You might enjoy reading a brief article on the iconic renderings of St. George slaying the Dragon. The article was written by Dr. Samantha Riches is author of St George; Hero, Martyr and Myth (Sutton, 2000)

It points out that the majority of the depictions of the dragon are female, and of course St. George on the white horse being the symbol chasteness and male superiority. St. George's saving the princess then becomes chastity saving purity (the Princess as the blessed virgin Mary) from the evil female.

K, then entailment in a logical sense?

It might be pertinent to note (don't want to surprise you latter, I already did that with someone else...ha, ha) that I am sorta Panpsychist, While I don't believe that every atom is conscious, I do assert that matter over the course of billions of years obtained a vital structure, from which consciousness has evolved. Spirit has to come from somewhere, I don't believe we are deluded, spirit is and it seems to me, in a very materialistic way, that similar to gravity's relationship with matter, the correct structure of matter gives rise to life, to spirit.

K?

:)

How do you make clear your distinction between a "virtually real construction" and something "virtually objectively real"?

Our self, the I our virtual organism is constructed through our experiences in the world where the other is of dominant importance, as Rimbaud put it "I is another". Our virtual self is constructed by and in our interactions with others from the get go, we become a virtual self due to our intersubjective experiences. How we approach the world, how we construct conceptions about the world are based on what we have learned from others, filtered and automatically reconstituted, self actualized, by our prior experiences, our feelings, wants and desires.

There are instinctive aspects to this ability in my estimation. The way we think and infer, our regard towards pleasure and away from pain, form the 'mortar' for our construction and are common/typical to how we are constituted as a species.

The phenomenal train is based on our idealization about what constitutes trains, which enable us to recognize them as such. Its ideal is constructed virtually. The virtualization of phenomena is based on our history of observations of trains, from which we infer or add to previously learnt commonalities. The train does not proceed from transcendental ideals, rather it starts in the world and ends up being virtually understood by our construction. It is only by taking apart, the abstraction or reduction of these commonalities, that ideal components can be inferred as objective/shared. The shape of a ball, pyramid or anything else is based on its form, which we raise to the level of being objectively virtual due to its ability to provide commonly understood, intersubjective coherence to our experiences. This process is, I think, similar to how we can treat our self as an object.

My admittedly rough thought is that we move from not from the transcendental presuppositions as a basis for experience but rather from phenomenal experience providing the presuppositions for transcendental ideals. Reality is not hidden or occluded, it is experienced as such. Our and science's attempt is to explain why we experience what we experience, the ontological determination of that 'why' is dependent on the reality of what experienced and not the other way around, in my opinion.

"Nigelian reduction" you mean Nagelian reduction? I kept on thinking about Nigella Lawson cooking :rofl:

[reply="tim wood;169176"

Then isn't spirit real? Reality blushes at this, and the runs away from it. What am I to make of it?

Spirit is a virtually real construction, in the same way logic, and mathematics are virtually objectively real.

Can this be right?

I don't think of it quite the same way you have presented it. Thinking about this problem in terms of reality which you ended up at, the following is my rough understanding. You stated:

The present experience is fairly called a phenomenon.

to my mind the phenomenological is reality. It is the only thing we can say we really know (and while we can be wrong about what it entails, we cannot be wrong about what we actually experience), the world literally presents itself to us. Science explains why reality appears to us the way it does, but that explanation is dependent on what was experienced or observed.

Being does not reside behind us, it is in front of us, hidden in plain sight, in our experience of reality, which is always becoming. What we abstract and differentiate from experience is the commonality, consistency and coherence in what we observe from things like trains, a commonality that extends everywhere from high speed Maglevs to the steam locomotive. The only reality attributable to an 'essence' as such is its virtual existence, which makes the phenomenal understandable, and which enables it to be communicated.

The Fibonacci sequence

Irregardless
Merriam Webster definition of irregardless:
nonstandard
: regardless

To call something a universe would be an act of description. So without us, there would be nothing that you can describe as a universe.

If no thought would entail that the thought is a contingent component in the world, and not identical with the world, therefore the idealist position which denies difference between thought and the world cannot hold. The only necessary absolute is contingency, it is the only thing that is not relative to thinking, which entails that the world exists separate from it existing for us. [Meillassoux]

…every rational being, exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will…Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature have, nevertheless, if they are not rational beings, only a relative value as means and are therefore called things. On the other hand, rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves.

Groundwork

Kant seems to make a pretty clear cut distinction between persons and animals, with animals having only relative value.

The state of the animal industry: pig, chicken, cow and other large industrial complexes is disgusting but it is part of our culture, and as such it can be changed towards more humane treatment of our food. I realize that this is demeaning inhumane treatment of our fellow creature and as such it diminishes me, yet I do enjoy a nice steak once in awhile.

I limit the amount of meat I eat, I eat a lot of fish.

So you don't think there is a legitimate way to distinguish Anti-Zionism from Antisemitism?

The consequential approach has problems. Many times our actions can yield several results, which we cannot clearly delimit prior to the action, so how do you act morally if you can't predict the consequence of your action. Also it discounts intent, which is problematic because the consequence of some actions may be benign but whose intent was totally malevolent , or an action with no wrong intent produces a terrible consequence.

The phenomenal world suggests a material world but that world is for us, and while it cannot be known as it is, it certainly is, with or without us.

Truth is formal, static unchanging
Fact is empirical, approximate, becoming

I want to debate the idea that human technology is awesome, wondrous, and sacred. I think that the man made is more wondrous than the stars, and that the most common utilitarian is an artifact of supreme awe and wonder.

We are part of nature, and so are the things we make out of nature.

It is in what we do with what is around us that makes the difference. Things qua things are indifferent. The "awesome, wondrous, and sacred" you discuss are in regards to our own inventiveness, a kind of pride in being able to come up with an I Phone or something other. I find the same awe and wonder looking up at the sky.

Our ability to relate with each other ethically, morally, justly, virtuously is far more "awesome, wondrous, and sacred", and I think this ability forms the basis for the possibility of any of our species achievements.

Your topic was hardly developed, and your position on the topic was not stated.

I heard a radio program once interviewing a guy who had been tortured by somebody (can't remember who). He said the process finally burns off everything that can be degraded and reveals something that can't be controlled by anyone else.

I think this might be going in the wrong direction in regards to Bacon. The horrific image from Abu Ghraib reminded me of his painting, but this prison photo is a sadistic posturing and I don't get that feeling in looking that Bacon's spindly crucifixion. He was a functional masochist, and in so far as two adults can behave in a mutually acceptable manner, his masochism was not deviant, which is what I sense in the Abu Ghaib photo.

I think pain is how we learn to transcend the empirical. We seek to escape pain and our self awareness of it by trying to obtain a viewpoint outside or beyond it. Our feeling of pain, which I think is physically very similar in each each of us, is not the same as how we each react to pain. Some have a very high tolerance for pain and some do not. Some people like Bacon are somehow able to transmute their feelings of pain into a sense of strong erotic pleasure. His paintings recall his experiences of this pleasure in images, images which we might find disturbing, insightful and pleasurable all at the same time.

What makes life worth living?

The people we love.

Reflections of the beast within him.

He did multiple versions of the Crucifixion this one from 1933



reminds me of the travesty of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq



His others, his triptychs are intense!

After watching that video I started wondering if addiction to risk was really what was going on with Bacon. Since he was masochistic, it may be that taking risks was just one avenue to some kind of punishment?

It is said that his best works occurred during his most punishing relationships. Gambling is a way to question/doubt fate, to wrestle with it, to search for certitude in the midst of chance, while hoping for a run of luck. Bacon liked roulette the best because it has the longest odds and biggest rewards ( orgasmic). Its wheel reminds me of a mandala, a universe of chance, where time seldom rewards but often punishes its players, players who become entranced in their pursuit of winning, almost like artists.

I think he was able to take the punishment he suffered at the hands of his lovers, and use its erotic force as the inspirational engine driving his works. The greater the pain, the easier it was for him to transfer his experience into his works.

He enjoyed gambling and drinking with Lucian Freud, famous friends, very different kinds of artists. Freud is my favorite of this period.

Here is what Bacon had to say:

I agree with his basic premise. Government has to start somewhere, and the difficulty is that we are in the midst of it. If you start a Bank or any business you need to capitalize it first, which means that if you are a government you must print money to get the ball rolling to capitalize it. There was a bench mark for doing this, which was the gold standard, which was exchanged back in 1971 for the value of a dollar at that time, and now currencies float relative to each other. In principal the only restraint on a government printing as much currency as it wants (and some have tried) is the exchange rate or how much a 1971 dollar is effectively (vs nominally) worth relative to their currency today. If you print too much money interest rates drop and so does the relative value of a particular currency to other competitive currencies.

He suggests that the Central Bank controls interest rates by buying or selling bonds, which is right, and he dismisses the explanation that their use as public project financing tool which I am not sure about, but it kinda makes sense. If the government can print as much money as it wants, and assuming that it's able to keep to its inflation targets then why issue bonds, why not just print the money? The apparent answer is that the issuance of bonds enables the Central Bank to adjust for market fluctuations,to keep currency values, inflation rates with its targets.

"Why aren't people behaving more immorally than they are behaving?"

Perhaps because no one can be completely unjust or immoral without performative contradictions and if so then perhaps it is necessary for those dedicated to an immoral life style to be moral/just in order for them to be or to practice their immoral life style. And, maybe for the most part it is easier to act justly than unjustly, where being just or unjust is not the same acting justly or morally.

You must have some things you value, if this work is emphatic with your existing values, and you desire to do it, then yes. Stay in tune.

Hi and welcome to TPF, nice 1st post.

I think that psychoanalysis can help explain the dynamics of a work of art, but in doing this, it seems to forget the form of the work.

On the other hand a Jung argues that certain artistic products are borne of visionary, primordial experiences that are expressed by the artist, yet completely independent from the human artist himself. These are symbolic expressions that exist in their own right and in bringing forth these visions from the collective unconscious to our consciousness minds in the form of art, these artists fulfill the roles of seers of prophets.

I like this idea because I think works of art are primarily a result of the society where an artist works, not as overtly causal, but as the effects of the unconsciousness grappling with the archetypes, stated and unstated narratives that swirl around in society. The artist thereby is an instrument of culture who has the unique ability to sense what bubbles up from inside his/her self and gives it form in the work of art. The form that is used typically has an accepted foundation (even when that foundation was unaware of itself as in Schoenberg's 12 tone) that exists aside from the artist generally.

"There may be some validity in the idea held by the Freudian school that artists without exception are narcissistic - by which is meant that they are undeveloped persons with infantile and auto-erotic traits. The statement is only valid, however, for the artist as person and has nothing to do with the man as an artist. In his capacity of artist he is neither auto-erotic, nor hetero-erotic, nor erotic in any sense. He is objective and impersonal - even inhuman - for as an artist he is his work, and not a human being." (Jung Modern Man in Search of a Soul 172).

I don't find the ascription of normal or abnormal to an artist particularly helpful in trying to understand their work and I agree with Jung that there is a great difference between the act of creation and what is created.

I don't think of Weinstein as an artist. I think he is more like a shrewd gallery owner that knows how to spot talent and then promote it.

I think that Trump is becoming so emboldened that soon he will fire Mueller.

Maybe be, but if so it will set off a shit storm like we have not seen since the 60's I think. Both the DEMs and the GOP are warning him not to fire Muller.

I listened to the podcasts that @Baden referenced and I could not help but to think of Thomas Kuhn's notion of Paradigm in which scientists

... agree in their identification of a paradigm without agreeing on, or even attempting to produce, a full interpretation or rationalization of it. Lack of a standard interpretation or of an agreed reduction to rules will not prevent a paradigm from guiding research

Kuhn thought that scientists have always worked under dominant Paradigms and it seemed to me that Kuhn's notion of a Paradigm is very similar to Debord's notion Spectacle.

We like scientists don't question the Spectacle that that we live in, work in...unless a critical mass of anomalies threaten our understanding of being in the world. The progression is from being, to having to appearing remains, but if there is a Spectacle or a Paradigm shift then what was apparent now becomes a new way of being, leading to a new progression.

There are such things as Freudian slips. Feud thought the unconscious is dynamic, but I doubt it and I don't think it is volitional, perhaps it is more dispositional in the sense that it provides a basis upon which we act. I think it is repressed for the most part, but occasionally things bubble up whether we like it or not. Freud thought our psyche is determined by causal forces, and one of those forces is our self.

Exterminate your tensions with Dalek mindfulness.

Do you know if JP ever responded to this letter from his student. I looked but I didn't see the author's name.

I'm reading "seeing the invisible on Kandinsky" by Michel Henry

Because the truth of art is a transformation of the individual's life, aesthetic experience contracts an indissoluble link with ethics. It is itself an ethics, a 'practice', a mode of actualizing life. The internal connection between the invisible aesthetic life and the ethical life is what Kandinsky calls the "spiritual".

Expressing the inexpressible.

The point of of this thought experiment is to determine whether or not positive and negative feelings such as pain and pleasure are essential in our conception of morality.

Perhaps this comes down to the difference between knowledge and belief. If you have made a definitive judgement about the rightness or wrongness of an action can you rationally/morally act contrary to your judgement vs If you believe an action is right or wrong, can your emotively/morally act contrary to your belief.