If it is the case that he was just repeatedly pushing the same position over and over without engaging with the criticism laid at his feet, then fair enough. — I like sushi

Basically yes. On this particular topic, no less. I don't really like it, but Bob kept skirting around the guidelines with respect to racist and homophobic viewpoints. It was also explained to him in his more recent thread why : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1031074

I know I've quoted this before, but it's worth reading the relevant part of the guidelines carefully:

Racists, homophobes, sexists, Nazi sympathisers, etc.: We don't consider your views worthy of debate, and you'll be banned for espousing them.
— Baden

This is not rhetoric. It reflects a substantive judgment about what does and does not count as a legitimate object of philosophical debate.

Every intellectual community draws boundaries around admissible positions. Refusing to treat certain views as worthy of debate is the baseline judgment that makes good philosophical debate possible.

TPF is not a platform for discredited intellectual frameworks, particularly those belonging to a long line of justifications for racial discrimination. Views which presuppose racial essentialism, whether framed biologically, metaphysically, or in thought experiments, fall well within the category of those positions we do not consider worthy of debate. — Jamal

And the most recent post, now deleted, was basically this but towards homosexuals, a topic previously discussed between he and I where we told him "This topic is not worthy of debate here".

So he has been warned multiple times on the similar theme of putting forward views that are not considered worthy of debate, being told directly that this is not how we do things here, and he went ahead and posted anyway.

I like Bob, and don't really relish losing him. But this was done as gradually as possible, as I tend to like to do, and here we are.

Question and Answer, Attempt 2 at a paragraph by paragraph because it's reading more easily now with the knot in Affirmative Character I tied myself in untied.

1. I think your post with Edit here is an excellent introduction to that opening paragraph and lays out a lot of the conceptual background going on very clearly. Nicely done. :

2. That the new ontology could not be critiqued by the individual subject's consciousness opens the door to the heterenomous social order through the threat of deeming the concerns of consciousness as merely ontic. In the early days of neo-ontology this was openly evident with Husserl's switch from the oblique intention to the direct intention. The critical philosophy delimited reason and phenomenology wishes to get past the category to the object as it is; i.e. to get past consciousness. And yet the general categories of Heidegger are meant to anticipate all the possible fullness of all of existence, a second refrain of absolute Idealism.

3. Even so the critical philosophy continued to have an effect on philosophy by receptively receiving and describing Absoluta from the positivistic sciences or in the manner of the positivistic sciences, in all of their contradictoriness. Absolute knowledge here is an intellectual intuition. The mediations of the subject are hoped to be cancelled out rather than acknowledged and contextualized. The desire to break from the Kantian critique becomes a new conformism. Without critique the categories stand as absolutes chosen capriciously which sit there like Aristotelian natural Kinds for the philosopher to see and describe, which that reduction to Naturalism is the sort of thing Husserl meant to push against. But rather than something radically new it doesn't take long to figure out just what social norms are meant.

4. In contrast, and in parallel, the idealistic strand of philosophy moved along through the positivistic philosophy which exempted what the untutored often think of as properly philosophical as proper philosophy: Kant's discipline on metaphysics rendered philosophers an academic niche which could not answer life's most basic questions which the phenomenologists were concerned with. Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche signify this mark as a difference from the specialized niche of positivistic philosophy and the necessity to become "anti-academic" to pursue the deeper questions/not-niche-academic. The new ontologies of the phenomenologists then are making this non-academic break into an academic position: An audacious move befitting a youthful philosophy becomes a cadre of academics with specialized terms that are themselves abstractions rather than the things themselves.

5. This developments are to be expected given the ontological needs problematics. Yet here we are with what is meant to be a return to the things themselves, an overcoming of the subject which satisfies the ontological need, with a philosophy that has become what it sought to overcome and hence has a miasma about it. To keep the chase alive the question is emphasized, but this is just for the new ontology to console itself in its failures. Proper philosophy does not stop with the existence of the questioner without an answer. The authentic philosophical question includes its answer, and not in the if-then pattern of research. Rather the authentic question is modeled on what's been experienced so that it might catch up to that experience: there isn't a given, or a thing itself to which we return, in asking the authentic philosophical question but to the experience.

6. Idealism tries to drown out this subjective mediation of the question and answer by "deducing" itself from its own form and content, thereby "flattening" out the mediations. By contrast thinking which does not claim the origin should not shy away from saying, no, I am not the producer of the object but instead, as an experiencer I am giving back to the object what the object already has. In the moment of expressing the thought in the "I think" we cannot deal with consciousness thought in the more mathematical manner whereby we deduce answers that satisfy questions. Philosophy which attempts this ring false because they postulate that there's a difference between thinking itself and what thinking is about precisely where the two are one: the object is experienced by an experiencer and a judgment takes place which the object is meant to fulfill. (I want to say "But there is no need for this because...")Only what is true can truly be understood by philosophy. (We can't deduce the truth before the judgment as the idealist, nor do we separate the truth of the judgment from the object as if to be able to derive "ahead of time" or outside of experience that the judgment is true) If you don't participate in this process of judging the stringency of a theorem then you do not understand it -- that stringency has its own content that can and must be judged (rather than derived, idealism, or immediately answered with a quick and clear question with appropriate procedure, positivism)

7. There is no judgment without the understanding, and there can be no understanding without a judgment. We do not have a problem which is a mere question which judgment provides a simple solution to, a temporal if/then of a question which provokes an answer that satisfies the question. Philosophical proof is mediated -- rather than the scientific model of oblique intention -- but the fiber of this proof does not disappear in this mediation as it does in the Kierkegaardian dissolution of the answer into the questioner continually questioning. The "proof" is rather in the effort of judgment which attempts to answer with proper expression such that our expression can become commensurable to this desire to fulfill discursive thought through a question/answer. This critical reflection is not of philosophy but is philosophy.

8. Although Hegel claims to derive the non-identical from the identical he never gives an accounting such that the question is simply answered in his greater Logic. Rather the answers are implied through the manner of setting out the question.

I've tried retyping this one out and I'm still scratching my head to give it this closer rendition I'm attempting:

While he sharpened the critique of analytical judgement to the thesis of
its “falsehood”, everything is an analytical judgement for him, the
turning to and fro of the thought without the citation of anything
extraneous to it. That the new and the different would be the old and
familiar, is a moment of dialectics. So evident its context with the
identity-thesis, so little is it circumscribed by this

But the rest: As our philosophical thoughts yield more to experience the philosophical thought becomes closer to an analytic judgment. Becoming aware of a part of cognition is itself cognition: the subject prepetually producing judgments as the Idealist mind perpetually created existence. But by relying upon experience, these close-to-analytic judgments, we let go of the absolute that the new ontologists and positivists have given chase to in their rejection of (and eventual inevitable return to) Hegel.



Honestly still scratching my head on paragraph 8 now, but wanted to revisit this and give it a more proper attempt.

And why the reference to liberalism? What did liberalism once think it was? — Pussycat

I have a guess here.

Liberalism took itself to be a universal political philosophy which ought to rule, and the managed state with markets has fulfilled this vision -- capitalism is everywhere enforced by a giant web of rules around property, and everything is owned: including us.

So what is substantive about the subject becomes this ability to function rather than to be. It's one's relationship to the wider liberal order that gives people worth, and thereby shapes their subjectivity to the point that who we are doesn't matter as much as how much we own.

It is just a guess, though, trying to make sense of the phrasing. I'm not certain about the epistemology yet but it's something to think about as we keep reading.

Do you mean, "The intro to this TV show looks so goofy without the music"? Or something like that? — Pneumenon

Yes, that's what I mean: i.e. our senses are different yet they are still thought of as "bound together" in what I'll call the subject such that our overall experience changes with one sense. Our perceptions are altered by the total sensorial experience (both in the sense of ignoring some senses, like touch when watching a movie, and in paying attention to hearing and site which combine together into an experience)

I can try.

There are managers of the world. They live within a liberal state with politicians that are the managers of those managers, or lackeys of the banks -- managers again.

In the managerial liberal world there's a path provided whereby a person can excel if they do such-and-such, and if they don't then they'll be punished and encouraged to do such-and-such, or else eventually end up in the military or prison.

This idea of a managed world -- where everything we must do is dictated by what we know -- is what Heidegger pushes against, and Adorno agrees with.

But Heidegger does it in a romantic-poetic sense, which would be fine if he were not a fascist.

So "the subject" is lost in these managerial categories directed towards GDP, or other things, rather than being about what we're dealing with -- they aren't categories that even try to reveal what is, but only what makes number grow bigger.

There I can see a connection. The bit which is obvious is that Heidegger loses himself in fascism, which is bad, whereas Adorno did the opposite.

OK, this morning I was up to the task and tried reading it your way and it read a lot easier. I think you're correct to say that it's Heidegger's categories and not Kant's -- I was retro-reading the second paragraph into the first, but if I just read it straightforwardly then it flows a lot better and makes more sense.

Thanks for picking up on that.

So to try again:

Affirmative Character, attempt 2

I think you got this right:

The ontological need guarantees so little of what it wishes as the misery of the hungry does of food. However no doubt of such a guarantee plagued a philosophical movement, which could not have foreseen this. Therein was not the least reason it ended up in the untrue affirmative. “The dimming of the world never achieves the light of being.”1
— Adorno - Affirmative Character

He starts by saying that wanting something really bad, doesn't make it happen (against wishful thinking). And then he somehow excuses Heidegger for his short-sightedness. But I didn't much notice the quote of the dimming of the world, until later. When I googled it, I got an AI overview, saying "that humanity's self-inflicted obscurities (like pollution, evil, or spiritual apathy) prevent true understanding or fulfillment (the "light of being"), creating a state where darkness becomes normalized rather than overcome by genuine enlightenment", as well as a link to a gallery exhibition, but not its author. Then I noticed the superscript index 1, only to see:

1. Martin Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens [From the Experience of Thinking], Pfullingen 1954, p.7.

Wow, it's from Heidegger, the man himself! Why on earth is Adorno quoting him? Well, it's because the world's dimming got to him too, plaguing his philosophy. So Adorno used Heidegger's own saying against — Pussycat

carries out the sentiment of that paragraph, though I want to highlight the part that had an "ah-ha!" moment for me:

. The horror
of this, the dawning consciousness that the subject is losing its
substantiality,....

So he is critical of Heidegger's project but sees how the subject is becoming lost in a series of functional, rather than substantive categories -- into the liberal managed state.

But then Adorno goes on to critique Heidegger's philosophy -- and I agree with you in calling it pre-critical in the sense that it resists/evades critique (but doesn't perform critique as much as try to uncover these buried categories in a phenomenology of language)

The reference to Kant is meant to point out how Heidegger doesn't adequately address the critical philosophy, but ignores some of its insights such as its concepts or categories. Instead it waves it away with the imputation of ontological commitment:

rope in: persuade someone to take part in an activity despite their reluctance.

So Heidegger was reluctant to engage critically, but had to make it seem like he was doing critical philosophy, in order to turn Kant's noumenon into a positive ontology. Moreover, he made it foundational and pre-critical, thus barring it from critique, paving the way for acceptance and conformity to the status quo. Well, he didn't like critique very much! :razz: — Pussycat

[Kant's critique] . . . indeed tolerates the assumption of an in-itself
beyond the subject-object polarity, but leaves it quite intentionally so
indeterminate, that no sort of interpretation however cobbled together
could possibly spell an ontology out of it.

How does that look?

Less confusing than my first attempt, at least, thanks to help.

EDIT: Or so I hope so.

What, unconvinced of your own conclusion? :smile: — Pussycat

I'm uncertain of it now, yes.

The only error I see is this thing with the categories.

I said I'd do it this morning, but I'm afraid I'm going to do it when I have the energy to revisit. I didn't want to leave you hanging, though.

Exactly! This is Adorno's charge against Heidegger. — Pussycat

M'kay. That makes me hopeful in that I'm at least not entirely off track. :D

I'll have a reread tomorrow morning with your notes to see where I'm in error.

I'd never thought of that, that the aforementioned categories would refer to Kant's and not Heidegger's own. I think it would be really cryptic of Adorno to mix two different projects into one, without explicitly saying so, and therefore I do not agree. Besides, Heidegger's fundamental ontology has its own categories, what does it needs Kant's for? — Pussycat

Is it cryptic? I reach for it because he referenced the amphiboly and the paralogisms earlier. It seems on-point to me because Kant and Heidegger both address "the ontological need" in different ways, and Adorno is mentioning Kant in this text at least. What to do with that?

My take away from going over the amphiboly and paralogisms is that Kant's philosophy directly stops Heidegger's philosophy from lifting off the ground because it denies knowledge of the subject, whereas Heidegger's fundamental ontology is based upon that Being which I am, Dasein -- a sort of knowledge of the subject.

I don't know, though. This is just my first guess as I try to think through the text.

I think that you are over-thinking it, and over-complicating things, while it is simple. No matter what the problematic with Kant's categories is, they are not the focus here. Heidegger illegitimately moves past Kant, Kant is not even his stepping stone, just an obstacle that he bypasses out of whim, there is nothing of Kant in Heidegger, nothing at all, not even subsumption. — Pussycat

I could be. As I said these are just my first guesses in trying to make sense of the text at all.

I don't even have an argument. These are just my first impressions as I'm reading and attempting to make sense of what I'm reading.

How about norms that encourage people to share emotionally difficult subjects? In particular, men? Caught in the vice of 'toxic masculinity' that they embody if they talk about their feelings, but also if they don't? A vice that is tightened by the males and females both in their lives? — Jeremy Murray

For sure. I think such mores are very silly, but how to get others' to see that is sometimes hard to think through. I have no problem sharing my feelings on this subject, and tend to think that a genuinely mature man is one who is comfortable with their feelings whatever they happen to be -- the fear of emasculation is itself an extension of patriarchy, but if these social games are viewed as not just silly but counter-productive to forming good relationships then I'd rather say it's better to question these norms directly and expose them for what they are.

BTW, I hope it okay to use so much personal anecdote. I don't do so to find answers or express my own case as much as I find the anecdotal illustrative of broader trends. — Jeremy Murray

Not at all. They're real; that's not something you need to apologize for but something to be thankful for in a conversation partner.

Have you read "The Myth of Normal" by Gabor Mate?

Nope.

I didn't say that Heidegger is pre-critical, but that his philosophy of fundamental ontology is:

In those categories to which fundamental ontology owes its resonance and which they for that reason either deny or so sublimate, that they can no longer give rise to unwelcome confrontations, is to be read how much they are the imprints of something missing and not produced, however much they are its complementary ideology.
— Adorno

I read "unwelcome confrontations" as "conflict" or "critique". Then, the categories of fundamental ontology (Being, Dasein, Present-at-hand, Ready-at-hand, Care, Destiny etc), either do not (deny) confront the ontology, or integrate into (sublimate) it. In fact, these categories give the ontology its power. But, Adorno sees deprivation in them, as he treats them negatively, as well as complicity. — Pussycat

I meant Heidegger's philosophy isn't exactly pre-critical, according to Adorno, but mistaken in its response to the critical turn. Adorno seems to recognize that Heidegger is attempting to get beyond the Kantian denial of metaphysics, at least, so I'd hesitate to call Heidegger's philosophy of fundamental ontology as pre-critical.

I read your quote there as: "In those categories which fundamental ontology owes its resonance" is referring to Kant's categories. So fundamental ontology owes its resonance to Kant's categories. And because of that Heidegger's fundamental ontology either denies the category or sublimates the category into his wider project, thereby removing Kant's critique of the project of metaphysics (unwelcome confrontations).

So, simplifying, Kant's categories is to be read how much they are the imprints of something missing and not produced even though they complement Heidegger's project. I.e. there is something beyond those categories, namely Being. Or even moreso, the very ability to articulate the meaning of the question "What is the meaning of being?"

Roughly I'm reading this as Adorno reading Heidegger's reading/critique/subsumption of Kant.

Where is he saying this? What's been missing? You mean Being? — Pussycat

I mean Being. Does the above explanation of what's going on in my mind as I read this making sense of what I said, or making things worse?

I think your comment here makes sense of Adorno's allusions to Heidegger's fascism. Adorno understands the ontological need, but if you supersede the categories (standards of intersubjective judgment) then how is an initiate to criticize?

Were this to happen within a monastery then that'd be different from what happened: there is a place for when one needs a teacher or guide in life, spiritual or otherwise.


But Heidegger is an unapologetic fascist to the point that he turned against his mentor in favor of the Nazi party, in a way not even allowing Husserl to reply to Nazi "thought".

I'm not sure Heidegger is pre-critical, tho, at least according to Adorno. He seems to sometimes note that Heidegger is taking a particular path in light of critical philosophy, but subsuming it within his wider project of something that's been missed for all of philosophical history.

Yeah.

Or -- Adorno says that Heidegger did not critique but attempted to rope in the critical turn by imputing being to the Kantian project, thereby rendering Heidegger's approach as somehow encompassing Kant.

But Adorno is saying "Naw", here; that Heidegger gets Kant wrong when he tries to reply.

But anyway, I think your mistake was here:

Kant's effort to theoretically vindicate humanity and being and time as Ur-phenomena does not halt the destiny of resurrected ideas (that are resurrected by Heidegger). Concepts were criticized (by Heidegger) even in especially philosophical areas as Kant's dogmatic hyposteses. Kant's transcendence of the soul in the paralogism chapter is met with the aura of the word Dasein. For Kant's attack on treating the soul as something empirically indeterminable Heidegger employs the question of "being" as originary.
— Moliere

It wasn't Kant's efforts but Heidegger's. Concepts were not criticized by Heidegger, but by Kant. In fact, Adorno's charge against Heidegger is that he didn't engage at all critically and philosophically with them, but only ritualistically disposed of Kant's critique. — Pussycat

I found that sentence incredibly difficult to parse and what you say makes more sense -- I agree with you.

I very much doubt that Adorno sees any merit to Heidegger's (non) critique. He most probably was appalled by Heidegger's writings, in both content and form, although I am not sure which one he abhorred the most. — Pussycat

The part that made me think this is where he says

Despite this, in order to rope in critical philosophy, an
immediate ontological content is imputed to this latter. Heidegger’s
reading of the anti-subjectivistic and “transcending” moment in Kant
is not without legitimation.

So there's a sense in which I think he agrees with criticizing Kant, but not in the manner of imputing being as he interprets Heidegger to do.

Affirmative Character

The ontological need is not satisfied by the categories which fundamental ontology resonates from. This is the reason for fundamental ontology which is supposed to somehow overcome the critical turn by noting that the categories have a certain lack -- they lack Being.

This Being is supposed to somehow escape the society. It is on this basis that it is attractive -- liberal society grounds thought in function, efficiency. It is managed. Being is attractive because it hints at something "beyond" the categories, be they Kantian or the modern managed society.

This is the false affirmative. Social production and reproduction hollowed out what ontological philosophy attempts to awaken.

To figure out how that connects to the rest of the paragraph I decided to revisit Kant's paralogism and the amphiboly of reflection:

The effort to theoretically
vindicate humanity and being and time as Ur-phenomena does not halt
the destiny of the resurrected ideas. Concepts, whose substrate is
historically passed by, were thoroughly and penetratingly criticized
even in the specifically philosophical area as dogmatic hypostases; as
with Kant’s transcendence of the empirical soul, the aura of the word
being-there [Dasein: existence], in the paralogism chapter; the
immediate recourse to being in the one on the amphiboly of the concept
of reflection. — Adorno

So the way I'm reading this:

Kant's effort to theoretically vindicate humanity and being and time as Ur-phenomena does not halt the destiny of resurrected ideas (that are resurrected by Heidegger). Concepts were criticized (by Heidegger) even in especially philosophical areas as Kant's dogmatic hyposteses. Kant's transcendence of the soul in the paralogism chapter is met with the aura of the word Dasein. For Kant's attack on treating the soul as something empirically indeterminable Heidegger employs the question of "being" as originary.

Does that sound right to anyone else? I'm having a hard time with that sentence, but the conclusion makes sense to me:

Modern ontology does not appropriate that Kantian
critique, does not drive it further through reflection, but acts as if it
belonged to a rationalistic consciousness whose flaws a genuine
thinking had to purify itself of, as if in a ritual bath

The way Heidegger overcomes Kant isn't so much to address the critical philosophy as much as to treat him as a sort of fallen philosopher stuck in the present-at-hand. But then this opens the door to questions about what I truly am, the sorts of things Kan'ts philosophy denied knowledge of except as transcendental condition of thought (and thereby empty).

But in spite of the Kantian doctrine that there is no intuition of the self that is a priori and rationalistic Heidegger "ropes in" critical philosophy into his sites by imputing an affirmative character to the philosophy: i.e. it does not escape the question of the meaning of being and the history of metaphysics as presence.

By no means however is this objective interest to be
equated with a hidden ontology. Against this speaks not only the
critique of the rationalistic one in Kant, which granted room for the
concept of a different one if need be, but that of the train of thought of
the critique of reason itself.

...

It indeed tolerates the assumption of an in-itself
beyond the subject-object polarity, but leaves it quite intentionally so
indeterminate, that no sort of interpretation however cobbled together
could possibly spell an ontology out of it. If Kant wished to rescue that
kosmos noetikos [Greek: cosmos of the intellect] which the turn to the
subject attacked; if his work bears to this extent an ontological moment
in itself, it nonetheless remains a moment and not the central one — Adorno

Adorno sees some merit to the critique, but not enough to say that Heidegger overcame concepts of presence to get at something fundamental through the analysis of the subject, Dasein. Rather, as he stated at the beginning, this is the untrue affirmative philosophy finds itself in. This resembles, to my eye, Kant's definition of a paralogism:

The logical paralogism consists in the falsity of an argument in respect of its form, be the content what it may. But a transcendental paralogism has a transcendental foundation, and concludes falsely, while the form is correct and unexceptionable. In this manner the paralogism has its foundation in the nature of human reason, and is the parent of an unavoidable, though not insoluble, mental illusion. — Kant, CPR, link in post

In the spirit of quantification....

Would you say that you can pick out a tone from a timbre while listening?

I would say so, but I would also say I cannot pick out red/green from a brown I'm seeing even though, conceptually, I know that's a way to make a brown/grey.

This would be something like a conceptual or logical divide which isn't quantification but needed for quantification, and seems related to:

2. Two phenomenological spaces are orthogonal iff variations in one do not affect the other, e.g. shape is orthogonal to color because we can change a blue sphere into a red one without changing its shape, or change a sphere into a cube without changing its color. — Pneumenon

But the definition of "orthogonal" would have to differ because clearly sight and sound affect one another at least in our perception.

Here I'm thinking that the rules of quantification might differ in describing color and sound perception -- what "counts as" a sound, timbre, color, differentiation and so on could be in an orthogonal relationship conceptually, but we are bound to all of them at once and they all e/affect one another (and it's not even known if there is a "one another", in terms of describing the senses, IMO).

Me too :). Gracias amigo.

I'm still struggling slowly through "Question and Answer". — Jamal

I gave this section a re-read today and I think I can summarize what's going on.

Adorno is differentiating what he's doing from the new ontologists, like Heidegger, and from the positivist scientists. For the former he notes that the new ontologists are more of a second refrain of the old absolute idealists after Kant -- they are going "back to" (the things themselves, Husserl/the forgotten meaning of Being, Heidegger).

But he does not want to stop at Kant even though Kant puts pause on the positivistic project. In fact he goes so far as to say that ontology is attempting to address a need, so even in light of the various failures the philosopher cannot help but reach out to address that ontological need.

And I think he's saying that he's going to do so in the dialectical manner, but one that is not "analytical" like he describes Hegel at the end.

Red/green simultaneity doesn't seem to fit either of those models. What I picture is: A person sees the color brown, and is able, at the same time, to see both red and green "within" the brown. And no, I don't know what "within" means, exactly. — J

I agree it seems different.

Maybe it best to say "Because synesthesia I can imagine the possibility, even though it may not actually be possible"

The strongest of claims :D

Is happiness the goal for you? I align more with Buddhist non-attachment, but that too is not available only through rationality. — Jeremy Murray

It is, though I tend to think there are benefits to non-attachment. We can become overly attached to a point where we are no longer happy -- so here I mean happiness not in the sense of intense joy but rather calm and tranquil joy.

There seems to be some subtle differences between the way Buddhists see the world and I, but it's a close analogue.

So what would you (and other posters) nominate as starting points for 'better conversations'? Where is the need greatest? Where can philosophy best intersect with social science today? — Jeremy Murray

I'm not sure exactly, though I do know one important thing. You note:

For many, or at least, certainly for myself, mental illness begins with hypersensitivity and an excess of reflective ruminating. 'Too much thinking' has been precisely my problem. — Jeremy Murray

Which I think is a danger in philosophizing about mental illness when you're wanting to know about it because it helps you express yourself -- to disappear into the navel and not even enjoy oneself but instead get caught up in a self-feeding circle that just hurts.

I.e. we ought not ruminate. And the way to tell if we're ruminating or not is whether or not we're enjoying ourselves or not -- i.e. am I just wallowing in my sadness in which case, OK, I have to wait it out and can't think myself out of it, or am I actually coming to understand it better such that I know better how to deal with my emotions?

Which leads to:

Better concepts such as? — Jeremy Murray

That's sort of the philosophical question. But the guide towards whether a concept is better or worse is whether or not it helps us to talk about our feelings in the pursuit of finding more peace with them.

Sometimes I think it best to drop all talk of "mind"; not that there is no mind, but to speak about the mind to understand the mind runs the risk of rumination and question begging. Here then the medical model isn't towards this mental construct which we interact with but rather towards whether a person we are talking to is happy or not.

But the social model might run differently. A better concept there might be the elimination of the doctor-patient relationship in search of another relationship to seek peace in -- such as solace among fellows and mutual aid.

Which isn't to speak against the medical model at all, from my vantage, but to show that there's already two different ways of improving concepts. (Medical/Social distinction I'm lifting from @Banno's thread here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/16296/disability/p1

I can't recall back to the beginning of this thread, but participating over the past few days, I see a lot of dialogue that belongs to the 'better conversations' category. — Jeremy Murray

I agree. Sometimes there's not a program or a concept or anything more to it than open and honest communication.

Excellent NY times article on AI impact on writing, generally — Wayfarer

Huh.

I don't know how I feel about that. I've heard of the emdash thing, but not the rest.

One, it's somewhat weird to change how one writes just because the robot does something. I utilize emdashes and mixed metaphors, and had done so before the word-predictor.

On the other hand if there's a codification of annoying tics then insofar that the writing is for an audience that has a hypersensitive attention to AI patterns it has to take into account that the audience will misunderstand because they've been bombarded with A.I. to the point that the pattern is simply forbidden.

think synesthesia refers to experiencing a sensation in two different sensory modes, rather than two versions of the same mode, like red and green. But maybe simultaneous red/green perception can happen, which would be relevant to the OP's question. — J

Yes, you're right. "Synesthesia" is the example I thought of to make sense of the notion, but that's very much a conceptual thing rather than something documented. I'm analogizing from that unusual experience to say perhaps others could have another unusual experience, but I don't know the mechanisms of synesthesia so I could just be full of hot air.

Sound to like you’ve thought a lot about these themes and have acquired wisdom. — Tom Storm

Thank you, and I want to say the same for you: I'm doubtful of my own wisdom (as I'm sure you are of yours), but I'm asking after your thoughts in reply because I think you have it too.

I doubt it. I think we need face-to-face discussions in real time, not the anonymous often polemical world of forums. But who knows? — Tom Storm

I do too, tho I've also been disappointed by face-to-face interactions in real time as well.

To the point that I've come to think that the face-to-face relation is not literal, but that we can have it here even as we only type to one another.

The issue for many people is that normal behaviours have previously been described as mental illness; homosexuality, even feminism. Of course, many religious folks might still agree. And now trans identities… even many progressives view this as mental illness. — Tom Storm

Yes.

"I am homosexual/trans/etc." is classified and understood as a "sin", and people who grow up in them settings will likewise attach themselves to that idea and not want to be seen that way. Or, for the "progressives", understood as "illness", as if it needs a cure.

Also, why sign up for an identity that is likewise stigmatized unless you have to? Even with doctor's notes I've been treated by HR peeps as a liar.

It does.

Perhaps we here can attempt to create this "much better" conversation?

Seems amongst us all, in our various experiences, we could find that ground given how much we've agreed upon while speaking all the points we've heard before.

People also talk about mental illness as if it is romantic and needs to be defended as merely a kind alternative lifestyle that the evil mainstream can’t handle. — Tom Storm

I don't like the romanticizing of mental illness.

I understand people forming groups, like goths (from back in the day?), who want to defend their identity as an alternative lifestyle choice which happens to include various diagnostic criteria.

Would you agree with:

Long story short, we need much better public conversations about mental health and mental illness? — Jeremy Murray

? As in, we need better public conversations about mental health and mental illness.

Well, it depends on the charges and claims made. I’m not interested in revisiting this fairly intractible debate, but I will say that if a particular psychiatrist takes the view that they are not infallible, that patient rights should be upheld, that medication is not compulsory, and that the patient should have a say in all treatment (which is how it works here for the most part), then I think we're mostly good. But no doubt there are people so hateful of psychiatry that nothing will ever excuse or redeem it. And there have been awful practices. The Foucauldian charge of social control will always be popular. I feel this way about interior designers. :wink: — Tom Storm

I agree we're mostly good in the circumstances you listed.

And I appreciate the self-awareness of the practice -- I've benefited so I have no desire to tear it down or something like that.

Though I say that when writing and such isn't really a part of my job, but something I do for pleasure.

And when pressed on particulars for what I'd allow others to do I'm more open. Is it really a good exercise to edit your bibliography to fit blah-blah-blah standard when you've done it 100 times before?

I appreciate the material analysis. Perhaps that's what the "serious fight against AI" is meant to convey, or is that still unforgivable? I'm thinking the notion that the powers that be want to force us all into breadlines is a good point.

I think psychiatry probably arouses more hatred than almost any profession (even lawyers and politicians). — Tom Storm

I don't know about comparisons, but I agree that psychiatrists are often bad guys in movies. There's a stigma against psychiatry.

There is no single project of psychiatry. — Tom Storm

Good point.

t's also worth noting that the psychiatry gurus are often psychiatrists themselves; people like Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing, David Cooper, Franco Basaglia, Peter Breggin, and Giovanni Jervis. There's a lot of self-criticism built into the profession. — Tom Storm

Yeah I agree.

I've worked with many psychiatrists over three decades, some brilliant, some dullards. None of them have ever held a view that what they do is objective. They would see thier profession as a mix of science, art, culture and intersubjective agreement.

Does that defend it from the charges of anti-psychiatry?

I'm not sure either way. Really I think that insofar that we take psychiatry, psychology, and the various clinical diagnostics therein as merely kind-of-sort-of right and we're open to hearing one another -- whether they be patient or doctor -- then we're doing as good as we can do.

I'm not anti-psychiatry. Far from it -- it's the reason I'm able to live a content life now.

I agree that there's something to the notion that cultural desires for individualism run against the need for psychiatric help. It also doesn't help that in culture at large people talk about the mentally ill as if they ought have less rights than others.

I have seen the unwillingness to talk about the hard topics in psychology - suicide, depression, addiction, psychosis, etc. - just in the people around me since I was young.

And I've been exposed to the best arguments of the anti-psychiatry contingent as well. They lose me when they talk about psychosis.

Long story short, we need much better public conversations about mental health and mental illness? I think this would honestly reduce some of the problems we see with overdiagnosis. — Jeremy Murray

I've noticed an unwillingness. I've been exposed to some arguments of anti-psychiatry, but I'm not invested enough in the project of psychiatry to want to really dig into them. I agree that it's not as objective as people are tempted to believe. But I think that true of medical science in general. There's an annoying habit amongst Doctors where they tend to think that because they are the guy who knows everything in a particular situation that they're the guy who knows everything all the time.

Hardly objective in the manner people tend to mean.

But I agree we need better conversations -- and would go further there and say we need better concepts.

Where I'm hesitant is in thinking there are problems with overdiagnosis. I'd reach for the opposite -- there are problems with underdiagnosis. People may want a diagnosis, but that doesn't mean it's an accurate one....

I'd rather say it's a medical field with such-and-such degree of confidence in it, which is lower than people often mean by "science" because they have the picture of Newton's physics in their mind.

I find real solace in darker philosophies sometimes. It helps combat that sense of doom that comes with despair. I flipped through Ligotti again last night after mentioning him here, and when he quotes Mainlander "Life is hell, and the sweet still night of absolute death is the annihilation of hell", I find it comforting to recognize my suffering, at it's worst, so eloquently expressed, and shared by another.

Of course I know that my beliefs are symptoms, but the power of philosophy, or dark, emotional art, is one of the few strategies I have to fight the worst of depression. — Jeremy Murray

Yup.

Definitely how I ended up experiencing existentialism when I reconnected to philosophy a couple of years ago. — Jeremy Murray

:cool:

We do not seem to have improved. The idea that mental illness and mental health are best addressed by professionals is part of the problem, but I have had excellent experiences with counselling as well.

Have you? Or other positive interventions / rituals? — Jeremy Murray

I've had both bad and good experiences with counselling. I also take medication.

I also try and give comfort to people I see who have the same emotions. In fact I tend to find the more I focus on others' needs the less I notice my depression.

But I don't think that we can just think ourselves to be happy, or whatever that is. Even medicated I have depression and have to recognize it when it creeps up in order to stop myself from going into some kind of spiral.

Other rituals, though, would include writing poetry and reading.

Yeah -- he's more optimistic than I about AI. What he'd call "Centaurs" I'd call "People who don't want to exercise" :D

I appreciate his focus on workers in the economy and how this is driven more by class interests to use AI for the worst possible purpose while the "gee wiz" parts are there as a sort of bread and circuses.

The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to Criticizing AI. Cory Doctorow gives an excellent economic-material analysis of Why AI?

Those who live on SSI disability ought share a bond towards the undocumented, and so on, because it's in their own self-interest and basically decent.

This idea of means-testing the suffering is pretty bad.

Well, they suffer 20,000 more points than I, but there are those who suffer 45,000 more points than them so the real need is....


I understand greater need and greater suffering. But lesser suffering is still worth talking about and improving. Comparing suffering as if to triage the worthy from the worthless is counter-productive to building bonds between those who suffer.

I don't know. Everyone I've ever met who was living "on disability" (receiving SSI payments) was doing pretty well. — frank

Good.

So does that mean we ought reject the social model of disability?

If @frank would say "Everyone I've ever met who was living "on disability" (receiving SSI payments) was doing pretty well" then we ought reject...

Now my advocacy has been towards a capabilities focus, looking at the valued human capabilities that are restricted, and what supports enable the person to actually realise them. — Banno

?

I don't think you mean this, but I do wonder what you're getting at.

He's talking about the Australian version of this. — frank

I know.

You have disability insurance through Social Security. It's pretty generous — frank

1. A disability is permanent.
2. A disability involves a substantial reduction in functional capacity.
3. A disability must affect a person’s ability to work, study, or take part in social life, and they must likely need long-term supports. — Banno

How would you say it stacks up to the USA's? Looks to be the same in terms of...

The impairment must be functional and permanent and require support. That's very much following the medical model. It reinforces the deficit model, framing disability as a problem for an individual body, not as a disjunction between that body and its environment. It presumes the evaluative place of a "normal" body, an unquestioned baseline. It arbitrarily rejects chronic illness, which would otherwise count as a disability. It ignores lived experience of fluctuating or episodic disability. — Banno

Thanks for doing your homework... :wink: — Banno

Heh. You're right I ought to have just read them before replying.

Now my advocacy has been towards a capabilities focus, looking at the valued human capabilities that are restricted, and what supports enable the person to actually realise them. In this framing consideration of the impairment is replaced by consideration of what supports are needed to allow the person to achieve their capabilities. "assistance with daily living" and "mobility supports" changes to "self-care" and "social participation".

This approach has wide recognition, and underpinned the initial vision of the NDIS, but met opposition in the implementation, the bean-counters not being familiar with capabilities-based metrics. The dynamic between medical and social models is ongoing.

Given that dynamic, considerations involving critical theory are a long way from the centre of the discussion. — Banno

A long way, sure, though sometimes that's an advantage -- less of a dog in the fight between your approach and the bean counters means a possibility for bridge-building.

Especially considering that sympathetic ears towards critical theory are likely to be more sympathetic to disability advocates than bean-counters, the currently frustrating deciders of the world.

Read now.

So intuitively I was reaching for something like your first link which explicitly uses "impairments" to mean the bodily reality while "disability" is the social reality of disabled persons.

Nussbaum is always a good read. I found the comparison to contract theorists helpful for differentiating her approach and why there are such-and-such frontiers for justice on that model. I can see calling it a neo-Aristotelian approach -- "capabilities" as a kind of virtue which makes for a eudemon life: though a marked difference is that she is advocating this under a liberal umbrella such that the eudemon life is not only objective, but also universally applicable such that state coercion is justified in obtaining it for everyone.

Makes me want to learn more...




Almost always :D -- it's still fun to pontificate and think on my own, though...

So when I say "social construct" I do not mean that to indicate "not-real", as is commonly thought. I think calling this "relational" works pretty well, too, insofar as we don't stop there. Relational... between what? and what relation? That's where a description of our social conditions can come in to fill in the details.

One way to differentiate between the medical and the social is to first set out what the medical model entails.

Roughly speaking: the medical model entails a doctor who knows about disease and a patient with a condition that needs a cure. Furthermore we generally operate under the notion of informed consent such that the patient's autonomy is respected even though they are in a weaker position with respect to knowledge.

With disability I can imagine people wanting this model in some cases. Nothing wrong with that as long as the patient is truly consenting -- i.e. isn't doing it just because everyone is telling them that they need to be cured when they are content as they are.

So insofar that we're not talking about disability in terms of a disease that needs curing with the assistance of a knower who will help the ignorant through the process of curing the disease I suppose then we're talking about disability in terms other-than-medical, other-than-disease. We might term this remainder, whatever it is, the social aspect of disability.

The state is not a doctor, and the social body can accommodate different bodies. And people ought not to have to prostrate themselves to gain pity and sympathy in order just to exist.

Is medical disease also a social construct? If not, how do we draw the line between social construction and empirical fact? — Joshs

In making the distinction between disability and impairment I'm putting the social construct on the side of disability, and the body/mind on the side of impairment.

Here the relationship between doctor-patient is social, and the disease is bodily(or mental, since I see no reason to differentiate between the body and the mind when it comes to a medical model).

I can imagine a person saying they'd rather stay at home than go to the doctor to get antibiotics. That is, they don't want the cure. That one can refuse a cure is part of our social world of the medical model.

So, yes, in part medical disease is also a social construct -- and I'd try to parse it similarly to how I'm trying to parse disability now.

And I'd say both can be investigated empirically as witnessed by our current medical practices.

So we might say a person is impaired from using their legs after some tragic accident, and is disabled because we think of human bodies in terms of norms which include things like the use of legs -- norms which show up in architecture and all the various tools we utilize; in short the entire social-economic environment is reflected by these norms of the body.