Comments

  • What exactly is communism?
    The older I get, and the more I see the appalling suffering caused by capitalism, and by theocracy - the other major governmental system in today's world - the more I feel drawn towards Marxism.

    Just saying.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    Doesn’t warrant hysteria but the fact remains. — Wayfarer
    It is a historical observation. Just as the facts of the many acts of mass murder conducted by Christian regimes and by Western capitalist colonial powers 'remain'. Facts are not arguments. Further, unless connected to an argument or proposal they are meaningless.
    But a careful consideration of the political track record of Marxist regimes. — Mr Phil O'Sophy
    That's not even a sentence. If you have a proposal or argument to make, then make it. If your proposal is that people should study the horrors of Mao's China and Stalin's USSR, you're a bit late. People have been writing dissertations on them for decades. As they have also been for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the many genocides of aboriginal people, mass atrocities conducted under the motivation of Christianity and Capitalism.

    I do not regard modern-day Christians and Capitalists as proto-mass murderers on account of those past atrocities. Neither should anybody regard modern-day Marxists as such.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    Failing to see the cause of either adulation or condemnation with Peterson. — Wayfarer
    If, as some of his supporters on here have suggested, he has claimed that Marxism leads to mass murder, then that is a sufficient reason for condemnation. It's effectively proposing a relaunch of the witch-hunts of the McCarthy era, and CIA activities like the assassination of Allende, supporting Suharto's murderous regime and fostering Fascist coups in goodness knows how many developing countries, all in the name of protecting us from Marxism.

    I don't know whether Peterson has actually said such things, because he seems very careful to confine his more controversial utterances to video talks, rather than setting them down in writing where they are readily accessible to all, and less protected by a 'heat of the moment' or 'taken out of context' defence.

    I'm not going to waste time suffering through his long videos. If his political opinions are not important enough to set down in writing, they are not important enough for me to waste time sifting through an endless video to find.

    So my criticism - it would be OTT to call it a condemnation - is that when it comes to politics he is a trivialising, anti-intellectual lightweight that is not worth serious people spending their time on. If he has written a book giving helpful life advice to young men then good for him. But it is his hysterical condemnation of Marxism that is the subject of this thread, not his life advice to young men.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    He specifically says that the ideology that drove Mao from his beginnings to his psychopathic end — Mr Phil O'Sophy
    How could Peterson possibly know what drove Mao to his destructive end?

    According to your report, it seems that Peterson asserts that it was Mao's Marxist ideology. Yet no shred of evidence is offered to support such an assertion.

    I could with the same level of justification assert that it was Anders Bering Breivik's Christian ideology that drove him to murder seventy people.

    Both assertions would be as baseless and nonsensical as each other.
  • What is Scientism?
    "Dimension" also has a figurative meaning. — Wayfarer
    We don't even need to go to Google. Both Merriam-Webster and Oxford give a meaning of 'dimension' quite early in their lists of possible meanings, that has nothing to do with measurement. 'An aspect or feature of a situation'.
  • What is Scientism?
    I think my personal line would, however, be crossed by 'purpose'. The trouble with 'purpose' is it is future-set and that opens up too much possibility for excuse; "your reward's in heaven, don't worry about the state of things now", "yes, the revolution/war will bring death and destruction, but it's all for a grander purpose". I can see the benefits, but the risks are too great for my liking. — Pseudonym
    I can see that that particular type of purpose is risky. There are other sorts of purpose one can adopt through philosophy that are less harmful though. I had in mind things like Sartre's use of the absolute existential freedom that is imposed upon us to create one's own authentic self, or Camus's rebellion against the absurdity of the world, or a Bentham-inspired drive to do what one can to reduce the suffering in the world. Perhaps, like the philosophies themselves, there are some that are helpful and some that are harmful to the world at large, and it behoves (sp?) others to try to talk people out of adherence to purposes that are harmful.
  • What is Scientism?
    is it not a social duty to try and replace such philosophies with ones we believe are less harmful? — Pseudonym
    Yes, I agree with that. Ayn Rand's philosophy is an example of one I think it's good to talk people out of, as are the more extreme versions of nihilism. My overall impression though is that most philosophies are helpful rather than harmful.

    By the way I didn't say philosophy as 'comfort'. I don't mind the idea of philosophy as 'consolation', since that phrase has a distinguished history going all the way back to Boethius. But I draw the line at 'comfort'. Plus I think notions like 'purpose' are much richer and more open than consolation.
  • What is Scientism?
    goes on to explain Hawking how feels the answers to questions like "why are we here?" are correctly answered by a deductive nomological model. — Pseudonym
    Is the model falsifiable?

    If not then Hawking is doing philosophy, not science when he engages with such a model. Which makes his claim that philosophy is dead look rather confused.
    If the the purpose of philosophy was to comfort people, then why do philosopher debate their theories using rational analysis. Why do they use terms like 'unpersuasive', 'invalid', even just plain 'wrong'. Refer me to a single philosophy paper... — Pseudonym
    This may be a point where there is less distance between our positions. Some philosophers do indeed debate in the way you describe, even (unfortunately) on this forum. I see such an approach as misguided and unhelpful. I don't think there is any useful role for the word 'wrong' in philosophy, and I think the way that some academic philosophers have lost sight of the role philosophy plays in giving meaning to people's lives is most unfortunate.

    I stopped the quote at the word 'paper' because I think the best philosophy is not done in universities, or academia generally. While there are some academic philosophical papers I like very much, most seem to me to be a waste of time*. But that is a comment on the current state of academic philosophy, not on philosophy generally. It is only relatively recently that philosophy was seen as something that principally belonged in universities. I hope for a reversal of that trend.

    If Hawking had said 'Academic Analytic philosophy is dead' then, while I wouldn't necessary agree with him, I would not disagree strongly enough to think it worth saying so. But alas, that is not what he said.

    * although to be fair, the same could be said, to only a slightly lesser extent, of scientific papers. But that leads to another large and controversial topic - the parlous state of scientific academia and the current corporatist obsession with KPIs dominated by publication numbers and impact factors rather than actual meaningful content. That's best left to another thread.
  • What is Scientism?
    The point someone like Hawking is making is that the whole of philosophy is unnecessary in answering the questions humanity has of its existence. — Pseudonym
    That is not a point. It is an assertion. And it is unsupported by any argument. Hence it is not worthy of anybody spending any time considering it.

    Further, it is an assertion that is observed to be wrong, as many people have been able to find answers to the questions they had about existence, through philosophy. The fact that Hawking has not was a problem for him, not for anybody else. Now you may say that the answers people have found are 'subjective', or 'illusory', or 'meaningless', but that's beside the point. They found answers that were helpful to them, that gave them greater peace of mind, acceptance, sense of purpose, or whatever else they were after. So for them, philosophy served its purpose.

    It's as though Hawking said 'I don't like Marmite, so nobody should eat Marmite'.
  • WTF is gender?
    Regardless of society and culture mostly throughout history was there not always a distinction in the roles of the two sexes — Mr Phil O'Sophy
    Was there? I would be surprised if there were not some cultures in which men and women performed the same roles in everything except those things that only one was equipped to do by virtue of their sex, eg breast-feeding.

    We'd need to ask some anthropologists.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    Such a romantic notion — Wayfarer
    Yes, I'm not advocating the adoption of such romantic views of one's preferred political philosophy. Just pointing out that if one wishes to assert that some lovely, romantic notion drives one's preferred political philosophy, one should allow that other political philosophies may be driven by equally lovely, romantic notions.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    ↪Maw
    I thought it was a bit strong in its criticism. However it makes one excellent point that I had not considered before. The primary target at which Peterson directs his attacks is identity politics, especially as manifested in what he terms 'authoritarian political correctness' (a distinction which he makes in contrast to what he calls 'egalitarian political correctness'. To give him his due, that does appear to be a useful distinction to make.)

    He regards the concern of many on the non-conservative side of politics with identity politics to be a major driver of the election of Trump. OK, so far, so coherent.

    But then he starts saying how terrible Marxism is, and conflating identity politics with Marxism.

    But hang on, out of the two potential Democratic candidates, it was Bernie Sanders that was closer to Marxism, not Clinton. Sanders talked about class rather than identity politics. It now appears that Clinton lost because she did not talk about class enough, ie that she was not Marxist enough!

    To conflate identity politics with Marxism, as Peterson does, is to deny the very dilemma that is arguably the biggest problem facing the non-conservative side of politics in the US, and likely the reason it lost the 2016 election.

    I feel that Peterson generally comes across as quite reasonable, just a bit too ready to interpret laws (like C-16) and viewpoints as much harsher and more prescriptive than they really are. But it seems that 'Marxism' is a trigger word for him that suddenly switches him from cool-headed, rational academic to hysterical ideologue. As soon as the word enters his talks, he abandons reasoned argument and makes only unsupported assertions. He is happy to say that all the terrible things that have happened through the exercise of insufficiently constrained capitalism were issues of implementation rather than fundamental flaws in laissez-faire philosophy, but refuses to apply the same principle of charity to Marxism. He insists that every terrible thing that has happened in a Marxist context is indicative of the fundamental wickedness of Marxism rather than an implementation problem.

    BTW I heard this interview yesterday with Peterson. It was pleasant to listen to and Peterson came across as an interesting, fairly charming, chap - largely due to the skill of the interviewer who mostly kept Peterson away from his hot-button issues. Even so, Peterson was quite self-relevatory at one stage when he said that he had an epiphany when he realised that the opposing cold war ideologies of capitalism and communism were not morally equivalent because capitalism had a wonderful value (individualism) at its heart whereas the other one did not. It occurred to me that, if one wants to romanticise like that, one could equally argue that communism has the wonderful value of Love at its heart - love of one's fellow humans, wishing to see that none of them have to suffer terrible poverty and exploitation. The fact that he could so extremely romanticise and idealise one philosophy while refusing to even consider the possibility that one could do the same to its alternative seemed indicative of a remarkable lack of self-examination - something that is a bit surprising in a professor of psychology.
  • What is Scientism?
    That fine and a respectable view. But this is not Dawkins, since Dawkins doesn't engage with phenomenology: he thinks from the premise of Empiricism, and accepts and rejects things based on this assumed premise. — Nop
    I'd like us to be a little cautious with the use of the term Empiricism here. 'Isms' are always a worry, aren't they?

    I think that the worldview that seems to be ascribed to Dawkins here, that only Empirically testable things are worth discussing, is quite different from the philosophical tradition that has traditionally been called Empiricism, and which is usually contrasted with the tradition called Rationalism. That worldview ascribed to Dawkins is what is generally referred to as Scientism. I haven't read enough Dawkins to have a feel for whether he subscribes to Scientism, rather than just hostility to organised religion. But there are posters on here that seem to have read plenty of Dawkins and feel that to be the case. My emblematic examples of Scientism are Krauss, Hawking and Harris.

    But in any case Scientism has not much overlap with the philosophical tradition of Empiricism. After all, two of the most notable exponents of Empiricism were Berkeley and Locke. One of them became a bishop and the other thought that atheists should be the only religious minority that should not be allowed freedom of belief. Further, the ideas of one of the most notable Empiricists - Hume - are these days seen as quite compatible with various forms of non-dogmatic mysticism, particularly Buddhism and Vedanta Hinduism.
  • Is there a way to disprove mind-brain supervenience?
    To disprove supervenience we would need to observe a change in mind state over a time interval in which the brain state did not change. Since brain states are always changing - think of all the subconscious processing necessary to keep our heart pumping and physiology regulated - there is no time interval in which brain states do not change. So it looks like the theory cannot be tested.

    Even if we could somehow determine with certainty which parts of the brain were related to consciousness (neural correlates) and focus on only changes in those parts (and I doubt that a perfect separation of that type will ever be possible in practice), I don't think a test would be possible. Neural activity occurs at levels so tiny that any attempt to observe it in complete detail will change it. So it would not be possible to ascertain whether the neural correlates had changed.
  • What is Scientism?
    The history of philosophy is so blindly aimless that to suggest there is some canon of work leading incrementally up to the positions held nowadays in some subject is stretching the point. — Pseudonym
    Yes, and so is the history of art, literature and most worthwhile human endeavours. Yet when celebrities that know little of art or literature say ignorant things about them, they are reported because they were said by a celebrity, then disregarded (I am reminded of when Elle MacPherson said she didn't think people should read books they haven't written themself). Nobody proposes to establish a research project to investigate the 'ideas' of the celebrity.

    The same is true when celebrities like Hawking say ignorant things about philosophy. The statements are noteworthy solely because of Hawking's celebrity. It has been noted, and now can be disregarded, being of as little value as Elle MacPherson's thought bubbles.
  • WTF is gender?
    physiology normally defines one's behavior — Harry Hindu
    Whether that's the case is the big question that is nowhere near answered - to what extent human sexual stereotypical behaviour is based on genes vs how they were raised. We can't learn much from other animals because those that are social enough to have a culture will have the same dilemma. We can learn from observing sexual differentiation of behaviour in non-social animals, but it's hard to draw any inferences from that to humans, since non-social animals are much more different from humans than the social ones (eg all the great apes are social (actually, I'm not sure about orang-utans. Are they social?)).

    But even if it were to be conclusively demonstrated that genes make boys enjoy playing rugby more than girls, I would like to live in a world where girls are allowed to play rugby, and are not looked down on, or regarded as 'not a proper girl' for doing so.
  • What is Scientism?
    Are we only to talk about the ideas of those who have made earth-shattering advances in their field? — Pseudonym
    Certainly not. But with so many ideas around, we need to use some filter to decide which ideas to discuss. When we see somebody putting about an idea about a topic (philosophy) which they have not taken the time to investigate and of which they are patently ignorant, it fails the filter.
  • What is Scientism?
    Why is it that when scientists make arguments against certain philosophical approaches they "pontificate", yet when people like Heidegger write what many consider to be meaningless nonsense, they are great thinkers? — Pseudonym
    I haven't said anything about Heidegger. I don't really understand him, but I am open to the idea that there is something very interesting there. If one day I get the time to read him seriously, I might find out.

    As to scientists pontificating, the reason I'm happy to use such a term is partly that they are unremarkable scientists, like Krauss or Hawking. Most really great scientists, like Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohm and Newton, realised the significance of philosophy and how it was complementary to science, and made that known in their public comments. I only know of one great scientist that has said silly, dismissive things about philosophy, and he hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet, so I won't mention him (and in any case the thing he said was much less dogmatic and generalising than the sort of thing Hawking or Krauss have said).
  • What is Scientism?
    If you cannot, then I'm still failing to see how the view that science can answer these question is not just another serious philosophical viewpoint like any other, and yet is continues to be treated with derision. — Pseudonym
    That it can (present tense) answer these questions is demonstrably wrong because there are no scientific answers to the questions. That it may, one day, be able to answer some of the questions is a tenable belief, but it is a belief of no interest, as there are no proposals for how it might happen - eg what sort of experiments one might do to detect consciousness, or to detect whether a certain action is right or wrong.

    Further the Krausses, Harrises and Hawkings of the world don't stop at saying that science may one day be able to answer the questions. They pontificate that it's the only way to answer the questions, and that other approaches like philosophy should be discarded. Not only is that repellant, hubristic dogmatism, but it flies in the face of the observation that many people have found answers to these questions (questions like Kant's 'What Can I know? What must I do? What may I hope for?) in philosophy and/or religion, whereas nobody has found any answers for them in science.
  • WTF is gender?
    For most of my life 'gender' was considered a polite synonym for sex, because the word 'sex' was considered a bit risqué. That has lead to many forms asking for people's gender when they actually mean sex. Simone de Beauvoir saw gender as an oppressive collection of cultural expectations about behaviour, based on people's sex, and she wished it would disappear. I agree with de Beauvoir, and see the best way towards this being to work towards discarding the notion of gender, so that people of any sex should feel free to dress, talk and generally behave in whatever way they want.

    My minor way of contributing to this rebellion is to cross out the label 'Gender' whenever it appears on a form I am asked to fill in, and write next to it 'Sex'. Yeah, call me a dangerous radical, but somebody's got to do it.
  • What is Scientism?
    So, What does Scientism actually mean?
    Presuming it means something like the excessive use of science     — Pseudonym
    I would not say 'excessive'. As a science junkie myself, too much science is never enough!

    Rather, I regard it as the claim that science should be used in areas where it is not applicable. A prime example is Sam Harris's claim that moral values can be deduced by science.

    Other primary exponents of scientism are Stephen Hawking, with his claim that 'philosophy is dead' and that we should all just go to science to answer all our questions, and Laurence Krauss, who has said similar things.

    The main reason I dislike the things people like that say (to say I was 'angered' by them might be going a bit far) is that they give science a bad name, and make it easier for the climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers of the world to gain traction for their claims that we should not trust scientists when they are talking about science. I feel that the anti-science ethos in US conservative circles is an example of the damage that scientism causes.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    ↪Maw
    Peterson comes across as a full-blown conspiracy theorist in that interview.
    Not just a lovely story about sisterhood? — Time magazine
    No, not just a lovely story about sisterhood. No, ‘fraid not. No, you don’t spend tens of millions of dollars on a carefully crafted narrative that’s just a lovely story unless that’s what you’re trying to tell — Peterson
    Um, no, you spend tens of millions of dollars on a lovely story, and catchy songs to go with it, so that you can make hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office and in video and music sales, to people (most of them not politically engaged at all) who enjoy the story and the songs.

    I thought this guy saw himself as a prophet of capitalism. Yet he doesn't seem to understand how it works.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    ↪Bitter Crank
    Indeed.

    According to wiki the earliest known examples of writing are 3100BCE, which is 5100 years ago.

    I suppose they must have found a clay tablet from 3100BCE that said something like '8000 years ago, Ug made up this story about a mermaid, which I am now writing on this cuneiform tablet'.

    Or something like that?
  • Is it true that the moon does not exist if nobody is looking at it?
    I read somewhere - I forget where - that a research project had been commenced in the Stanford Physics Labs to try to answer this question once and for all. I can't remember the details, but I think it involved something to do with quantums and some very expensive measuring apparatus.

    Until results are obtained from that or a similar project (there was mention of developing a network of international labs to work on it and share results, possibly involving the accelerator at CERN), we can only speculate.
  • Finally somebody who's empathetic towards climate-change deniers and other "anti-science" types
    I am strongly anti-scientism and I am also totally in favour of the destruction of claims of climate denial and anti-vax nonsense, whether that be by public ridicule or any other means. Too many people will suffer and die if we wait to consider the feelings of the poor, gullible people that have been sucked in by such nonsense.

    Scientism is about claiming that science is the answer to all our questions, a proposition that is palpable nonsense. The use of science should be restricted to scientific topics - LIKE climate change and the risks and benefits of vaccination.
  • Gender equality
    whether or not there should be gender equality. — Purple Pond
    I don't understand the question.

    It sounds like a question, but when one looks more closely at it, it dissolves into a purple haze.

    To understand the question, we first need to know:

    (1) what is meant by 'gender equality'; and

    (2) what does the should imply? eg legislation? If so, exactly what sort of legislation, making what compulsions on whom? If not legislation then what? What exactly is the proposed action if one concludes that there 'should' be 'gender equality'.
  • Identity Politics & The Marxist Lie Of White Privilege?
    Still waiting for Dr Peterson to come out with a written statement of his claims. It's hard to take claims seriously enough to bother spending the time listening to them if the claimant is not prepared to put them in writing. Especially when their day job is centred around putting ideas in writing in clear, cogent form.
  • The American Gun Control Debate
    ↪Cavacava
    That is hilarious. A better example of Poe's Law I have never seen.
  • Putin Warns The West...
    I said "this is a typical American Imperialist view." — René Descartes
    And that is not the way the word 'typical' is used in English. How many examples do you know of somebody saying to someone that is not in group X, in a derogatory way, 'What you've just said/done is typical of group X'?
  • Putin Warns The West...
    ↪René Descartes

    This is a typical American Imperialist view — René Descartes
    ... to somebody that is not American.
  • Do some individuals and/or groups want a monopoly on truth/reality and right/wrong?
    -I discovered that it is believed that the evidence from biology tells us that the Y chromosome has very little time left relative to the time that all of the other biological material on Earth has existed; that female humans will move on; and that this is, apparently, good news to a lot of people such as feminists. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
    You needn't worry about this. If the Y chromosome disappears, another genetic locus will determine the sex of each member of the species. Disappearance of the locus that currently determines sex does not entail a disappearance of sexual differentiation.

    For the rest of your post, I understand and sympathise that you have read some horrible things about men written by people that describe themselves as feminists. I too have seen such things, and been appalled by them. But I have also seen horrible, intolerant things written by members of just about any belief system, movement or worldview I have encountered. Even Buddhists, that are generally regarded as so gentle, are murdering Rohingyans in Burma.

    It is best not to tar any group with the worst things that have been written by people alleged to be part of that group. I am still a vegetarian, despite some people liking to claim from time to time that 'Hitler was a vegetarian'.
  • Putin Warns The West...
    Is English not your first language? — andrewk
    Yes it is actually, and that you assume it isn't shocks me — René Descartes
    I assumed no such thing. As a native English speaker you should understand the difference between asking whether X is the case and assuming X is the case.

    You made an erroneous and unfounded accusation to another poster by your use of the word 'typical'. Had English not been your first language, that may have been excusable on the grounds that you didn't realise the meaning of what you had said. But you have now rendered that excuse unavailable to you, leaving the erroneous conclusion you leaped to standing there unexplained.
  • Putin Warns The West...
    His English is superb and I bet is way better than any language you can speak — CuddlyHedgehog
    You are clutching on straws — CuddlyHedgehog
    it goes without saying that its individual country would have its own foreign policy — CuddlyHedgehog
  • Putin Warns The West...
    I just stated that your post shares the views of American Imperialists. — René Descartes
    No, that is not what you stated. What you said is the following:
    This is a typical American Imperialist view: — René Descartes
    Is English not your first language? If it is not, you can use this as an opportunity to improve your English by learning how the word 'typical' is used.
  • Putin Warns The West...
    ↪CuddlyHedgehog
    The West doesn't have a foreign policy. A foreign policy is an attribute of a country, not of a vague reference to a disparate and fuzzy group of nations. The foreign policies of countries that are sometimes regarded as being part of the West vary enormously.

    'Pretending to take the higher ground' is a notion you've just invented. What response, if any, is taken by various countries - of whom those most concerned are those near Russia, not the United States, which Putin would not dare attack - will be dictated by geopolitical and diplomatic tactics, not by naïve notions of moral superiority.
  • Putin Warns The West...
    ↪CuddlyHedgehog

    1. So what?
    2. Again you have left out the quote to which what you quoted was responding, which was an attempt to drag America into the discussion.

    The........ discussion ........ is ........ about ........ Russia.

    Not ........ about ........ America.
  • Putin Warns The West...
    ↪CuddlyHedgehog
    That was in reply to you bringing America into the conversation, and it was directly pointing out the irrelevance of doing so. You have yet to explain what relevance America has.
  • Putin Warns The West...
    ↪CuddlyHedgehog
    No, neither was I. But you were referring to Americans, and nobody had mentioned them but you.
  • Do some individuals and/or groups want a monopoly on truth/reality and right/wrong?
    ↪WISDOMfromPO-MO
    You pick radical feminists yet you do not name any. I know that some radical feminists are dogmatic and closed to new ideas, but not all radical feminists are. I am a radical feminist and am constantly adopting new ideas and modifying old ones under the influence of those with whom I discourse and what I read, including about feminism.

    Nor is closed-minded dogmatism limited to radical feminism. Every political movement, religion and philosophy has its closed-minded dogmatists. They are not limited to one part of the political spectrum or one particular worldview. Dogmatic ideologues are as common amongst Protestants as amongst RCs as amongst atheists as amongst Muslims as amongst Post-Modernists as amongst Idealists as amongst Libertarians as amongst Science Worshippers as amongst Neocons as amongst Marxists.

    For me, if there has to be an enemy, it is closed-minded dogmatists, regardless of what religious, political or philosophical belief they are dogmatic about.
  • Putin Warns The West...
    ↪CuddlyHedgehog
    Neither Sophisticat nor Agustino, who wrote the OP, is American (and neither am I, and neither was Bob Marley), so the cleanliness or otherwise of American fingers is not relevant.
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