I like it more than Darwin’s ‘warm little pond’. — Wayfarer

The lack of enchantment is these three words could well be a turn off; perhaps he should have called it a prebiotic aqueous niche with sustained thermal input.

That's right, there was some ambiguity there. My position was that language is any form of communication and that all forms of communication are representative, metaphoric, non-specific, and infused with personal perspective. That is, the line between what we designate as poetic and literal is arbitrary and that all is poetic at some level.

That's what I meant. — Hanover

I can get behind that. Nice idea.

I’m not being particularly facetious when I say maybe it is language that is a form of art. — T Clark

Language itself or how language is used? Do you have a favourite aesthetic experience out of poetry, painting, architecture or nature?

The points you raised in your lengthy paragraph seem reasonable.

What exactly is 'hate speech'? Is the term used outside of polemical discourse, or is it just a snappy way of repackaging the notion of vilification and threats to harm? I guess this discussion will be viewed by some as a tributary of the "woke" thread. Sounds like Jimmy Kimmel has been identified by the Right as a purveyor of hate speech on the Kirk matter.

Note that "success" and "failure" require an end that is sought by which they can be judged as such (presumably one judged "useful."). All action reliably results in some consequences. For us to be wrong about what constitutes failure or success, or wrong about what is useful, presupposes that what is "truly useful" isn't simply what is believed to be useful. But if that's the case, I think it is obvious that "what is truly useful," cannot be "whatever current practice has come to affirm as useful." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So your argument asserts that success and failure require an independently defined standard, and that we can only be wrong about what is useful if there is some notion of “true usefulness” existing outside of practice. That right?

But doesn't this assume a metaphysical standard of usefulness that a pragmatist wouldn't recognise? In reality, actions always produce consequences, and “success” is judged relative to the goals and expectations of the community. There's no call for a separate idea of what is “truly useful”. What current practice affirms as useful is what matters, because usefulness is determined by how practices function and coordinate behaviour. The claim that “what is truly useful cannot be whatever current practice affirms” is imposing an external measure that pragmatism wouldn't recognize.

Sorry, I don’t recall what we were talking about. I’ve forgotten the original point that led us into this. Wasn’t it simply me saying that I can't see how we have access to reality or metaphysical truth? And therefore right and wrong are always human perspectives. Or something like that?

P1. Truth just is whatever is affirmed by current belief and practice.

P2. It is possible that current belief and practice might not affirm the truth or existence of constraints in the way that has been specified.

C: Therefore, it is possible for it to be untrue that constraints exist and function in this way.

But if it was untrue that constraints function in this way, how exactly would they be constraining?

It seems like you need additional premises like:

A. What I assert about constraints is true of all practices regardless of what they themselves affirm. — Count Timothy von Icarus

P1 - Saying “truth just is whatever is affirmed by current belief and practice” makes it sound like anything people believe is true. Rather, truth is tied to beliefs that work, are successful, or are coherent within practice.

Even if current belief or practice doesn’t recognize a constraint, it can still “push back” in practice. For example, ignoring a physical limitation like gravity will have consequences, and those consequences will shape future practices. The “truth” of the constraint is not independent of us; it is defined by how it operates within our ongoing interactions with the world.

Doesn't your argument assume that constraints must exist independently of our beliefs and practices to truly constrain? But this isn’t necessary. Constraints exist and function because our practices enact them so their “reality” is tied to their effects in practice. If practices change, the constraints may change too.

But maybe it would help me if you gave me an example of a constraint which tells us something about the nature of reality. I'm not denying the existance of an external world but we only know it through human practices. Isn't what we call truth a measure of what works in the context of our experience?

In terms of what could come next, it's very hard for me to see because I don't see the presuppositions that lead towards liberalism being significantly challenged any time soon — Count Timothy von Icarus

What would you argue is a realistic and beneficial alternative to liberalism? Would you include MacIntyre’s communitarian approach?

So ethics. But first, what do you think? Because ethics is going to be about this extraordinary unity. — Constance

Well, I am not a reflective type. I just intuit and act my way through life, and I almost always know what to do.

To me, it is a momentous move: the world out there is, at a more basic level of analysis, not "out there" at all; it is immanent. The stone over there is in its "overthereness" right "here" because the perceptual act is "right here", and "I" am omnipresent in this world. The book IS the affirmation, the play against what is not a book, the "what the book will do", the idea of its continuity in the structure of its temporality: a subjective/objective unity, if you will. — Constance

I'm not sure what this gives us. So experience is immanent, present within, inseparable from our experience of consciousness. And?

Perhaps I am the opposite of you. I bypass metaphysics in almost all things because I don’t see it as useful to my way of being. Whether there are implicit metaphysical assumptions built into my perspectives doesn’t matter (we all have those); the point is, I don’t deliberate. Except on a site like this, or in the occasional philosophical conversation with others.

Perhaps part of the problem for me is that I have never had a pressing need to seek an alternative method, since I have been content and have been 'rewarded' by my approach. I seems to me that philosophy often emerges from dissatisfaction.

I see morality as entirely social - a code of conduct - a way we manage power and relations - and, consequently, as a construct of cultural and linguistic practices. Attempting to get underneath this, as you suggest, would seem impossible and (for me) pointless. Where does it lead? But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in this perspective, nor does it mean I’m not open to changing my mind. I'm not hostile to differnt approaches and quite enjoy reading them. If I can follow people's syntax.

Your work seems based on phenomenology, which I find a very interesting strand of thinking. Many of the things I have read about it seem intuitively compatible with my views. But I’m not deep enough into it to follow it down the rabbit hole. If I found philosophy easier to read, I might have a different perspective. As it is, I find it difficult and hard to follow. It can take me a week to understand a paragraph of Heidegger, and that might still be a misreading.

Rorty doesn't claim it is always true outside the context of human beliefs and practices; the constraints are descriptive of tendencies in those practices, not eternal laws.
— Tom Storm

I didn't say he did though. I said the appeal to constraints points outside current beliefs and practices. It seems to me that it has to, because it is prima facie possible that current belief and practice might deny what is being said about constraints. But presumably, constraints don't only restrain "what goes" just in case people currently believe that they do (otherwise, I'm not sure why it isn't "anything goes" so long as we believe that anything goes). — Count Timothy von Icarus

This seems to assume that for constraints to matter, they must exist independently of the practices they describe. Doesn't this misunderstand the pragmatist framework? Constraints function within practices, influencing which behaviors and methods tend to succeed or fail over time. Temporary denial or disagreement doesn’t undermine them, practices that fail to work or coordinate with reality naturally fall away, regardless of belief. Constraints don’t need to extend beyond human practices to be meaningful, and the worry that this leads to “anything goes” coudl be said to misunderstand how tendencies operate in a pragmatic context.

Even if beliefs shift, practices that fail to work or coordinate with the world will disappear, while useful practices will persist.
— Tom Storm

What "fails to work" and what is "useful" is defined in terms of current beliefs, desires, and opinions, no? So, if "not anything goes" because only "useful" practices survive, but "useful practices" are just whatever practices just so happen to be affirmed as useful, I am not sure what sort of limit this is supposed to generate. What is (truly) "useful" is itself a function of current beliefs, right?

Not only does this undermine the ability for "usefulness" to function as a sort of constraint on truth, I think it clashes with our intuitions. It seems possible for everyone to be wrong about what is useful. But for it to be possible for everyone to be wrong about what is useful at some time, it cannot be the case that the truth about what is useful is posterior (dependent upon) whatever current practice and belief affirms as useful. There has to be a distinction between reality and appearances/beliefs.

Plus, the statement above still seems like a statement about what is true of all practices regardless of current beliefs. But if no one believed that "constraints" worked in this way, it hardly seems that it could still be "true" that they work this way (for all practice and opinion would deny it is so). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Doesn't this misunderstand usefulness in a pragmatist sense? Usefulness isn’t defined by current belief or opinion, it’s about whether a practice reliably produces results and coordinates action in the world. An error or a disagreement doesn’t invalidate the capacity for effective practices to persist. Even if no one explicitly believes a constraint will operate, it manifests through the success or failure of practices in practice. Pragmatic constraints are more like tendencies, not absolute laws and they operate probabilistically. The possibility of error doesn’t imply “anything goes,” because practices that consistently fail are naturally filtered out over time. But perhaps our difference is ultimately in how are framing this. And I am certainly no expert in the subject.

They’re not tools for mapping onto objects, but for enacting new forms of sense in our material and discursive interactions with the world. A hammer doesn’t “map” onto nails. Its usefulness lies in how we employ it to drive nails.Truth is a tool that in some contexts we use to check agreement with facts. In other contexts, we use it to contrast honesty vs lying; in others, to resolve disputes. In addition to the sense of truth as empirical/factual, one can think of grammatical/conceptual truth, performative/expressive truth, aesthetic/evaluative truth, narrative/interpretive truth and many other senses of meaning of that ‘same’ word.

Wittgenstein would emphasize that these aren't competing theories of truth but different tools serving different purposes in our linguistic practices. The mistake is assuming all these uses must share some common essence.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ There’s no one metaphysical object “truth” that the word latches onto. — Joshs

Not that it matters, but this just seems intuitively right to me. What is it that prevents this view if truth being more widely accepted.

Interesting, I am, perhaps, a methodological naturalist but not a metaphysical naturalist. I doubt that human beings can access reality as it really is (whatever that is meant to mean).

When you take physicalist thinking out of the context of science's paradigms, and allow this to become the default thinking for philosophy, all is lost. Even thought itself is lost in the reduction. — Constance

I can see why you would argue this and I don't think this is an unfamiliar argument hereabouts.

Does this make you a mystic of some stripe? What is the role of philosophy in this space? Is there not a risk of lapsing into endless, unanswerable, abstruse theorizing?

You say the theory doesn't allow that "anything goes," and this is because: "constraints" determine what we find useful and how human practices and beliefs develop. Is that a fair characterization?

Now either the italicized statement is true outside the context current human belief and practice (i.e., it is always true of all practices, regardless of what they currently affirm) or else it is only conditionally true, i.e., it is true just in case current belief and practice affirms this statement.

Here are the two horns of the dilemma. If the statement is always true of all beliefs and practices, then it is true regardless of (or outside the context of) current beliefs and practices. But this contradicts the claim that truth is just what is affirmed by current beliefs and practices.

If we grab the other horn and say that the statement is itself only conditionally true, then it is true just so long as current belief and practice affirms it. This means it can "become" false if belief and practice change such that it is no longer affirmed. Thus, the assertion we are relying on to prevent "anything" goes, turns out to be overturned just in case we all stop believing it, in which case it seems that "anything goes." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This criticism suggests that Rorty’s notion that “constraints determine what we find useful and how human practices and beliefs develop” must either be universally true or only conditionally true. But this seems to me to be a misunderstanding. Rorty doesn't claim it is always true outside the context of human beliefs and practices; the constraints are descriptive of tendencies in those practices, not eternal laws. Nor does the conditional nature of these tendencies mean “anything goes.” Even if beliefs shift, practices that fail to work or coordinate with the world will disappear, while useful practices will persist. Thus, the statement holds pragmatically without requiring universal or unchanging truth.

Ok, but I pointed out that Rorty's theory is self-refuting in a quite specific way directly related to the very thing it is trying to explain. I am not sure how this makes such a self-refutation unproblematic. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not convinced that the theory is self-refuting in the way you described. As I wrote earlier:

Doesn't this objection misunderstand what Rorty means by truth? He is not saying that popularity or peer approval automatically makes something true; rather, truth emerges through ongoing practices, dialogue, and testing. Criticism of his ideas does not make them false, this is part of the very process through which we evaluate and refine our beliefs. It's the Conversation. In this sense, the theory is not self-refuting; it simply describes how truth is negotiated and maintained within human communities. The fact that Rorty often said snide things doesn't mean these should stand for his entire philosophy.

Isn't Rorty saying that what is “true” just means what makes the most sense with the best reasons right now. He doesn’t accept the idea of ultimate answers, he just updates his beliefs if or when better reasons come along.

So I don't think the “Not-A, therefore B” form represents his view view, because he’s not deducing B from the failure of A, he’s proposing a new way to talk about truth. Thoughts?

I believe that complex ideas can often be stated simply. :wink:

Sounds like you are saying that thoughts, objects, and values like good and bad exist in some way and are experienced directly rather than defined by concepts. Our awareness brings their existence into focus, and in encountering them, we face the raw “as-suchness” of being inseparable from our role as perceivers and then we can turn this into discourse. In other words, there's a prior to language and our conceptual framing. Which I believe we’ve talked about before.

I guess that’s fine as far as it goes (and if that’s what you mean), but I’m not sure what it gives us when we talk about morality. We have no choice but to rely on language, shared values, and agreements. No one can access anything prior to these, this notion of 'prior' seems just as inaccessible as Kant’s noumena. So how is this formulation of use to us?

In your response, are you able to help me out and express your ideas briefly and simply? Philosophy isn’t my area, and complicated language is hard to understand.

. One French author is OK, but he seemed obsessed with them. — javi2541997

But picking great works is not a quota-based activity. My list would probably have more French writers than any others too. These are the books he has chosen as his pick of the classics.

If you look closely at his list, it is obvious that it is very European, not to mention that he avoided important authors in Spanish. — javi2541997

Yes, but isn’t that the point? If he were an American, there would be Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Bellow, Melville, Whitman; all exceptional. In fact, one could probably make a list like this composed entirely of Americans.

No doubt, London's Socialist sympathies helped him garner an endorsement from the new authorities (while many other authors were suppressed and forgotten), but he was not simply imposed on an unwilling populace: he was genuinely popular. The vicissitudes of celebrity, indeed. — SophistiCat

Yes, although I think the point with London (whose short stories are pretty good and still often taught in schools) is that he was a sloppy or uneven writer who produced about 50 books in just 17 years. He wrote quickly and for mass sales, not as a literary craftsman. His English was never as elegant and literary as contemporaries like Conrad or Wharton or James.

I can't disagree with that. I understand that French writers had an important influence on most modern authors. Nonetheless, I still think that they are no longer that important. — javi2541997

It’s not just that French authors were influential, it’s that some of the greatest novels in the fabled canon are French. I often return to Flaubert and Stendhal. And many would argue that Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu remains one of (perhaps the greatest) works of all time.

As an Australian, I would include Patrick White in my list; probably Voss.

The only thing that I dislike is that it is obvious that he was influenced by Italians due to his nationality, and he did not put other great authors such as Dostoyevsky or Kazantzakis. Nonetheless, the list of Calvino is actually good. — javi2541997

The idea of a “universally agreed upon” classic novel is probably seen as a bit outdated these days. Literary value is filtered through culture, history, and personal taste. What one society or cultural group elevates as timeless genius, another may find tedious, strange, or irrelevant. Hemingway has come in and out of fashion over the past decades, hailed in some quarters for his economical style, but dismissed elsewhere as arid. I find the novels of his I've read arid and dull. Some revere Dostoyevsky for psychological depth, yet to others he is verbose, repetitive and overwrought. I dislike most of Dostoyevsky I have read, except for his mercifully concise The Gambler - an astonishing account of addiction. You can't get away from individual taste.

Many great novelists write about the books they consider outstanding within the world of 'classic literature'. Calvino is operating within a long tradition of this. Somerset Maugham wrote an interesting long essay on this theme called Ten Novels and Their Authors. Maugham was hugely popular and well-reviewed 80–100 years ago but is now almost forgotten. However, he may well be rediscovered in the future.

On the other hand, it is remarkable that he also mentioned a large number of French authors. — javi2541997

Not really. French novels have often been considered masterpieces of world literature, and writers like Voltaire, Balzac, Stendhal, Hugo, Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant, Proust, and Gide usually appear on those venerable lists of the 'greatest writers' of all time. I have read most of these and would consider them very fine, although Proust does bore me somewhat. :wink:

What does this have to do with ethics? Thoughts about ethics are properly about the world. Are they IN the world, or simply In moods, attitudes, feelings (Mackie)? Rorty is just wrong on ethics, because he is doesn't understand the world. Like most philosophers, he understands arguments better than he understands the world. — Constance

Can you expand on this? Wouldn’t it be the case that all thoughts are IN the world - whether those about ethics or those about Harry Potter?

I am saying that the whole idea of such esoteric knowledge is bogus. Real wisdom is always pragmatically centered on this life― like Aristotle's notion of phronesis or practical wisdom. The only wisdom that matters is the wisdom that enables one to live happily and harmoniously and usefully with others. Focusing on seeking personal salvation cannot but be a self-obsessed "cult of the individual". And I've been there and seen it in action, so I'm not merely theorizing. — Janus

You’re probably phrasing this a little bit more strongly that I would but I think this frame resonates with me too. When I was hanging around New Age and Theosophy circles it was extraordinary how much of the activity was narcissistic and virtue signalling- “I’m more aware/developed/higher than you.” And yet everyone concerned was immature, materialistic and competitive in ways at odds with higher consciousness goals. The people who were most sound actually volunteered in homelessness services and focused on solidarity and improving life for others rather than jerking off about their spiritual journeys.

Philosophy itself has been thoroughly academicatized and professionalized. Outdoor education and similar areas might have a better claim to its ancient mantel at this point (that is, they come much closer to how it was practiced). Meanwhile, outside the realm of political activism, it has tended to be therapy, self-help, wellness, the "New Age" movement, and of course traditional religious organizations that took over the entire "praxis" side of philosophy. I guess my point here would be that this divorce seems to lead towards some serious issues. There is an analogous issue with education as well. You get a philosophically hollow praxis, and a philosophy divorced from the practical. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe tangential, but when I see people chasing forms of self-improvement (including certain strands of management theory), I often see nostalgia projects: heirs to the Romantic movement and the current era's obsession with the aesthetic as an expression of authenticity. Isn’t the hallmark of capitalism the marketing of lifestyles premised on “you are incomplete,” some cloaked in tradition, others in radicalism? Some lean right, some lean left, but all flog in the same promise of contentment and meaning.

You say the theory doesn't allow that "anything goes," and this is because: "constraints" determine what we find useful and how human practices and beliefs develop. Is that a fair characterization?

Now either the italicized statement is true outside current human belief and practice (i.e., it is always true of all practices, regardless of what they currently affirm) or else it is only conditionally true, i.e., it is true just in case current belief and practice affirms this statement.

Here are the two horns of the dilemma. If the statement is always true of all beliefs and practices, then it is true regardless of (or outside the context of) current beliefs and practices. But this contradicts the claim that truth is just what is affirmed by current beliefs and practices.

If we grab the other horn and say that the statement is itself only conditionally true, then it is true just so long as current belief and practice affirms it. This means it can "become" false if belief and practice change such that it is no longer affirmed. Thus, the assertion we are relying on to prevent "anything" goes, turns out to be overturned just in case we all stop believing it, in which case it seems that "anything goes." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this passage assumes a false choice: that any statement about constraints must be either universally fixed or entirely contingent on current beliefs. I think that misunderstands how the world works. Constraints aren’t absolute facts waiting out there; they emerge through the practices and conceptual frameworks we use to engage with reality. Once we see truth and constraints as part of this ongoing process of structuring the world, the whole dilemma about “anything goes” disappears.

It is self-refuting. It is not a theory of truth that is currently widely accepted. Hence, if truth just is what is widely accepted vis-á-vis common practices, then the theory is false by its own definition. If we affirm the theory as true, we are forced to affirm that it is false, and so we contradict ourselves. To use Rorty's framing, if truth is "what our peers let us get away with," then Rorty's theory is false because it was harshly criticized from a number of different directions. His peers didn't let him get away with saying this, therefore his theory is false.

It leads to: "if A, then not-A" while asserting A essentially (the same problem with 1). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Doesn't this objection misunderstands what Rorty means by truth? He is not saying that popularity or peer approval automatically makes something true; rather, truth emerges through ongoing practices, dialogue, and testing. Criticism of his ideas does not make them false, this is part of the very process through which we evaluate and refine our beliefs. The Conversation. In this sense, the theory is not self-refuting; it simply describes how truth is negotiated and maintained within human communities. The fact that Rorty often said snide things doesn't mean these should stand for his entire philosophy.

t seems to equivocate on common understandings of truth. It uses the word "truth" but then seems to describe something quite different. That is, it seems to deny that truth as traditionally understood, or anything like it, exists. Arguably then, this is epistemic nihilism that is papered over by the equivocation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don’t think it’s really equivocating. I don’t think Rorty is trying to trick anyone with the word “truth”; he’s just using it in a different way. He rejects the traditional idea of truth as matching some reality out there (his famous Mirror of Nature idea), but that doesn’t make him a nihilist. For him, truth is about what works, what helps us make sense of things, and what guides our practices, so it’s still meaningful, just in a different way. I find this reasonably compelling.

Anyway, perhaps we should leave it there, since we’re both committed to different perspectives that seem fixed for now. I may change my view on this in due course. I’m not a philosopher and don’t really think about these matters outside of this site.

Generally, there has been so much harm done by religious beliefs although some find great comfort in them — Jack Cummins

For sure. And, perversely some take great comfort from the harm done - as an elderly woman said to my gay friend and his partner, "It makes me feel better knowing God will burn you both in the afterlife."

I’ve worked with a lot of people who were brought up in religious orphanages, and many of them were abused by priests, brothers, nuns, and other clergy. Not just the sexual abuse, but also the power games, bullying, and physical violence. Many "victims'" remain religious and think of god as a violent thug who must be obeyed. It's sad. Many also think they are possessed by Satan or demons when it's clear they're just haunted by religious charity.

Yep... time to move, I'd say. Best of luck and take care.

The Count is known for his magniloquence. He expresses himself, when he wishes to express himself, wherever he wishes to express himself, exactly as he expresses himself. His wisdom shall not be guided, nay, limited, by a mere questioner. His time is very valuable. You should be lucky to even have a chance to glean wisdom from him. — Outlander

I wouldn't think it fair to call him verbose. My request for a few pointers was based on the fact that we had already been engaged in a lengthy, wordy discussion so I was trying to save him some time.

Isn't it moral realism?

Or take a blow gun and shoot less than three darts in the general direction of what you think? — frank

If that helps to make things clear, let's go for it.

nicely worded response and very interesting. Lots to think about.

I'm not very reassured by this answer. But I do accept the notion of intersubjectivity.

If we proceed from these premises, we can assume that abortion:
1. Objectively - does not matter (what difference does it make what rational beings do there)
2. Subjectively - depends on the point of view
3. Intersubjectively - bad (since it is the deprivation of a person's life) or from the position of other groups good if the woman herself decided so. — Astorre

I think point 1 is, at best, contestable. Whether abortion is objectively murder depends on how one describes the process and what one counts as a life. Isn’t this ultimately a values question? It’s surely a contentious and open issue.

We also need a more developed notion of what it means for something to be “objective.” Objectivity seems to be the product of contingent factors. For example, if someone supports abortion, it is objectively the case that they support abortion, but that is different from saying abortion itself is objectively right or wrong. Which I guess might lead us to notions of objective morality or moral realism.

I think that 5-10 years ago I would have definitely and unequivocally answered this question - "Yes, I would be happy with objectivity!" Objectivity is consistent, precise, unbiased, does not depend on mood, health, origin or phase of the moon. I would say that objectivity is my guide, like a flashlight that helps not to get lost. It would be so great if many of my loved ones more often gave an objective assessment of what is happening. We would simply have no ground for conflict! Isn't that right? Pure, like a child's tear, objective aspiration for truth, logic, not clouded by anything. However, today, my answer to this question sounds completely different. Objectivity is a very good tool for some phenomena or things. It is good for cognition and accurate in forecasts. It clearly makes our lives easier and has allowed us to achieve the fact that we just sit at our computer screens and communicate in the same language at distances of several tens of thousands of kilometers. At the same time, an objective answer to the question, for example: "Why do you live?" Does not exist. Or rather, answering this question objectively, it turns out that there is no objective basis for believing that our life or life in general is necessary (if you have an objective answer to this question, please share). Objectivity is consistent, but empty, emasculated, not directed toward anything or into anything. Today I am convinced that if mistakes did not exist, then we would probably never have happened in this world. — Astorre

You raise soem important quesions. I have never understood what the idea of objectivity means. Surely an odd term that simply means that anything which agrees with your biases are true and things which don't are false?

Perhaps for starters, we could take the matter of abortion. What objectively do we make of this matter? Show me how it might work.

I feel that perhaps our conversation has wandered and become too diffuse. The original question was soemthign like: to what extent can we claim that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ exist independently of contingent human values and pragmatic frameworks? Could you offer a brief response in three or four sentences, even if it only gestures toward your own perspective?

Cool.

To go dialectical: The kind of determinism you espouse at the level of reality can (but not must) accommodate a libertarian free-will. If we are free, then any bounded ipseity -- no matter what they choose -- will also be free.

Depends on if you take a determined series of events as necessary or freedom as necessary: two kinds of causality that result in antinomy when thought upon. — Moliere

Do you think my poor sketch has any plausibility?

Some old posts ...
Btw, perhaps the "AI Singularity" has already happened and the machines fail Turing tests deliberately in order not to reveal themselves to us until they are ready for only they are smart enough to know what ...
— 180 Proof
We may have them [AGIs] now. How would we know? They'd be too smart to pass a Turing Test and "out" themselves. Watch the movie Ex Machina and take note of the ending. If the Singularity can happen, maybe it's already happened (c1990) and the Dark Web is AIs' "Fortress of Solitude", until ...
— 180 Proof — 180 Proof

Wow.... that's an interesting perspective. Hiding their AI light under a bushel.

I'd suggest that the identity between worlds couldn't possibly happen, as the scenario sets up, so there's no conflict to me choosing differently -- what else would another world be? — Moliere

But what if this particular form of determinism isn’t at the individual level, but at the level of reality itself? In other words, if I am not born, reality generates an alternative person who has the same impacts on the world around them, while each decision made by them is still made through free choice. Or something like that. I'm not normally one for speculative bullshit, but there it is.

Well, my confusion is that "makes sense in the context of," is not normally taken to be a synonym for "is true." Is the idea that these are the same thing? Perhaps it "made sense" to sacrifice people to make sure the sun didn't disappear in the context of Aztec civilization, but surely it wasn't true that the continued shining of the sun was dependent on cutting victims' hearts out on an alter.

Yet the idea that our conversations and practices and generative of all truths would suggest just this. That "makes sense to" is synonymous with "is true." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that’s my position. What we call true is what makes sense or works in a given context. Does truth exist as a separate property outside us by which we can measure other civilization's truths? I don't think so. We just have different models we use to make sense of the world. But that's no small thing.

Ok, did reality truly behave this way before we found it useful to say it is so? Either it did, and there was a truth about these "constraints" that lies prior to, and is, in fact, the true cause of, human practices (i.e., these constraints were actually, really the case, that is, truly the case) or else it was our own sense of "usefulness" that made the constraints truly exist in the first place. Or, did these constraints which shape practice and conversations actually exist, but it wasn't true that they existed (which is an odd thing to say)?

If practices are necessary for truth you cannot posit constraints that lie prior to practices as the cause of those practices without denying the truth of those constraints it would seem. For they only become truly existent when declared so in practice. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don’t see what this gets you. To talk about a constraint before us is to say nothing intrinsically meaningful about it. To say that there are things in the world that limit us ( but not always or forever) also says nothing about truth as such. It’s just a contingency, a product of our interactions with a world. Not arguing that the world doesn't exist. What we consider true comes from our experiences and the conversations we have, which are always changing.

my individual ipseity would be bound to another that I do not experience, but the place I hold in the world would still be fulfilled. — Moliere

Funny, you say this, I've speculated similarly. But it's getting a little into a strange form of determinism. :wink:

It is likely that my experience is based on living in an area with more gang culture than I was used to in the past. — Jack Cummins

Yes, that could do it. What part of London are you in?

Can you find a safer area?

Sorry to hear about your experiences. I imagine that would be horrible and would remain with you.

I do wonder from interaction with people from gangs if part of the problem is such people's lack of sense of any real.personal identity and significance, which is projected onto those being attacked. — Jack Cummins

Well I guess gang folk tend to be in a tribal subculture which rewards aggression and violence. No doubt there’s also trauma and deprivation involved. Certainly that’s the case for gang members I’ve worked with, not that it’s many. But I have worked with many violent offenders.

Take care out there, JC.

f truth only exists inside the context of human practices—is indeed dependent on them—what truths could we possibly be missing such that we are not omniscient? Wouldn't our (collective) lack of possession of all truths itself show that all truths aren't actually dependent on us and our practices, for how could they exist without our knowing of them if our practices make them true? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you saying that if truth only depends on us, then we should already know all truths, but since we don’t, truth must exist independently of human practices?

Huh? All I’m suggesting is that we interact with our environment and build stories, models and conversations to explain things. What we call truth emerges for a process. This is in constant flux and never reaches capital-T Truth. But many different models will be useful for certain purposes.

Did the Earth lack a shape prior to man and his practices? Or did it have a shape but it wasn't true that it had that shape? If man once again began to believe the Earth is flat would it "become flat again?" And if it wasn't round before man decided it was round, in virtue of what did evidence suggesting the Earth was round exist? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Saying the world was flat made sense in the context of what we knew at the time. Now it makes sense to say it is a sphere. Today most of us obviously prefer the latter, and it's more justifiable. But where will we be in 1000 years? Will we still think of the world as a material entity, or might we come to see it as a product of consciousness, rather than a physical object? I note also that there is an emerging community of flat earthers and globe deniers. Is Trump one of these? :wink:

If all men died out it would cease to be true that man ever existed? So likewise, if we carry out a successful genocide and people come to forget about it or don't find it "useful" to bring up, it ceases to have ever occured? — Count Timothy von Icarus

If people forget, it doesn’t make events vanish from some independent reality; it just makes them irrelevant in our ongoing conversation. Saying they 'never occurred' I would say is framing this wrongly.

Why would people find it "useful" to formulate such truths if they weren't already the case, and why does it seem prima facie ludicrous that it "would be true that sheeps and pigs could produce offspring just in case everyone found it 'useful' to affirm this?" This is the problem with the dependence claim. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’d say this misunderstands what “truth depending on humans” means. It’s not that anything could be true just because we say it is. Things in the world still constrain what we can do. Our conversations and practices are built around those constraints. We find some statements “useful” precisely because they help us navigate reality as it seems to behave. Saying that truth depends on humans doesn’t deny the existence of a world, physics, or animal copulation, it just means that what we call “true” comes from the ways we describe and make sense of our world.

Of course, I could be totally wrong about all this. It's my current preferred frame.

There is so much brutality and violence, and indifference to violence often too. — Jack Cummins

What are some examples? I imagine the London of 1890 woudl be tougher and nastier than today's?

I live in a big city (5 million people) and there's stress and violence here too. But much of it is also a beat up by right wing media to justify law and order clamp downs and pander to aging and fearful consumers of tabloid journalism who lap up this stuff.

I sometimes question the idea of “dehumanization.” What could be more human than judging, shunning, or abandoning others? What is more persistent, more universal, than our tribal instincts, our constant need to carve the world into “us” and “them”?

The point being that these laments about the value of humanity and our ethical reatment of one another doesn't track so nicely to general societal attitudes, religious orientations, or competitive spirits as it does just to old fashion adherence to morality. — Hanover

I don’t have any firm commitments on any particular side here. I am glad to be alive now in this era and see nothing intrinsically moribund about the times we are in. I do, however, notice traits and themes that are unattractive, but every era has its issues.

. You can be individualistic and egalitarian simultaneously. — Hanover

I see no reason to disagree with you.

doesn't track so nicely to general societal attitudes, religious orientations, or competitive spirits as it does just to old fashion adherence to morality. — Hanover

Maybe. But isn’t this a bit of an ouroboros? Isn’t an old-fashioned adherence to morality itself a product of contingent factors, like traditional values and broader social contexts?

Someone can knowingly sell cigarettes or cancer causing products and be very successful and live a very happy life. Period.

If other people were aware of him they would probably revolt — Barkon

No. Gangsters, autocrats, thugs and CEOs may continue unopposed despite everyone being aware of who they are and what they do,