Would it not depend on the issue? If it's about bike lanes, then never. What do you have in mind?

I'm not a philosopher, but it strikes me that the word philosophy is an umbrella term for a wide range of enterprises - some of these would, as per Deleuze, develop new ways of understanding or describing the world. It sounds like you prefer to see philosophy as a creative endeavor rather than one bound by methodologies and mechanistic reasoning.

People seem to pursue the approaches to philosophy that match their dispositions and experience, and these help to form a set of habitual approaches to making sense of the world. I like the idea of philosophy as a way of trying to "undermine" our own habits, but this necessarily suggests that philosophy might need to be different things for different people. What I often observe, including in my own reflections, is that philosophy can serve as a series of elaborate post hoc rationalizations constructed to validate one's affective relationships with the world.

I am just trying to understand if I can possibly record what goes through within us at every moment. — Ayush Jain

Not sure I understand your ideas here. Memory doesn't represent what happened to us or how we felt. The self is like mercury. What we think we experienced changes which each recollection and evolves, often imperceptibly. The idea of a correct recollection of an event seems wrong. There is how you felt in the moment, which is specific to everything that came immediately before and after. It continually evolves: seconds, minutes, days, weeks, years later. I can't see how your idea would be useful. Rather than nailing down a single meaning and reproducing it over time in an attempt at a kind of synthesis, it might be better to celebrate the multiple interpretations of any event and realize that all we can do is try to make sense of our environment.

I don’t know the difference between the bush and the outback. I use them interchangeably if I have to use them. But generally I talk about going to ‘the country.’

Bushmaster" is an ironic name for an Australian tank, isn't it? — Arcane Sandwich

I thought is was an amusing name - sounds more like a Chinese Swiss army knife knock off you might find at Kmart in a grubby blister pack for $4.99.

As we keep imagining and exploring, the universe unravels itself. In your day to day life, I don't think the black hole sitting in the center of our galaxy has any direct impact. you will be indifferent to its existence.
But its there now since somebody has observed it. If nobody would have, it might or might not have existed?

All of these thoughts intrigue me a lot. What do you think? — Ayush Jain

I have no real commitments either way here but it might also be said that the universe doesn't so much unravel itself as we co-create or even invent it. Everything we see and experience is subject to our cognitive apparatus, our arbitrary language and our frames of reference which may not (and in my view are unlikely to) map directly onto reality. 'Reality' itself is a human construct, the ultimately real, the foundation, the prime mover, whatever conceptual frame you wish to insert.

There's a whole thread on this here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14685/the-mind-created-world

:up: Yep. Thanks again for the reference.

Does he need to use those words? He is obviously responding to the famous criticism of it as I have outlined earlier. The following appears to be a clear response to the CI, stating almost identically the famous critique.

“The moral principle that it is one’s duty to speak the truth, if it were taken singly and
unconditionally, would make all society impossible. We have the proof of this in the very direct
consequences which have been drawn from this principle by a German philosopher, who goes so far as to affirm that to tell a falsehood to a murderer who asked us whether our friend, of whom he was in pursuit, had not taken refuge in our house, would be a crime.”

Yeah, I live in the centre of Melbourne's CBD. It seems quieter than Richmond or Fitzroy. Nice for walks and close to all kinds of expensive shit. I like Sydney - used to stay in Potts Point. lovely place. I quite like Brisbane, but like Alain, it's been 10 years since I was there. I like Canberra too - it feels like a university campus town.

Or a lad-led wank...

Great, thanks. Now there's a direct source for this.

Most Australians I know drink imported beers like Asahi or Corona.
— Tom Storm
You're in Melbourne, then. — Banno

Yes, I'm a black-clad wanker, like the rest

Yes, Coopers comes up a bit too.

Thanks. So Kant actually addresses this concern directly. :smile:

Christ, it's hard to read. What does it say...

Environmental issues are an important issue, indeed, but I think every country of the world should promote their national products. I — javi2541997

Well, amongst Australian national products are institutional racism and laziness - we don't need to promote these. I don't drink alcohol, but in the days when I did, I rarely drank beer or wine. I actually found that there was some marvellous Tasmanian made whisky. But for the most part, I supported Scotland (J&B) and Ireland (Jameson's). I was never a connoisseur.

Makes sense.

Lawson vs. Patterson was a part of the culture wars in the eighties. — Banno

I must have been away that day. :wink: What was the point of that fight? I was in the Keating versus Hawke stoush back then.

Out of curiosity, I read most of Lawson's stories and a few Patterson pieces when I was a voracious reader in the 1980's but then I also tired to read Xavier Herbert...

I'm looking for some recognised expertise, not just an anonymous member of a forum, like us. I want something that I can cite. You seem to be making this all about you and it's actually about Kant. :wink:

I’m not looking for a rebuttal, I am looking for some expertise on Kant, perhaps a scholar on this matter. What is the expert consensus (if there is one) on this frequently touted weakness of the CI?

Why should you fallaciously appeal to the authority of a Kant expert in order to bypass or overrule my counter-argument of that critique? — Arcane Sandwich

Settle down. I will do as I want.

I think that Crocodile Dundee created the stereotype, — Arcane Sandwich

No. The stereotype was decades old. Which is why we resented its use.

It's a common critique of Kant. We should ask a Kant expert.

Lawson and Patterson are historical relics of a bygone day. Most Australians under 50 would probably not have heard of them. I have never heard a kangaroo joke in my life. Australians of my generation generally ignored their own culture and embraced overseas books, films and food. When Crocodile Dundee came out, many of my friends initially refused to see it as it was dealing in lazy cliches about the bush held mainly by American tourists. We saw Paul Hogan as pandering to that demographic to make a quick buck. Which he proceeded to do. Many bucks indeed.

but the first Australian thing that comes to my mind is Foster's beer, not AC/DC. — javi2541997

I don't think anyone here drinks Fosters. Most Australians I know drink imported beers like Asahi or Corona. Different in the country I'd imagine. ACDC? The US and Europe are their biggest markets. As I understand it, only one of the band was born in Australia, the rest are from the British Isles. :wink:

Is that right? — Arcane Sandwich

I'm not a Kant expert. But the categorical imperative - essentially - Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. This leads to the infamous scenario that if Nazis are asking you if you have Jews hiding in your attic, you must tell them where they are because lying is wrong. Hence: Do what is right, though the heavens may fall. Adhering to an absolute principle regardless of the situation seems rigid and can lead to tragic outcomes.

I think that Kant is right in the universal context—for me the mistake he makes is transferring that truth to all particular situations as a rigid notion of duty. — Janus

For what it's worth this is my read of Kant too. The old saying, often attributed to Kant - 'Do what is right, though the heavens may fall.' - hints at what the consequences of a rigid consequentialism might be. I sometimes think of this categorical imperative as a kind of blunt scientism of morality, if that makes sense.

:up: I've probably asked this before, but if your thesis is that the world is mind created, then why would maths and time and space not also be similar products of the human mind, a matrix of cognitive gestalts, if you like, rather than a reflection of some objective reality which (mostly) transcends our experience?

I'm betting on the 5th or the 12th.

↪Tom Storm? — Banno

I haven't heard anything yet.

And can you see how this notion doesn’t take away from science the usefulness that we know it has in our lives? People tend to go into a panic when you suggest his to them, as if the ground has been pulled out from under them and suddenly cats will be mating with dogs and murderers will run rampant in the streets. But accepting this idea of science as contingent artifact leaves everything exactly as it has been. It just gives us further options we didn’t see before. — Joshs

Absolutely. I accept that something doesn't have to be 'true' (or correspond to reality in some mysterious way) to be incredibly useful.

I don't think it's so black and white—either this or that. We formulate the laws of nature, but we are constrained in those formulations by what we actually observe to be so. We see regularities and invariances everywhere we look. We encounter number in our environments simply on account of the fact that there are many things. — Janus

Sure. I guess this is a common sense account. By the way, I have no commitments either way, I am just interested to hear more.

I think there is confusion around the term 'platonic realm'. There is a domain of natural numbers, right? Where is it? — Wayfarer

Yes, I'm aware of these arguments and well summarised. But what we don't often hear are the ideas @Joshs has proposed in more detail. I find them particularly interesting. I guess I used the term platonic realm as a short cut for transcendental.

why is it that mathematical predictions so often anticipate unexpected empirical discoveries? He doesn’t attempt to explain why that is so, as much as just point it out.
— Wayfarer

Apparently he has some ideas concerning why that is so.
Wigner wrote:

“It is important to point out that the mathematical formulation of the physicist's often crude experience leads in an uncanny number of cases to an amazingly accurate description of a large class of phenomena."He adds that the observation "the laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics," properly made by Galileo three hundred years ago, "is now truer than ever before.”

I myself am a critic of ‘scientism’, the attempt to subordinate all knowledge to mathematical quantfication, but I don’t think that invalidates Wigner’s point.
— Wayfarer

If Wigner’s point is that the laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics, then that’s precisely what I’m trying to invalidate. It’s the human-constructed norms of nature that are written in the language of mathematics, not anything to do with nature ‘in itself’. — Joshs

I find this some of the most interesting ideas on the forum. The notion that scientific laws and maths are contingent human artifacts rather than the product of some Platonic realm seems more intuitively correct to me. But as an untheorized amateur, I would say that.

I guess Argentina would just be Spanish Texas then, or something like that. — Arcane Sandwich

Most Australians tend to see themselves as sophisticated city folk, urban hipsters, etc, emulating New York and London rather than any hic desert state. If you travel around Melbourne, most people see themselves in terms very similar to Californians. Ditto Sydney. In fact, I think there used to be an old saying that Sydney is the better half of California.

But up North we do have a Texas-like culture, everything is big and the ideas are often small (with apologies to Austin).

The other aspect of Australia is that the country is so big that most of us never travel to parts of it. I have never been to the North or West of the country. In Melbourne and Sydney you will meet many people who have been to Argentina or France but never been to Darwin or Perth.

Then it's oxymoronic because it can't be dysphoric and be good. — Hanover

This sounds like you're just playing word games. The bigger point isn't about the word 'dysphoria' but the concept of transitioning to a desired state—the idea that happiness, or even euphoria, can be achieved by changing gender and thereby feeling normal. I would take it as good that more people are able to identify a problem and be supported in the solution rather than spending their lives suppressing who they are.

There simply is no good logical explanation — Hanover

I make no comment on any so-called logic or attempts to paint transitioning as somehow deviant or unnatural. And I won't enter into yet another futile anti-trans debate masquerading as a search for truth (not that you necessarily approach it like this, but many do.) My point was a simple response to whether it is on the rise. And it may be on the rise because more people feel brave enough to express their identity, and take action - not because the commie, woke, progressives have done something nefarious to our youth... :wink:

I'd respond by saying that we shouldn't allow the Nordic person to be accepted as Asian. If you don't agree with me, why not? — Hanover

Your argument sounds like a case of false equivalence or a slippery slope style fallacy.

How is this not like the response to the 'love is love' argument for gay marriage: 'Next thing they'll want to marry a fridge or an animal'? How is this not like the response on homosexuality that permitting it is the slippery slope to bestiality or paedophilia? All familiar 'arguments'.

And who knows, maybe in the future the notion of gender and race will be be abolished and we may well be able to chose from many identities.

:up:

I'm glad to hear you experience this differently. — Benkei

:up:

The OP maybe is as much about my own biases as anything else — Benkei

Cool. Yep, and all I'm offering is my observations and built in biases too.

How can more options lead to more people being unhappy with their selves? — Benkei

I think more options mean there are likely to be more ways of being authentic (in the West), which is likely to promote more potential satisfaction. We are no longer limited to mainstream looks, orientations, lifestyles or cultures. When I grew up it was harder.

Gender dysphoria is on the rise and this is not driven by the availability of sex-change operations; and that's for me the main hint something is not going well. — Benkei

I'm no expert but it may be a positive sign that gender dysphoria is on the rise. Perhaps it shows a truer figure of the issue's prevalence, which was suppressed for so long. People often point to how a hundred years ago left handed people were rare, maybe 2%. Once it was accepted that being left handed was not a sign of evil or a bad practice, the percentage increased to maybe 12%. As it happened, I used to try to write left handed and I remember the teacher slapping my left hand and intoning, 'That's wrong!' That was 1970.

Nowadays, nobody is allowed to be ugly. If you're a teenage boy and don't have a six-pack and spend 3 days a week in the gym, you're not meeting the expected standard. — Benkei

I can see why people might think this, but it's not what I'm seeing. Maybe it's different in Australia. Unfit and perhaps unattractive people don't seem to find it hard to make friends and get laid, from what I can tell. And it's even cool to belong to the nerd group, which definitely wasn't a thing when I was 15. I think it may well be true that certain subcultures and occupations have set standards which may be unattainable to some others, but I recall that being a thing 40 years ago too. Overall, I think self-confidence and purpose will get you almost anywhere. Always have.

When I say that violence of war is out of date I am thinking of how many people see the use of war and violence in religion as being something to be avoided. — Jack Cummins

I understand that, but I don't think this matters. Many soldiers I've known feel this way too and yet were committed to conflicts when they were called to them. How do you think we would ever arrive at a time when humans won't fight over territory and values? I am not a utopian or a pacifist nor do I make any comment as to whether war is natural or whether nature can be overcome. Not sure if notions of essentialism or 'human nature' give us anything.

I think war is simply a part of being human. What could be more natural than seeking to expand territory and values and finding enmity along the way?

It is natural in that way, but could be seen as a rather outdated approach to life if it is about literal violence. — Jack Cummins

What would make 'literal violence' out of date: do you mean by this physical violence? Do you have a model of progress which can demonstrate that violence is less intrinsic to human behaviour over time? I know this is a popular view among progressives.

There is also the evolutionary possibility of people thinking of avoiding destruction. — Jack Cummins

I'm not a big fan of projecting untheorised interpretations of evolutionary theory upon behaviours. But if you must say this, then we can also sat that there is also the possibility of people thinking of more destruction in order to gain control over land and values.

If there were weapons that could vaporise people but leave all buildings and infrastructure in place, that could be viewed as less destructive and yet be more deadly.

:up: Thank you. Plato's one thing, but what do you think? Later is fine. Personally, I struggle with theories. I just intuit my way around. I'm rarely caught short. :wink:

All goodness, even the good of mere appearances, is a reflection of the Good, like light refracted through different mirrors, some more smokey than others. We see now "through a glass darkly." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is this your belief too?

The transcendent, to be properly "transcendent" cannot be absent from what it transcends. Likewise, the absolute is not reality as set over and against appearances, but must encompass all of reality and appearances, both what is relative and in-itself. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I get the theory. How would we demonstrate that this is the case? It also seems kind of circular: claiming that the absolute encompasses all reality and appearances, doesn't it take for granted what it is supposed to establish?

What I am interested in is how we might defend the idea of an absolute goodness which somehow is the grounding for all instantiations of goodness. I get the various schools, but they take this axiomatic. How could it be demonstrated? But let's not get into too much detail, a rough sketch would be perfectly adequate.

I don't think greed explains anything much. We need to look at what underlying needs are being met. Greed itself isn't a need, it's a downstream response. So, the real question is: what are greed's drivers?