I mean... would it help if I pointed to Hagger's Trait Self Control and Self Discipline?

I'm not quoting some article on BuzzFeed here I'm summarizing decades of research and what I said isn't controversial it's just accepted understanding of how human beings develop psychologically to regulate their actions in a social dynamic.

As such there just isn't any such single thing (or couple of things) as what you're asking for (except, of course, for lists of citations by link depth).

Link depth would be shown on Hagger's Google scholar (approaching 5k/year) but that's just an appeal to popularity. You really would have to read a few studies in order to get a feel for how most psychologists describe self discipline/self control. — SkyLeach

Whoa there, Partner! You don't need to come on so strong. :wink: If you are having trouble expressing yourself succinctly, you can just ask questions of clarification rather than have an information dump. We're all freinds.

You said:

What is truly more terrifying then religion, however, is the absence of both religion and philosophy. Without being armed with at least one, individuals cannot exercise self discipline and must therefore have discipline imposed upon them. It guarantees that only a tyranny (and a very strict tyranny) can hold humanity together. — SkyLeach

Now let's just tease this out. It might help if you slowed down. What makes you think this statement - which is jammed packed with choice ideas - is true? What evidence do you have?

Josh's argument is, if we get rid of the notion of blame, then we get rid of the root cause of anger. — L'éléphant

Yes, and the idea of ridding ourselves of blame seems to me to be almost impossible to accomplish, even if it's the right thing to do. We struggle to rid ourselves of pride, jealousy and greed - could blame become the 8th deadly sin?

is it really philosophically correct to not assign blame for the wrong done? — L'éléphant

Can you find a way to defend blame in a way that 'redeems' the notion for Joshs?

Tom, any conjectures as to the "incomplete ideas" which might be unique to each system, or common to them all?

For example, Berkeley needed a transcendent Master-Mind to preserve, maintain, and explain the existence and inherent organization of ideas if and when they were not being perceived by any human mind. — charles ferraro

Exactly. That's what I mean. The sorts of questions these expressions of idealism raise for me are: If everything is mind then why can't we change the world mentally? Why is there so much consistency between the experience of people? Why can't I read minds or be read? How does the 'physical' world remain stable? It seems clear that an overarching mega-mind is needed as the ground of all experience.

The notion of a Big Mind or cosmic consciousness which is not metacognitive seems intriguing to me. Berkeley has a version of Big Mind that is essentially God, so his idealism is guided and I imagine in some kind of reflective dialogue with all that is.

Indeed. Or is transcendence another way to fill gaps in incomplete ideas?

:up:

Our reality is not the expectation of reason. Could Romanticism be the problem? — Athena

I think this is often the case and yes, we do tend to idealise people and institutions out of all proportion. A certain path to bitterness and cynicism is to have one's ideals and romantic notions trampled upon.

Naiveté isn't romanticism; viciousness (Hitler, Stalin) isn't romanticism either. — Bitter Crank

Interesting you chose them - two men who were obsessed with romantic imagery and music throughout their lives and who had the most cloying, sentimental outlooks. It seems often to be the case that the most brutal of men are also the most sentimental.

Would we still call it punishment if we believed that the other’s motives were not only in their own interests but in the interest of those they allegedly ‘wronged’? And furthermore, that we agree that given the level
of their understanding at the time they took action, their actions were indeed the best they could
possibly do?
Would you punish a child who locked a nose-bleeding friend in the closet because she was told by another child that a bloody nose is a deadly contagion that can wipe out a whole community?
Or would you teach them what they would like to know anyway?
Do we punish individuals who ostracize deviants because the medicinal folk ways they grew up with i. their very traditional cultures tell them the deviants are
evil? — Joshs

That's a useful series of questions. I'm seeing your broader point.

Going back to Gendlin, what is the difference between anger as an emotion or felt meaning and does he provide an account of blame? I am assuming he would see anger as sometimes having a useful role.

a certain conception of blame is at the very heart of both modern and postmodern philosophical foundations. — Joshs

I'd also be interested in a few points on this.

What I am suggesting is that we can get rid of the concept of blame, but only when. we stop thinking of motive and intent as potentially arbitrary , capricious , vulnerable to bodily-emotive and social conditioning and shaping. — Joshs

I'll mull over this. I've never really taken the idea of blame very seriously. Do animals get angry and does blame play a role?

Do you think that anger and blame are also the only way we can think of to improve certain situations where the other acts in ways that appear capricious and ‘wayward’ to us, such that our anger tells us we can ‘ knock some sense’ back into them? — Joshs

I think anger satisfies an emotional need and I believe many of us seethe in hatreds and bigotries already and we are always on the look out for events or cues to activate these emotions. I come to this from work I have undertaken with violent offenders over the years. If this is not relevant please let me know.

I was just making an observation based on Josh's OP feel free to ignore it.

Yes, I think a key attribute of anger and blame is that if can feel so righteous and satisfying and can provide purpose and structure to people's lives - a narrative built around a grievance can bring forth a worldview and one can feel 'blameless' and perhaps even 'sacred' in this process. I also think that for many people an event may be used to activate anger which is already there waiting for an ostensible justification and convenient flare up.

Even a summary at that level would fill multiple pages in order to supply just the biblio links. — SkyLeach

I wasn't asking for a thesis, just one or two points towards evidence of your observation. :wink:
You might even cite or quote someone else who has done the work. But if you are unable to back up the claim, that's fine.

Why have multitudes embraced the Christian miracles, whereas myriad other miracle stories have been dismissed? — ucarr

We're going around in circles. Maybe you just have a need for the the Jesus story to be true and it suits you dismiss Islam and Hinduism and their miracle stories which are still very much from a living tradition. Miracle stories are so common it's scarcely worth noting them. What is rare however is actual miracles.

Why do televangelists fall like bowling pins, whereas Jesus and other divines keep surviving? You can count their names on one hand. — ucarr

People have a need for stories to help them cope with the struggles of life. You know that. There's a reason people take drugs and drink too. Even when the brands change. Televangelists seem to bounce back from scandal anyway because the followers don't really seem to care about ethics as much as they care about belief.

These antiquities are a philosophy perennial. — ucarr

Sure, but they had help. For centuries you were put to death for disbelief in Jesus or Allah. And powerful universities run by dominant groups determined and maintained the tradition of what counted as scholarship. It was never just about quality.

I'm thinking of the job of the philosopher. Isn't it to explain why one particular set of myths has staying power across two millennia? Maybe it's more the job of the psychologist, eh? — ucarr

The job of the philosopher is to help determine whether tradition is worth preserving and to test the truth or merit of ideas which are often popular despite the harm they cause.

.

Maybe. Although for Schopenhauer the English translation could also be 'energy'. The problem with 'mind' however is that it brings baggage. In the case of the aforementioned thinkers, the mind they are describing is instinctive and not meta-cognitive and does not relate to or communicate with people or have plans. It is not a god surrogate. It's a funny kind of mind.

Why hasn't this vast array of good news deniers done the work of creating & promoting a venerable book of denial, dating from the time of Jesus, or have they? Perhaps you think the history of science is a kind of bible of rational denial. — ucarr

No, it's just that I don't accept your over-aching premise that there needs to be an equal and opposite tradition to any given religious stories. In most cases people are free to just ignore magic stories whatever their source. There is no need to erect an edifice of oppositional doctrines.

:up:

You miss (or perhaps avoid) the point. It isn't just atheists who think the Jesus story is a myth. Many theists consider the tales to be bunk.

An appeal to tradition is a logical fallacy.

All religions have venerable stories of great deeds, gods and miracles - do you believe them all? Because if you accept the New Testament on the basis of an ongoing tradition then you need to accept Islam too or Buddhism or anything else featuring 'amazing stories', ancient doctrines and old books.

Depression can result from "abnormal" brain chemistry, and that fact is uncontroversial. — Janus

But if we take the view that brain is simply what mind looks when seen form a certain perspective, then are we are faced with a chicken and egg question?

both Berkeley and Fichte seemed to have successfully eliminated Kant's Thing-in-Itself as a material cause, but both ultimately were forced to reinstate it as an Absolute Mind. — charles ferraro

Interesting - Bernardo Kastrup calls it Mind at Large. Inspired, it seems by "Will" from Schopenhauer.

*

Jesus, being claimed as the physical manifestation of God, obligates atheists to refute the resurrection of Jesus as God in the flesh.

Since atheism denies the resurrection of Jesus on the cross, it must refute verbal evidence handed across two millennia with contrary evidence, say, another verbal account, contemporaneous with the crucifixion of Jesus. — ucarr

You realise that many theists think Jesus died on the cross, or may not even have lived. Islam and Judaism for one view the Christian Jesus story as wrong. As do other faiths.

Claiming Jesus was an itinerant preacher about whom legends were constructed is not just an atheist position. I even know Christians who think Jesus was a mortal - an ethical teacher rooted in Jewish tradition.

It's one thing to argue for a god on the basis that there are as yet unexplained issues in physicalism. All of which sound like fallacies from ignorance. It's another thing entirely to use these gaps to state the case for a particular god. We could just as well argue that humans are part of an alien experiment in evolved apes. Or whatever.

Then there's the issue of atheism and argument. I suspect most people don't care about arguments or intense displays of reason being bent in all directions. People are atheists because the reasons for god/s are not convincing and the religious stories seem child like. But mostly it's not possible to believe if you lack a sensus divinitatis. Nothing can be done to make god/s seem relevant.

The real problem is the weak-arsed nature of all the god's who refuse to show up and communicate directly to people but leave proof of their existence to a priestly class and to fan fiction and to laborious arguments.

What is truly more terrifying then religion, however, is the absence of both religion and philosophy. Without being armed with at least one, individuals cannot exercise self discipline and must therefore have discipline imposed upon them. It guarantees that only a tyranny (and a very strict tyranny) can hold humanity together. — SkyLeach

Sounds like a riff off Jordan B Peterson to me. What's the evidence for this idea?

Thanks for this. It's not quite what I expected, but I guess I'm not sure what I did expect. :wink:

No need for an apology - we're just shooting the breeze. I don't think it is subtle. It was directly addressing your point about harm. I think the problem with identifying risk taking behaviour is that it is often undertaken because it meets some other important goals. These might be ontological in nature and help people to survive.

I'm not interested in debating the functionality of drug use so I'll yield to you on this subject — Average

It's not a debating point. This functionality goes to the heart of your argument about harm. You just replaced heroin with alcohol precisely because you failed to see the broader point.

Anyway I think I'm done here. Maybe we can chat about theory things later. Take care.

The cat looks the way it looks to anybody that looks at it (either tabby, ginger, tortoise-shell, male or female, relatively large or small, and so on), so the way it looks cannot be constructed by my mind, even though it is mediated by the kind of mind and sensory setup I have. — Janus

Fair enough. So for a phenomenologist Kant's metaphysics and idealism in general is of no particular value?

I believe there is no definitive "wrong" way to live. — Jake Hen

Whether there is a right or wrong way to live will likely depend on 2 things. 1) on whether you believe there is a foundational or transcendent purpose to life. If so, then obviously there is a right or wrong way of living. And 2) most people have a worldview which holds values. If they live in a way those values are subverted then you could say they have gone in the wrong direction subject to their value system. It can often be very hard to live with yourself if you betray your own values.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to communicate with this sentence but it strikes me as strange to say the least. — Average

It's not in the least strange, it's just that you aren't following. People use heroin (or whatever problematic behaviour you wish to include in your example) for the benefits it brings - which may be assessed by the person as being more useful to them than the potential harms.

If this really is the case then just substitute heroin for alcohol. — Average

Then you've missed my point about the functionality of drug use.

Some people aim to get high by using heroin but does the mere fact that you were aiming for that outcome make it good for you? — Average

Yes. It all depends on what you value as 'good' from a risk assessment perspective. Getting high versus risk of overdoes. Pure heroin, by the way, is less harmful that alcohol on the body. Consider also those people who use heroin to deal with post traumatic stress disorder from, say, childhood abuse (a fairly common thing). Many of those people will say that heroin saved their lives. It made life bearable and prevented their suicide. But, given the risks, there comes a time when a lifestyle change is recommended.

Sure. Collaboration with what? The noumenal or the cat? :wink:

How would a phenomenologist describe the nature of a person's experience of a cat?

I don't even know what that means. It seems to be some sort of weird inapt analogy between grasping with the hand and grasping with the mind; I'm not seeing the relevance. — Janus

I think he's saying that your understanding of the cat is constructed by mind, not the thing itself...

I had another thought, or maybe it's the same idea as my previous post. I have often thought, and more than once written on the forum, that a belief in objective reality requires an objective observer. Someone who can stand outside the reality we experience and see it as it really is. The only entity I can think of that could fill that role is God. — T Clark

Not sure exactly what your point is, but it sounds a little like Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology wherein God is seen as a properly basic belief, the necessary foundation for objective reality and coherence. This is worked up from Kant's transcendentals.

:up: :fire:

Much philosophy is dogma and antithetical to philosophy. There are plenty of examples here on the forum. And no, I'm not talking about you. — T Clark

Sure. There's too much dogma everywhere. It's worth identifying when we see it, whether it be religious or secular.

Religions borrow from philosophy. Christianity had an entire worldview based upon Neo-Platonism. Some people would regard religious figures like the Buddha and Confucius as philosophers. I think much religion is dogma and antithetical to philosophy, in as much as wisdom isn't valued as much as obedience.

I also think that a person's ability to harm themselves and screw up all relationships is not unusual amongst people of high intelligence.

What if the result you were aiming for is bad for you? — Average

Same answer as above.

If the result is bad and you didn't see it coming, who knows? We need an example of what specifically you are thinking of. All I am trying to convey is that outcomes are complex.

Do you have some sort of reasoning you could use to support this conclusion or is it simply something we are supposed to accept without evidence? — Average

I would have thought this was obvious. If you are aiming for a bad result and you achieve this then you were successful. There's nothing in the notion of intelligence that implies moral virtue. Hence the cliché of the evil genius.

it might make sense to act in a way that leads to bad outcomes in certain situations. — Average

If you are intending a bad outcome then that is a good outcome. :cool:

Gore Vidal once defined an intellectual as anyone who can understand an abstract.

I don't have a definition of intelligence but I generally think of it as 'skill solving problems and using information'.

What do you think intelligence is so far? You can't have no idea.