Could there be an argument made that all philosophy since the ancients' should just be considered science OF philosophy?

I would understand this statement as studying philosophy but not practicing it. Right?

I'm not sure. There is just something "there" in ancient philosophy that isn't there in philosophy after Aristotle. Maybe it's the wisdom vs intelligence (or a better suited word). Maybe an over reliance on our limited senses/perceptions? Less to zero intuition?

I am currently listening to the gulag archipelago abridged version. I believe that we are being subjected to an invisible mental and spiritual gulag

[removed]

I quickly relise i'm not smart enough for this conversation. Do you suggest that we don't come up with anything new, but just recite and study old wisdom?

>Do you suggest that we don't come up with anything new, but just recite and study old wisdom?

No, not necessarily, but is the "new" still philosophy? Is it just science Of philosophy? Or intelligence, but not wisdom?

Are you suggesting that the contributions of Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and so forth are all just science of philosophy? Do you intend, further, that there is otherwise nothing new in philosophy since Aristotle?

Could an argument be made? Yes, you can make an argument for almost anything.

Could a good argument be made? I doubt it.

I would be interested in the argument if you can make it. You might start with explaining what you mean by "science of philosophy." To me that is a very vague phrase.

I think it’s also worth noting that philosophy, in a sense, is inherently un-scientific. Abstract concepts do not lend themselves to objective quantification and therefore cannot be measured in a way that fits the scientific method, at least in my opinion.

Edit: typos

I think the study of philosophy, if done intelligently, in indistinguishable from its practice. If you study a philosopher and his or her thoughts, and draw your own conclusion from those thoughts rather than taking them at face value, then are you not practicing philosophy?

Quite right. Very good point.

>Do you intend, further, that there is otherwise nothing new in philosophy since Aristotle?

There is "new" of course. But isn't it just "building" on Aristotle like science of his philosophy. Idk. I can't make the argument itself. Which is why I said "could" there be an argument. Maybe I should have said "could there be a good argument".

Something doesn't feel right about post ancient philosophy. Just seems like "the science of". Can't put my finger on it. In A history of Western Philosophy I remember Russell explaining the difference between science and philosophy. And post ancient philosophy just seems like what he described science as...

Ok. I understand.

But what you are writing is not philosophy or even about philosophy.

You say "something doesn't feel right" and it "just seems like the science of" something on which you can't put your finger. But it seems like something Russell said about the difference between science and philosophy.

There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't get us anywhere. It's the sort of thing one hears from college freshmen in a course of Introduction to Philosophy.

I, sort of, understand what you are aiming at. It is your responsibility to make it clear and argue for its correctness -- i.e., defend it.

That is western philosophy, probably since Thales, certainly since Socrates.

Lol I'm less than a college freshman. In philosophy at least.

Doesn't matter. You might actually have an insight into something important. I think you should develop that idea.

If someone does something you view as bad, but in their mind it is without a shadow of a doubt doing good, do you still consider them evil? Or just misguided? Many places around the world have different, often conflicting beliefs. What seems like a normal every day part of life to someone on one side of the world may seem like a heinous crime to someone on the other side of the world. But if they have been taught that it was just normal, or it’s just what you do since birth to adulthood, can we really call them truly evil when to them it’s just how it’s always been? It’s what they were taught to believe? Or take someone who grew up in a different time period. They were raised on specific values and beliefs since birth, let’s say in the 40s. Now it’s 2022, they held on to the beliefs they were raised with, but today those beliefs seem barbaric, cruel…. Evil. Does that make the person evil? Because they stuck with what they were taught? Because they held on to those beliefs that at the time they were young were the absolute right beliefs? Think about this and remember that no one will truly know who is right and wrong, who is good and evil, until either judgement day arrives, or the world just ends and we die knowing nothing. And reflect on the fact that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” no matter who you are. Because no matter what you believe in, no one on this earth has the answer, only the creator(s) of the world itself know for sure, or maybe their isn’t an answer and no one is wrong or right. We have wars over beliefs, and yet truthfully neither side could ever know who is truly right.

My Claim: Postmodernism is a flawed ideology that not only defies logic itself, but contradicts its own position...

The following quote is from the link. It is a pillar of the belief system that postmodernists hold.

"Postmodernists contend that there is no objective truth, rather truth is constructed by society. All ideas of morality are not real, but constructed. Consistent with postmodern doctrine is the belief that institutions, such as science and language, are oppressive institutes of control."

The problem is how people of past and present believe postmodernism to be true. To prove it is not and support My Claim above, one only has to read Postmodernist claims, and think for about 5 seconds. Thus, one learns that any claim made by postmodernism contradicts itself, as it is saying its own statements are true, while arguing that truth does not exist. A rebuttal would be "no it's to say relative truth exists, just not absolute" This rebuttal fails, because you just said an absolute truthful claim of "only relative truth exists" which postmodernism supports....but then.... proves incorrect......

It defies logic itself because anyone who is competent understands what color, laws, language, names, height, math, heat, brightness, emotion, history, smell, mechanics, physics, stars, etc are, and by doing so they understand that either these things must exist in the same state for everyone alive, or our entire idea of reality itself and the physical realm is wrong. The latter being true makes as much sense as saying "Tomorrow I will wake up and have superpowers. The next day, I will be able to go 2 months without sleep." In fact, a postmodernist may argue that such statement may be correct, because his truth is relative. People that have such beliefs are defined as crazy by society, and rightly so.

There are some things found in Postmodernism that is worth thinking about and is actually educational. However, the overall idea that absolute truth does not exist, morality is subjective (seemingly arguing that the world war 2 bad guy could have been vindicated?), and that objective reality doesn't exist, is not only dangerous and childish, but outright scary as this is an idea spreading centuries, with college professors having taught and still teaching their students such stupidity. In conclusion, if somehow the belief that truth does not exist is true, then we truly live in an upside down world, and I will gladly be flying like Superman tomorrow.https://theappalachianonline.com/opinion-truth-objectivity-and-postmodernism/

Based on The Phaedo's theory of the soul could an argument be made that Scientists are very young souls whereas Sages' souls would be the oldest?

I suppose it depends on your interpretation of the truth. I for one don’t view societal expectations as truth because each society has different truths, and thus no one will ever know which truth is “THE TRUTH”. It may also depend on spiritual belief. If you don’t believe there is a higher power, than maybe there is no truth. Each society creates their list of rights and wrongs yet no society is right or wrong because it doesn’t matter. If you do believe in a higher power, than the truth may only come from them, and no one will actually know the actual truth until they meet their maker.

True. Either man decides what's right and wrong, or someone/thing else does. If man decides what's right and wrong, then "You say theft is wrong? Well I say it's right... were both men, so now what?" Sure, the collection of all humans can come up with moral codes, but does that really PROVE that things like murder are wrong? All I see are a bunch of people sharing an idea.... (this probably ties into the idea that truth {objective reality} is dictated and spoken into existence by man himself)

Anyways, great post, and this question will probably never be answered, unless we can know that a supreme being exists or not, and we don't even know if aliens exist yet...

Personally, I think there is something in everyone that really does judge their own morality, and everyone knows what is true right and wrong (like charity giving/murder). I also personally believe that someone like the Las Vegas shooter, or the WW2 bad guy deserves no excuse, and no remorse. It's one thing to be misguided or taught something wrong, it's another to defile your conscious and ignore your own judgement repeatedly.

"If you don’t believe there is a higher power, than maybe there is no truth." But then you'd be saying the truth is that there is no truth. I agree that no one can know for sure all aspects of THE TRUTH, I think it's just easier to focus on objective reality, like the exuberant list I mentioned in my post (trees, heat, stars, etc). Imagine society if everyone had different interpretations of everything in existence.... We'd all be dead tomorrow "nuclEar exploSions will give Us iMMortaLity!"

Something: *exists*

Philosophers: "hmmmm?"

Have you seen that meme, lol

What texts do you recommend about Putnams account of perception Post-„Threefold Cord“?

What do you mean by “science” here and why would it be “just” “science of philosophy”? Particularly so since, say, someone like Hegel — well-read on and responding to ancient philosophy — deemed it necessary for philosophy to become science.

Why did he did he deem it necessary for philosophy to become science?

> https://theappalachianonline.com/opinion-truth-objectivity-and-postmodernism/

Is that article a spillover from the late 2010’s 90s-style culture war remake? Stuff like:

>To solve these problems, among others, Karl Marx, began drifting away from Enlightenment principles in search of ideas to eliminate the inequalities brought on by Enlightenment principles. However, the disillusionment with the Enlightenment occurred post World War I and II, when the technological marvels produced by science led to the slaughter of millions.

Doesn’t strike me as particularly productive. Marx pretty much continued the sort of critical philosophy that Kant (perhaps the most important Enlightenment thinker….or at the very least one of the most important ones) pioneered, the post-Kantians systematized, and the German idealists and their successors critiqued sympathetically.

The critique of Enlightenment ideals and conceptions of reason we see after WWII (like, say, Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School, i.e., the eternal bogeyman of a subset of the political right) strike me as perfectly in line with the very spirit of the Enlightenment, which is always also self-critical. Also blaming the disillusionment exclusively on science strikes me as misleading. There was disillusionment with the culture that spawned out of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment at large.

>Consistent with postmodern doctrine is the belief that institutions, such as science and language, are oppressive institutes of control.

Who actually claims this and what is their actual argument here? And more importantly, what is the context of this argument? This is an often repeated claim that isn’t entirely wrong, but I worry that it has taken on a life on its own, i.e. separated from actual postmodernist thought.

>If both sides are right and wrong, does that not prove postmodernism’s point that truth is up to individual interpretation? Not exactly. Aristotle solved this philosophical problem in ancient Greece when he theorized that truth and ethical behavior bisect between two extremes, called the “Golden Mean.” Since both sides offer truth and falsehood, given their rejection of the other side’s perspective, then it stands to reason that the middle approach is true, since it formulates a solution based on complete information. To answer humankind’s biggest question pertaining to truth is to find the middle between Enlightenment and postmodern philosophy. To choose one over the other is to look at the world from an incomplete lens. We should strive to reach a reasonable approach toward human progress while acknowledging our personal bias and give those with dissenting beliefs a platform.

Disagree. A better solution would be to first actually understand what led to the disillusionment with Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment ideas and what those critiques of them (especially those that still conceive of themselves as continuing the Enlightenment project or at the very least as laboring in its spirit) say. Especially since this issue doesn’t really seem to be confined to the post-war era:

>Paradoxically, the crisis of the Enlightenment arose from within, and indeed from its most cherished principle. The problem is that this principle is self-reflexive. If reason must subject all beliefs to criticism, it must also subject its own tribunal to criticism. To exempt its tribunal from scrutiny would be nothing less than ‘dogmatism’, accepting beliefs on authority, which is the very opposite of reason. The criticism of reason therefore inevitably became the meta-criticism of reason. If the Enlightenment was the age of criticism, the 1790s were the age of meta-criticism. All the doubts about the authority of reason, which are so often said to be characteristic of our ‘post-modern’ age, were already apparent in late eighteenth-century Germany.

Frederick Beiser’s Hegel, p. 23

It’s a paradox I suppose. If the truth is that their is no truth. It’s the same thing. The statement in itself can’t be proven true or false because it is both true and false. If we are talking very literally, than if everyone sees a different truth than either nothing would happen because no one could agree on anything, or anything and everything could happen. As for objective reality, for some people even reality isn’t reality. The philosophical idea of solipsism is the idea that the only thing that you can be certain truly exists is your own mind. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I believe that, but it’s an interesting thought that there are people that are not sure anything is true or real, even their own body. I guess that because the idea of truth can be subjective, anything or nothing could be any truth of any kind depending on your point of view.

I'm quite confused by your intentions, as you seem to be ranting against the article, but only provided 1 instance on your position about Postmodernism, which is what my entire post is about?

{Consistent with postmodern doctrine is the belief that institutions, such as science and language, are oppressive institutes of control.}"Who actually claims this and what is their actual argument here? And more importantly, what is the context of this argument? This is an often repeated claim that isn’t entirely wrong, but I worry that it has taken on a life on its own, i.e. separated from actual postmodernist thought."

Im guessing you downvoted this also because you don't like the source?

Here's Britannica-

"Postmodernists deny this Enlightenment faith in science and technology as instruments of human progress. Indeed, many postmodernists hold that the misguided (or unguided) pursuit of scientific and technological knowledge led to the development of technologies for killing on a massive scale in World War II. Some go so far as to say that science and technology—and even reason and logic—are inherently destructive and oppressive, because they have been used by evil people, especially during the 20th century, to destroy and oppress others."

Here's The Postil Magazine-

"To the Postmodernist, classical accounts of truth–like that of Plato’s–which use language via propositional logic, or other bodies of knowledge which rely on the experiential, reason, or narrative cannot tell us anything about the world, due to their use of language. The strong Postmodernist must therefore reject science, history, and philosophy, as they attempt to rationalize the world using language."

Here's Why Evolution Is True-

"Empirical evidence is suspect and so are any culturally dominant ideas including science, reason, and universal liberalism. These are Enlightenment values which are naïve, totalizing and oppressive, and there is a moral necessity to smash them."

3 more sources that provide a similar statement to "science and language are oppressive instituts of control". And the point of this argument, at least mine, is to prove how Postmodernism is one of the stupidest, incoherent, illogical, dumbfounded, illiterate, collection of jumbled words and jargon ever put on paper, let alone be spoken out of someone's mouth. While it sounds harsh, I still hold that there are some good takeaways from the theory itself. Especially when it comes to critical thinking, and bringing to light what truly cannot be known.

I encourage you to look at the beliefs of postmodernism, especially on Britannica, as they number the beliefs and explain them. I also would like to know your position on Postmodernism. And I also do not have any comment on Karl Marx, the Enlightenment period, how Postmodernism began, World War 2 technology, or anything other than Does Postmodernism make sense? Provide your explanation" I have already posted my answer, twice.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy

^HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING^

​

https://www.thepostil.com/postmodern-understandings-of-language-and-power-explanations-and-refutations/

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/09/21/postmodernism-explained-and-criticized/

"I guess that because the idea of truth can be subjective, anything or nothing could be any truth of any kind depending on your point of view."

I know some people think this way, but truly if society functioned on these beliefs, then everything we know would cease to operate. Courtrooms, marriages, nuclear power plants, you know.

"here's a video, photo, dna test, and witnesses all proving you committed the crime"

"all wrong"

"and your evidence to prove this?"

"it's my truth, and mine is just as valid as yours..."

"wow! well then, have a nice day! :) "

​

Or the classic :

"I'm a 9ft tall, 300 year old Martian from Uranus!"

"umm no, you're Bob. We've been friends for years"

"My truth is just as valid as yours >:( "

"oh, well hi Martian!"

​

​

What's your belief on Postmodernism, do you support it fully, partially, or reject?

The truth is like ice cream. You eat what you like and ignore the consequences, because after all it’s just ice cream. Some cultures like different ice creams than others, and that doesn’t mean any particular ice cream is better. Sure, you’d like to say the ice cream with cyanide in it is worse ice cream in some sort of objective sense. But you cant, because its ice cream

What was Rousseau’s ideology? I’ve read several things, some people say it is liberalism, some anti-liberalism… I have trully no idea because he had a very bad relationship with Voltaire, which makes me doubt too

Fascism baby, he invented it!

I wrote an intricate reply then my phone died. So, you should read Three Waves of Modernity and peruse Nietzsche and Modern Times by Laurence Lampert. In short, science is not the category but the branch. In other words, the scientific method is a particular type of philosophy but it is not an exhaustive definition of the later. Philosophy, on the political level at least, fundamentally deals in Noble Lies. Moderns chose to alter the application of such but that doesn’t mean that all modern philosophy is scientific. Rousseau and Nietzsche, in particular, certainly are not.

I had no idea! Why do you say that?

The common will — Rousseau framed the house, Hegel finished it!

I guess my stance on post modernism is complicated. I agree with it to an extent, but looking at it as a realist I can only comment based on how I see the world working. Your arguments make many valid points, but you look at them from a viewpoint where the ideology is trying to exist in the overall societal thought process. If our society was built off of the beliefs of post modernism instead of what it actually was built off of, than it all could work very well because we as humans would redirect how we understand things based on those beliefs. Basically we could have adapted. But because post modernism is clashing with modern beliefs of society, it’s seems more likely to be ridiculous. It’s like objectivism. People say objectivists can’t live in the real world, and that’s not entirely true. They have a hard time living in the world that we created, and thus must try to live like that against the majority. If time had been different and somehow the founding fathers had decided to build the USA with a different philosophy in mind, it could have been just as successful as people imagined. So I guess I have a question for you now. Do your views and beliefs line up with overall society? Because if they came from and were influenced by said society, than that society’s truth is your truth. But In my mind, this does not make it the absolute truth. And as long as there are even just a few people who believe differently than the only logic post modernism defies is YOUR logic. Because there is no absolute truth and we as humans will most likely never know as we can only comprehend so much, than logic itself could also be questioned and argued with. Please know that I am neither agreeing or disagreeing with you because as we both agreed, we will never actually know who is right or wrong. Now from a purely scientific perspective (assuming it is 100% accurate and is hypothetically speaking the ABSOLUTE TRUTH) than post modernism makes absolutely no sense. But from a perspective based off of beliefs, ideology, and knowing that you don’t really have THE TRUTH, than the arguments made hold enough weight for me to take it somewhat seriously from an interest standpoint.

What part of cognitive function are we born with, and what develops during childhood?

Problem solving and intelligence in general originate from the ability to make associations between pieces of information. For example, seeing a banana and seeing a fellow animal eat it, touching a hot plate and experiencing pain, or hearing a question and associating it with a relevant answer. What part of cognitive function are we born with, and what develops during childhood?

Trolley Problem modification 3 tracks 1 lever: Degrees of immorality when it comes to killing

I was having a discussion with a friend about the levels of murder and morality.

This led to the thought:

If one is decides they are going to kill yet they kill fewer people than someone else, then they are still morally wrong but "less bad."

Some thoughts from the discussion

1. Killing 1 is morally better than killing 5 and both are better than killing 100 etc

2. A modification to the trolley problem

There is a trolley on the tracks and there is 3 separate divisions. Track A is empty. Track B has 1 person on it. Track C has 5 people on it.

A lever that defaults to the neutral position controls the rails and can be pulled halfway or all the way with more effort, but once released goes back to the original position.

• By not pulling the lever the train stays on track A and no one is hit. -Pulling the lever half way and holding it changes the trolley to track B killing 1. -Pulling all the way changes the trolley to Track C killing 5.

If someone pulls the lever halfway are they "less bad" than one who pulls it all the way? Is "bad" even a spectrum? If so is it always a spectrum?

Any insights on this?

So, I have an assignment where in one of the questions that I need an example of egalitarian. Does anyone have any examples of egalitarian by any chance?

We will probably never understand the true nature of our existence

But that doesn't mean it's not fun to talk about! What are some of your theories?

One of my personal theories is that we could be something along the lines of nanobots, infinitely occurring chemical reactions that will inevitably consume whatever it has been set upon with the either impersonal or deliberate attempt at... something we could probably never understand the purpose of

The Sublime

I once heard (or maybe read) that daily exposure to the sublime is important. I think the point of it is to anchor your experiences and perspective of reality in the transcendent, awe inspiring, and divine. I often forget to engage in this kind of exposure. I do amateur astronomy and astrophotography but I usually get this sense of grandness and awe while engaged in thought about the nature of reality. When I happen to achieve this emotion - it's difficult to explain apart from "awe" or maybe it's kind of what religious ecstacy is like - I'm incredibly captivated by the idea of my existence in this world.

I often feel incredibly curious about what this is all about. I also often ponder human culture and how radically it changes from one Millenia to another, though the human animal is basically the same. This high variability in human culture makes the culture I know seem a bit arbitrary and absurd. It's like humans are so distracted by engaging in culture that those initial ideas, like asking why you're even alive, seems to regularly escape our attention. The nature of death, for example, remains uninspected until it finally surprises us all later in life as if we didn't really believe we were mortal all along. Our engagement in our culture - i.e., chasing money, a career, cars, houses, lovers, food, media, etc.. - distracts us from wondering about the nature of the reality in which we're engaging in that culture. This is true, at least for me, until I touch the sublime (usually in idea) and get sucked into the more fundamental, I think, experience of reality. However, I notice this occurs at night and I've also noticed that no matter how deep my thought had been through the night the next morning I wake up "locked in" to human culture once again. Each morning I wake up distracted and ignorant and some days I'm lucky enough to remember I'm part of something grand and wonderful.

I wonder now, how many of you experience this? Does it happen to you regularly? How do you achieve this? Feel free to comment how you'd like (obviously), I'm very curious.

Thank you for sharing this. I’m so glad to hear that others care about these ideas too.

I think meditating every night for the last 3 months has allowed me to get to what you might term a secular form of “The Sublime”. What I have observed is a gradual development of the ability to detach from human culture as you call it, in short bursts, throughout the day. The more I meditate, the more aware I am of the space between my environment and my reactions. In short, I can just exist. I believe this is one way to experience “reality” without all the cultural influences clouding it. Not sure if I’d call it an objective reality, but at least it’s one different from the usual culturally motivated one. Maybe it’s a different facet of reality.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that while in this state during the day, I often experience profound gratitude for being able to breathe, eat, sleep and experience the world. Gratitude is definitely heightened during and after my daily meditation practices, as well as feelings of forgiveness, benevolence and wishing other living beings well. There are also feelings that are quote unquote “unpleasant”, like despair, rage, terror and the like. I see all of these as part of the experience of being alive, something that non-living things cannot sense, so I count them as blessings and am interested in immersing in them fully. Overall, seems like the trend is towards being calmer, more deliberate with my choices, more comfortable with myself and accepting situations and others as they are.

Hopefully, the more I meditate, the more space I have to discern “reality” from cultural pressures. Well, at least insofar my senses and cultural background allows me to. What about you? Anything you do to trigger this state?

Hello,

Thanks for your reply. I don't know if it's a bit strange but I can enter this extremely wonderous and profound appreciation of life when considering what I think may be some really unexpected things. For example, I remember sitting around during lunchtime at work. I obviously wasn't particularly occupied at that moment so i could think about random ideas. I had my neck turned, I touched my neck and thought about how those muscles are all laid out so perfectly for my neck to work, then I considered my body and how amazing it is we are such complicated and, in my opinion, exceptionally impressive and precise machines, then I considered how the entire universe is organized in such a way that this is all happening for us/with us. It's so strange how you get there sometimes. There is considering the consequences of the idea of being the universe itself rather than separating yourself from the universe. There is considering the story of cosmogony so far.

You know, I find it interesting that you state you accept the pain of life and consider it a blessing - I agree. I once asked my father about what he would do if an asteroid was going to annihilate life on earth, would he go to a bar and drink or would he stand and watch it hit. He told me that he would choose getting drunk, he wouldn't want to see it coming. I found it pretty interesting to consider because death is a part of the experience of life as a mortal. Your death will only happen one time, would you want to fully experience the event? (I've read some pretty cool things about what happens when you die). It seems like most people would choose to look away. I think it's all a part of the story. I wonder, would you look at your death?

Can you explain this more for me, I am interested

Is it possible that behaviour is heavily influenced by the gut biome and other nerves/receptors that would otherwise be imperceptible?

How does that affect the concept of free will?

Could recent behavioral issues and seemingly increased neurodivergence be related to what's in the food stocks we eat?

What behavioral issues?

Egalitarian what?

I don’t get it…

My 9-year-old daughter told me the other day that the thumb isn’t a finger. I was floored, naturally. Apparently the situation Is more complicated as far the thumb/finger but there is the anti-finger school of thought.

But I care about the general moral. Which is- or could be- that I can be mistaken about a seemingly really basic aspect of a concept in that way.

This is well-trod territory post-kripke, but it is only hitting home for me now.

Of course many people found it disconcerting when the authorities concluded that Pluto wasn’t a planet. In retrospect the remarkable thing about that development is that it …

I researched the Pluto thing for 5 seconds and saw that the international astronomical union decided that Pluto is a dwarf planet. That’s still a planet, right? Short people are still people. So I don’t know what is the deal with Pluto.

Anyway, I think the fact about the thumb that is disconcerting is epistemological. I was brought up to think of philosophy as conceptual analysis. One could discern the nature of knowledge by learning which things one would apply the concept to (and which not). But my classification of things apparently can be dramatically wrong as a result of how other people are using that concept. (Or I guess what is the same concept.)

Some questions. Could the authorities conclude that green isn’t a color? Suppose physicists announced that. I think I want to say they could be wrong. The fact that the authorities announce a classification doesn’t make it automatically right. But could it be right?

I suppose the issue is internalize/externalism about. I don’t feel like I have very good evidence to rule out that there are authoritative communities saying that temporal passage is whatever or properties are such and so. But maybe I don’t need evidence. Maybe as long as I believe whatever about my concepts on the basis of reliable mechanisms and there in fact are not such groups out there then I know.

We are all being constantly polices for our beliefs and penalized for not conforming. Then when a figure is put in the spot light, subjected to the court of public opinion and sent to spend the rest of their days with this giant black spot following them. After which they seem to be discarded from society. Forgotten about and never to be spoken of again.

As a young man, just out of high school, I read Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape & The Human Zoo. Both books were enjoyable & they strongly reinforced my fledgling wariness of reason.
I accept we are creatures who evolved over billions of years & sometime in the recent past we began to develop language & civilizations. We are animals with evolved abilities like all creatures on this planet. Reason is an evolved ability that did not somehow leap past biological barriers & provide us with a god-like tool to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Sure we have honed this skill, language & mathematics have stretched its reach & scientific methods of repetition & peer checking have lessened many of the personal idiosyncrasies that have tainted research in the past.
However the faculty, that a lion uses to figure out when prey are most likely to be at the watering hole, is still the faculty that we are using. The lion could be said to be using the faculty in a simplistic manner while we are using it in a far more complex way. Okay, I can accept that. Still … despite the scientific findings & the technological marvels we have created, how does this faculty, when used properly, become limitless in its reach?
Reason can give us plausibility in our perceptual world. The lion has increased the probability of killing a prey animal by being near the watering hole at a certain time, but it is an increased probability not a truth: there is simply a higher plausibility of prey. Evolution has a high plausibility - I use my belief in this plausibility in my argument. There are myriad observations & experimental models to support this highly plausible theory. I step back from saying evolution is true; I stick with evolution is highly plausible. And I would add: Evolution is highly plausible "within our perceptual world." Same with the atomic theory or quantum mechanics - they are plausible within our perceptual world. Atomic bombs are very convincing.
When a person reaches the sophistication to philosophize, they have been nurtured, indoctrinated, trained, taught, practiced, & accepted by the societal measures used to gauge success academically. What constitutes correct reasoning & proper of language has been inured in us long before personal logic or philosophy of language concerns arise. We are primed to accept reason & put on a pedestal. It is very difficult to use the approved societal, scientific, or philosophical reasoning & language to knock reason off that pedestal.
As animals we sense; as animals we digest nourishment & expel waste; as animals we think to assist survival of the species. Somehow we've detached the latter ability from its roots. We are animals. With limited evolved abilities. We are in the present world situation partly because we deny our evolved limitations. We are a lion starving to death at the water hole because plausibility is not certainty.

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I think what you experienced is a sense of awe and I don’t think it’s strange at all. I think it’s wonderful and restorative. For example, authors like Brooke McAlary talk about how it can rejuvenate us and help ease climate anxiety.

When it comes to death, let’s just say circumstances made me aware of my impending non-existence since I was a kid. It’s shocking at first, the idea that someday you would stop existing. Over time I came to see death as part of life. Living beings make up less than 0.1^1000% of matter in the universe (stat is just to make a point), and of that small percent, we somehow have the chance to be self-aware and sentient. Maybe this can’t last forever, but I’m just grateful to be on the ride.

Because of my love of life, I think I wouldn’t look at my death. I know it’s coming, but I’d rather spend my time living life with my loved ones and favourite passions. My life philosophy is to savour my time, and the good and bad experiences that come with it, so I’d do the same if I knew my death was coming soon. I probably would think about my death only to enhance my gratitude for the experiences I’ve had.

What about you?

> Nurtured, taught, educated

> Trained, Indoctrinated

The mobile app won’t let me reply to your post in any decent way, but these things are opposites.

Opposites don’t always come in twos.

There are three prongs here.

1. Basic observation -> basic assumptions/hypotheses about causality coming from just what that one individual can see with the naked eye, without building off of anyone else’s experiences.

2. Schooling and indoctrination -> A set interpretation of the past imposed on individuals by society. Mistakes are enshrined as truth because they confirm the biases of some decision maker (that decision maker can be an individual leader, or can just as easily — more often — be a crowd/the majority).

3. Actual education means ruthlessly questioning beliefs and refusing to accept confirmation bias. It means ruthlessly breaking down inherited packages into the smaller blocks that make them up, and questioning who put those blocks together into that package, and why, and whether that system is still functioning, etc.

So if you stop at 2, or if you accept this idea that 2 is “reason” — that 2 is the limit of what “reason” can mean — then of course, “reason” isn’t going to get you much further than 1.

But 2 isn’t reason.

Isn’t this a signified/signifier thing?

I’ve heard of an example about two languages both having a word that more or less means “stool” and a word that more or less means “chair”, but then there’s some kind of seat where one would call it a stool and the other would call it a chair…

Either way, it’s not an issue of authorities.

The “authorities” didn’t decide that Pluto wasn’t a planet. Scientists discovered a celestial body far out in the universe that changed a lot of the models they were operating on, and when they tried to make new models — which are necessary and useful for understanding a lot of things, and for formulating new experiments to learn more things — they realized Pluto didn’t fit.

There’s a book, called “How I killed Pluto and why it had it coming” or something cheesy like that, that’s by the actual scientists involved.

As for colors… define “a color” and “not a color”. Could physicists discover some new aspect of light particles that makes primary colors so much more fundamentally different from secondary colors that it has to change even how these are taught to 4 year olds? I guess it’s possible.

It’s also possible for the evolution of human biology to fall over some tipping point, or for climate change to affect standard air pressure, or something so that the line between “red” and “infrared”, or between “violent” and “ultraviolet”, changes.

But short of that, “green is no longer a color” seems as likely as “five is no longer a number”.

If you think neurodivergence is a bad thing? Stop.

Neurotypicality is probably a myth, anyway. I mean, how can people claim to know how a person 200 years ago would have gotten diagnosed as today, if that person were…

• born into a situation where they had no option but to work on the farm their whole life, and/or pump out babies?
• born into a richer family, but thought of as “the odd one”, so they get either sent off into some war to die, or thrown in a back office to just file papers and never say anything but “yes sir”?
• Made it out of either of the above situations by being creative in the arts or sciences, their eccentricities shrugged off as “genius”; if they’re remembered at all today, internet mind-blown types want to debate whether or not they were neurodivergent but serious biographers and doctors realize you can’t just do that about someone who isn’t there, etc.

It’s not like people throughout history had as many options as people today.

Behavior is influenced by literally millions of things — every sensory input, even the ones we’re not aware of… which then awaken (consciously or subconsciously) memories, which are recorded (again, millions of sensory inputs every second, which get recorded and how?) and accessed for reasons we don’y understand and can’t control…

And the emotions evoked by a memory you didn’t realize you were remembering, that comes up due to a smell you didn’t realize you were smelling, nudges your behavior slightly this or that way, for better or for worse, times a trillion.

It’s like a pool table, but with as many balls as, well… atoms in your body.

“Behavior issues” in the past few years, like more public fights and loudness and rudeness comes from the spread of the belief that if you have any standards whatsoever, you’re a snob and a bad person.

(Signed, someone who’s legitimately autistic/neurodiverse/whatever word you want to use, and moved to the other side of the planet to be where people don’t do that rubbish. So don’t blame neurodiversity for assholes.)

When did “culture” start to mean “conspicuous consumption” as opposed to “art”?

I think I find something sublime in art quite often.

Whether it’s just a particularly skilled or intense or emotional performance of a song or a dance; or the character arc of a character I really care for in a piece of media with a longer story… art tends to be what gives me that feeling of just wanting to gasp.

Just wanting to… point at it and say, “This! This! Look at this! Just look at this!!”

I feel this way about things all over anyone’s highbrow-lowbrow spectrum, with no regard to those distinctions.

If what “culture” means to someone is the food selfies you post online to show off, I’d recommend picking up a book. Any book.

…. Stop me before I start talking about how sublime my favorite character is, but like…!!!

So you’re familiar with some of the further intricacies of the Pluto development. That’s cool. Is it true that Pluto is considered a dwarf planet? If so, that makes the idea that Pluto is not a planet puzzling in a different way. Generally speaking, blank planets are planets, just as far as how English works. I gather the phrase or its elements work differently here.

I don’t see the relevance of multiple languages since the phenomenon (Pluto, thumb, red) is intralinguistic.

You say it’s not an issue of authorities but you elaborate by emphasizing how what happened with Pluto was not a decision. That puzzles me.

I think you’re right that it’s not a matter of authority. I think the international astronomical union could look at the data, make some calculations, and make a false inference. I believe that’s how our concept of planet works. (Unlike say the supreme court’s interpretations of some legal issue, which arguably are dispositive.)

The thing that is distressing to me is how the theoretical adjustments can impact paradigmatic cases.

Don’t know what you mean by a tipping point of human biology. The number example had occurred to me. I gather you think you know that 5 is a number. Isn’t it possible that mathematicians concluded an annual convention just yesterday where they reassessed - as they do every year - how math should be understood? One of their conclusions was that 5 is not a number. It never has been. I assume the proper attitude isn’t to waive that hypothetical assertion out of hand, right? You should go look at the data, inferences etc to see if the whole new theory works. Which I gather is what the astronomers did for Pluto and what I could do for the thumb.

What’s the point of this discussion?

You’re trying to decide whether it’s “objectively” less bad…?

Why? To do what with?

There are reasons why there are such things as legal trials. One reason is to establish the facts of the case, and to make sure (with witnesses and evidence) that those facts are accurate. The other is to decide what should be done based on the laws. There’s a reason why laws will give a range of suggested penalties for things, not one absolute correspondence between people injured and time in jail, or what have you.

This reminds me of my response to the Argo problem. That is, “if you change the parts, how much do you have to change before it’s no longer considered the same ship?”

I think it always depends. To what practical purpose are you asking? What practical thing can you do only if it is the same ship?

I don’t think there can be such thing as “objectively, absolutely, the same object” — the object is made of a ton of smaller parts, anyway. How do you even draw the line and say “These things are one object, a Ship”, and “Those things are not one object, they are parts”? You only do it by practicality.

(tl;dr I am not a Platonist)

Isn’t this a question for neurologists, not philosophers?

Wikipedia is generally a good place to start

And it depends on what you mean by “liberalism” — freedom to do what?

Specifically on the topic of whether his ideas were freeing or repressive:

He believed in that sort of philosophy where everyone born into a group must be ideologically limited to the doctrines of that group, must not question those doctrines, must glorify those doctrines and through that glorification, work towards the advancement of the group. That dissenters from that doctrine should not be tolerated.

I am of the opinion that that undermines any claim towards liberality that one might attribute to him. But his time and place were so different from the present that if you understand his time, you can see how dissent was such a rare thing, and easy to condemn.

Again, context.

These labels like “liberalism” are really pointless unless you’re talking about one issue over a limited time-span. Freedoms often come at the expense of other freedoms. The thing Person A thinks of first when they hear the word “freedom” has everything to do with that individual’s priorities and circumstances in their surroundings.

None of them is “the truth”, every society is one limited perspective. To get a full, three-dimensional view, you have to combine them all, and discover even more views, that were never enshrined as anyone’s culture. Parable of the elephant.

Culture as in humans doing what humans do. Archaeology examines human culture, they do this by examining things like tools left behind. Culture is the thing that humans do. You get what I mean.

“You are Bob” = “Your name is Robert Smith. You were born 35 years ago in Alabama, and you were 25 before you ever met someone from outside the state. When you were in high school, you heard a genre of music you friends didn’t listen to, for the first time. You liked it. When you tried to share it with your friends, they beat you up. When you were a kid, you didn’t really like football all that much, but social norms say you’re not valid if you don’t like football. So you forced yourself to pretend you like it. Your friends still bring up that “crazy Chinese song” you showed them that one time 20 years ago, and make fun of it, adding more and more racist caricatures about Chinese people to the story year after year (when the song was actually Korean).

You know you can’t leave Alabama, because no one from your town can. Everyone believes this, believes they’re better off staying, believes that anyone who wants to leave is crazy, a traitor. Your parents wouldn’t let you go to college. You ended up following in the same sort of aimless jobs they did their whole lives. Nothing around you excites you — not like the videos you watch online, in secret. If anyone knew about them, you’d never be able to show your face outside again. Society teaches you to be ashamed of sex, though your male friends are always sharing sexual videos and saying abusive things about women, and their wives are forced to put up with it, because their mothers told them that the only alternative is to be single, and that’s the worst thing ever. But your videos aren’t even sexual, so why are you ashamed? They’re just different types of music that your friends don’t understand. Places in the world that you can’t travel to, because you’re stuck in Alabama. Documentaries about interesting things that happened in history, in distant parts of the world. Why is it wrong to like these? Why should they hurt you for it?

You don’t know why. You just know that they will.

You just know that it’s wrong for Bob from Alabama to want to travel to Poland or Peru. You know that it’s wrong for Bob from Alabama to like music from Korea or Romania. You know that it’s wrong to want to wear colors besides grey. You know that it’s wrong to not want to watch football. It’s wrong to drink wine instead of beer, or to not drink at all.

All of these things that don’t seem wrong… well, they aren’t wrong objectively. They’re just wrong for you because you were born as Bob in Alabama.

And you’ve been taught by your town all along that these things are not for you.”

“Well, I’m actually not Bob from Alabama” is one attempt at breaking free from those limits.

And it’s not necessarily a bad one.

Moving to another city and changing your name, and lying about where you’re from does not necessarily mean perjuring yourself if it comes to that.

(See also — about a billion crime dramas where the red herring is the smooth, well-set, probably mafia-tied businessman whose lies have nothing to do with the crime at hand — what he’s really trying to hide is that until two years ago, he was Bob from Alabama.)

Making an online persona where you can live a different life is also not a bad outlet, though it doesn’t solve the real issue.

The real issue is that it is okay for that person to want to do those things, no matter where they were born.

And obviously, that’s a mild example.

I would look.

It’s not about what I say or what they say, or what anyone says, it’s about the effect that it has on others.

I don’t think 2022 standards are that much better than 1940 standards or 1840 standards, or 740 BCE standards, or Ancient Roman standards or Tang Chinese standards or Viking standards or Aztec standards or whatever else.

I think all the systems are broken — still, today, everywhere. and need to be reevaluated.

Elephant parable.

They’re all broken in a lot of different ways. Only by bringing the whole world and the present and the past together and honestly examining without bias and without discomfort, can a positive system be built.

Mathematicians didn’t decide that 5 is a number.

The fact that you can pick up one rock, then another rock, then another, then another, then another, then stop, means that five is a number.

If some government decided that they were only going to register numbers in binary, or base 3, or base 4, then 5 would still be a number, it would just be written differently (say, as 101, or as V, or as ○, or 五… but it’s still the same number).

Physicists, artists, whoever you’d consider the “authority” on color didn’t decide what wavelengths of light are visible to the human eye.

When light enters the majority of human eyes that are considered “healthy”, the rods and cones in those eyes notice things about the wavelengths of the light, and send signals to the brains they’re connected to, and call it “colors”.

Doctors could decide that actually, colorblind people are the healthy ones, and seeing color is a disease. That wouldn’t change the fact that the majority of human eyes recognize light with 550nm wavelengths as a thing that English calls “green” (some languages don’t have a separate word for “green”, and use the same word for 470nm (“blue”) light as green).

(Tipping point of human biology after which point, humans who can’t detect red outnumber those who can).

> I'm quite confused by your intentions, as you seem to be ranting against the article,

I'm not "ranting" against the article as much as I'm pointing out how vacuous it is.

>but only provided 1 instance on your position about Postmodernism, which is what my entire post is about?

Who cares about my position on postmodernism? What I'm really suggesting is that both you and the author of the article aren't informed enough on what postmodernism even is to adequately critique it.

> Im guessing you downvoted this also because you don't like the source? >

I don't up/downvote on reddit in general, so no.

> I encourage you to look at the beliefs of postmodernism, especially on Britannica, as they number the beliefs and explain them.

Why would I look at a generalist encyclopedia, or even worse, a wholly unrelated evolutionary biology blog that relies on unserious polemics against "postmodernism" like Sokal and Bricmont's work or the output of a known grifter like Helen Pluckrose?

If I really wanted to deep-dive into postmodernism (something I'd have to do before critiquing it), I'd start with the SEP article on it. Or some threads on /r/askphilosophy. Or selected chapters from Garry Gutting's French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, or Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, or Cuck Philosophy's Postmodernism FAQ.

>I also would like to know your position on Postmodernism.

Postmodernism is a vacuous term that serves more as a bogey man for reactionary pundits than as a meaningful umbrella term for philosophical positions. Instead, why don't you pick out a "postmodern" philosopher -- either someone who embraced the term like Lyotard or, to a lesser degree, Richard Rorty) or one of those that get regularly accused of being postmodernists, like Derrida or Foucault -- and work through their output?

>And I also do not have any comment on Karl Marx, the Enlightenment period, how Postmodernism began, World War 2 technology, or anything other than Does Postmodernism make sense? Provide your explanation" I have already posted my answer, twice.

Why do you think it is wise to divorce a supposed set of assumptions and conclusions from the historical context out of which they arose?

Because they're either falling for typical pseudo-history of philosophy nonsense or are making fun of those who do.

>Rousseau framed the house, Hegel finished it!

I apologize if i said something to suggest I believe mathematicians made it the case that 5 is a number through some actions of theirs. I definitely do not believe that. But the hypo remains re the mathematician convention etc. That seems intriguing to me. But maybe it doesn't seem like an intriguing hypo to you. Or not possible. Or whatever.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

I suppose my point is man's abilities are evolved abilities - or they're not. If you dismiss injection of self-reflection by a higher power, what else can they be? We can only jump so high. Live so long, Think so far.

Prison: punishment or rehabilitation, Should someone pay their entire lives for a crime.

A news segment got me thinking about this and I’m curious what other perspectives are.

The article was about a teenage boy who murdered a teenage girl via strangulation. Because he was a minor at the time in my country you can’t release their name. He’s finished his sentence and is due to be released soon and the victim’s family want laws changed to be able to publicity name and shame him. They want to do this for “the safety of the public”.

I’ve seen Law and Order SVU episodes on a similar issue. In regards to rapists who finish their sentences. As weird as it sounds they normally focus on for lack of a better phrase run of mill offenders. Like I know these are horrible crimes but they aren’t Jeffery Dahmer or Dennis Rader level horrible.

And I’m conflicted on the issue.

On one hand I understand the idea. These people committed rape/murder which is awful and I wouldn’t want to live near them either. And the families/victims want them to suffer, I get that sentiment.

But if we give people sentences that they can finished/served even without parole. Shouldn’t we focus on rehabilitation first and punishment second? To make sure society is safe with them out? This guy, the one that’s a teenager, killed someone and he’s done his time shouldn’t we leave him alone and allow him to reintegrate into society? Or should we sentence all offenders like him to remain in prison their entire lives? I also feel like if we continue to name, shame and make this ex prisoners lives miserable their just going to commit another offence bring more pain into the world. And we would have been better off having them rot in prison.

What are your thoughts?

It is a well-established (though by no means universally accepted) premise of human behavior that negative reinforcement (punishment) is almost entirely ineffective past the age of reason (about four to seven years old) and of limited value even before then. Nevertheless, most people far older than that continue to desire retribution for an injustice. There are valid and good reasons for this desire, but that it can be a deterrent (a prospective negative reinforcement, in other words) is not really one of them.

As for rehabilitation, it, too, has a meaningful basis in the arena of criminal sentencing, but coercion nullifies the possibility of rehabilitation: a human cannot be forced to rehabilitate, they can only be convinced to obey. Also, the practice of providing heightened opportunities for rehabilitation to criminals contradicts the demands of justice, by essentially rewarding convicts for previous bad behavior and (if this can even be considered separate) effectively substituting advantage for retribution, in a social sense.

For imprisonment to be just and moral, it should be seen as simply sequestration, removing an individual from society. Whether it is a punishment or is an adequate opportunity for voluntary rehabilitation is for the convict to determine. Making their living conditions as sparse as humanely possible based on the nature of their crime is appropriate, but willfully (including through malicious neglect) making their circumstances intolerable or horrifying in a misguided effort to maximize either punishment or deterrence is not merely inhumane, it is counter-productive.

It really doesn't matter how severe or horrendous the crime was. The optimim process from a social perspective is whatever has the greatest statistical likelihood of resulting in a convict both recognizing and accepting the immorality of their actions and voluntarily choosing to rehabilitate themselves. And what we are currently doing in the United States is not that. A large part of the reason we have such a significant problem with crime in the US is because of the prison system in the US, although the teleologies are so complex that most people aren't interested in understanding how that is possible. And the people who most definitely (and erroneously) believe in punishment have any easy time convincing anyone who has any desire for retribution against lawbreakers to vote for the Wrong Wing Party, and spewing atrocious lies about anyone who does manage to understand that 'the beatings will continue until moral improves' is too much of a joke to even be funny.

"My parents whipped the hell out of me, and I'm a better person for it," is something that only comes out of the mouth of a severely emotionally damaged individual.

>We are animals with evolved abilities like all creatures on this planet.

Here is where your reasoning starts to fail. (Although, if I'm being honest, it was actually earlier when you said you were wary of "reason", by which I presume you actually meant logic, but let's skip that issue for the moment.)

We are animals with evolved abilities unlike any other creature on this planet. This alone doesn't distinguish us. Every species of creature has some evolved abilities which are different from all other species: this is part and parcel of being a distinct species. But with humans it goes beyond that, because of the specific ability we evolved to have, which is demonstrably unique in result.

>Reason is an evolved ability that did not somehow leap past biological barriers & provide us with a god-like tool to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Returning to that earlier point, then: reason is an evolved ability that leaps past biological barriers and provides is with a tool to unlock the mysteries of the universe. These mysteries become less mysterious therefor. Reason need not be "god-like", in fact it cannot be God-like, but overcoming biological (and other physical) barriers is exactly what it is for, and what it accomplishes. But (and this is the most important issue in all of philosophy, the key to unlocking all of the things about human behavior which are not merely biological abilities but the capacity to go beyond biological and physical barriers) reason is not logic. It is something more than that. It is, among other things, the ability to conceive of logic, and it must be greater than logic, it must transcend mathematics and deduction and even induction (or any other formal system) in order to recognize, discover, invent, or develop formal systems like logic, which you have been taught to identify and describe as reason. That, the limitations of logic, is what you are raling against, what you are wary of, and you are using reasoning to do so.

>The lion could be said to be using the faculty in a simplistic manner while we are using it in a far more complex way.

The lion uses no reason nor logic. The lion is logic, with no reason. It's genes are logic, the physics of the nucleotides and the proteins they "encode" is logic, the entire universe is logic, limited by mathematical laws although we know not how. But lions (nor whales, elephants, dogs, birds, apes, or fungi) have no consciousness, they do not have reasoning, they are unaware of the existence of biology or logic. They have no reason to be, they engage in no reasoning, and they are incapable of deciding how they should behave, they merely exist and do whatever their biochemistry causes them to do. Humans really are different. You can say that reason is an illusion, that consciousness is merely an unsolved engineering problem or a gift from god or a ground state of the universe, what you're really doing is denying the evidence. Humans are different. We aren't just a different kind of life, we are a different kind of matter, even though our biological existence is the same as any other life form and our atoms are the same as any other object. Our consciousness isn't a fiction, our language is not a logical code, and our morality is not simply social norms.

>I step back from saying evolution is true; I stick with evolution is highly plausible

You remind me of Richard Dawkins, stepping back from saying God isn't true, and sticking with God is merely implausible. Socrates' showed that accepting uncertainty is a necessary aspect of reasoning. Descartes showed that doubt is a fundamental premise of consciousness. But sooner or later we have to man up and accept the fact that being unsure if humans are moral creatures (and that God does not exist!) is a disastrous and unproductive pretense.

>as animals we think to assist survival of the species.

Animals don't do that, though. If they thought at all (they do not, though the neurological impulses in their brain is only teleologically, not physically, different from the neural impulses which are our thoughts) they would only consider, care about, or assist their own survival, and seek to be the definition of the species rather than merely a single creature doomed to die. Evolution is undeniable, the mechanism of natural selection is so absolutely true and unavoidable that even God, if It existed, could not prevent it from occurring. But knowing evolution is true (beyond the notion of causation itself, a mere fiction in comparison) does not mean that what some person or expert (or ALL people and experts, if we can imagine such a universal consensus) claims the implications of evolution are is likewise true.

>We are animals. With limited evolved abilities.

We have that one evolved ability which has no limit. We can imagine things that aren't real, and consider whether they should be real, and devise methods to make them real. Just because we are still animals doesn't mean we are still just animals. Consciousness isn't just sense perception with a larger neural network, it is a very specific and particular (and also holistic) perception (to be explicit and give it a name, it is self-determination and theory of mind) that isn't limited to senses (or sense) with a larger neural network. 😉

>We are in the present world situation partly because we deny our evolved limitations.

We are in the present world situation entirely because we have the ability to ignore our evolved limitations. The real problem is that we deny that, as you are doing. If we were just animals like any other, we wouldn't be in this mess. And if we accept the moral responsibility of reason, instead of trying to avoid it by confusing reason with "logic", we can work our way out of this mess, and any other situation we might find ourselves in.

> We are a lion starving to death at the water hole because plausibility is not certainty.

What is the water, in your metaphor?

We are apes trapped in a tar pit, unable to figure a way out because plausibility is as close to certainty as anything beyond cogito ergo sum ever gets. We cannot overcome metaphysical uncertainty (whether there is anything beyond our perceptions) and we cannot overcome epistemic uncertainty (whether there is anything to our perceptions) and we need to stop using that as an excuse for remaining stuck in this damned tar pit. 🤓

>man's abilities are evolved abilities - or they're not.

A false dichotomy.

>If you dismiss injection of self-reflection by a higher power, what else can they be?

The ability to dismiss false dichotomies, I suppose. Need they be more? Are you saying that because self-determination is not a magic power, it is therefore not real?

Please don't take those questions as merely dismissive rhetoric, I think they should be considered and answered. I entirely agree with you and empathize with your perspective, I sympathize with your premise. But you're ignoring the possibility that reason itself is an evolved ability, and I think I know why. There are three reasons, two of which I'll explain.

First, you rightfully believe that free will has to be a gift from God or else it doesn't exist. This is true, but it is also true that self-reflection doesn't require free will, just self-determination.

Second, you assume "reason" is logic. This is false, but it is also the assumption that modern and postmodern (and neopostmodern) philosophy (apart from theistic morality) has relied on (and been trapped by, it is a "tar pit") since the time of Socrates.

I had the same position you do, felt the same frustration, and was stuck on the same problems, years ago. Plus, I was even more desperate than you are to find answers, for personal reasons. And believe it or not, I managed to extricate myself from the tar pit by finding answers. I've been trying to help other people do the same ever since. Consider it plausible even if it isn't certain. What have you got to lose?

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

>But I care about the general moral.

Whether the thumb is a finger is not really any different than whether a hot dog is a sandwich. With all due respect for Kripke, if formal systems of any kind whatsoever could resolve such things, they would have been resolved long ago, whether by Kripke himself or by Aristotle or by someone in the interim.

>Could the authorities conclude that green isn’t a color?

Green isn't a color. Green is an experience of perceiving a frequency of electromagnetic radiation that opsin molecules most sensitive to ~535 nanometer wavelengths respond to. So the authorities say.

> Suppose physicists announced that. I think I want to say they could be wrong.

It seems like you are reticent to confess that, as if physicists, biologists, or scientists in general are priests with the blessing of God who must not be contradicted. This is scientificism, not science.

>The fact that the authorities announce a classification doesn’t make it automatically right. But could it be right?

Ay, there's the rub.

"Could" is something we mere mortals must deal with. Scientists (and analytic philosophers like Aristotle or Kripke) should stick with "is", and we should ignore them when they don't, because they are not priests providing divine revelations.

The meaning of words (like "finger" or "sandwich") does not derive from being codes for logically precise and consistent categories. Socrates was [mistaken ]( >But I care about the general moral.

Whether the thumb is a finger is not really any different than whether a hot dog is a sandwich. With all due respect for Kripke, if formal systems of any kind whatsoever could resolve such things, they would have been resolved long ago, whether by Kripke himself or by Aristotle or by someone in the interim.

>Could the authorities conclude that green isn’t a color?

Green isn't a color. Green is an experience of perceiving a frequency of electromagnetic radiation that opsin molecules most sensitive to ~535 nanometer wavelengths respond to. So the authorities say.

> Suppose physicists announced that. I think I want to say they could be wrong.

It seems like you are reticent to confess that, as if physicists, biologists, or scientists in general are priests with the blessing of God who must not be contradicted. This is scientificism, not science.

>The fact that the authorities announce a classification doesn’t make it automatically right. But could it be right?

Ay, there's the rub.

"Could" is something we mere mortals must deal with. Scientists (and analytic philosophers like Aristotle or Kripke) should stick with "is", and we should ignore them when they don't, because they are not priests providing divine revelations.

The meaning of words (like "finger" or "sandwich") does not derive from being codes for logically precise and consistent categories. Socrates was mistaken when he said that in order to know if virtue can be taught we must first define it. Substitute 'wisdom' or 'knowledge' or 'sandwich' for "virtue" it makes no difference. The definition of a word depends, innately, inherently, and intrinsically, on context. Whether a thumb is a finger or a hot dog is a sandwich depends on why you are using the word "finger" or "sandwich", not on the physical (or historical, or "conceptual") properties of fingers, thumbs, wieners, or food.

Conventional philosophy includes a supposedly unavoidable premise that words (or "concepts", a word invented to avoid dealing with this very issue/truth) cannot have communicative value in this fashion: they must be codes or else they are meaningless. Nothing could be further from the truth. (I mean that literally, not just figuratively.) Your intuition may tell you (since you have been taught according to this convention) that this informal/non-categorical/illogical method of words and language would result in incomprehensibility: that words would be unintelligible if their definitions were entirely derived from context rather than "authority". But the truth is, this is how words have always worked, since humankind first started using them. And it is worth pointing out that we started using them long before we realized we were doing so, and came up with the word "word" to identify and describe them, let alone before analytic philosophers started insisting they'd work better if they were a formal and logical system of codes.

So the reality (and I mean that, again, literally rather than rhetorically) is that scientists are authorities on science, which is about quantities and formulas, not words or reality. There are ways (contexts) in which a thumb is a finger, there are other ways it is not. It isn't really that confusing unless you want it to be. Your brain might be nothing more than an organic computer programmed by natural selection and operant conditioning, but your mind is independent of that, and is all about self-determination, reasoning, morality, and ignoring as much of what you've been taught as you need to in order to do better than those who taught you.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

Wonderful reply. Thank you. And you're right about the false dichotomy. And clever rebuttal.

If “they” didn’t decide that 5 is a number in the first place, how could they change and decide it’s not?

If some group of professors got together and decided to declare that 5 isn’t a number, how could that affect the real world?

They could send out some guidance of how math teachers are supposed to teach differently, but schools would all ignore it. There just isn’t any organization with that kind of power in most of the world.

Even if in, say, North Korea, they decided to try that, it would probably involve creating a new symbol or word for 5.

Math simply does not work if you try to pretend that adding 4+1 is impossible.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that there is no “they”. There is no board of experts that can make a declaration like that. It’s an extremely childish worldview to believe that there could be (again, aside from places like North Korea).

Humans realizing that they were wrong to label Pluto the same way they labeled Neptune, Uranus, etc. does not affect anything that happens in space. It’s the reverse, actually — when humans realize that their labeling systems are wrong, the humans must change. If a human scientist insists that since they learned xyz when they were a child, xyz must be true, despite evidence, then that human is not a true scientist and is harming humanity.

Saying “Actually, Pluto isn’t really a planet” (that is, “Actually, bodies in space under a certain size have certain properties that make them different from planets”) is no different from saying “Actually, the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around” all those centuries ago.

The whole “dwarf planet” thing was done to placate people who are uncomfortable with science, and that’s something any thinking person should be uncomfortable with.

(Also, if there were a board of scientists that powerful, tobacco would no longer be a thing. If only.)

Thanks for the response. There’s a lot there so I’ll just respond to a few.

First a very minor thing. I don’t think I was aware of this hot dog/sandwich thing. However, it seems to the situation as far as whether a hot dog is or is not a sandwich is surely dramatically different from whether Pluto is a planet. (I think that’s better as an example than the thumb or color situations, for reasons that I’ll perhaps get to.) With Pluto I take it at a broad level of description people are looking at whatever data, trying to systematize it in accordance with whatever empirical/logical criteria. And they say Pluto is or is not a planet.

Are there people looking at data trying to systematize analogously to figure out whether hot dogs should be classified as sandwiches in our best empirical theory of edibles? I guess sandwich and planet seem to me like relevantly different kinds of concepts with respect to a potential effort to discover how they carve up reality. But I’m open to persuasion on this.

As far as green being a color: I don’t think mainstream physics says green isn’t a color. I think they claim to have discovered the (admittedly surprising) nature of green and color, which is whatever involved fact about light and reflection and whatnot.

I am reticent to acquiesce in a conclusion by a group of investigators that really seems in conflict with how I thought my concepts worked at a basic level. Thus the 5 is not a number example. I imagine you’d be reticent to acquiesce in that alleged revelation?

Context: It’s interesting you mention that because I’ve been thinking along those lines for thumb, Pluto, etc. We take our concepts (I know you don’t like that term!) to connect up with reality as a team. So the scientists do whatever ferreting about planets and discover the whole affiliated team fits better if Pluto is not a planet. I assume my concept is theirs and therefore there is this chain reaction whereby I don’t think of Pluto as a planet.

I really should study in detail what these people are drawing on in the various examples (Pluto, time, thumb, monkey). I guess one thing I suspect is that they don’t care much about being faithful to a common concept of planet or finger or whatever.

I agree on the importance of context I think generally. But I think pretty much the same questions remain about the relationship b/been my planet classifications and the astronomers.

It seems like you are missing the thrust of the number 5 example. Here goes again. Possible: math professors get together to discuss (er) math. Possible: after much deliberation, math professors announce that 5 is not a number. They’ve recalculated, so to speak.

Do you agree the above are possible? So far we’re just talking people doing things of varying degrees of normalcy and weirdness.

Then enters philosophy: how should I as a person who strives to be cognitively responsible, respond? I assume I can’t just waive it out of hand. A lot of weird stuff has been discovered. Allegedly, a spatially located object could be neither in location A, nor B, nor… That’s a thing right? I mean if that weren’t already a thing and physicists announced it tomorrow, I’d say: what the what. Pass the joint, physicists.

Again: what mathematicians say don’t make it so it not so.

Those aren’t possible.

You have no understanding of math or science.

Right, so I have just read the Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway. it is described as brilliant by some and the precursor to identity politics Neo-progressivism.The core ideas are that the text criticises classical feminist theories by denouncing their faithfulness to that male-female distinction, and criticising all the faults of humanism: race, disability etc. Instead, we should go beyond (post) humanism to a less 'categorical' distinction in society.

Now, I don't understand how this text can be considered academic in the slightest. It is in the title, a MANIFESTO! It is an ideological discourse, no justifications are made whatsoever and it just comes in with sweeping remarks and emotional upheaval. To me, it represents everything that is wrong with Philosophy today and the reason I personally do not want to pursue academic philosophy anymore.The main critique for me is moreover the effect it has had. A justification I can see for its ideological discourse is that it makes you think, it makes you want to explore this subject further by giving you an emotional response. Okay, fine. It also seeks to improve society by challenging concepts of gender, race and many 'woke' theories today follow in its footsteps, and judging by Donna Haraway's more modern writings and lectures, was supposed to allow that.

My main critique here is: We have destroyed the male-female barrier and replaced it by 81 barriers and distinctions. Is that really what it was all about? I simply don't understand. If the point of this text was to break down the barriers, why has it contented itself by creating 81+ barriers instead of 2?! In regards to race, this text has certainly not brought about the destruction of 'race' but instead has resulted in the fortification of race as a distinction of humans. Race is now an identity, more so that it ever was.

What happened, then?

> whether a hot dog is or is not a sandwich is surely dramatically different from whether Pluto is a planet.

Not really even a little bit, for all the reasons already discussed, as I will again explain:

> With Pluto I take it at a broad level of description people are looking at whatever data, trying to systematize it in accordance with whatever empirical/logical criteria

Nope. Now, granted, because the issue with Pluto is a very limited one in several ways, your mistaken notion of systemization is closer to being realistic. But it highlights the inadequacy of that model at the same time.

First, in that case there undoubtably is an explicit authority involved. And in theory they are only dispassionately determining what category and object belongs in. But what happens in real life? Rather than describe the issue as "whether astronomers call Pluto a planet or a dwarf planet" becomes "whether Pluto is a planet", with 'dwarf' planet being a 'demotion' (whether something is a "dwarf" is no different than whether it is a "sandwich", syntax be damned) and a tempestuous argument because it involves whether school children will learn the same "nine planets" their parents did.

Words aren't words in science. They're merely alphabetic symbols for mathematical quantities or logic categories chosen to resemble words, effectively as a mnemonic device. Science works well, because math (aka logic) works well, for physical objects, which can't intentionally change their behavior because they don't like what someone said. Whether you should care about what a scientist says depends on whether the math works out, it never actually has anything to do with the meaning of the words as descriptors for what they measured to produce quantities for their calculations. Unless you believe scientists are priests who's moral dictates must be followed, they are not in charge of what words we use.

Now the problem is that the word "science" is, like "finger", a word. Whether something is "science" actually depends entirely on why someone might call it science, or why someone might not. We again are taught that there is a "concept" or "category" the label confers and by which we can infer validity and certainty in an absolute sense, and there are, of course, good reasons for that notion.. But they revolve around the justifications for calling something science (the process, the empiricism, the mathematical predictions of future objectively quantifiable results) not any magic power the 'label' has. 'Science', ultimately, is a word, and like all words it isn't a label for a logical category of "thing", it is an identifier and descriptor who's validity depends on whether it is recognized as accurate within a particular context, not any existential ability to be calculated True of False in a universal sense. People who are emotionally certain that language is (or must be, or wouldn't work unless it was, or would benefit by being) a formal system then invent new 'categories' like soft science to maintain their faith in their assumed conclusion when their initial argument can no longer be defended. Is psychology actually science or a scholarly tradition of myths? There are philosophers (themselves assuming conclusions and wishing dearly for philosophy itself to be an analytic science) who insist that all science is myth-building, and only consciousness truly exists.

>Thus the 5 is not a number example. I imagine you’d be reticent to acquiesce in that alleged revelation?

I believe you really mean whether 5 (or any other number) is real, rather than whether 5 is a number. I am very familiar with the "located in time and space" criteria. I would not describe my position as reticent, acquiescence, or allegation, but actual revelation: it is the same question as whether a hot dog is a sandwich. As an object, all sandwiches can be located in time and space. As a category of thing, "sandwich" does not occur in time or space. Whether a restaurant puts it in the "sandwiches" section of their menu is as potentially trivial and potentially consequential as whether astronomers regard Pluto as a planet, or whether school children learn to recite that categorization as if it was a fact.

> I guess one thing I suspect is that they don’t care much about being faithful to a common concept of planet or finger or whatever.

They definitely do; their entire worldview would unravel (according to the dogma of their faith, although in real life the change would be less dramatic and more beneficial, since their worldview is inaccurate in this regard) if words weren't empty symbols used as arbitrary labels for "concepts" and logical categories for "concepts" which are themselves "concepts". This explains the supposedly revelatory explanation of the status of a thumb as a finger that initiated your dive down the rabbit hole of existential epistemology because it rocked your worldview.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

Funny how often the acts to promote races and genders only create larger barriers

Exactly!

I believe self awareness is just a small part of the brain like a cog in a system and we aren’t a being or person but a small function in survival. And I believe I “die” each time I zone out. The part of the brain we exist in transfers information across the brain and we do not consciously exist until something stressful our mind cannot properly comprehend comes into play. And like a computer we can retrieve memories from our mind to help make choices and create scenarios. But ultimately it is all we can do before fading out. No matter how stressful something is, do it enough and u zone out. It is a”sad” reality but like the cat in the box, if u wait 100 years to accept the cat is dead, it won’t change the state of the cat. Feedback is appreciated, I’m just beginning my philosophical journey.

>I believe self awareness is just a small part of the brain

Self-awareness isn't a part of the brain at all. But it is the most important property of our brains, regardless of what proportion of our neural processes related directly to conscious thoughts. Survival is a minuscule consideration, in comparison; even creatures without brains survive and apparently act with volition.

>And I believe I “die” each time I zone out.

Then you are using that word very differently than everyone else does. Your outlook seems bleak and cynical, which isn't unusual these days, but isn't as necessary as your postmodern analysis suggests.

>It is a”sad” reality but like the cat in the box, if u wait 100 years to accept the cat is dead, it won’t change the state of the cat.

I presume you are referring to Schrödinger's cat. That cat remains alive no matter how long you wait to open the box. But it doesn't die until you cause it to assume that state by opening the box; half the time, anyway.

> Feedback is appreciated, I’m just beginning my philosophical journey.

Start with this.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

[deleted]

I'm reading and writing about Nietzsche's Death of God and the ethical systems preceding the enlightenment. One major problem that we face is the lack of, for the lack of a better term, "grounding" of current moral system. Consider the three major ethical traditions now

Utilitarianism - Any high level version i.e. Rule Utilitarianism will collapse into Act Utilitarianism

Deontology - Lack of context in making ethical decisions

Virtue Ethics - Slightly better but still relativistic.

Furthermore, both 1 and 2 don't have axioms that appeal to fundamental moral intuitions. Before even talking about what is moral, we have to examine whether morality is objective. This is where a lot of the criticism occur especially from Moral Anti-realists or immoralists.

I believe we're looking at the issue in a different angle. We don't need to prove that Morality is objective, in its complete epistemological sense. That problem of true objectivity may never be solved. Science, for example, is reasonably objective. Mainly due to the problem of induction. If we prove that Morality is objective in an equivalent manner, there could be a ground to based it off on. Here's my Primitive Argument. Feedback very much appreciated.

Preliminaries

Let C denote the context (i.e. the circumstance being referred to). Let K be the set of knowns (i.e. everything the rational agent knows about C; sensory inputs and common virtues are examples of this). Let M denote the method grounded in rationality and H be the hypothesis i.e. a questions that has either true or false answers. The conventional usage of mathematical functions maybe used here. Either M(C, K, H) = true or M(C, K, H) = false

Virtue : A Quality deemed to be Good

Vice: A Quality deemed to be Bad

True Objectiveness : The Statement at hand is known to be true, or false, regardless of what any rational agent might ascertain.

Lemma 1: Any Scientific conclusion doesn't hold the property of "True Objectiveness"

Proof. Let's take a hypothetical context C. The knowns while using the scientific method are the senses, denoted here by K_{S}. Assume we reach a conclusion M(C,K_{S}, H), regarding hypothesis H, B for instance. Let's say a non-human being approaches with a new sense S_{N} and analyzes the context. There is very well the possibility that M(C, K_{S} + {S_{N}}, H) offers a new conclusion - B_{N}. Hence, we can't claim complete objectivity over the scientific method.

Note that this is a different way to put forth the problem of induction.

Reasonable Objectiveness : Science is assumed to be reasonably objective

Theorem 1 (The Cultural Argument): There are a set of moral knowns, M_{K} either virtues or vices, that are part of human essence

Proof. Let's outline the argument.

Premise 1: Morality is a concept that exists in human society

The idea of what one ought to do exists in society, whether the answer maybe agreed upon or differs.

Premise 2: Significant differences in Morality can be seen across different cultures

Cultures could mean anything from Religion, Tribes to even different languages. For instance, the morality of Buddhism and Islam is significantly different due to the cultural differences (religion here)

Premise 3: Throughout human cultures, a common set of virtues or vices are shared

There are cultural arguments to be placed here. But inductive anthropological evidence is already present.

Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies - https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/701478

Conclusion: Common set of moral knowns are independent of culture and therefore part of the human essence

Primitive Moral Method: The Right thing is to uphold the moral knowns, unless conflicting virtues and/or vices exist in the context.

Lemma 2: Primitive Moral Method is reasonably objective"

Proof. Suppose the primitive moral method isn't reasonably objective. That means the answer, it only applies to moral questions with answer by definition, must be conflicting dependent on observers. But both the observers can't be human, because inductive anthropological evidence dictates that they share the common virtues necessary. Hence a non-human agent who is rational has to exist with a new moral known M_{N} , that must gather new conclusions. But this is the reasonable objectivity permitted by the scientific method. Therefore, a contradiction arises. Q.E.D.

After this I have a similar argument where morality of specific context require upholding virtues embedded in that social context i.e. the telos. For instance, Schools are for learning, Hospitals are for healing etc. Here an equivalency can be drawn between this and language, similar to Wittgenstein.

Goal is to show that a moral method like that is reasonable objectivity similar to science and language. Hence if we reject it, we have to reject science and language.

Would love some feedback. Thank you!

what philosophy books do you recommend for a beginner? and fyi im currently reading the courage to be disliked!

https://youtu.be/wgsBtYDHcaU

Idk how to reply like that. But Part 1 I believe memory would be the most important part. And nonetheless our consciousness is just a physical part of the brain. Survival is still the foundation all philosophy comes from. We just seem to focus on the why and quality of parts.

Part 2 I’m trying to get to absolute root of why? In all actions. I suppose the necessity of my thoughts and conclusions hasn’t bin a concern of mine.

Part 3 The cat is still dead even if we do not know it is dead. The presumption of our awareness having any affect on the universe is backed by the same reason as magic

Part 4 Thank you for the recommendation and time. It is very appreciated

>Idk how to reply like that.

While creating a reply comment, select the appropriate text in the comment you're replying to. Use the pop-up menu to choose "Quote". Or, just type a 'greater than sign' (>) and then type or paste the text you want to reply to.

>And nonetheless our consciousness is just a physical part of the brain.

I'll presume you meant 'emergent property' rather than "part", and ignore the attendant question of whether an intellectual abstraction qualifies as "physical". The issue then is whether consciousness is an integral aspect of the [human] brain or is an epiphenomena (an inconsequential side effect). Survival is not the foundation of philosophy, it is merely a prerequisite for philosophizing. The substance and topic of philosophy are all those aspect of existence beyond mere "survival".

>I’m trying to get to absolute root of why?

In POR this (both the question and the answer) is identified and described as the ineffability of being. The conundrum you face is familiar to every four year old and their parents: questions of "why" can only be answered by statements that might satisfy either party, but never actually resolve the issue (teleology) because that answer in turn can simply prompt another query as to 'why?'.The approach conventional science and religion uses is referred to in POR as "turtles all the way down".

>I suppose the necessity of my thoughts and conclusions hasn’t bin a concern of mine.

It really should be. And I think it actually is, or you would not be here trying to discuss philosophy. The necessity of your consciousness is the absolute root of "why".

>The cat is still dead even if we do not know it is dead.

You are simultaneously misrepresenting the truth of the gedanken and misunderstanding the philosophical implications of that truth. The cat is not dead until the superstate of being both alive and dead collapses to a finite state of either living or dead. Your assumption (which seems reasonable in reality but is physically incorrect in terms of quantum mechanics and Schrödinger's Cat,) that it is dead even if we do not know it yet, is inaccurate. Schrödinger's cat isn't dead until you open the box to find out whether it is alive or not.

>The presumption of our awareness having any affect on the universe is backed by the same reason as magic

Up until you start talking about that damned cat, meaning you are referring to quantum physics rather than biological organisms, sure. But metaphysical uncertainty is real even outside of the spooky weirdness of QM. It's just easier to be in denial about that until the empirical experiments and math of physics makes it undeniable, forcing you to confront it's reality. You say your awareness cannot have any effect on the universe, but that assumption is backed by the same reason as a baby who thinks that things stop existing when they can no longer be seen.

The resolution to all this requires an unconventional perspective, which POR provides. The effect of your consciousness only needs to have a minuscule impact on the universe in one very particular and specific case in order to have an effect on the universe. It does not have to be a general effect or affect, as in "magic", to be real. That one real and necessary absolute root of being, where your consciousness can change what happens in the physical universe, is self-determination. Since the conventional approach you are relying on for your thinking can only explain self-determination as "free will" or an illusion, your approach fails, because it is neither.

Thanks again for your time. Hope, it helps.

I’m still to new for this and like half of this flew over my head, I’ll return someday.

I would like to hear some opinions on The Republic and of the substance of the Republic. Socrates started debating with a rich man. And the issue that came up was is it better to be a good person or better to be a seeming good person but take every opportunity to cheat and get ahead. Basically the premise of the rich man was you want to seem good to make friends, but also be realistic ("be evil") to get ahead. Whereas Socrates argues that you should be good, and from what I remember he then justifies it by saying "good people" know both good and evil. Whereas an evil person only knows evil. It's been some time for the exact arguments, plainly.
But when I attempted to read it again a couple years ago, I was feeling the rich man was making better points than Socrates and I actually didn't get past the first 20 pages because of it. Are you able to flesh out the argument of particularly Socrates better than myself to kind of defend him?
And also, if you don't lie to yourself, I think a lot of people definitely try to "seem to be good" to make friends, it's one of the most natural things we do. And when opportunities arise, we make crude survival based decisions, like "that's a pretty girl" I'm going to try to go out with her. Or "that's a pretty girl, oh she is limping? I think I'll pass, let's not tell my conscious self I just made that really cold analysis." Once we have the Mighty Seat of "might makes right" equation, I think our feeble minds take it much more times than we suppose, conscious of it or not.
Maybe there is a spiritual element to "doing what we would want others to do unto us" - which is essentially what Socrates defines as "good people" Anyhow, I would like the Socrates part of the argument to win, but I want to be cautious of using the childish argument, of "because it's good" and "good beats bad", and so Socrates has a better argument.
Because right now, I think I'm more in the camp of the rich man, because I think it is the more realistic conservative opinion. I might try behave differently or "properly" because it's what I prefer, but maybe I'm not being very rational about that. If you happen to support the rich man, then, I can't blame you.

Does anyone know the difference between circumspection and comportment in Heidegger's B&T? Because they are slightly phonetically similar too, I find myself not even differentiating the two terms when I read them, until I question it after the fact. Heidegger really seems to use them interchangeably, but I probably am just not familiar enough yet with the jargon to understand the difference. Could anyone please help me make sense of this distinction?