art has a double character (Adorno), it is at once art and politics.

Why do you think Guernica was done in grisaille.

The Bull & the Girl seem almost curated, and maybe that is right for our age. Frederic Jameson holds that position, he believes that the Curator is the new artist of the 21th century and Curators are found all over the art-world, not just in museums.

What about "all former students are students"?

Shouldn't it read: " all former students were students" the other way round mixes up tenses.

Thinking a little more about these works and their relationship. I think the introduction of the girl created an encompassing work of conceptual art where the concepts of danger, domination, uncertainty are challenged by our ideas about defiance, weakness & innocence (not so sure how innocent, she seems to know exactly what she's up to) are juxtaposed. The strong relationship between the two works is established by their shared context. A context which goes beyond the dynamic of danger and uncertainty which their immediate proximity poses. I think these works in their same relative positions would suggest very different concepts out if it were installed where the deer and the buffalo roam. In NYC they are placed in close proximity to one of the largest centers of capitalism in the world.

Its effect is not what you are describing:

"This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.”

Punk

A rallying cry for the occupy potheads and the like.

You mean the millions of women who marched the following day were potheads...

sad.

Not sure I understand what you are saying here, are you suggesting that women are treated equitably in corporate America?

Doesn't this symbolic confrontation point to the shame of the social injustice inveighed against women in corporate America?

I don't think the girl, aside from the bull is much of a work of art, the girl confronting the bull, as a symbolic act installed the day prior to one of the largest protests by Women...come on that's something that disrupts, and it continues to disrupt, which is what art is supposed to do.

I very much agree that from the Bull's perspective the girl taps its power. She is supervenes over the Bull expanding on its representation of capitalist power, the power of the exchange of values, and yea she suggests social justice as a confrontational value to corporate values especially as regards to women, just in time for one of the largest protests in American history.

Thanks BC, I am somewhat familiar with State Street Bank, it is the Un-Bank, Bank, a custodial service that makes pennies on each transaction, and does a zillion transactions.

McAnn Advertising agency is one of the largest in world. "It's the real thing" and Coke's Hilltop song were hugely effective. Mad Men

I think advertising is primarily concerned with purpose, whereas a work of art is primarily concerned with itself, it is purposeless in that sense. That does not mean that other meanings don't attach to art, such as who commission at work, or what the artist's intent was in crafting the work, simply that as a work of art it must 1st be able to stand on its own as a work of art.

Does the "Fearless Girl" stand on her own? I don't think she can stand as "Fearless Girl" without the "Charging Bull". Without the Bull she is no longer "Fearless", she is a 250 lb bronze casting of a girl standing with arms akimbo, which maybe art but not art with the confrontational power suggested by her facing the bull.

A patron commissions a work of art, Picasso's Guernica was a commissioned work, does the fact that it was commissioned make it any less a work of art. If the work was morally decadent, but provided insight would its decadence make it any less a work of art, or is that not a liberal bias.

The Fearless Girl statue was meant as statement in support for women's interests by a very large corporation ($64Bn I think) in support of the International Women's Day. It was installed on March 7th the day before International women's day on the 8th. The community behind her showed up the following day.

This is not quite what I was arguing. I wasn't contrasting the language of pure mathematics with the language of ordinary experience. I was rather contrasting the language of mathematical physics, and of other so-called exact sciences, with the language that one must make use of in order to bring to bear physical laws (couched in terms of B Series -- universal law statements) to the results gathered from actual experimental setups (couched in terms of A Series -- actualizations of real powers). There has to occur a translation from claims reliant on a metaphysics of isolated 'event' (magnitudes of physical values at space-time locations) and Humean causation to claims reliant on a metaphysics of 'substances' (or 'continuants') and their powers in order that the former claims may become empirically meaningful (and hence objective).

So because an abstraction is not reality, the results the mathematician arrives at must be matched up to reality (the translation) to determine if the result can be instantiated. There are no guarantees. What they come up with may or may not be realized in reality.

It is a point of view that abstracts away from the identity relatons that hold between the temporal 'stages' of the powerful actors, and which seek to externalize or reduce their specific powers to universal laws of causation that hold between structureless events. It's a vain attempt to achieve a God's eye view on the empirical world.

No, I don't see it that way. I think human history tries to tell us how we got to where we're at, it is of course a subjective determination, but it is not meant to be 'scientific', or 'god' like in that sense. The purpose of a genealogy is to chronologically inform us of those non-scientific, human truths that have occurred, suggest reasons why they occurred and show how they have affected our cultures through the ages.

I am not sure that 'weakness' as displayed in the Fearless Girl is weak. She is shaming it defiantly.

"God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things which are not, to bring to nothing things that are" Paul (1 Cor. 1:27-8)

The protests on March 8 for International Women's Day may have been the largest protests in USA history, and perhaps in the world. A sign of strength by collaboration. Innocence should not be confused with weakness.