My problem with the Matrix movies is I don't know if you're real or are part of the Matrix, so I'm not sure who or what I'm responding to. In truth, I don't know what I am. It's too complicated for me.

What do you, Philosophers, tell prospective parents about how to raise (Old Norse, raisa) their children so that they will be good citizens, good parents themselves, and good thinkers? — Bitter Crank

I can't say that I've ever offered unsolicited advice to prospective parents about how they ought to raise their children, and I'm not sure how well received it would be. My guess is that I'd tell them what I did, and knowing that my children are without flaw, they should take my advice.

In short, the key to success in most every regard is a real education, and if you stress that and insist upon that, all else tends to follow, including such things as good citizenship, morality, and general perspective.

I must also say that I appreciate your Old English and Norse references, considering both are my first languages. I still can't get a hang of this modern English.

Might be because so many of us are left-leaning and the left demonstrably has more humour than the right. ;) — Michael

I'm the funniest one here. Just ask me.

Let me tell you the politically incorrect answer. They've tried to ban Agustino, and there weren't enough moderators supporting that decision. I would release the PM from one of the moderators, except that he would be placed in an unfair position if I unveiled who it was. — Agustino

I'm now to learn that I was part of an elaborate court packing scheme as opposed to my simply having asked to moderate. Nope, no conspiracies. You'd be surprised how unimportant you are.

The deletions may be warranted or unwarranted, but the fact that the mods here have roughly the same views is problematic and might possibly have contributed to how the site is moderated (which is definitely true in the case of Empty). — Thorongil

Except I don't roughly have the same views as any other moderator on here. I voted for Trump after all. I know that's an odd fact I have to throw out to gain credibility. If I'm on the left, I'd hate to see what the right looks like.

And for the record, rants about the horrors of masturbation are neither rightist or leftist. They're just fucked up beyond repair. Just one man's opinion I guess.

Don't know. Can we fire him for laziness jamalrob? — Baden

I do feel I've been a bit lazy. If I ban you, will that be enough work for the day to keep me aboard?

It was. I wasn't necessarily saying that the mods knowingly pick on right-wingers for being right-wing (apart from Empty), but that 1) their political views may influence some of their moderating subconsciously and 2) it is interesting to note the fact that all the mods appear to be irreligious lefties in one way or another. How did that happen? — Thorongil

What you should realize is (1) any forum dedicated to the humanities will likely be left leaning, (2) any English speaking site that doesn't originate from certain areas of the US will likely be left leaning, and (3) the right is no more tolerant than the left, meaning that expect stupidity to be banned regardless of political affiliation.

While I do consider myself a part of the right (especially when lined up against most on this site), I am far less tolerant of the nonsense often presented on this site than are those commies you have finally exposed. That is, you'd do well to realize that certain right leaning folks owe their continued existence to someone other than me.

So, do please arrive at another theory to explain the deletions than bias. For example, perhaps the deletions are occurring because they are warranted.

no, I don't accept the conclusion that psychology has no therapeutic value.
— Hanover

I don't think anyone was offering it. — unenlightened

But you said "Science is very successful when directed outwards to the world of objects. But directed inwards at the subject that is (or isn't) scientific, it fails utterly, precisely because it must methodologically eliminate subjectivity in trying to be objective. Thus science applied to the psyche is a madness of the form of going to sea in a sieve."

I took "fails utterly" to mean it's useless.

Psychology isn't unique in it's reliance upon subjective history. Typically the first question asked of any patient is to ask where it hurts, and it's not possible to objectively verify the pain. A neurologist, for example, will diagnose migraines and post concussive syndromes based entirely on history. An orthopedist cannot simply look at an MRI and tell you if or how bad your back hurts. An arthritic back is rarely treated just because arthritis is seen. It's the subjective pain that is treated.

And just like there are objective elements in other fields, so too psychology. That you feel sad is subjective, but that you sleep 20 hours a day, you drink a pint of gin a day, that you can't hold a job, and that you commit crimes is not. The reduction in measurable criteria is evidence of resolution.

And no, I don't accept the conclusion that psychology has no therapeutic value. It can work.

Is happiness everything, or is truth important independently from happiness? — Kenshin

Your question assumes that an element of happiness is not a greater knowledge of the truth. It's reasonable to argue that happiness is attained through knowledge, which would mean that happiness and truth are interrelated. Such a definition of happiness distinguishes it from simple pleasure.

As John Stuart Mill said when defining happiness, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question."

But I do need to say, at this point, it really sucks. ;-( — Wayfarer

Sorry for the setback. There will be brighter days. I generally rely upon the principle of sour grapes when such things happen. The new job probably would've sucked too.

(Oh, and feel free to punch him if you think that will help). — Baden

Bring it on whipper-snappers.

Let me allay your fears. I am not retiring, and I remain an incredible physical specimen, being able to run hundreds of miles, lift thousands of pounds of weight, and perform sexually for hours (sometimes even with someone else in the room).

As you have correctly assumed, I did in fact start a soup kitchen specifically for cancer victims, having the belief that there is no better cure for one's ills than humility, thus forcing a limited meal of cheese sandwiches and watery vegetable soup on those with cancer. I feel that should my prescription of humility be ineffective, I will at least have performed a useful experiment for academic purposes, so it all won't be a loss.

Speaking of my age, I am 50. What that means is that I remember before there were cell phones, computers, cable TV, or gay people. It was a different time. There was actually a milk man back then, who would sexually satisfy all the young mothers and then leave them a quart of milk. Milk came in quarts back then, as it should. The bottle was glass, not plastic, like it ought to be. You could let your dog run loose back then, and if it bit someone, it just proved to you that dogs bit sometimes. Like everyone, we had an American car that wouldn't start, just like expected. You could punch your friends in the hallway at school without getting suspended because boys were supposed to punch each other.

I could go on and on, but I'm starting to get sentimental and weepy, so I'll take a break.

I think he's just one of those old school dudes who has problems expressing emotion. — Mongrel

This is much more accurate than you can imagine. I'm really working on it. It can be entertaining and even occasionally endearing, but it's generally limiting.

Alright, enough sharing. Get back to work.

You're most certainly welcome. It is due time such a thread were started. It seems, though, that I have done so much for so many, I often have difficulty remembering what it is that evokes such gratitude, so if you could remind me what generosity you're referencing, it would be much appreciated.

think you've missed a moral dimension. Robert seemed to want to name God as unjust. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But doesn't this just clarify the general objection to his posts: nobody is completely sure what he means.

Simplicitude is French for simplicity. — Bitter Crank

Thank you for the clarification. I am now to understand RL's distinction between simplicity in English and simplicity in French. The latter being more refined I suppose. The harshest and least refined simplicity is Einfachheit I'd think.

Anyway, my old Collins Dictionary offers either 'simplicitude' or 'simplism' - both having the same meaning so hopefully I'm saved from having to fall on my sword! — Robert Lockhart

Nope. Even the online Collins dictionary indicates "simpicitude" isn't a word. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/spellcheck/english?q=simplicitude

I'll weigh in here as a third moderator. I can tell you that none of this has been discussed beforehand and we're not all so cozy with one another that we just line up behind one another and support one another's decisions.

Your problem isn't grammar. It's coherence. Your problem isn't form. It's substance. You make no sense. The irony is that you claim the confusion all forms around our inability to distinguish between "simplicity" and "simplicitude." Such is ironic because the latter appears to be a word you made up. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/simplicitude

Western culture is what you miss when you're far from home.

Typically I like to remain behind the scenes and allow others to have the limelight, but my efforts were so obvious and heroic in this instance that I'd lose credibility if I didn't fully accept credit for this.

If I provided everyone with a picture, gave them 2 minutes to look at it, and then asked questions about what appeared on the picture, I'd assume the majority would get only a small percentage of the items correct, and, the more specific the question, the lower the score. What I'd do is try to remember a list of things from the picture in the hopes that is what would be asked on the test. There might be a very very small number who could actually take a mental picture and then refer back to it then answer questions about it.

There is some controversy about true photographic memory, with some saying it exists only in a small percentage of children (not adults) and some say it doesn't exist at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory.

That is to say, I don't think there's anything at all unusual about those who say they have limited visualization skills because that's the norm. I still contend, though, that the question of whether qualia exist is not addressed by this issue, but, more specifically, it addresses only the question of what is the nature of qualia. It would seem we're all admitting that qualia exists, but we're now asking how it varies from person to person.

Once at trial, I called a witness who had suffered severe seizures throughout his life and he was clearly suffering from brain damage. When asked to recollect the automobile accident, he would close his eyes and start reporting slowly what he remembered. It was sort of like he was telling us what he saw in a movie in his head.

So yeah, there are all sorts of ways people visualize, and I'd imagine he sees every zebra stripe.

I saw some show on a guy who perform complex math in his head, and he insisted that he did it by visualizing complex shapes and manipulating them. He proved it by using clay and showing what those shapes looked like with consistency.

Interesting stuff.

These differences may be at the heart of the misunderstandings surrounding the existence of, or how to interpret, certain sorts of intuitive evidence. — The Great Whatever

Then aphantasia is not being used to address the p-zombie debate contrary to the name of this thread, but is only being cited as evidence of the significance of variation among philosophers?

This is really an over-read of what is occurring. Aphantasiacs most certainly can experience things. — Hanover

Well, I never said they couldn't, so I'm not sure of the relevance. — The Great Whatever

This was the comment I was referring to:

What is so absurd that we might find out that there's a large divide between people, some of whom can experience and some of whom can't? — The Great Whatever

If all you're saying is that there are great variations in phenomenological experience, I do think that's an interesting scientific fact, but I don't know how it matters to this philosophical question any more than the well accepted fact that there are great variations in how well different people's perceptions work as well as their intellect in deciphering the meaning of their experiences.

Would you expect someone with no experiential states to behave overtly the same as those that have them? — Michael

I wouldn't expect them to behave the same, and in practice, no computer can make it past a few minutes under a Turing Test. If you're asking hypothetically whether they could behave the same, which is to ask whether there could be a computer that so mimicked human overt behavior that it was indistinguishable from a human with internal experience, I don't see why not. That is just to posit a p-zombie.

If not, is that because experiential states are the only things that can cause such behaviour or because experiential states necessarily emerge from the only things that can cause such behaviour (e.g. particular brain activity)? — Michael

Since I answered in the affirmative, this question is inapplicable. However, hypothetically, had I answered as you'd have assumed I would, my response would be to agree with you. If certain overt behaviors are necessarily linked to certain internal states, then obviously they are dependent upon one another.

Of course, this question only really matters if your claim that "there's a world of difference between having limited internal experience and entirely lacking the ability to experience" refers to a world of behavioural differences. — Michael

But that seems such a straw man. Why would anyone suggest that overt behavioral differences are critical when assessing the significance of internal states? It would suggest that a quadriplegic with no muscle control whatsoever, but who has fully intact mental function is no different than a dead man. That I cannot act on my thoughts does not makes my thoughts not matter.

I don't know if I followed all of your questions. The questions all seem to relate to mind/body interaction. I would expect that two people with very different experiential states could behave overtly the same. A group of synchronized swimmers might be all thinking different things as they carried out their stupidity.

As we get better at sussing out phenomenological differences, more of them may become part of common knowledge. What is so absurd that we might find out that there's a large divide between people, some of whom can experience and some of whom can't? — The Great Whatever

This is really an over-read of what is occurring. Aphantasiacs most certainly can experience things. They just don't experience them in a visual way. I would say that the vast majority of my experience is non visual. It's not like I read these posts and have anything really concrete in my mind in terms of sensation (like sounds, pictures, etc.). Most of our experience is not represented that way. Nevertheless it's an experience. If you told me a cat walked down the street, I could visualize in my head an actual cat walking down a street, but I probably wouldn't if you just told me that. There's be no reason to. Sometimes when someone is telling a story, they may ask you to actually imagine the events happening, but that's not necessary to relay the story.

Sure, it's an interesting fact that some can't visualize, but I don't see this implying that we have real life p-zombies walking around. It just means that experience is holistic, with all sorts of feelings, understandings and whatever wrapped up into that very experience. No one has ever suggested an experience is just a clump of pictures and sounds swirling in your head and that without that clump, you'd have no experience.

I'm unimpressed by this example. There's a world of difference between having limited internal experience and entirely lacking the ability to experience. There are also plenty of people who can't internally visualize. They are called blind people.

Women can compete with men in chess, but there are entirely different tournaments for women as well, as well as woman's champions, and a separate system for determining women's grandmasters than there is for men. The purpose is to foster competition, and it has nothing to do with fairness.

For those familiar with chess and who have competed at the amateur level would know, you receive an Elo rating that pretty accurately provides your playing strength, and you can choose to compete in a section of those with similar ratings. That way, every one who enters a section has a reasonable chance to win, as opposed to signing up and just waiting to lose to the dominant player in the room every time.

This really isn't that different from what happens in many sports, although the rating system isn't as mathematical as the Elo system. They create gender, weight, and age classifications, and in some sports actual earned levels (like different color belts). A newbie wouldn't compete against a black belt and a 60 year old wouldn't compete against an 18 year old.

The purpose of the classifications isn't based on fairness as much as creating meaningful competition. There's nothing inherently unfair about me winning a medal in a 5k road race in the 50-55 group when my time wouldn't have been in the top 10 in the 20-25 group.

We should dispense with the formality of trying to make rules and move right to the business of insulting one another.

Fucking shush! To speak of them speaks of someone else.

They're inanimate objects, with no concerns at all. — Wosret

The hyper-modern post figurative school would see only two pieces of juxtaposed steel on a street imposing a barrier to pedestrians and mentally noted that oddity. This school is notorious for its silence, as it shuns the use of symbols or sounds as an inappropriate figurative representation of reality. To write about it is to write about something else.

Neither by connotation or denotation, only by location. — Cavacava

You can spit you some rhyme.

I took it to mean that women, due to their inherent irrationality and childishishness stand in the way of a healthy bullish market and should therefore be re- relegated to the kitchen. I was terribly offended by it. You seeing it as a liberal gesture is odd.

If symbolism is art, then all speech is art.

You're a Nazi. I'll take that back if you take back calling me a white supremacist.

The intrinsic beauty of all art is held in its ultimate irrelevance. Carry on.

If presentism were right, then mental events in the past time did not exist. — quine

No, your tense is wrong. Do, not did. What I did yesterday existed, it impacted the present, but it no longer exists. The effects are still felt.

Presentism will delete your every experience occurred in the past. — quine

If I walk across the room and sit in a chair, I'm in the chair because (i.e. due to the cause of) of walking across the room, but I'm not still walking across the room and in the chair at the same time. That's presentism and it's super smart, not stupid.

And then a picture of his profession-rattling book (which came out of his PhD dissertation): — Bitter Crank

I read up on this cite on Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tearoom_Trade), and it seems it rattled the profession not because of the focus of the study (homosexuality in restrooms), but because of the unethical way the research was conducted (concealment and misrepresentation of the author's true identity to interviewees, revealing interviewees' identity, and failure to secure consent from interviewees to participate in the study).

Maybe this book offered comfort to those who participated in such conduct by explaining the necessity and normalcy of having sex in bathrooms during the 1970s, an era still generally oppressive to homosexuality, but, with the other controversy miring the book, it'd be hard to laud Laud a hero.

There are some things worse than death, such as torture, and Jefferson regarded life in the prisons of the time to be of the same order. Which it was. — ernestm

This is wrong. Jefferson actually wrote the Virginia law regarding the proportionality of punishment, holding that the highest form of punishment was death. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendVIIIs10.html.

Long term prisons did not become common until after the Revolution, and typical Colonial punishments (as noted in the law cited above) included forced labor and the like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_prison_systems#Colonial_criminal_punishments.2C_jails.2C_and_workhouses

That is to say, Jefferson was progressive in the sense that he wanted punishment to be proportionate to the crime, but he did not hold the untenable view that death ought to be provided to inmates as a form of euthanasia because prison was worse than death. He also did not condemn prisons to the extent you say, largely because they didn't exist in the US until 1790 when the first was built in Pennsylvania (as noted in the Wiki article cited above). Jails at that time were largely only used to house inmates awaiting trial.

More importantly, none of this is compatible with anything you previously said, which is that natural rights proscribes deprivation of life or liberty in all instances. That is the part of natural law you simply cannot comprehend, which is that people can be deprived rights (including the right to live) if they have done something to earn it.