alrighty I'll take it from there.... I have half trolled this forum by way of introduction but I actually was interested in this question so I'll take it from page 16 thankyou for taking the time to patiently explain it to a filthy noob like myself <3

This is precisely what some of us have been at pains to set out. I invite you to peruse the recent discussion from it's beginning — creativesoul

What consensus did you come to then ?

How is it morality can be viewed to have a source... It is at once a historicity, It is at once contingent on things like how good the world lets one be, It is at once deeply personal and variant, It is something that will change further in the future....

What would suffice even in drawing of time the source of all morals from past, present and future ?

Does every question that is asked have a possible or easily answer ?
If so how does one imagine a square circle ?

At worst morality in the purer form of reason might be conceived as Hobbes did to arrest ourselves from our animal nature. But this obfuscates our capacity to act in accordance to our better natures of our own accord. We might also appeal to consequentialism to give us a bottom line and schema that is in order to categorize stealing as wrong one first needs property law. We can supply more humane and developed principles perhaps by some version of Kant's categorical imperative a sense of humanitarian duty. Alternatively you could be entirely suspicious of it and view morality as some kind of sickening fancy, conflated norms where institutions are mistaken for principles. Such skepticism is fine but then with the separation one must account for the principle or excuse oneself from the discussion. We can then make distinctions based on culture or even between say groups and individuals, balancing norms to individual moral virtue.

I think what I said above is a fairly good condense version of getting somewhere in a discussion of morality but there is nothing in it that I would call a source.... a proverbial genesis or rivers mouth, a foundation or bedrock... It is not my wish to be facetious but what would constitute a satisfactory answer to a source of morals? If we could even discuss what it is we want in the answer before answering it perhaps we can further some kind of discussion of the matter.

For in doing so we at least admit our biased, forfeit to some degree the possibility of the question being answered and have to justify our own rational basis. I have a rather pessimistic view on the subject but not in the tragic sense.... more in the sense of the struggle to be good and the good life.

But given the general and idealistic pursuit of the question (not calling question shit) we could at least define something of a football field upon which to play a language game with the caveat that the game we play is but a small attempt to understand something as potentially as vast as the Savannah.

I give up.... you win it is Chimp-Pig it is.... I just can't beat you.... More I cannot begin to think this 'for the memes' absurd assertion is worth opening Adrian Johnston's The Irrepressible Truth The Chimp-Pig Thing ... To make the kinds of arguments where Chimp-Pig might seem like it makes sense.

I have yet to come to the point where I hate myself that much.

I think that if a certain idea is prevalent in a culture, people within that culture who disagree with that idea will be eager to express their disagreement. The idea that the sciences are "better" than other academic subjects is quite common. However, you'd be right to point out that that's a crude position to take, and it's probably more common among ignorant lay people than actual scientists. But a lot of very smart people also have beliefs which (whether or not they're true) incline people who disagree with them to want to point out the limits of science. Quine, for example, thought that philosophy should strive to become an extension of the natural scientists. For another example, look at how psychology since the days of Freud and Jung has become so much more integrated into the sciences. Whether or not these are positive developments, it's easy to see how they (and many others) would lead to people pointing out the limits of science. — Dusty of Sky

I think Science is better personally or else I would have chosen to study humanities as opposed to Sciences. I also find S.T.E.M. infinitely easier to deal with... the entire project is more team orientated, less controversial and intimate in the realm of personal so that the research and entire subject takes less offence. The entire domain is predicated on finding non arbitrary causal systems and descriptions, making it a kind of logic or logical understanding that isn't useless like a syllogism.

That said I don't view a true competition of Science and Humanities... at least I hope it has not come to that.... Education, expression and understanding should not become a capitalism of ideas.... Just because I prefer Science in terms of technology and domain itself does not mean I want to say lose history, ethics, drama and so on.... The realm of ideas should be viewed as a buffet and just because I like one type of icecream over another doesn't mean I am not going to eat both....

To placate oneself to the extreme of one opinion or specialty, short of the earnest obsession of genius or the ruthless interest of professional capacity is surely the more mediocre road. There are multiple levels of absurdity in Science not the least what i call the the idealist critique....

How can an observed be observed without an observer? <<< That question... That question explicated destroys naive materialism....

But the characteristic narrative of context that is Science as a 3rd person ontology concerned with description of physical descriptions chiefly in manner of their quantification, regularity, function and causal relations.... Shifts the bounds such that once one is speaking of Matter one is speaking in the context of speaking of the matters of the description of matter implicit in the conversation...

It is the unmediated criticism that denies any civil efficiency of language a thoroughly unGerman thing that makes people go WHAT THE FUCK..... when they encounter this conversation....

I would say the fact most people naively apprehend this subject is a call for concern. But it does not mean that everyone who does not offer some kind of clarifying apologia as a preamble to a conversation is a particularly helpful or convincing polemic.

No greater lie or story has ever been told that Man is a rational creature.
Rather he is a creature of paradox and unnecessary mystery.

By blaspheming the hyphen or separation of the whole as an abominable sin, talking past another, intentional misreading and sheer force of will to destroy the enemy of Chimppig even if that enemy in all sincerity be one created by one's own mind.

I get the robot and bowling shoe, but Kant doesn't read like an obscurantist at all. — jamalrob

Fair point....

Just because I believe something doesn't I'm currently arguing for it. — Dusty of Sky

I just genuinely found it funny... I don't do that... I don't force people to expand arguments they don't want to...

It would be fucking hypocritcal of me to do that an call you out for the bottom part... I genuinely thought that was funny... it made me smile.

I don't quite understand. Are you saying that I shouldn't argue based on what some idiots believe? I'm only saying that the reason I think that people like to point out the limits of science as opposed to the limits of history is that a lot of people think science can explain everything and other subjects are inferior e.g. Rick from Rick and Morty. That's all. — Dusty of Sky

Okay lets say there are more relativist strained, (postmodernist, marxist, Rorty fans etc etc...) then what there are not. Let's assume you are a not is it fair for me to use a rehashed dumb dumb media impression of a categorical norm to assume this is your position ?

If it is okay for philosophy to demand specificity and just shrug such nonsense right off... why wouldn't scientists, materialists and so on do it...

Keep in mind, my point is not that scientists are wrong to think that the scientific method is best if not the only way for humans to attain knowledge (although I do think they're wrong). — Dusty of Sky

That is funny....

I think the reason science is held to this different standard is that so many people, most of whom are not scientists, like to claim that nothing exists that isn't captured by the sciences — Dusty of Sky

I don't believe in free interpretation to the specific geography of idiots to one particular village or another is a meaningful place to start.... Such a position is either physicalism wherein they want to play a semantic distinction of existence being 'something physical' as distinct from a conscious imputation OR they are categorically a moron... I don't know what to tell you other than euphemistic generalizations are not helpful to the project of philosophy.

Continuing the memetic argument for Chimppig as a necessary intellectual artifact so that Man does not like the smell of his own farts to bottle as fragrance... ChimpPig is necessary for the survival of our species.. by everyone accepting chimppig we give redemption...

The fact you equivocate aesthetics and education that is the principle of arts criticism and pedagogy as the same thing means you are exactly the type of person I have no wish to agree with.... Because you somewhere lost the democratization of content to an infinite subjective everything is permissible form of education...

Meanwhile in the real world I need to understand certain facts...

like Bob the Builder and To kill a Mockingbird have very different reading levels and the latter is a reading level I want high school students to experience....

It is not okay for the board of education to let people read anything universally... Try think of some controversial titles and imagine if parents would phone in or not....

More so the problem with unlimited and infinite aesthetics sameness is it applies to values too...
If I get a book on how to bake muffins.... that is the value too... contrasted to To Kill a Mockingbird... are you so vacuously relativistic that you want to argue the sameness of educational importance ?

I doubt it... I mean maybe you would double down on the bullshit... but as an educator I have a real world and normative interpretation of reality to consider outside of the context of your own hypothetical musings.

'Postmodernism' or whatever synonym you want to use for relativisim ad-infinitum pedaling twits is full of shit and although I am for democratization of school content where possible some key underlying themes need to be insisted upon for a syllabus of any kind.... The fact you don't get my clear sarcastic ridicule just goes to further highlight one of my current hypothesis that is Postmodern theories and literature generates autism and autistic interpretation.

I'm not reading this entire thread... Google synthetic happiness and then look into the empirical evidence and consider why that might be an evolved trait as much as a cultural condition...

Philosophy just can't argue out of its asshole anymore.

The equivocation of what is understood better in technical terms to rhetorically indistinct naive optimism... Is the beginning, middle and end of the BS.

schopenhauer at least sees light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of askesis, and also art. But Camus — Wayfarer

LOL.... Oh man.... Camus is a mind fuck... Reading the Myth of Sisyphus I feel there is some positivity there ... But the picture is so bleak....

It is like writing poetry on the beauty of a disemboweled cat... It really is that absurd.

But to your point Schopenhauer wasn't a pessimist in the euphemistic sense of toxic emotions and depression... He wrote more on the modes of Transcendence then most any other canonical philosopher I know and his latter work that focused on defining a mysticism without God as a full realization of Mysticism without Utopian fancy through Idealism he was after... That is so neglected it is a farce and a stain on his legacy.

That is to say overcoming the human condition is worthy of doing so on the basis of overcoming ones own inequity and suffering alone. It does not need a transcendent principle, the transcendence is the self fulfilling overcoming through giving providence of Discipline and Autonomy of ones being ....

I think only in Schopenhauer is there a possible middle ground for the clear harmony of what I muse in my scrap books of notes as 4 currents of thoughts that I am playing with prosaically.

Humanistic Empathy --> Deification or exaltation of Love
Romanticism --> Deification or exaltation of Imagination
Enlightenment --> Deification or exaltation of Reason
Miltonian Renaissance --> Deification or exaltation of Creation

Of course to labour this as anything but personal truth is folly at this point. I am not a technical or professional philosopher by any stretch.

But Schopenhauer was anything but depressing alone. It was more as a historical point of contention his philosophy was a response to a deep embedded nihilism and dystopian element surrounding the end of the French revolution proper.

Can Kant be the most depressing philosopher... just based on the fact his prose are like reading an obscurantist, over elaborating robot with the charisma of the bowling shoe ?

I think I can recommend you books on this basis... But I don't think you want to say naturalism per say
as Thomas Nagel would be a Naturalist but he has an idealist composit to his philosophy and what he is somewhat empathetic to in say panpsychism.

In any case if you want the best Thomas Nagel book which elucidates a lot of what you are saying Mind and Cosmos is the book you want to get.... Then you might want to try access some reviews of said book and argue to and from the position.... If all you are interested is a rhetorical inventory that is.

In any case assuming you are curious....

1) I believe that consciousness neither consists of nor emerges from material phenomena
Daniel Dennett Consciousness Explained & Mind a brief introduction John Searle
The materialist hard line against your position is if you want to suggest consciousness as departed from material phenomenon you are essentially engaging in a word soup... as nobody sane makes arguments that vegetated states or a labotomy makes you more conscious... The materialist is less concerned with necessarily encountering 'consciousness' as you probably want to describe or defend it...One only needs to have a look at Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works to see a broader brush than many would like to admit exist in a naturalist framework.

2) I believe that secondary qualities exist just fully as primary qualities
No Idea... I highly suspect your primary and secondary qualities belong to something purely philisophical... some accept it some don't... to a naturalist i.e. a scientist this is fucking useless and hence would largely be ignored. Either that or reinterpreted in things like the hard and soft problems of consciousness...

I have never looked into this as I got too the two dogmas of empiricism first and it seems silly to me to accept something like that and then backpedal back into a very similar categorical distinction.

3)I believe that science paints a useful but extremely limited picture of reality
What picture specifically are you trying to say Science is painting? I feel like alot of this 'science does this and that' is Chimp-Pig rhetoric from the humanities to try and get scientists or science enthusiasts to defend a position or enter a debate on the terms of Humanities...

Do you mean this limited picture ?
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12


I feel like there is the domain of Science and then what people (many of whom are philosophers) try to extend the domain of Science to try to do rightly and wrongly....

I think History has certain limits I don't criticize History itself for one particular historians interpretation of it... But Science for some reason is held to a different standard.... I think it is because Science is useful in ways philosophers wish their discipline was.... But that is just me...

If you want the philosopher game conforming to Science look up basically anything by Quine. As probably one of the most influential but non-canonical philosophers...

Moreover it is a mystery to me how S.T.E.M. which is the extended discourse of Science is looked on so slowly from those with the false high moral ground on one hand... But absolutely want to use statistical measurements and insist on things like Climate Change exist on the other... Seems kind of shallow thinking and faulty thinking.... As no claim was made your argument or implication is a straw man but yet you need this 'limited picture' to be the paint that gives color of evidence and factual basis or justification to ones own arguments, political agendas, policy making etc... It is some bullshit.

But larger models of Science like the computational model of everything etc... Is a thing Earth System Science... Demographic and Group Psychology, evolutionary psychology and cognitive science... All attempt to extend Science discourse but are also criticized as being Soft Sciences... In the same way Sociology or Economics is...


4) I believe that although science can give us lots of information about what matter does, it can't tell us why it ultimately does it (rather than something else), what it's ultimately made of, or where it ultimately came from.

Well when you or any other domain answer the question to "what is the meaning of life?" in an objectively true sense let us know.... Science does not speak of heaven it builds the craft to take Man to literally walk above the sky his mortal clay and mortal eye sees as the height of his world.

5) I believe that certain (not all) universals exist in a way that is prior to their particular instances
Good luck with this one... I am not touching that with a 10 foot pole or any other length of pole or object...

:lol: That is just too funny - believing Trump has a philosophy, or expertise. — Wayfarer

Trump has a natural instinct for Science... a natural instinct for life.... he is an instinctual autodidact, a self-educated man who never read a book but relied on his ethereal instinct.

Yeah, and here I take my bow and leave with some semblance of dignity. — Wallows

The cleaver of ChimpPig gets no dignity....

'Malevolence foiled by incompetence'. — Wayfarer

But this is why he is such a great jobs president.

.............

In all honesty the only logical reason you would vote for Trump is that you hate humanity and either want to see the death of the species, destruction of all civilization or fall of the United States and you are just voting for Trump to expedite the process and so you can point and laugh all the while.

Trump is an abortion all grown up.

One can formulate existence in the form of Buddhist metaphysics Suchness... that is a formal equivocation that A=A and existence simply is.... Only by imputation does one derive meaning or create distinctions.

I only hope in 2020 more humanities departments close down as universities are starved even more economically.....

I really want to see how long they can keep pretending that SJW fanatics are not a problem and people don't want to learn from or with such morons.

I wonder if they will pretend to the end.

It is all relative... we should just forget novels altogether after all they are all texts... Highe School Education should have equal testing for SAT levels of Shakespeare and To Kill a Mockingbird as they do Bob The Builder and Dora the Explorer.

Reinforcing the narrative and myth of 'age' appropriate material is the beginning of ageism ignorance. we should move beyond that in its entirety.

It isn't even an opinion the complete lack of standards in aesthetics is one thing, to apply that to education is just disgusting. If one wants to dispute aesthetic predilections of literature more power to you but if one wants to suggest literacy rates or all texts assess the same level of literacy and interpretation you are insane.....

The idea of replacing film with reading is just shit and missing the entire point of education... That is to also develop a toolbox of cognitive ability.... Including but not limited to READING ABILITY

1 + 1 = 2 is True.

It is True in the sense of an indisputable fact of a mathematical operation... It as its own statement is its own means and ends.

Let those who wish to quibble over the foundation of maths, epistemic truth and semantic version of truth without substantiating any terms do so at their leisure.

Naive inductive reasoning has many epistemic problems with it but probabilistic induction one has the bread and butter of much of Science and the seed of statistical play and inferences.

Deductive Reasoning is just necessary, and the logical syllogisms providing they undergo an ostensibility test and are examined at for faulty or unsupported premises seem fine... In that, even the epistemological uncertainty and examination of these premises for validity and soundness will usually rely on a broader understanding of the world.

In the real world though I think most favor abductive reasoning over deductive reasoning. As deductive reasoning or its limitation very much depends on a consensus of validity and soundness. One only needs to consider intelligent design or debates on gods existence to see why abduction would be preferred in secular spaces.

It seems a given in educated circles that Shakespeare and DaVinci created "better" art than, let us say, Michael Bay (makes movies that many would consider "low brow" like Transformers or Armageddon). Is there even a little justification for this?

However, once convinced of their superiority, the elites are happy to force their tastes on the rest of us (I never learned anything about Michael Bay movies in school) and they even have the audacity to suggest I am wrong when I say "I like x better than y". Why are we teaching opinions in school? I appreciate the discussion of opinion in school but there should only be judgement of the justification, not the opinion itself.

I think this idea applies to philosophy (and other areas as well), but every time I write my thoughts on that it seems like I will be insulting somebody, and I don't know enough philosophy to justify any insults :grimace: I do feel comfortable enough in my knowledge of education or the arts to justify any insults - for example Shakespeare is OK at best (brilliant use of language but garbage stories). — ZhouBoTong

The kind of catch 22 'progressive' critique... Wherein any distinction of value is a contrivance is easily put at their feet too...

a) the same piece of art claimed to be painted by a white conservative male or a Hispanic lesbian which has more value? If you want to claim both would have equal opportunity to get their art hung in a gallery you are out of your mind....

b) a conversation in contrasting the significance of Starry Night by Van Gough, The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso and Tracy Imin's unmade bed.... Go on have a chop don't just go to the catch 22 Renaissance writers, poets and other mainstream cultural icons paint your own artist canon with the same brush.... Have a real go... then after you get done defending the bed half-heartedly contrast the value of Tracy Imin's art to the kind of aesthetic commentary one might draw from Artist's Shit by Piero Manzoni....

c) If one is a philistine for treating some art as shit and others as not but all are equal then consider the biography of a man like Auguste Rodin whose classical style in France elicited criticism and scorn in his day but still triumphed....

d) If you don't like Shakespeare that is up to you but his stories were written 400 years ago... You will have to forgive the writer if they did not weather as well as some English majors hyperbole would have you believe.... But given his pre-industrial revolution pre democracy writing one might have to be a little more forgiving...
e) The reason why you wouldn't see Shakespeare in a lot of schools today is that he is probably one of the best and most humanistic centers of CULTURE the C word that some artsy wishy-washy Lefty Safe Space Occupying Morons don't want anymore...
The idea Shakespeare is still dominating English classrooms is as much just another battle of one fucktard who calls himself a right winged/conservative against another fucktard that calls himself a SJW/Left (other synonyms....)

I just don't understand why kids need to read the same book.... Surely we could have an electronic database of books and let them pick in 2019.... Insisting on references (reference generators), cut and paste quotations and a digital copy so teachers could cut and paste a reference in doubt into said data base and quickly know whether it is there or not..

Considering its all arbitrary anyway a kid might as well read and write a report on the book of their children rather than read the same book and share opinions nobody cares about or learn to form those opinions. At least they might actually get some joy out of their English class, but an education system that enfranchizes individuated learning and thinking... This is the thing most out of the minds of most people.... It is probably the most significant bipartisan issue for Right and Left Idealogs their want to control and systematize children's thinking and learning.... The only difference of their sycophantic Orwellian Intent is branding.

We do our best to treat people with down-syndrome well. But we certainly don't treat them as equals. Nor should we. I wish them the best, and most of them are fine people, but clearly, they can't be trusted with regular responsibilities. So we deny them some of the freedoms we grant to the rest of the adult population. There are many categories of people that we treat differently, and depending on the category, this difference in treatment may or may not be just. — Dusty of Sky

This is just wrong try googling " can people with down syndrome live on their own" or even the insensitive " average iq of people with down syndrome " you will be exposed to a more enlightened view than your current assumptions on what down syndrome is....

To your OP I have nothing else to say that I did not say prior.

Logic can be used to infer things beyond the realm of sense dependent reality... Even if scientific laws are facts contingent on the description that only holds as to point to the gap between the thing and the concept/descriptor. After we conceded the real world is unspeakable in an absolute sense we can still ask whether we can describe things non-trivially or not.

There is logic at the heart of basic chemistry, inferences on geology, people accept the world is round without 'first hand' empirical experience or the existence of nations they have never been to... As such no matter what kind of skeptic you are there is an axiomatic basis of rationale... So long as one believes in the existence of India without having been there, no word soup will stop the fact that clear assumption has been made. I think there are very good reasons for making such axiomatic assumptions...

As such we can say some kind of assumption is
a) necessary to life
b) exists in a world with Order and distinguishable constants...

This cannot be dependent on empiricism so long as one is willing to use a microscope to validate microscopic worlds or a telescope to validate an astronomic world... To say this is still 'sense dependent'' is meaningless garbage the stage has been set to take human knowledge and its limits beyond its basic senses for a long time.

As for Truth I am just suspicious of Universals, especially with no predeclared definition or intention... What about Truth belongs in that same kind of Meaning of Life nothing question.... That without setting up a criterion cannot be hoped to be answered in an individuated formulation through prose much less meaningfully discussed.

Logic is a good assessment of causal agents, formalization of practical and meaningful contexts, principles and laws... But Logic alone is not Truth or even close to it, examining false premises, looking for evidence, examining the competing hypothesis, debating and such... All show how we meter logic in a myriad of forms and contexts to come to the truth, certainty, consensus or whatever the fuck else you want to call adopting an axiom proper. Where a concept leaves a hypothetical and becomes a truism or a basis for action, policy and so on.

In particular within the context of Science it is not so much Logic alone but Logic + Mathematics it is the combination of Logical Principles/Applications and Meter of Truth(probability) that I would say is our best descriptor of the world in most principle certainty.

Chimp-pig content generator.. — Wallows

God gave us all a calling.

No no.... that is not a chimppig or a chimp-pig, or a chimp or a pig it is a cancer, a wart, some kind of hemmoroid or unwanted growth with the worst haircut possible... how dare you hold living things in such disdain.

Accepting the irrepressible irrefutable truth of the Chimppigness of humanity is how you avoid that abomination/abortion of a human being having a presidency.

No, I realize there is no nation-saving solution. I primarily wanted to shift your attention from the need for voters who are better informed to the need for improved critical thinking. Not only is that the more serious problem, it is also more feasible to address. Addressing it does not mean fixing it, it means improving it - perhaps little by little, step by step - drawing attention to this as a problem, striving to improve our own critical thinking, and finally working towards small improvements in education (informal education and eventually formal). It needn't be autocratically imposed in formal education; it can be through improved textbooks by authors who realize the problem exists. Even individual teachers who embrace the issue could address it in some limited way. Eventually perhaps electives in critical thinking skills could be offered. Still a bit of a utopian vision, I admit, but still a reasonable principle to have in min — Relativist

The role of government tends to be delegation more so than direct leadership...
Government does not set a highschool syllabus implicitly, they set standards on what to and not to include in abstract, total hours and so on at best... the Department of Education in a nation sets curriculum....

Having a formal standardized standard of what is acceptable for voting, what needs to be included in the test, to the appropiate education level, designating school curriculum, adult education, funding for apps, things like that... THAT is a political policy
It would then be handed off too someone else to deal with and formalize...

So specifically how would you fix this problem... specifically a method... it doesnt need to be pitch perfect manual.... I am asking for an A B C D plan in general that could feasibly exist within the current culture...
Rather than appealing to say "education" as if by way of a magical pixie fart we suddenly bump the collective IQ of a nation up by 3 points and reading average up significantly....

I feel like if you look through my posts I started from an argument and addressed the criticisms of how as reasonably as should be expected in an internet forum.... I also pointed out a license as proof of competency for just about fucking everything and anything now.

But the one exclusion seems to be democracy.... It is fine for open heart surgery or something as simple as driving a car but one no matter how much of a dumb fuck they are should be given free voting based on meeting an arbitrary voting age and coming out of one particular vaginal canal within an acceptable degree of latitude and longitude... Well take a good fucking look at the aesthetic argument...

That shit right there is the real price of freedom.

As for critical thinking faculties being developed no... it isn't utopian It works in most of British education just not Welsh and rural education that got left behind that was brexit... The education outside certain areas and inside others is a tale of two education systems....

Nowhere is this more evident than the United States with the best Education at the top end of universities.... But woefully depressing educational averages in stark contrast.

I am done making rational arguments... Here is argument through art.




Love It Love Democracy Do It...
We the collective will of dumb fucks
Shall have our dumb fuck elect

Awesome... good luck with it... Everytime you are haunted by it by the way is a moment in time I am right

That always sounded like an oxymoron in my mind, haha. — Wallows

How about this argument... that ChimpPig appropiately dehumanizes people from having some kind of anthropocentric value....

Example

Explain to me how you can seperate chimppig...

One must be a wallowing root sniffing greedy swine and an angry infantile, industrious, social shit flinging chimp...

I think I am apathetic to the point where whatever the truth is..... *shrug*

You could argue plants are conscious under the definition of OP simply by understanding an event unfolding, plants have a complex of biochemical communication...

But they are not conscious in that anthropocentric definition... I think the amazing things about humanity and their consciousness is to create and impute meaning. Trying to build these faux premises ambiguous semantic universals as empathetic signifiers of significance is just a bit myopic.

Whatever happened to joy for joys sake or experience for experience sake....
For argument sake if on the 25th of december the materialist consciousness professor says he cracked the hard problem finally.... Would you live your life significantly differently? Would it ruin Christmas?

What human beings call consciousness, meaning and truth seems tied to human beings unique abilities of language use and impute meaning. I would say our minds are more geared for strategy than some 21st century conception of ego just as I question whether we are designed for truth.
More likely our truth/falsehood is an assessing mechanism to refine the industriousness of our endeavours in filtering signs.
The looking for the future divination in goats bowels and looking for the broken brush as evidence of where prey items in which to hunt is an extension of the same kind of all too human assignment of meaning in different contexts.

But if you have MS, as I do...? — Pattern-chaser

I will smoke with you and anyone that tells you that you shouldn't I will slap on your behalf

You firstly have a shitty brochure... giving an as advertised fantasy preying on people's want and need to believe in anything, their instinctive compunction for certainty.

Next, you have a very illusory way of manipulating institutions and bureaucracies so that it seems impersonal, part of the nature of things and the norms. The predates on synthetic happiness, people's infinite capacity to find some modicum of comfort even in hell.

Next you extend your impersonal model for advantage by doing things like creating non-physical cashflow so even people who acquire more debt or pay petty bullshit admin charges etc that are quasi-legal it doesn't matter too much or as much to them because 'the thing' is not something they have ever seen or touched so the empirical validity is as a stranger... So you alienate value so one cannot empathize with it.

Next, you have a large mechanism of systemic manipulation that functions outside of the democratic sphere such as lobbying and have your corporations your own centers of cumulative capital be considered people with the right form of legalese so you get all the representation you want and have the elected representatives working for you.

Next, you manipulate the game via private/public mechanisms to stifle potential growth of competitors even to the extent of bringing legislation against yourself.

You give distractions in the contemporary bread and circus
Seize control distribution channels of media
You set up the game so there is no accountability mechanism in place even the richest CEO needs to answer to the shareholders.

Oh and no matter what anyone says or does you do not want intelligent people being listened to and definitely don't want unions....

If you do the following you are well on your way to creating an IRL game of monopoly... Hardly everything, broad strokes of the brush and such but I don't think these premises are in any way groundbreaking innovations of critique, but just adequately address the question...

Why does a single person or tiny group control a popular vote?

Although Aristotle might contribute to a civics course I wouldn't just say read him is the answer....
For one example is the answer he gave to why objects come to rest as opposed to what Science gives... Although surely a genius whose contributions a nobody like me will pale in comparison to 2300 years is a long time and some significant innovations have been made.

Sure you can ask your question, but I see it as a rather strange question!

Like most (like everyone, I suppose), I read what I want to read.

You do also. Right?

Anyway, I agree it is arbitrary to base voting rights on age...but at least that has to do with something easily defined and authenticated. ("How long you been alive and can you prove it?")

"Are you 'smart' enough to vote"...is not so easily defined. And what you (or a majority) might consider a minimum of intelligence to vote...might exclude people better prepared to make a reasonable selection of whom they want to represent them than those you deem to be "intelligent enough."

In any case, "the current litmus test" is NOT merely age. The desire to vote is also a test. One must go through the process of registering...and completing a ballot.

That desire to vote...seems to me to go a long way toward meeting a standard of being intelligent enough to make a reasonable decision.

Said another way: I'd love to see more people qualify to vote as opposed to seeing fewer qualified due to the standards you advocate imposing. — Frank Apisa

If the entire notion of biased of reading is meaningfully codified to subjective experience as the meaningful standard.... sure I do...

Insofar as it is hard to define.... well Cambridge Analytica launched a targeted advertising campaign and identified their victims well... Although I wouldn't say it is as 2+2 =4 we are getting a lot better at it.Big Data will take care of that proofing but Big Data will take over everything including democracy more and more.

From Aristotle's inspiration, Alexander the Great's conquests built the largest empire ever known. Alexander died early and unexpectedly. His empire immediately dissolved into battles between his Generals. Had Alexander not suddenly died, he would have been able to institute a democratic constitution, like that of Solon (~600 BCE), in accordance with Aristotle's tutelage.

Even in the last decade, politicians have increasingly regarded the Solonic Constitution as the cornerstone of modern, healthy democracies. When Soviet Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979 CE, it thought that communism could safely supplant military dictatorship, but failed. in 2001 CE, the USA touted that its idealistic superiority justified a further attempt to invade Afghanistan, but it failed. Four years later, the USA touted the same idealistic superiority in Iraq, but this time it made the formation of a new Iraqi Constitution a top priority after conquest, even more important than terrorist suppression.

The slow success in Iraq has been internationally embittered as foul play. Some say the constitution did not really provide much of an improvement. For example, Iraqi women already had the right to vote since 1980. But the problem has not been so much in political governance, and far more with moral justification for invasion. The USA justified the invasion to the United Nations by claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), but they were never found. So the USA has now lost the moral right for further invasions entirely, no matter what the actual value of Solonic Constitutions, and has been increasingly retreating into nationalism. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has become more cynical, ironically moving back to viewing democracy as the best option among worse alternatives...just as Aristotle did 23 centuries ago. — ernestm

a) Afghanistan war is one I am somewhat more empathetic too.... don't get me wrong it is a clusterfuck but there is no way 9/11 happens and someone doesn't pay. The Taliban chose not to turn over BinLaden based on lack of evidence as they saw it... So America began a war.

The big problem there is America didn't cut a deal with some other regional leaders to help stabilize the region and began a large scale assault against what was essentially a guerrilla war effort retaliation. M

b) Whilst Afghanistan was going on fake rancher G.W. Bush tried to run a war through based on the intelligence given from a meth addict, of biochemical manufacturing space in the back of a truck that never stops....
This was A grade BS and they took it to the United Nations.
On the other hand, multiple people from the intelligence community also quit over the Iraq war. Pentagon officials complained and the war that would be over by Christmas... Famous last words since the first world war dragged on into thousands of U.S. and allies dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and trillions of dollars of debt.

It is good that in Iraq a better political policy but the war was an unwarranted murderous act of aggression voted down in the U.N. with those fantastic advanced interrogation tactics...

The best thing to come out of the wars was Saddam and Bin Ladens deaths but the price just wasn't worth it.

I think democracy can be given the Winston Churchhiill defense but I do support some nationalism... More specifically I want nations to have to fiat their own financial institutions' effect in international court damages. I want to see what the banking regulation looks like then, most problems around the devisive nature of politics is a specific type of ethical claim around 'Political Correctness' and specifically economic policy....

Nobody is really questioning whether their nations should have a sovereignty or a vote. It is the future vision for that democratic nation that is in contention.

A question if I may:

Are you suggesting that YOU get to decide who the "stuid and gullible" are?

If not...how will that be decided? — Frank Apisa

Having anticipated this I have already pointed to any number of standards we have allowed to be culturally imposed in multiple ways in life. To the point of also including a citizenship test for immigration. The current litmus test is merely age.... you just need to exist and be born within a certain range of latitude and longitude and hey presto you are an adult citizen and you get a vote.

My argument is more let's not make it arbitrary anymore and tie it to any number of standards already produced whilst also promoting education in civics and critical thinking/reflection things already taught and have been taught for decades.


Moreover I am not saying this test should be a one time deal that is you fail you fail forever, you can take it infinity times... But you have to pass it much like you have to pass a drivers test in order to drive...

Given that your question just has me repeating myself may I ask a question...

Do you read what others write..... or do you more read what you want to read?

Well I don't live in the States and I just left England.
So as much as possible it really isn't my problem.
You just keep doing American things.
4 more years of Trump cannot wait.
Sounds fantastic and wonderful.
We loved the wall in the brochure.
Democracy will prevail and the Will of the People
An idiot president for idiots democracy at work
Hoo Fuckin Rah God Bless America.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-10-12/2-of-3-americans-wouldnt-pass-us-citizenship-test

Read this... Have a look at a citizenship test and tell me your children would not be better educated by a squirrel... making their rights tied to their highschool diploma... You bet those fuckers will be doing all kinds of reading and writing.

Have you ever heard of Adrian Johnston?
He on the one hand wrote one of the most lucid 'in English you can read' accounts of Transcendetal Materialsm... called speculative adventures on transcendental materialism. I think the book is an interesting read, and a reasonable version of that Hegelian vein in the 21st century that in some way could be useful.... Did not think that was possible until I read that book.

On the other he hand he wrote Irrepressible Truth : On Lacan's 'The Freudian Thing' this is a bible of Chimp-Pig from the first page to the last page it is Chimp-Pig porn.... By far the worst book I have ever read on philosophy in my lifetime but the perfect place to draw from for a Dao -Te-ChimpPig, an ontology of ChimpPig.

I became a school teacher and have made good changes in my school... But if you are hoping for a nation-saving solution with the syllabus, pension for standardized testing and bureaucratic silliness let alone bold education then it is hard. There are some people like Rita Pierson who influenced my teaching. It is just we can't do anything radical, or even talk about it.

An example was Jane Elliott's blue eye- green eye experiment designed to give kids a confrontational and solidarity based experience in discrimination. It was something viewed as heretical and would still be viewed traumatizing...

What to do?
There is too many Theory running wishy-washy Marxists running around the University I worked close too in England and are doing the same here.... It is amazing they think that it is going unnoticed the attempt to advocate a curriculum with Derrida and Deconstruction. Really this is an inroad to bring back the right-minded construction theory and lesson plans with no concern for classroom management or measured engagement... inevitably creating shit pedagogy. You should consider having a listen to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak talk at the University of London (on youtube) as she talks about the difficulty of contextualizing Derrida at a University level.

In spite of that difficulty it has a good chance becoming curriculum you want to know why? Even though it is a garbage idea there is a market for it... Hearts and Minds determines what becomes real or not... I won't win people to my side but the fact that I have said this time and time again....

Nobody has argued that stupid people contribute to a democracy outside of the principle...

If I argued and I think it is unfair that black people, women or some other group based on arbitrary demography should not get the vote. I would be condemned... For articulated and passionate calls for justice... Why? Because it is arbitrary, small minded prejudice... This is a good sign but more needs to be done.

But it is fine.... all something will happen this that and more

Eventually humanity will tire of its own bullshit and just let the computers be in charge... Seems more realistic than just stopping dumb fucks ruining democracy.... But then I always was a romantic.

thedeadidea LOL. Alright. Then I have nothing against your position, so long as I get to rule. — YuZhonglu

Everyone will get to rule eventually... I will make a drug induced VR euthanasia available so everyone can rule. Whilst us normies will get the benefit of you ceasing to be... It is win-win.

↪thedeadidea The way I see it, the problem is not so much that uninformed and ignorant people are allowed to vote - good luck rescinding that right without violence, let alone getting people to agree with it - but that we celebrate and amplify the voice of uninformed and ignorant people.

Why? Because drama and conflict outsells intelligent discussion any day of the week. Polarity more readily stimulates a response from even the most intelligent and rational citizen, so they give air time to whingers and devil’s advocates, generating an assumption that what they’re saying has value other than simply stimulating response from others.

Rescinding the right to vote from the uninformed and ignorant will only generate a different form of class conflict. It’s not a solution, and to tout it as such only shows a lack of sympathy and an ignorance of what it’s like to be denied access to information, or to be raised ignorant.

That the age cap on democracy fails to ensure a standard of voting capacity is an indictment on our education and value systems. What happens historically when the ‘ruling elite’ dictate the criterion on which one can become enfranchised? Do you not see the problem with your supposed ‘utopia’? — Possibility

& someone finally tries to run my ideas through a word that actually exists and finds out the tragic despot failure of the position. Alas I concede the flaw in my position as something applicable but I do stick to the principle. The fact immigrants need to get their 'citizenship license' and natives just get it for free is absurd. I don't think the test is the problem I think the problem is that it isn't a universal principle for voting rights.

So instead we will likely end up in a technocracy, for it is utterly more realistic. Alas I tried.