If women had been equals
I am intensely aware of how painfully difficult it is for me to participate in male dominated forums. I know I am thinking on a different level and that I am not conforming with the male idea of what is important. I have been banned enough times to know that it is a risk to go against male control of forums. All this seems to make a discussion of gender differences, and how our thoughts are shaped, very important.
Abigail Adams prodded her husband John Adams to think of women when he was working on the constitution. History has said John Adams considered his wife to be an excellent advisor. Hopefully, we all know Franklin Roosevelt also considered his wife to be someone to listen to, and that Elenor Roosevelt played a strong role in his decisions and national policy. That clearly is not the case for Ivana Trump who is the worst first lady we have had in a long time and the tyrannical rule of Donald Trump.
In the back of my mind is the Haudenosaunee and their a matriarchal society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_roles_among_the_indigenous_peoples_of_North_America
And the Etruscans who were contemporaries with Athens and Rome.
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/30/archives/etruscan-women-had-womens-lib.html
Is it possible that women may think fundamentally different from men, unless they are pressured to think like men, and that that difference is important to humanity? What if it is our potential to be more like bonobo (female domination) and less like chimpanzees (male domination)?
Abigail Adams prodded her husband John Adams to think of women when he was working on the constitution. History has said John Adams considered his wife to be an excellent advisor. Hopefully, we all know Franklin Roosevelt also considered his wife to be someone to listen to, and that Elenor Roosevelt played a strong role in his decisions and national policy. That clearly is not the case for Ivana Trump who is the worst first lady we have had in a long time and the tyrannical rule of Donald Trump.
In the back of my mind is the Haudenosaunee and their a matriarchal society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_roles_among_the_indigenous_peoples_of_North_America
And the Etruscans who were contemporaries with Athens and Rome.
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/30/archives/etruscan-women-had-womens-lib.html
Is it possible that women may think fundamentally different from men, unless they are pressured to think like men, and that that difference is important to humanity? What if it is our potential to be more like bonobo (female domination) and less like chimpanzees (male domination)?
Comments (268)
I think such generalizations as "female mind" / "male mind" are not very useful. Individuals think. Assuming an individual thinks a certain way because of their sex is foolish, and sexist.
The mirroring of human societies to animal societies is something I steer away from, unless one desires to be an animal rather than a human. I desire the opposite.
When answering the question "who should dominate?", perhaps the question that first needs to be answered is, why should anyone ever be dominated in the first place?
And it almost happened here in the US. :smile:
I would answer that in the affirmative but I don't think any moderator would agree with that.
I am sure there are better words for what I want to say. That is why I started this thread. It is not so much about what is said as it is about how it is interpreted. I think men and women interpret things differently or organize their thinking differently.
Moderators are prone to see a challenge to their authority, rather than an effort to be understood. I think many times disagreements are about interpretations. Such as trying to help a nation eradicate a disease when the people we are trying to help distrust us and think it is our intent to sterilize them or harm them. Mods who use guns in their avatars see bad guys to shoot down because that is what they are looking for. A teacher will have a different interpretation.
This post didn't come out right.
:kiss: Yes, I am sexist and you assume that is wrong? Why? What if it is based on science and an appreciation of yin and yang? Sure under pressure women can behave like men, but is that desired?
Oh my, if you want to ignore anthropology and related sciences, we are in trouble. I don't know how any good can come out this.
Why should there be a leader and submission to the leadership? Because I ship, an industry or a nation without strong leadership is in big trouble. With that said, it is extremely important to know the qualities of good leadership and avoid mistaking a tyrant for good leadership. Tyrants who appeal to the masses can lead to thousands of people dying because of the ignorance and ego of the tyrant. Democracy is supposed to prevent that from happening, while assuring strong leadership, but it can not prevent that unless the masses are well educated, and the culture supports democracy, not Wrestlemania mentality. This is really tricky!
It is possible, though I don't know that there is good evidence to support it. All thinking individuals have already been socialised to an extent, so it's almost impossible to figure out how they'd think without their socialisation.
What almost happened in the US, electing a woman to the presidency? In matriarchies, women rule, right.
I think you're bang on that "going online to have an argument about something abstract" is something that men are more socialised to accept, seek out and revel in. We unfortunately don't keep collaborative and exploratory discussions going long on here, and it's very hard to keep oneself exploratory and collaborative when someone is going to come along and treat it like a fight anyway.
The topic of raising the bar for post quality comes up sometimes, as does lowering the bar for moderating people getting combative. I think we usually err on the side of inaction for a few reasons, (1) it would make many posters unable to contribute and (2) policing the urge to show someone that they are wrong on the internet on an internet forum devoted to arguing about weird shit seems fruitless.
But I do regret that the aggregate effect of this inaction is that we aren't cultivating an environment where exploratory discussions are more common. Always open to suggestions.
On the contrary, we tend to try to answer very difficult questions of our complex society by preferring to anthropology and biology disregarding sociology, the political sciences, economics and history.
"Why did the US invade Afghanistan and Iraq? Let's look at why and how aggressive chimpanzees are, biologist X has studied West African chimpanzee groups...".
It's like asking deep philosophical questions from a quantum physicist or a cosmologist, because they study things that people think is close to deep philosophical questions, not knowing that what they actually know is math & statistics.
Quoting Athena
Yes, would we even notice that you are a women if you wouldn't say that you are? The name in an anonymous site can be actually confusing.
It took me a couple of posts to get no one seems to appreciate matriarchy is female domination, female leadership, and there are some really good things about matriarchies.
One proof that females think differently is the skyrocketing number of bills passed to take care of children.
Anthropology is one science that studies animals and humans to get at what is natural, and also anthropology does cross-cultural studies. I don't know what the name of the field that studies hormones but that certainly should be taken into consideration in a study of human behavior and gender differences.
When I did a college paper about middle-age women, I came across a study of language and social positioning. That study really got my attention because I could so relate to being a domestic woman struggling to do college work that is very male-dominated! My chauvinistic professor rejected my research on women that was done by women and was not the abstracts. He only accepted papers that were less than 10 years old and in the abstracts. He was perhaps the most ignorant of all my professors. On the last day of class, some older women who audited the class delicately ranked him over the coals for his ignorance of how to help older women. I don't think there is a good understanding of the importance of women's work nor of the language differences, and I am loosing hope of this thread helping me develop my thoughts.
Male and female brains are “wired” differently, to use that old cliche.
“Male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes”.
https://www.pnas.org/content/111/2/823
Given that it makes sense that both genders should cooperate with one another rather than dominate. It’s why the emancipation of women is so important to the development of a society.
Undeniable. (I'm guessing.)
Quoting NOS4A2
Decade-specific fantasy. (I'm guessing.)
Aaliyah! Just as I was giving up any hope of this discussion being what I was hoping for, you come along and give me hope.
I can totally appreciate not keeping collaborative and exploratory discussions going for long because they are exhausting! The thinking requires a lot of energy. Unlike the reactionary, kneejerk fighting than is common.
I have deep concerns about judgments of raising the bar because whose standards would rule? That is a large part of the problem I want to discuss. I am thinking the male standard leads to very narrow thinking? The requirement of staying on topic prevents anyone from considering the bigger picture, and it is my concern this keeps us in a constant state of conflict, heading towards war, and prevents the expansion of consciousness that could lead to peaceful resolutions.
As you said" we aren't cultivating an environment where exploratory discussions are more common".
Suggestion- find more people who can handle this discussion. Talk about language and how we think. Talk about consciousness and how to expand consciousness. Talk about the importance of this discussion to our future and a New Age with such a different consciousness the people of the future can not relate to our barbaric past.
End women's liberation that does not liberate women but makes being feminine taboo and forces us all to conform to the male standard. An evil plot that does not make men any better than they have been. :lol:
There is hope! Thank you so much for turning to science. We need a lot more of that. And thank you for suggesting it is okay for me to be a woman and to rely on a man to do what men do best. I really have no desire to give up being a woman, nor to compete with men. I do believe working together can bring out the best in both of us and manifest a better future. Imagine children growing up in homes where mothers and fathers love each other and enjoy working together for the good of the family.
Ignorant is the word I would use to describe a sexist.
Quoting Athena
Because a sexist worldview is inevitably based on generalizations and simplifications that have little connection to reality. To be content with such a worldview or even posit it as truth is what I consider ignorant.
Quoting Athena
Show me this science.
Quoting Athena
Yin and yang aren't about sex differences. Nor is it a binary concept. The two parts make a whole. They are not opposites but they complement and give rise to each other, as symbolized by the two opposite color dots. It's a symbol of unity, not of division.
Quoting Athena
People should submit to leadership? What if I don't need or want to be led? What if I don't care about the ship or even consider myself to be on it?
This 'dominance and submission' concept sounds to me like an non-consensual exercise based on coercion rather than mutual agreement. It seems to me as the polar opposite of what good leadership is, and it should be no surprise when systems that base themselves on such a concept sooner or later start running into problems. Coincidentally, that seems to be the power dynamic that is pervasive throughout most of human history.
I'll vote for that. Votes for women, orgasms for women, equal pay for women, and there you go, now you're just like men. We even monetised childcare and professionalised it. What more do you want?
God, you want men to change? That's a step too far!
If I were to suggest that we live in a patriarchy because that's the way women prefer to organise it, would you bite my head off? The trouble is, we cannot start from a state of nature, we start from men in a patriarchy and women in a patriarchy critiquing the patriarchy. Their critiques are not to be relied on, but that's all we have.
Quoting Athena
Mrs un relies on me to open her fizzy water bottles, and other feats of strength, but she is an old-fashioned lady. But I am a thoroughly modern man, I and know my place.
The US carried the three aspects of Athena, Goddess of Liberty and Justice and the Defense of those who stand for liberty and justice. As Liberty, she is our Statue of Liberty holding a book because our liberty depends on being knowledgable. She was common in courtrooms as the Lady Justice holding a scale because justice is a balance of wisdom and compassion. And in a mural at the Capitol Building, she is the Spirit of America, brandishing the Sword of Justice.
I think our culture has lost a lot by loosing the meaning of these icons and it amuses me that what is most important to us is represented by female figures. Perhaps we should wonder why?
Bolen's books explain the archetypes of men and women. Our archetypes can change over our lifetimes. And of course, there is the mythology of Gia the earth mother goddess. I know people mean well by ignoring the feminine power, but I don't think the ignorance benefits us.
Some are more comfortable (i.e. socialized for) talking about talk. Some are more comfortable (i.e. socialized for) talking about more-than / anything-but talk. Surely, as pointed out, they're complements, not opposites.
I fail to perceive the point of your OP, @Athena.
Coming from the head of a male ("Zeus"), your "goddess" user name is rich with irony - intended or not - in taking this essentalist "male vs female thinking" position.
If true, then isn't it incoherent to expect, or even seek, to persuade us "male thinkers" to think otherwise (i.e. in order to make you "female thinkers" more comfortable - how gallant of us that would be :wink:)?
If not true, however, then ... ? :roll:
What am I missing (other than sequiturs)?
Btw, I've just reread Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson for the Nth time. Lacunae & elisions abound. Have you?
:death: :flower:
There are forums run by Women and some probably have section that if it isn't dedicated to philosophy it might, allow philosophy.
I got kicked off of www.christianforums.com and they had wierd sections for seekers.
I would be surprised if facebook didn't have several philosophy groups.
Or you can just stay on here and continue to argue with us.
Or you can change your name so no one knows you are a women.
I've never told people my race and i never intend to.
I'm guessing you've figured out my sex.
Of course it's possible. But it may not entirely be possible to distinguish nature from nurture in that regard. We can't raise children in a sex and gender-less society, because no such thing exists. We have no possible way to create a double-blind test for this. So, whether females are hardwired differently from men, and if so to which extent and how exactly may not be within the grasp of humanity for the foreseeable future.
What we do know is that whether nature or nurture is to blame, there are average differences between how men and women act, reason, perceive the world, etc etc. I emphasize average, because there are huge discrepancies within these demographics.
Are these differences important? I should think the answer is obviously. Again, whether you attribute such differences to nature or nurture, they are all part of what it means to be human.
For example, one thing feminist theorist emphasize as a good quality of feminine thinking, is the generally more "holistic," relationships-based view of the world versus the masculine "atomistic," view. Women are more likely on average to employ a greater degree of the holistic approach to reason, whereas men are more likely on average to employ a greater degree of atomistic thinking. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and neither is useful on its own.
One thing I’ve discovered through forum discussions is that one should never assume the poster is male or female based on the way they think (or their avatar) - you’re liable to be mistaken. Yes, there are a lot of older males in this forum, which I have found to impair discussions that pertain to sexual relations, and contribute to a certain amount of ignorance regarding how people might think and feel and value generally that appears to be based on a limited understanding of women in particular.
I have a fair idea of what my strengths and weaknesses are, but while I recognise many of them as common to my sex, I won’t assume that anyone who appears polar opposite in any of these traits to be male, or assume that I cannot develop a capacity to, say, grasp complex mathematical concepts, given a focused degree of time and effort. I think that would be ignorant of the degree of diversity in humanity, and of our capacity as humans in general.
I agree that we need to recognise and value what women bring to leadership positions - here in Australia, we have been watching NZ PM Jacinta Ardern’s handling of situations common to both governments with no small degree of admiration - particularly when fear, anger and hatred is at the forefront. But the qualities she portrays with courage and tenacity are not alien to the male psyche - they’re just devalued, generally speaking.
Quality leadership is about collaboration more than dominance. It’s not about attaining individual power to the exclusion of others, but about leveraging the potential of a group within a broader whole. I don’t think it helps to claim this as uniquely matriarchal - but I do think it may be something we’ve traditionally downplayed as an act of leadership, in favour of ‘instinctive’ evolutionary behaviour. And I do think the experience of women in society allows us to value it more, generally speaking.
Quoting Artemis
I like to view this distinction in relation to particle-wave duality, but again, I’m not convinced that it’s necessarily a male-female distinction.
I also agree with and appreciate @fdrake’s measured response.
:clap:
Both Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt have some interesting lectures on this, based on research. To put it simply, of course every individual is different, but as whole there are some general differences that are based on nature, not nurture.
This is an interesting but also dangerous thought. The idea that men and women are essentially (spiritually/intellectually) different was/is perhaps the basis of male supremacist ideology. Opposing matriarchal to patriarchal ideology just inverts the same hierarchical structure. FWIW, I do think that technology has empowered the 'feminine' (traditionally-associated-with-females) aspect of the human to become more important. What does it mean that POTUS is a reality TV star? Appearance and pageantry are more important than ever perhaps. Seduction has replaced violence in many ways perhaps, yet this seduction is often itself a virtual violence (more Mean Girls than a utopia of free love.)
I just want to add/emphasize that perhaps men are using 'feminine' power, the power of spectacle. Perhaps even Trump is using feminine power. Pelosi was recently called a 'mama bear.'
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-ocasio-cortez-on-the-view-20200219-gcliuehkgbb77dovdjxt3j2p3i-story.html
If matriarchy can take as many forms as patriarchy in practice, then talking about the benefits in general doesn't seem to be very useful to me. There are presumably huge differences between a "Victorian era, but reversed" kind of matriarchy and "enlightened post scarcity" kind of matriarchy.
So what are the specifics? Where would you start with the matriarchy?
Quoting Athena
You're using proof very loosely here. After all the majority of MPs are still male. Though it occurs to me that the relative absence of historical examples for matriarchal societies does point towards some kind of relevant difference in practice.
Quoting Athena
Endocrinology, perhaps?
....and the "children" often being external invaders. Women tend to have strong instincts to provide, but very low instincts to protect the tribe. No wonder, as throughout human history, it was males who were and are killed in tribal conflicts. Women are simply taken, and become part of the victorious tribe. Which from a biological point of view makes no difference to them. And this is ingrained in our species throughout our existance. To claim that that has suddenly changed in the last few decades is simply denial of reality.
I think we need to be more mindful of what happens when we attribute a masculine-feminine dichotomy to potential/value concepts such as ‘power’. It points to the multi-dimensional aspect of value structure. The same thing happens when we use terms such ‘black/white power’. We need to be aware that there is more than one way to collapse this value structure, depending on your perspective.
There is no valid reason to suggest that ‘spectacle’ is a particularly feminine tactic: men have been employing it since ancient times, including Greek theatre and rhetoric. The idea that men are wholly rational beings is ignorant of the irrationality of men over thousands of years of patriarchal dominance, not to mention the ‘spectacle’ they’ve employed in order to gain or hold onto the illusion of power throughout history.
Again, this is a value perspective. What mattered to women in this sense were the relationships, the potentiality, rather than the actuality. So interaction with another tribe would rarely have been seen by women as a ‘bad’ thing. It was the men who were threatened, who seem focused on protecting the status quo at all cost. It was the value they attribute to ignorance, isolation and exclusion that saw them killed in tribal conflicts - and this continues to be the case today. Fortunately, we’ve come to realise that not all men are as fearful and ignorant as history has often portrayed them, just as women are not ‘simply taken’ as much as they are often portrayed.
Introducing a new topic by articulating how it links to the current one generally makes for a good post. I'm sure that you've noticed that staying strictly on topic doesn't happen very much here, even within the focused exegesis of reading groups. I believe it's partly a combinatoric problem; there's too many divergent ways of taking something as an obvious consequence of something else. Absent strong constraints on seeing what is relevant to a topic, discussion regarding it tends to slide into tangents and tangents on tangents.
I wouldn't call this male or female, it seems to happen regardless of circumstance. You maybe see it as male, though, in that move where discourse itself is seen as following male archetypes and standards.
Despite all the differences in perspective, differences in what people find obvious, and differences in what people find relevant, I believe that when people discuss in good faith, they partake in the same norms of expression and rationality; even if there's no common ground, people speaking in good faith are still disputing the same terrain (usually).
Quoting Athena
First thing - we're an open access internet forum, we can't selectively recruit. About as good as we can do is invite speakers. Those events are few and far between, big thinkers are too busy to waste their time educating us plebs on their minutia; or responding to our long winded essay posts and convoluted questions takes up time they don't have.
I don't really understand why you frame what you desire in the quote as a departure from normal discourse on here. Posts constantly talk about language and thought, people behave as if they have a blueprint for sorting out all the world's problems a lot - people with contrasting blueprints get frustrated with each other. This is business as usual for talk beyond gossip.
Big picture talk is also usually extremely reactive, responsive to continually updating meat space events. When the meat space events change, the sites of tension which will be discussed between people's blue prints or big pictures change without (usually) changing their perspective. I mean, I have a bunch of thoughts about how things should be done and see things in that light, and essentially that means I have 2 conversations repeatedly on here and don't talk about much else. The events change, the perspective doesn't. I'm guessing your big picture talk is in the same ball park, how long have you been expressing frustration with what you see as male norms of discourse, saying the same thing in different scenarios?
Anyway, the chances of forum big picture talk turning into a world historical event of ideological rupture are slim to none. Framing things with that goal in mind is... noble, but extremely silly. "Everything needs to change! We need to be talking about how everything needs to change. No, not in that way... The purpose of the obscure hobby forum should be to increase the likelihood of a world historic shift in consciousness."
Quoting Athena
Well, so long as you have moderators and admins, a forum is not going to be a democracy. If you don't have moderators, you currently end up with 4chan. I believe this is preferable.
One thing that works to propagate exploratory styles is trying to stick with them when talking with someone, mod action to enforce exploratory styles which does not change or strongly restrict the open access nature of the site seems impossible to me.
....the "status quo" here being the existance of the tribe, and the continuation of its culture. So yes, the male and female perspectives on this are naturally very different, and have been, well, as long as our species has existed.
Quoting Possibility.
I do not know what you are getting at here. Conflict between tribes has existed as long as humankind has, and even earlier (apes have it too).
Quoting Possibility
That is a fact, not a question of "portrayed". Conquering tribes routinely killed all the males of the conquered tribe, and took the women and children as part of their own group. You find countless examples of this in history and in primitive societies, in fact it is the norm. What you will NEVER find is a conquering tribe killiing only the women and children,
Please do not confuse wishful thinking with reality.
Women probably think differently from men, on one level and on average. They are likely to have different concerns about what is relevant and important in daily life – on average. But this shouldn’t matter when doing philosophy, and if it does, we should make and effort to minimize its importance.
They say women are more emotional. Well, men have emotions too, but that’s the part of our being we should put aside when constructing logical arguments, isn’t it? We shouldn’t be swayed by our emotions to jump to conclusions that just feel right.
Also, when trying to understand another person’s argument, it’s unfair to refer to that person’s psychology, life situation and gender to explain where the arguments are coming from. Treating people fairly means taking what they say seriously and don’t dismiss it as psychologically biased. However, that also means taking yourself seriously and don’t tell yourself that you are only saying what you are saying because you are a woman.
Quoting Athena
Are you really saying you have been thrown out because you are a woman? Whether that is true or not you’ll have to prove that the rules that caused your expulsion were unfair or that you didn’t really break the rules. Only then can you claim that there was sexism involved.
I read your post and wondered what you did to get yourself banned in those other forums and wondered what excitement we might now have in store.
I see two questions here: (1) Do men and women think differently, and (2) can men and women get along even if they do think differently. I think the answer to #1 is more difficult to answer because it requires a break down of how the different sexes think and it necessarily requires some degree of stereotyping, as if all men think one way and all women think another. I think #2 is clearly that they can, largely because they do in very many contexts, including our humble abode.
Peterson gets way too much attention for saying a lot of stuff that's more slightly controversial than substantive. Haidt's theory about moral disgust is so far the only thing of even marginal interest I've heard from him.
Well, it's a good thing then that I was careful to talk about degrees of behavior that happen on average and not about any strict distinctions.
Actually it is best to turn to science. We look different because our hormones are different. As our gentiles are the same at first and develop differently so are our brains the same and developed differently. However, the development of our brains is directed by how we use them, unlike our gentiles that are what they are. :lol: Using a penis does not make it larger, but using our brains increases the growth of the neurons that are used.
That is just the beginning of understanding our differences but it is very important because our brain structure and hormones are at the heart of our differences and this why we should not attack homosexuals. Nature loves variety and there is a lot of human variety.
Thank you so much for considering science is important to our understanding.
As for us getting along, of course we can get along. Our difference is a wonderful thing and I think those who have attacked me, hate women. They are jumping up and down like chimps in a rainstorm insisting women should be like men. Imagine if our hands were exactly the same instead of mirrored manifestations. We could not enjoy the use of them nearly so much. I think we can get along much, much better if we do appreciate our differences. I am working for a New Age where we value the feminine as much as the masculine and I invite everyone to imagine how history might have been different if all cultures were as the cultures that valued women as much as men.
That is a great statement! :cheer:
Not necessarily - this is an assumption based on perception of past experience, and both tribes contributed to a self-fulfilling prophecy in this way. It wasn’t until they paused to consider the potential/value of their neighbouring tribe’s culture that fear was no longer at forefront of interactions.
Quoting Nobeernolife
True - and ignorance, isolation and exclusion even longer. It is the perceived value of awareness, connection and collaboration that has evolved in humankind. The thing is, this perception develops most readily from a position of humility.
Quoting Nobeernolife
No, it’s a question of available evidence. Please do not confuse awareness with objective knowledge. If you don’t care enough to ask the questions, the answers won’t reveal themselves of their own accord.
Quoting Nobeernolife
Yet you will find a conquering tribe killing women and children. Don’t assume women were always passive items of property, just because they were treated and recorded in history as such. I would say that at least some of them freely chose their fate, either way - once they perceived the potential. This unpredictable, ‘feminine’ behaviour is regularly portrayed in history as manipulative, disloyal, resourceful, insane, emotional, irrational, illogical, etc. - largely from a male perspective.
If two people are debating an important issue (assuming both people are not post modernists), with the exception of logic and/or mathematics and/or article comprehension and/or definition of terms, how are the two sides going to debate anything or try to convince others?
If we aren't willing to expand our minds, what is the point in debating in the first place?
I'm sure you would agree some things are true and some things are false.
If two members of the opposite sex are arguing, shouldn't the one who embraces reasoning best in their argument, be the one who is declared more reasonable, regardless of sex?
I find that many exploratory conversations often degrade into logic and reason arguments.
Both sexes are known for envy and jealousy. Friendly conversations are usually friendly and non-friendly conversations are often not friendly.
I understand friends get jealous of other friends.
Fair enough - I still think too much is made of attributing ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ value to these ways of thinking, as if this ‘holistic’ method is something that men don’t really have a capacity for. Because I think they do.
Making people slaves was an advancement over killing everyone. Not all invaders took slaves and this made resistance against them absolute because the only choice was to fight and have a chance of living or die. But before we became so brutish, I think it was grandmothers who gave their tribes the organization they needed to evolve into civilizations. Science has suggested we survived and the Neanderthal did not because our social organization gave us a survival advantage.
Well, this discussion has greatly improved over yesterday.
If a woman has value or not, is a value judgment, and we come from a very ugly misogynistic past. Not all of humanity, but certainly the Christian West with its roots Athens and Rome. Jews were misogynistic and the idea of a deity being born to a woman was absolutely revolting to many. The God of Abraham created without a female force. Misogynistic thinking does not value how a woman thinks and does not include her in decisions made by men. :lol: We have not had the vote for that long, and :gasp: horrors, now women are even serving as representatives and have a real voice in government. :wink: I have to point out this follows a growing rejection of Christianity and men being the head of the house.
:lol: Women are emotional and men are not. There is some truth to the statement for biological reasons, but isn't it annoying when a man believes this and denies his emotions while beating his "emotional" wife. Oh dear, that is a nasty can of worms.
"Also, when trying to understand another person’s argument, it’s unfair to refer to that person’s psychology, life situation and gender to explain where the arguments are coming from."
:lol: Do you think. That is a powerful and cruel effort to dominate and it brings the men together to silence women. We definitely see it in our politics today, right? However, women also join in on this, as the attacks against me in this thread demonstrate. Over the years none have attacked me more viciously than women who are reacting to the misogyny we live with and they are not realizing how important feminity is to societies that are not Military-Industrial Complexes. Destroying the value of being feminine does not improve our social order.
As for being banned. :lol: There have been very few women in the forums, and on occasion, I was the only woman. Women can be so annoying you know. I think that has something to do with a female being the symbol of liberty since ancient times.
No argument here.
Of course! Even feminists, like Simone de Beauvoir, accepted that male and female minds had inherently different "styles". This dichotomy --- as the French say, "vive la difference" --- is obviously related to the contrasting bodies that their brains reside in. The male body was adapted by evolution to life in "Nature - red in tooth and claw". Hence, they were physically & mentally adapted to "Hunter" jobs that require them to face dangers away from home base. Meanwhile, the female body was adapted to "Gathering" jobs that could be done near the village and dependent children. Thus, the male mind tends to be more confident & aggressive & combative, while the female mind is more sociable & nurturing & passive. This is the either/or distinction between male & female roles that we have inherited from thousands of years of human history.
But suddenly, in just a couple of centuries the influence of Nature has been moderated by the rise of human Culture. Hence, in the 21st century, most men do not hunt wild animals for food --- even though a few still do for sport. And technology has allowed women to do jobs that were traditionally reserved for men. But conservative thinkers, of both sexes, rely heavily on emotion & custom, and are wary of tradition-threatening cultural changes. So, they "feel" that women should be content to play their natural "god-given" role as passive "help-meet" to dominant men. Yet again, technology has eliminated much of the advantage of physical strength & combativeness, and civilization has learned to control the aggressive competitive temperament with communal laws. So, for the first time in history, women are empowered (by technology & culture) to do the same mental & physical work as men.
Unfortunately, bodies don't adapt as quickly as minds. So the mind-styles of men and women are still emotionally & hormonally influenced by innate genetic differences. Therefore, we will have to gradually learn to modify our cultural expectations to accept the fact that physical bodies are no longer the primary factor in social roles. The either/or rules of ancient societies are no longer applicable to our modern anything-goes culture. Today, a man can become a woman physically, and vice-versa. But socially, the change is much more difficult. And since many world societies are lagging behind in cultural evolution, it will take a few generations for the egalitarian ideal to become the norm. Meanwhile, we'll have to do our best to accommodate the advantages & disadvantages of each mind-style. Again. "vive la difference". :wink:
Gendered Mind Styles : https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1521&context=cmc_theses
PS___Women are typically rare posters on Philosophical forums. That may be, in part, due to the wild-west openness & freedom of online forums. It allows aggressive posters to play rough, which suits the individualistic male mindstyle better than the more communal female mindstyle. It's also why most forums have moderators to level the playing field by putting a damper on the boys-will-be-boys rough-housing and I'm-smarter-than-you trolling. Perhaps some philosophical self-defense training will give women more confidence to play with the big boys. :joke:
Yes, I have noticed in this forum a topic can easily slide into a related one. There also appears to be many females here.
I now regret giving up the book explaining how written language made cultures more male dominant. Especially in the west that favors linear logic over wholistic logic. This male dominance is intensified with education for technology and specialization and "expertise". Before this education, we educated for well rounded individual growth and avoided being narrow-minded. The Conceptual Method of education preparing the young to be independent thinkers and the Behaviorist Method teaching them to react like we train dogs to react to commands.
[quote=""fdrake"]Despite all the differences in perspective, differences in what people find obvious, and differences in what people find relevant, I believe that when people discuss in good faith, they partake in the same norms of expression and rationality; even if there's no common ground, people speaking in good faith are still disputing the same terrain (usually).[/quote]
Not exactly so. In the past women were less apt to organize their thinking with formal rules, such as the rules of thinking essential to science, a college education, business, and legal transactions. The difference in their thinking was called domestic thinking and it went with strong emotional reactions involving the care of others. The point is, there are different modes of thinking and different ways of experiencing life dependent on our roles in society. My granddaughter appears to have the mothering instinct of a cuckoo bird. The cuckoo bird lays its eggs in other birds' nest and leaves the adopted parents to feed and raise their offspring. While one of her coworkers stopped coming to work because the work is so high risk they can not risk being with their children. Of course, this difference is about how they were raised and their understanding of social expectations. Our use of language and emotional reactions are not hard-wired as is so for other animals.
[quote="""]First thing - we're an open access internet forum, we can't selectively recruit. About as good as we can do is invite speakers. Those events are few and far between, big thinkers are too busy to waste their time educating us plebs on their minutia; or responding to our long winded essay posts and convoluted questions takes up time they don't have.
I don't really understand why you frame what you desire in the quote as a departure from normal discourse on here. Posts constantly talk about language and thought, people behave as if they have a blueprint for sorting out all the world's problems a lot - people with contrasting blueprints get frustrated with each other. This is business as usual for talk beyond gossip.
[/quote]
That is a good distinction between formal mental patterns and informal. Gossiping is not a formal mental pattern! Of course in a philosophy forum, people are discussing language and thought, but very few of them have the education for the discussions, so the posts are informal, not formal. And an argument may have nothing to do with the logic of a post, but be focused on attacking the stupid person who made the stupid post. Being formal or informal serves different functions and this not good or bad, it is human and we need all of it.
[quote=""fdrake"]Big picture talk is also usually extremely reactive, responsive to continually updating meat space events. When the meat space events change, the sites of tension which will be discussed between people's blue prints or big pictures change without (usually) changing their perspective. I mean, I have a bunch of thoughts about how things should be done and see things in that light, and essentially that means I have 2 conversations repeatedly on here and don't talk about much else. The events change, the perspective doesn't. I'm guessing your big picture talk is in the same ball park, how long have you been expressing frustration with what you see as male norms of discourse, saying the same thing in different scenarios?[/quote]
How long have been addressing gender issues and education issues and the ramifications of the change in education? About 30 years I believe. However, I am even more enthusiastic since learning of
Daniel Kahneman and his explanations of Thinking, Fast and Slow Also in my later years I am experiencing a sensation of enlightenment when suddenly I understand the meaning of things. That is so different from knowing facts and not the meaning of them. I think we can life experiences that radically change our consciousness.
You must not know the history of our democracy. You could not say that and know the list of books that have changed history. But you should know we have experienced major changes and those changes were lead by people who wanted the changes.
Why in heaven's name would a forum with leaders and rules not be a democracy? :gasp: Wow, we are in very serious trouble if people think democracy is an unregulated free for all. That is another important subject and it deserves its own thread.
It'd be an interesting argument, for sure. I'm persuaded by Engel's account of the origin of patriarchy, linking it to ownership concepts of agricultural resources and land. Think the root goes further back than the development of logic and the (alleged) cultural contrast between holistic and reductive thinking styles. But I find it more than plausible that expected/acceptable behaviour under male socialisation became the norm in academia.
Quoting Athena
:up:
Quoting Athena
Impressive!
I've certainly had transformative experiences from forum discussions here (and like discussions elsewhere). Allowing an idea to perturb patterns of thought is a much more intimate relationship with the material, rather than familiarising myself with its consequences. Following an idea is much different than making use of it. I can't turn it on or off though, some things capture my imagination and some don't. Even being owned for the idiot I am, especially being owned for the idiot I am.
I think of those things as peak intellectual experiences, and it's quite hard (for me, though I think it generalises) to form patterns of the kind of conduct that leads to them. It seems to me to depend intimately on what's written and the background the reader brings to it.
Quoting Athena
I agree with you that ideas change history, but I disagree that there are easy measures for mods or forum standards that increase the likelihood of ideas having such knock on effects. I don't see a way to moderate consistently on something that comes down to a very particular relationship between an expression or pattern of thought and a reader.
Quoting Athena
Running a forum democratically would probably require upvote/downvote software and thresh-holds for post hiding/deletion based upon it. Even reddit and Youtube, which have those measures, trend to the kind of discussions we both agree tend to be shite (as in, unlikely to generate those kind of experiences). It's not that I don't believe in democracy, it's just that more democratic forum management methods still don't suffice for the kind of content we're talking about. I doubt any formal guidelines or institutional rules would. I think avoiding the worst excesses of internet debate is probably the best environment we can consistently moderate to achieve (without imposing restrictive content standards that the staff would also fail a lot of the time).
Though I would be very happy if that turned out to be false, especially if there were actionable insights involved.
I am a personal subscriber to A Different Voice by Gilligan or ethics of care by Noddings. There's obviously a bias in the field of philosophy towards male dominated ethical theories in my view, which is unfortunate, given that women roam the interwebs also.
Wholistic logic can be quantified to some measure using linear logic. Even though it is extremely hard to quantify feelings, it is technically possible.
Extremely complex systems (such as wholistic logic) can be sampled (such as the sampling rate used to digitize sound so that it can be put on a compact disc for music) and have equations applied using mathematical subjects like linear equations.
In some ways wholistic logic has similarities to post-modernism.
The point i'm trying to make is its hard to argue who is right with wholistic logic. One could almost say once someone embraces wholistic logic, why not just discuss wholistic logic with only people who believe strongly (strongly) in it. Or you can evangelize people to it.
All decisions people make are based on alot of information or a little bit of information but never a complete set of information, so the winners of history are not always the people who were the most rational.
Its one of those things, "only time will tell"
I agree. The whole game of feminine/masculine is a mess. But I try to meet others in terms of how I think they are playing the game.
I think the idea that we can just ‘put aside’ emotions is a point of contention. There is a difference between being aware of how our emotions affect our logic and trying to exclude or isolate the information available to us from this interoception of affect.
When we are aware, we can take steps to allow for or counteract the effect (ie. collaborate) when constructing our arguments.
When we choose instead to exclude certain value information (eg. emotions), we reduce our perception of the situation, and therefore our capacity to relate our arguments back to reality without prediction error.
Philosophers have recognized that the emotion/reason dichotomy is a false one for decades.
For example, you cannot reason without emotion. In order to even attempt to reason, you must care to do so, but you have reasons to care about reasoning.
Sure, we can’t put aside our emotions in the sense that they are our driving force for making the argument. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t somehow feel that the question was interesting. My reason and conviction will affect my emotions and stimulate me to pursue the argument. But in this process, I must be careful not to be carried away with emotions, not letting them obscure my reasoning arguing from feeling instead of logic. Of course, in public debate we see that all the time and all of us are probably guilty of slipping into it now and then, but we should definitely strive to avoid it.
Quoting Possibility
Our feelings can give us the first information about an issue. I may just sense that something is wrong, but then I should employ my reason to investigate if my feelings were right. Of course, that first information was useful and necessary.
Quoting Athena
In discussions like in this forum, we can observe how emotions are sometimes running high and feel the temperature of the debate. That often makes it more entertaining, which isn’t bad, but when it doesn’t connect back to logic and are just bursts of personal emotions it’s impossible to keep a serious debate going and that’s and understandable reason why some users might get banned.
I think it’s not just an initial impetus, though - if we keep in mind the reasons why we care about the question, then I think we’re less likely to be ‘carried away with emotions’. It’s not so much arguing from logic instead of from feeling, but rather arguing from logic whilst feeling the way we do. We can’t avoid this affective information - we need to adjust for it instead. To do that we need emotional intelligence: an awareness of how internal affect impacts on how we subjectively conceptualise reality, including the value structures we employ.
But, perhaps more importantly, we need to be aware of the potential for subjective value structures and emotions to be impacting on how this same reality is conceptualised by those with whom we’re arguing. It’s commonplace for those who have ‘put aside’ (ie. ignored) their emotions in an argument to expect others to do the same. So when our positions differ, we’re often unaware of the value structures that motivate that difference, and the discussion eventually deteriorates as a result of ignorance, isolation and exclusion.
The title of the thread invites everyone to think about how history may have gone differently if women always the powerful voices they have today. Would we have had the same violent history and conclude that we war because it is our nature to war? How might history have gone differently if women had always been respected and could have become as well known philosophers as Socrates or an elected representative?
Without question men who feel so strongly about something they are willing to risk their lives for it, such as those who lead the American Revolution, are emotional. However, these men did not put much consideration of women and children in the Constitution as, Abigail Adams, asked her husband to do. Using the Constitution to protect the women's rights, was like using it to protect the unalienable rights to people held as slaves. That is important to this discussion.
Thank you for sharing that observation. That is exactly what I hoped would be the subject of this thread.
Our concept of reality has been shaped by male philosophers. Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero shaped our reality differently from the way Nistzche and Hegel have shaped our reality. And female philosophers and females with political power are new. How might history have gone differently and how might our understanding of humans be different if women had also been treated as equals to men?
What leaps out at me is "The point i'm trying to make is its hard to argue who is right with wholistic logic" Yes :party: Exactly! And how might a society that thinks that way be different from the one we have? I have an old logic book that explains why we should never be too sure of ourselves, and since education for technology, we are very sure of ourselves and could not possibly be more divided! Something as gone terribly wrong. I could be wrong but this wrongness seems very male and militant and that is why I question the good of the feminine and the problem of making it taboo.
There is a thread for discussing banning, so I do not want to do it here. However, I want to move from what I just said, the post above this one, to the subject of this thread. Since education for technology, we have become excessively sure of ourselves, masculine and militant, and no one is holding back because there is a lady in the room. I think our feminity played a very important role in society. Women have gained a stronger voice and political power, but we are no longer curbing the male instinct.
AND YOU ALL GIVE YOURSELVES A BIG HAND :cheer: YOU ARE HANDLING THIS DISCUSSION MUCH MUCH BETTER THAN PEOPLE IN OTHER FORUMS. The first couple of posts were discouraging but after that, you all have been amazing. :grin:
If you want my personal opinion, philosophy has experienced a fundamental shift as of lately. It seems to me that women have populated the field much more extensively than at any point in the history of philosophy due to liberal colleges. People like Peterson kind of are a dying relic and countermovement to that sentiment; but, aren't taken as seriously as in the past. Good times!
I love what you have said! Emotional Intelligence is so important to us. It was a male who wrote the book, and it was my father who gave everyone in the family a copy of it, as though it were a bible we must all read. But he did so because of his success as a man, left his life void of satisfy relationships that did not depend on his.
Whoo, I am going to get "sexist". :gasp: We used to be homemakers and the caregivers, and we did it all without pay because that is what a good woman did. I am not arguing for going back to that, but for looking at the value of being such a woman and the whole of society valuing her for being such a woman. My father was an essential NASA engineer when we sent Apollo to the moon. I think that pretty well fits the image of male success. But he was a very lonely man in away because he totally lacked emotional intelligence and the ability to have satisfying personal relationships. Until recently the good wife totally supported such a man, so the socialization for past sexism was passed on generation after generation, and have the old books that tell a woman how she should ask nothing of her husband and totally support his professional success so he can best support the family. I don't mean to blame anyone, but be honest about our past and the present.
If we had not come from such a misogynist past but had always honored women would our history and understanding of human nature be different? Would we be prepared for war but not to protect everyone's health? If women were not in government today, would we be getting more unemployment pay and a kicker check? Franklin Roosevelt listened to his wife. Do we think Trump listens to his wife? Women swoon over Trump so I want to be clear about how we created an unpleasant reality, and that I am not blaming anyone. But I would point an accusing finger to misogynistic religion.
You make me cry for joy. Now if we all can just keep our economies going through these hard times, we might wake up to a New Age, a time of peace, high tech. and the end of tyranny. :heart:
I'd hesitate to see women's socialisation structually and men's individually. If you express negative feelings as a guy, you're a failure - that was a trope, and is still a trope to some extent. To the extent that rationality was treated as an exclusively male property, affect was treated as an exclusively female one. The restrictions cut both ways.
For men, success on those terms is a waking death and a volatile end for others.
Now, gender archetypes which were updated by the inclusion of women in the workplace have permeated to widespread cultural acceptance without undermining the expected choice of rationality over affect for men. In that time, relatively little has changed in our social expectations of success and the conditions which give rise to a full life are not available to all as is constantly promised. The game is rigged. And the only way [hide=*](an overstatement)[/hide] to process the worst excesses of this consistent with the gender norms we're living through the death of for men is the false strength and blunted catharsis that comes from anger.
Men are still warped by norms of emotional restriction and a striving for a kind of "success" born from these zombified social expectations. This condition of disconnection, from self and society, yields dissatisfaction and alienation. Then, absent any socially acceptable means of processing it besides rage [hide=*](it rightly being seen as toxic doesn't help the worst cases either)[/hide]; [hide=*] or in the aggregate limited exposure to newer more integrated norms of conduct [/hide]; it gets channeled into reactionary narratives. Yielding so effected men to resort to racist terrorism, mysogenous harrassment, or a retreat from social life entirely. Unless they get lucky and manage to step through the looking glass and bodge onwards.
And we blame ourselves for all that because we're supposed to be strong and better than it.
Do you know why a woman must stay a virgin until she is married? Because it has been males who own and control the property. If we study people in cultures where women have always owned the property or it is communally owned, the reality you describe is different. I think we need awareness of other cultures before we can determine human nature.
Those who work to improve economies around the world for humanitarian reasons, favor loaning start-up business money to women because the women will spend it on the children. That does not tend to be the case if the money goes to men. :rofl: My X had a car, jeep, motorcycles, and a boat, before I got a washing machine. He earned the money so it was his to spend, right. It was a neighbor who gave me her wringer washing machine that I could use in the back yard. But women don't really work, right? They are as children who stay home and do what the want all day and what they do isn't as important as what I men do. :wink:
And may I say, when we entered women's liberation we thought of it as liberating men as well. I try to acknowledge men have been treated very badly in our culture. Autocratic industry has manifested a very ugly reality where union people had to risk getting their heads bashed in to get better wages and better working conditions. Our autocratic industry was supported by an autocratic religion and defended by an autocratic military and when our schools stopped education for democracy that left nothing to resist the autocratic take over of what is supposed to be our democracy. That may not belong in this thread, but yeah, men haven't been treated so well so I am not in favor of kicking them.
I thought feminism was about leveling the playing field with men and not turning the tables on them. :gasp: :chin:
A very fine reason for accepting female domination would be if their moral compass is better than men's but I fear Elizabeth Báthory casts a long, dark shadow of doubt over this possibility.
Here in America we have alot of Post-Modernists. How does post-modernism relate to Wholistic logic? I actually did google/bing search for Wholistic logic but couldn't find a real definition for it. How would you define it? I actually find alot of Women in my area to be just as confident if not more confident than men.
Something like 80-90% of the world's violent crimes and murders are committed by men... but sure, let's take some nut job from the 1500's to prove we're the same anyway in that regard. :roll:
There are good arguments to be made about female aggression and morality, but this is not one of them.
:up:
Quoting Athena
What do you mean by "being feminine"? I have read some feminist literature and would like to share my thoughts.
I am not a woman myself, but from what I can tell, "femininity" is a standard imposed upon women by men. It is an expectation that they be submissive, nearly child-like, listen and don't interrupt, shut up when they are interrupted, be a sex toy for the silverbacks and do all the chores that men don't want to; but also cultivate virtuous traits like patience, kind-heartedness and beauty that, if displayed in a man, would make him emasculatorily gay and ultimately strip him of any power to dominate.
My observation is that much of second-wave feminism (the scary, exhilarating kind) is populated with figures that are "anti-gender", and they seem masculine because they are taking up roles, responsibilities and personalities that are typically only associated with men. It is not that these women were trying to be masculine, but rather they were denying the reality of masculinity, and demonstrating that some of the things associated with masculinity are things that any grown-up, self-respecting human has. Becoming less feminine meant becoming more human. Not a child/doll/object, but an adult with agency.
Quoting Athena
I'd rather just imagine people getting along and maybe living together without the need to have children.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well, liberal "if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them" feminism might be about that, but who honestly takes them seriously?
This is certainly a common understanding of what it means to be ‘feminine’. It is also what drives the commentary that wonders what we’re still complaining about in relation to feminism. And again, I hold what has to say as an excellent example of what is missing from this understanding - that qualities and capacity often dismissed as ‘feminine’ has VALUE in relation to all of humanity. Things like patience, kindness and connection, as well as the realisation that dominance is not what we should be striving for, either individually or collectively.
I guess the question is why have these qualities of care, collaboration, domesticity been associated with the feminine in the first place? Maybe that is what Athena is getting at.. or not.
Guilty as charged. I was simpl(isticall)y looking for the paradigmatic case of the fairer sex failing spectacularly and in the process revealing how women may not be better than men in the moral department and equality, if anything, is about goodness, no?
Exactly.
Agreed. It would be nice to combine the good parts from both genders, remove the bad and then dispense with the concept of gender.
I think in many ways, the ‘good wife’ was required to absorb or embody those elements of human experience that ‘mankind’ is frequently expected to ‘put aside’, avoid or ignore: like emotion, nurturing, uncertainty, humility, pain, lack and anything else that doesn’t fit with this image of ‘man’ as being autonomous, dominant and fully in control of a rational world. This perception is very much a source of domestic violence, even today.
But this is not just an issue for men. I also see women use their emotional and nurturing capacity to avoid humility, pain and lack by deflecting these experiences onto their partner, believing that a ‘good husband’ is responsible for protecting his family from any form of suffering. I think if we’re being honest, we need to acknowledge this side of it as well.
Emotion, nurturing, uncertainty, humility, pain and lack are all elements of the human experience, regardless of sex. This is what we SHARE, not what we avoid or blame on each other. The sooner we acknowledge this, the better off we’ll be.
Perhaps you are blaming, in a way. I’m not sure that it helps to go down the ‘would-a, could-a, should-a’ path in this discussion. I don’t think you can argue that women have not been honoured - not publicly and not often enough as individuals in their own right, sure - but are we honestly striving for this kind of honour, or is it just because that’s what society has valued?
We tend to devalue what reminds us of our own fragility and interdependence, and of the uncertainty and suffering we encounter the more we interact with the world around us. As women, we have always been an unavoidable physical reminder of this reality - for men and for each other. In many ways, women have learned to accept these aspects of life more readily, if only because we could not so easily ignore, isolate or exclude it from how we conceptualise reality.
In an age where even science cannot ignore the uncertainty of reality, I think society as a whole has much to learn from what are traditionally seen as ‘feminine’ perspectives. But so long as we keep referring to them as ‘feminine’ perspectives, and the striving for dominance, independence and honour as ‘masculine’, then we remain limited by our value structures.
Whether or not we really expect others to have put their emotions aside in an argument, we should act as if we expected it. If we don’t do that, we don’t treat them with enough respect. It is disrespectful to respond to an argument by saying: You obviously talk like that because you are a woman, or because of your childhood experience, or because you have a different nationality than me etc. Even though people’s background and values most certainly influence their thinking, we should treat their arguments for what they are or attempt to be, namely a rational and logical construction. I highly suspect that your Christian upbringing has influenced your anti-abortion stance, but I shouldn’t dismiss you by suggesting that you are only arguing in this way because you are a Christian. I should evaluate your arguments for what they are, no matter who you are; they are valid or invalid depending on their logic only.
Quoting Possibility
That has to do with an unwillingness to consider arguments that sound too strange and foreign. Sure, it might help to remind ourselves that our opponent has a different background and is not necessarily crazy, but after this reminder of tolerance we should move on to consider their ideas as objectively as possible.
I understand what you’re saying, but their ‘logic’ is often a result of their background, emotion and values as much as any other relation, as is our own. It’s not a matter of assuming, reducing or dismissing their logic based on these aspects, but rather mapping it in relation to our own value structures, recognising the uncertainty of this level of information. Again, we need to be conscious of this tendency to strive for dominance, independence and honour at the expense of new information.
An argument isn’t always as simple as who is right and who is wrong, or even which argument is most valid. When there isn’t enough information for certainty either way, it’s more about how your perspective of reality relates to mine. The more information we gather about the value structures of alternative perspectives, the more aware we become of the limitations and errors in our own perspective with regard to a more objective understanding of reality.
But you haven't revealed anything. You mentioned a single case, which can easily be written off as an anomaly. It's absolutely irrelevant.
Why? Haven't I proved that it's possible for women and power to be as lethal a cocktail as men and power? If so, then an argument in favor of women-dominated society premised on women being morally better than men doesn't hold water.
I agree with this in general, more data is a good thing. As is more practice dealing with it - communicating, learning what others' see as relevant to what. But I think that there's a necessary component of disconnecting ideas when reasoning about things.
When two people share perspectives on something, we generally think something X on some basis Y. The basis Y and the conclusion X might not be fully known to their interlocutor, they might not be fully expressed, but I think it is important to be able to disconnect ideas; to say that the connection between X and Y is flawed on some shared, or in principle share-able basis. "There isn't sufficient evidence for that given what we've talked about", "That doesn't follow.". We live in the same world despite our experiences and learning making us see different things as relevant to our speculation.
I say this despite the common tropes that people declare their opponents as illogical, or someone who takes the discursive role as a critic for the sole purpose of maintaining their own opinions (which they then don't need to express) by right of conquest. Still, when someone connects two ideas badly, we have to value dispelling the connection between them, and the emotional work required in having one's idiocy so publicly revealed.
Even in exploratory terms, dispelling bad connections, and being able to recognise them, allows us not to be sent down unfruitful paths, and opens others. Critique should always be an option when talking about the state of things, though it isn't always the best strategy to change someone's ideas about them (or even to learn new ideas).
I don’t think having your personal information in any way would aid me in realizing the merits of your argument.
But sure, this information would be useful for another branch of knowledge, namely psychology. Learning how people may think and which possible perspectives exist is certainly useful for understanding how we as humans reach our conclusions. It hopefully also teaches me to look into my own thinking, making me more aware of how my limited perspective risks pulling me in the wrong direction.
Modern philosophers, other than the ancient masters, typically stress that there can be no view from nowhere. Fair enough, there can’t be, but that is only a limitation of our human condition. We are always prejudiced by what we have learned before and that habitually makes us jump to conclusions without a thorough investigation. It is an unattainable goal to rid ourselves of all bias, but we can surely do better every time we try, and that is what doing philosophy is all about: The attempt to always look at the world afresh.
You hit a nerve. I have always done better with men than women. I am not in favor of either sex dominating. Actually I prefer rule by reason and everyone coming to a consensus on the best reasoning. The problem I see is, historically women have been excluded from the discussion.
I can't watch videos because of my limited information bits. Can you make the points he made without the foul language?
Whoo, do you think women have always had the opportunities they have today and have always been included in the discussions? Speaking of the past was inviting people to imagine a different reality if women had always been seen as equals. Would we have always engaged in war if we had not been male-dominated? Might men have been kinder and gentler people? Might we not have the argument you made if there were no reason for it?
Yes, I blame men and misogynistic religions and the women who enforced the repression of women.
Heavens I would never want to dispense with the concept of gender! I am totally opposed to the women who have pushed us to act like men or at least totally reject the idea of enjoying being pretty women.
Because an anomaly does not make data. I'm afraid your equation of the general criminal populations with outliers evinces a pretty weak grasp on how to apply statistics.
Albino crows don't mean anything when describing the coloration of crows. You don't say "well, because there are some albino crows, crows can equally be considered black and white."
If student A does 10-20% of his work all year long and student B does 80-90%, you don't say "well, because student A did some of the work, they both should get the same grade."
If you are a doctor and you have a medicine with 80-90% efficacy and another medicine that cured one patient over 400 years ago, you don't tell your patients that the medicines are equally effective.
I could go on, but you (should) get the point. At least I hope you do, because I'm not sure how better to explain this.
A delicious post. :cheer: We can not force anyone to feel anything. AND I sure do not want anyone telling me I should not have all the feelings you mentioned. I love being feminine and hopefully, it is obvious I believe feminity plays an important part in human societies. Some of my friends and I, think it would be super fine to share a home with a gay man. The problem isn't their nature but the intolerance of it. Why shouldn't males be feminine? That is what I am getting at, the intolerance of feminity.
My granddaughter who takes charge of shelter programs is proud that she can disarm men carrying knives with her feminity. She and I know if a male were sent in to take the knife, the problem would probably escalate. She goes out of her way to be none threatening to maintain peace. How angry can you get with a big cute bunny? :lol: You can identify the women in charge of a shelter, they are the ones who wearing the hat with a spinner thing on top, or a bunny suit.
About taking on roles of responsibility, did you suggest that is not feminine? :confused: I always ran the household, and I took volunteer positions where women carried responsibility. I have had more power and authority as a volunteer then as an employee where a person can be fired for being insubordinate. I had a terrible time as a paid employee because I tend to take charge, You have opened a can of worms. Being feminine should not mean disrespect or powerlessness. And I should not have to be as a man, to actualize myself outside of the home. What is this thing with insubordination anyway? Might the problem be autocratic industry and exploiting all laborers, regardless of gender? When women stayed home and men supported the family, the men were treated like shit and brought that home.
I think a female has represented liberty since ancient times because women do not organize themselves in a hierarchy of power and authority. A woman is less apt to attempt to control with brut force but she attempts to get cooperation. Without her, we can fall victim to a tyrant or warlord who uses the peasants to fight his wars. The Spirit of America is also a female and she was not about military might.
yes, obviously. That is, the average woman thinks differently than the average man. What those differences are, I do not feel like getting into.
I agree - when it’s as simple as X based on Y. But philosophical discussion is rarely as simple as a two dimensional relation. For me, perspective is a five dimensional relation, so if you want to make a genuine effort to understand the differences, then you will eventually need more variables than X and Y. This is especially important when we agree in some respects but not in others, and when there isn’t sufficient evidence either way. We do live in the same world, but we certainly don’t conceptualise it the same way.
I can say, ‘X doesn’t follow unless you value Y’, and then what matters is the sum of their experiences and circumstances that contribute to the reasons they value Y. Many of my discussions on this forum end at this point - people are often reluctant to get into the basis of their basis. There’s a certain fragility in holding the foundations of your own personal logic up for scrutiny. They’d much prefer to dismiss a discussion based on ‘lack of evidence’ than examine how we each structure value, potential and possibility, on which our thoughts, beliefs, words and actions are ultimately based. But to me, this is the basis of philosophy.
No, it shouldn’t matter to this discussion, which is why I haven’t offered it. I like to think I don’t need to offer it in most situations - so long as you don’t assume certain information about me.
But there are a number of occasions on this forum where I have given personal information in order to dispel certain assumptions made about my particular perspective. I think when we feel the need to position ourselves in an argument as male or female, for instance, it’s often to address a degree of ignorance, isolation or exclusion in relation to that position. This may be the crux of what Athena is getting at.
The aim of philosophy is to approach a shared meaning in how all of reality interrelates. We can’t achieve this accurately if we ignore, isolate or exclude information that relates to the difference between my argument and yours.
This is what I’m talking about. There is pain and anger in your words - it helps to recognise and then come out from under that emotion in order to have a rational discussion here. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel - but in communicating, you shouldn’t always expect others to make allowances for your emotion before they can understand your argument. As women, we’re probably more used to distinguishing between the different value structures in language. There are other ways to demonstrate the value of emotion.
I think a few women in history have made use of opportunities and influenced discussions more than most - and they haven’t had to become ‘male’ to do so. That this isn’t visible in historical writings has to do with perceived value and potential. The most influential women in history, the ones who had the best opportunities, are practically invisible in the history books. You have to read between the lines to find them, because they did what women do best, none of which was considered that important by writers of history and fact. But they did it anyway, because it was important to them.
My point is that we don’t have to re-imagine a different reality. We shouldn’t wait or wish for women to be seen as ‘equals’, for men to stop focusing on domination, to become kinder and gentler people. We need to see ourselves as equals, to argue for a more accurate view of reality than ‘domination’, and to demonstrate the value of kindness and gentleness, etc, so that no one cannot fault the argument. And we need to stop blaming and looking for re-dress, and instead recognise that our potential and value was always there - it’s just been ignored, isolated and excluded: by ourselves as much as by men. We can find it in our past as much as our present and future.
Quoting Possibility
But that is the value of kindness and gentleness towards strangers: domination. Hospitality paralyzes emnity in the stranger. A desire to view reality any other way than a game of domination reeks a bit of nihilism.
A perfect example, right from this thread: Quoting Athena
Most important quote in this thread. As civilization complexifies and progresses, everyone will continue to get more feminine, too.
And eventually, men with superior genetics will be sequestered underground and milked for their semin. Meanwhile on the surface, transgender females will utterly dominate.
I had imagined that the basis by which someone believed something wasn't a one dimensional thing; like another fact which happened to entail it. I had imagined it as a generating process for that belief; facts are part of it, entailments are part of it, what is seen as relevant to what is part of it, some kind of metaphorical/analogical structure that aids the imagination, and an expectation of how things should be (there's my attempt at a 5). Less a factoid, more what the thread is made of in the instantaneous tapestry of thinking.
Given all that and how deep an attachment to an idea can be, I think it's important to see that there can be errors in connection between and within all of these parts as well as an error of generating belief in something given those as input data.
What are those 5 dimensions in your view?
That you see the value/potential of this as ‘domination’ is interesting, and not altogether surprising. First of all, acknowledging that women are not the only ones capable of ‘disarming’ violence with humour, hospitality and humility is an important part of this discussion. The question why not everyone perceives this option (not just men) I think each of us will probably need to ask ourselves.
Secondly, I tend to think of this view as beyond nihilism, if you like. If your ultimate sense of value/potential in existence - this commonly held notion of individual domination, proliferation, survival, independence and honour - is recognised and dismantled for the pointless illusion that it is, then what IS the true value/potential of existence? If, as a women, I cannot but recognise my humility, my interdependence, my mortality, my procreative, physical and mental limitations - if individual ‘domination’ is not an option - then how do I determine my ultimate value?
For me, it is to maximise awareness, connection and collaboration. That’s not ‘domination’, but I admit that it does look like it sometimes, depending on your perspective. The effectiveness of kindness and gentleness towards a stranger brandishing a knife looks like ‘domination’ from a point of view which values the capacity to arm oneself with a knife. Athena’s granddaughter may (or may not) even consider it to be a ‘power’ that she possesses over these men, believing her own press, if you like. There is more to the notion of ‘domination’ than evolutionary theory would have us believe.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
And this is why I see the ‘masculine/feminine’ dichotomy as ultimately unhelpful.
What dichotomy would you propose?
Just as the albino crow proves crows can be white, an evil woman evidences women can be bad. If there's a statistical claim in this thread it's that women are better than men which could be rephrased as:
1. All women are better than men
or
2. Most women are better than men
Elizabeth Báthory disproves the stronger version of "women are better than men" viz. 1 that all women are better than men. That leaves only 2, most women are better than men, for people claiming women are better than men and notice that, while it does make women better than men in whatever context the statement was made, it doesn't, in any way, support choosing women over men just on the basis of gender and that is the key point isn't it?
Actually, it does. If your argument leads to the conclusion that most women (barring Bathory) are better than men, then yes it does in fact show that we should pick women over men.
Like I said in the beginning, there are OTHER arguments to refute such a notion, but yours does not hold water. It only proves the point, really.
If I say most Germans are good people does it mean that if I meet a German I should immediately conclude that s/he is good? No. Similarly, if I were to say most women are good and I meet a woman am I to immediately believe she is good? No. The idea that most x are y doesn't help me in making decisions when I meet something that is an x.
If you say that most Germans barring Hitler are better than the French, you should upon meeting a non-Hitler German conclude you've met someone who's at least better than a French person.
No, you didn't understand my point but the fault is entirely mine. Sorry.
The idea in the claim that most women are good is that if given a sample of women then the proportion of them that are good is more than 50%; I'd even go so far as to say 90% of women are good.
However, what I'm arguing against is that womanhood, i.e. the mere fact of being a woman, has some causal import on morality. It's not that goodness is linked to the X chromosome and so having 2 of them, like all women do, makes one good.
Morality, to my knowledge, requires appreciation of its value just like any subject does and then deeds are modulated based on that which is understood and appreciation is something that is, as far as I can tell, NOT gender-determined. A woman and a man's ability to appreciate value are equal and so, goodness isn't, can't be, a female prerogative and nor is it a man's thing.
The question then is what makes most women good? Could it be, given my explanation of why all that matters in morality is the ability to appreciate it, that this is the case precisely because women are weaker then men and so are unlikely to act in riskier immoral ways? Doesn't this mean that opting for a female-dominated system rather than the existing male-dominated one amounts to nothing? It's like replacing Hitler with Goebbels because Goebbels was "better" but unbeknownst to us that was only because Goebbels wasn't the Fuhrer.
I am impressed. You pulled something out of the dark corner of our minds and shined a light on it. You remind me of a cartoon of a woman stripper and her audience that questioned who is exploiting whom.
I am coming from the thread about economics, so that is what is one my mind. It was common for husbands to control the family's finances, which left the wife with much less power. Banks would not give women loans unless a man signed for them. There were not many ways for a woman to earn a living, and if she did the same job as a man, she was paid less. My father was adamant that in college I study home economics and then I marry and stay home to be a mother and homemaker because men are paid more than women. I value that because it benefits the children and society when the marriage works.
Unfortunately, marriages do not always work, and then being a traditional wife and mother is a very bad thing. Is there something we can do to improve the position of women?
I love it! Indeed what makes a woman good? What does that question mean?
I understand the ideal woman of the 1950'tys. That would be a social judgment. I also understand, what motivates me to be good and that is a different answer. Of course, the culturally defined notion of a good woman motivates us to be that, but if the husband is not the Dick and Jane father, and is not being the ideal father and husband, then things turn sour and it can be very hard to be that ideal woman. How the husband treats the wife is just as important as the cultural image of a good woman.
Whoops, now my mind slips to what industrialization has down to how we live together and how we value each other. Autocratic industry is very harmful with its hierarchy of power and authority and exploitation of laborers. Democratic industry treats people as we want to be treated. I would bet my life that if we had democratic industry we would have stronger families and radically reduce all social problems.
Next, I want to say war and economic crashes take a serious toll on individuals and families. Divorce rates go up when the economy goes down, and marriages go up when a nation goes to war. This combination does terrible things to our consciousness and we might want to explore that? An economic crash crashes the self-esteem of men and when they have very little self-esteem they are more apt to be neglectful and abusive. That fact of life can have a very bad effect on women and children. SO DEAR MADFOOL, MAY I SAY OUR GOODNESS DEPENDS TO SOME DEGREE ON PEACE AND ECONOMIC STABILITY. :kiss:
No, I would deny that that’s the aim of philosophy. What if we were all delusional? What if only one person had a reasonable understanding of reality- I would rather listen to him than the shared hallucinations of everyone else.
Don’t you think philosophy is the search for truth? Or do you think truth is subjective? (Sorry, this goes beyond the subject of this thread.)
Even if you take the psychological approach to philosophy, as in existentialism or phenomenology, the aim is to understand how we as humans construct reality, not how particular humans, like the ones I happen to have a discussion with at the moment, shape their reality.
I can learn more about psychology (and also philosophy where the two branches of knowledge overlap) if I know who I’m talking to. I can improve my understanding of the difference between male and female psychology but that doesn’t give me more insight into the subject at hand.
Were great warrior queens like Elizabeth !, Maria Theresa and Catherine the Great any less violent than their male counterparts at their time? Was Thatcher known for her pacifism? Do you see any tendency today that countries with female rulers are more peaceful? The dynamics of history are driven forward by human nature, and in that perspective the difference between male and female is probably negligible.
Like I said from my very first post, if you want to bring in OTHER arguments, you can probably make a good case that being female should not be a deciding attribute to be in government. I think the arguments you are listing are still very fallacious, but I want to stay on target for the moment.
Your Bathory argument still does not apply or make your case in any meaningful way whatsoever. If two X-chromosomes were to make a person good, hypothetically, then Bathory still does not invalidate that theory anymore than albino crows invalidate the genetic blackness of crows--albino crows and Elizabeth Bathory are both just chromosonal abnormalities and don't disprove the rule.
If it were the case that all women barring Bathory were morally good, then all your other assertions and hypotheticals about morality do not hold water. We would, actually, have very strong reason to think that morality is genetic.
How do you know the differences that have made it difficult for you are differences that should be accounted for primarily in terms of sex and gender?
Don't some males find it difficult to participate in enterprises dominated by males? Aren't some males sometimes banned from some male-dominated enterprises?
Don't males "think differently" than each other? Don't females "think differently" than each other? Isn't it the case that some males conform to fashionable norms of masculinity, while others don't; and likewise that some females conform to fashionable norms of femininity, while others don't?
Quoting Athena
I think it's preferable for all of us to pursue solidarity in resisting attempts by anyone to "dominate" or oppress anyone, and preferable for us to pursue solidarity in promoting conditions in which each of us has opportunity to express and cultivate their own character according to their own lights -- within limits we may characterize in terms of humanity, harmony, good will, liberty, tolerance, fairness, compassion, care, respect, and so on.
Demography is not destiny. The fact that you and I each belong to a different set of demographic "categories" is not sufficient to inform our expectations about each other's attitudes and behaviors.
I think these errors you mention are in the various ways that we structure all the events of our lives in relation to each other - in terms of perceived relative value/potential, time, space, direction and distance. Ideally, we refine the accuracy of these relational structures by increasing awareness of experiences that challenge them, especially with regards to value/potential. But this leads to prediction error or suffering (pain, humility, lack/loss): the recognition that we require more effort, energy and attention than current predictions indicate. It is when we pull back from interactions to avoid these experiences of suffering that we fail to perceive the errors in how we conceptualise reality - especially in relation to how things should, could or would be.
Ah, around the world it appears women pay more attention to the welfare of children than men. Those interested in economic development have determined business loans for women will get more for the buck than giving the money to men, because men are apt to spend on themselves and neglect the children's needs. Women may do that too but they are more apt to put the needs of the children above their wants. https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/economic-empowerment/facts-and-figures
Hum, you didn't mention Amazon women or the Celtic queen Boudicca. There is no defender better known than the mother bear. Women are capable of defending, but I don't think they are the empire builders that men are.
As for the women you mentioned, they were operating in male-dominated cultures. I can relate to the ambition and loved building forts in a field and imagining myself a great leader. But then I became a mother. True some women can become mothers and remain unchanged, but I am not one of them. The change occurs on a cellar level in response to hormones and repeated behaviors. This does not mean a woman will never pick up arms and defend her cubs, but she less likely to leave home and fight for the booty they can get by looting others, or take an army into war to expand an empire.
I can see the problem with my mention of the bonobo. That female domination does not mean forcing anything on the males. It means defending each other so none are brutes taking advantage of others. The females are not dominating, it is their idea of how to live together than dominates. This is contrasted to chimps where brute force rules.
The difference between bonobo and chimps falls into the argument of human nature. Male bonobo behave differently because bonobos are organized differently. They are organized differently because their supply of food is different. Where bonobo live there is enough food for the females to stay together, and together they defend each other. Where chimps live the food supply tends to keep them separated and individually the females can not defend themselves, so brute behavior rules. This is to argue human nature might be as brutish as we once thought and it is possible for humans to be gentle and cooperative. But to get there, females need to have the united power to change the rules we live by. Individuals do not dominate. It is the female social agreement that rules.
Yes, I think philosophy is the search for truth, which is a universally shared meaning in how all of reality interrelates. I think you misunderstand me - I’m not arguing for majority rules. I don’t think we can ever really be certain that we’re aware of every possible perspective. But if we did, and found that only one person had a different understanding of reality, then we should still listen to him in relation to the perspective of everyone else, and test the differences in how we interact with the world. That’s the only way to be certain of truth, either way.
Quoting Congau
I would say that how we as humans construct reality is relative. I cannot hope to know who I’m talking to with any certainty - especially on a forum such as this. But I can improve my understanding of truth by including and striving to understand those perspectives that appear ‘delusional’ in relation to my own.
The answer to your first question is knowledge of hormones and how the brain functions. When males have the same hormones as women and nurse babies, they will be like females and when females watch a football game and are flooded with testosterone and also have the receptors for testosterone, they will be like males. There are individual differences in the levels of hormones and sensitivity to them, so some males may be less aggressive and some females may be more aggressive. But it doesn't stop here. It is also a matter of brain development as a result of repeated behavior and thinking. The neurons in our brains atrophy if they are not used and grown if they are used.
A male's acceptance into male groups and a female's acceptance into female groups is not guaranteed! Our acceptance into a group depends on many things. Our brains are far more limited than we like to admit. We can accept extremely few people into our lives on an intimate level. We can have about 500 hundred people in our lives on the associate level. That means we know their name and a few facts about them, but this not near as much as we know about people on the intimate level. We can accept larger populations such as the notion of those who live in our state share values that may be different from people in another state, but this is really abstract like being one of a race, a nationality, a religion is abstract. But where our place is in each of these groups is an individual matter. Our own families may reject us.
Yes, women can think differently from each other and men can think differently from each other. How different they are, depends on childhood experiences and social agreements and one's place in society.
As in the explanation of chimps and bonobo,what can dominate may not be individuals but social agreements, and here is where the male and female difference plays an important part. Should we organize society with "family order" or "military order"? The old world order was family order. The new world order is military order applied to citizens. Are we honored mothers or "just housewifes"? Is it good to be feminine or intolerable? Are we liberated if being feminine is demeaned and unacceptable? How can I experience who I am and have social acceptance?
:cheer: :cheer: :cheer:
Whoo, that sharing of ideas is something worth getting out of bed and joining! :lol: what is happening here is a lot different from what happens in other forums I have been in. :up:
How about no dichotomy? There are differences in how we think, but those differences are not drawn accurately along gender lines, and to reduce this diversity of perspective to a single dimensional value is to exclude, isolate and ignore the complexity of information about who we are and how we think, particularly in relation to our potential as men and women.
Oh yeah, I bolded what I am responding too. And I want to say something about being personal. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't being analytical and impersonal a bit male? Empirical thinking embraced by the US Military-Industrial Complex is dehumanizing and we are dealing with the consequences with that now on a national level and the global response to it.
For whatever reason being a good woman has meant being a caregiver and it is not very caring to attack someone for making a personal statement. For sure a personal statement is not empirical information, but that does not make it invaluable. Germany, that gave us empirical thinking as a national goal, did not take it to the extreme of the US. In Germany, students are encouraged to have different experiences and to share them. Perhaps we want to value each other instead of being overly empirical and dehumanizing each other. I think this is the value of the feminine quality and that humanity needs it.
Women who have chosen to follow the traditional values have faced isolation or exclusion in relation to that position. I went from being a goddess to "justice housewife" and now we all have the freedom of barbarians. Women and children are on their own, no longer valued and protected members of society. However, female legislators are trying to do something about this.
Our leadership has taken children from their families and has left them in a building to fend for themselves, leaving 8-year-olds to care for babies without the help of adults? Elenor Roosevelt played a strong role in Franklin's New Deal. Our present first lady is not the strong woman Elenor Roosevelt was. So much for "women's liberation". We have increased opportunities for women, but our national values appear to stink.
The potential for being a man or woman is directly tied to the genitallia one is born with. If one puts the chop to their phallus, they merely become a eunuch. I think that is a clear and already existing basis for a trichotomy.
Yes, but they do it much more often since they faced less predation in evolution and instead stayed behind nurturing youth meaning not only are they physically weaker on average than men, but they also pity others more due to sympathy being more prevalent due to child-rearing. Both of these qualities, sympathy and fear (heightened danger means you fear more), combined, gives you more hospitable people.
Quoting Possibility
Only a woman living in a hyper civilized super protected society built off environmental domination over millions of years could say that domination is pointless. You are both a pessimist and a nihilist. Spoiled brat.
Quoting Possibility
You seem to look at "connection" from a religious standpoint. You negate the entire evolutionary process where those who fail to dominate their environment die off and are incapable of understanding why such "gentle", "kind" feelings to others remained. They didnt just fucking appear one day and everyone said "yay! Let's be nice to eachother yay!" They were tools that your ancestors used to survive, that then got carried into their offspring. That "connection" that you are talking about was used by the physically unfit to get help from others and survive. Your whole philosophy of value, that is to say, is built on TAKING, and not GIVING. The ethics of the parasite.
But I know you can't really help it. This is just the way you were evolved after millions of years of pressure and random mutation and elimination.
First of all, I’m not saying that being impersonal isn’t ‘a bit male’ - I’m saying that it isn’t the essence of masculinity. There is a lot of merit in empirical thinking, but not to the exclusion of emotional intelligence - humanity employs both, not one or the other.
So, when someone decides to label me a ‘spoiled brat’ and use aggressive language, for instance, they’re making a range of assumptions about my position, and responding to them from a personally affected position. They may be unaware of this internal affect, and how (and why) it’s informing their choice of words - because as far as they’re concerned, they don’t get ‘emotional’ over stuff like this. That’s not how they see themselves. Whether they’re male or female is no concern of mine, and to dismiss or devalue this as ‘masculine’ behaviour is to stoop to their level of ignorance, isolation and exclusion, and thereby limit my perception of their capacity (and mine) to increase awareness, connection and collaboration.
Not all of this potential. If you take away their genitalia, they’re still men and women, still human beings. The only potential missing is sexual intercourse and procreation, and even that’s negotiable. If you think that’s the extent of your potential, then I’d be concerned.
No, I’m a realist. What you fail to see is that the majority of our achievements have come from awareness, connection and collaboration, not from so-called domination. It is this focus on the illusion of domination that is destroying the environment, not ‘protecting’ society.
Quoting BraydenS
As I’ve said, it comes down to perception. Kindness and gentleness were not tools our ancestors discovered out of the blue and thought ‘ooh, this will help us survive’. Our ancestors recognised and exercised this capacity for reasons other than (and often counter to) survival, and were ultimately more likely to survive because of it. The difference is subtle, but important. The result is the same. There is no teleology in the evolutionary process.
Curiosity, wonder, creativity and critical thinking were not initially survival traits, either. They increased our awareness, connection and collaboration with the world, and that was what ultimately increased our chances of survival. Nothing to do with domination, I’m afraid. You see it as taking rather than giving, because you seem to believe one can only maximise their own value/potential by ignoring, isolating or excluding the relative potential/value of others. But all that does is limit your own potential.
I am not sure you actually disagree. I went back through the discussion and still couldn't decide. It may have been a one off sentence that I am miscontexting, but heck, I thought I'd react.
That's as good of a reason as any to respond, I think. Nevermind...
What exactly does that signify? The meaning of a hammer is a tool for driving nails. A few people perceive it as a weapon and then there is this one weirdo who uses it as the handle of his toothbrush. What would you make of that? How would that information in anyway be meaningful?
Or do you prefer to pursue the meaning of philosophically higher concepts? Then, what is the meaning of God? You look at the meaning for most people, for a few people and just for a handful, and then what? Maybe the concept should mean something that no one has ever understood? What do you get from this universal comparison of perspective other than a useful exercise for eliminating false views and find the one that’s closest to what you can subscribe to? What do you need this sharing for? It’s a step away from objectivity, isn’t it?
Quoting Possibility
We don’t construct reality. Reality is. Our interpretation of it is of course relative to our perspective, but some perspectives are more likely to yield a more accurate interpretation than others. The perspective of the bird is probably more realistic than that of the frog (metaphorically speaking) and a philosopher should rather imitate the former.
Understanding how a hammer can be used as the handle of a toothbrush and a weapon as much as for driving nails increases the possibilities of the hammer’s meaning. If you ignore this broader sense of meaning, and only see a hammer as a tool for driving nails, then you’ll be unprepared for situations where it may be used as a weapon, either by you or against you. Or you may make assumptions about the presence of a hammer in some guy’s bathroom that has you labelling him a ‘weirdo’ and running for the police. This is prediction error.
Quoting Congau
As for the possibilities of the meaning of God, understanding what conceptual relations contribute to your meaning of ‘God’, and why someone responds so negatively to references to ‘God’, enables you to still interact with them in the same conceptual space - ie. still talk about what you call ‘God’ - without necessarily using the term itself.
Quoting Congau
It’s a step away from certainty, sure, but not objectivity. If your aim is objectivity, then your view must include an understanding of how and why alternative views are false, inaccurate, limited or misguided in relation to this one you subscribe to - not just ignored, isolated or excluded as such.
That’s probably a poor choice of term on my part - we do conceptualise reality, though. My point is that if you’re going for maximum realism, then the aim of the philosopher is to conceptualise a structure of relations between the perspectives of the bird and the frog (metaphorically speaking), rather than subscribe to one and exclude the other.
I see. If your notion of “shared meaning” is only intended as a pedagogical device, I entirely agree. Sure, we should look around for all possible perspectives and it is certainly instructive to learn how different people see the same things differently. In fact, we should even go further than that and not end our inquiry by only paying attention to views that are actually held by someone. We should strain our imagination and be open for any conceivable perspective. Most of them would be outlandish, but a few may happen to contain some truth even though no one has yet captured it in thought.
That’s why I don’t quite understand your use of the word “shared” in “shared meaning”. A perspective may be interesting even if it’s not shared by anyone. Fictional characters who have been raised by wolves or monkeys for example, offer an intriguing viewpoint and do feel free to come up with any tale of your own. We absolutely shouldn’t let our mind stiffen to the degree that we can only imagine our own narrow perspective.
But our “open-mindedness” should not be expanded to a point where we think we see multiple truths, and that’s where I think modern popular philosophy has gone astray.
Unfortunately, our institutions are not in agreement with what you said. In the 60'tys we began training teachers to be impersonal. Government controlled agencies are firm about people being "professional" and enforce emotional distancing and even encourage using drugs to manage emotions. Drugs and being a social worker go together. The drugs help people by "professional".
Autocratic industry is a hierarchy of authority and separates management from labor. A person can be fired for fraternizing with the wrong people.
At the lower levels of labor, life can be brutal. Social status and self-esteem here, depends on being tough enough to handle abuse and on being abusive. It is learning to hold your tongue and be subordinate, and then going home and demanding instant compliance with demands.
I would love to have the authority of a moderator in my threads. Posts that are disrespectful would be returned to the author for correction. In this case, all that name-calling would have to be deleted before the post would become public. I want my threads to be safe and that means everyone is respectful and protects the dignity of others. No personal attacks, no name-calling.
It has been my experience males do not agree with my feminine concern but tell me I need a tougher skinned. Alligators have tough skins and very small brains. The question of this is, might the world have come out differently if the voice of women had always been as strong as the voice of males and civil meant having good manners. What kind of society do we want to create?
Wow, I really like that first paragraph!
Perhaps I should not comment on the second one that questions "shared meaning", but... I think democracy is an imitation of the gods. The gods and goddesses evolved from ruling with brute force to ruling with reason. They argued until they had a consensus on the best reasoning. So while a democracy values shared meaning and cooperation, it also makes room for the outsider. That is the power of creativity, and because the outsider may come with new and valuable insight, our form of government means constant change, unlike religions that are conservative and attempt to hold everything in the past with a defined "God's truth", no more thinking necessary, just obey.
Your last sentence is really beautiful. One of my books on logic says we should honor intuitive ideas, but always check them with empirical evidence. And here is where shared meaning and notions of truth become important. None of us want to be ruled by the mad man, nor to be the looney toon.
It is not that simple.
:brow: Sometimes I wonder if too much information is a bad thing. I love science but when I look at information like that, I think a rather stick with gut feelings and ignorant human imperfections. One rule, be nice, and don't overthink everything. :lol:
The key word: "abnormalities". I wonder what percentage of people are born with abnormalities.
Quoting Athena
The male-female dichotomy applies perfectly to the vastly overwhelming majority of people - what is termed "normal". To merge the abnormal into the category of the normal is a ridiculous confusion of concepts, and definitely would require an abundance of overthinking. To force reasonable people to agree to such an unusual paradigm shift would be as unjust as categorizing people with abnormal sex chromosomes as normal. Diversity is not necessarily a bad thing.
Quoting Athena
Agreed. Just because something is abnormal and not included within the category of the normal, does not mean it is inferior or should be treated as such.
From my own experiences in the (private) education sector, the majority of teachers today are anything but impersonal. Certainly there are regulations and codes of conduct in place to protect all parties (increasing since the 70s here) that make it seem from the outside as if teaching has lost that personal touch, but the greatest strength of a teacher is still their capacity to develop relationships with their students despite the limitations. I think you may need to take your focus off what has been lost in relation to the past.
I’m not familiar with the advocation of drug use to manage emotions at a government institutional level. My personal experience is of Australia, though, and drug use is very much portrayed here as a strictly personal and leisure activity, not a therapeutic or professional one - even in social work. I am, however, conscious of the cultural promotion of legal and prescription drug use specifically to manage emotions in the US, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
Quoting Athena
Any organisation that reaches a certain size becomes aware of the uncertainty of human potential, and the increasing inability to please everyone. How managers minimises that uncertainty is by excluding emotional intelligence from their decision-making process, and establishing a concrete relational structure or institution. This ‘scientific’ approach then becomes a ‘best practice’ model for smaller organisations and companies who are focused on growth.
Including emotional intelligence in the decision-making process involves accepting a higher level of uncertainty and unpredictability than most management styles are comfortable with. But effective growth is about identifying and focusing on an underlying impetus more than an overarching structure. Again, it isn’t about the autonomy, independence and identity of a concrete, actual institution or individual, but about working together to maximise the potential of the organisation as an ongoing relational structure. But banks and investors need certainty, and so do people with families to support and bills to pay...
I think that maximising awareness, connection and collaboration is not an achievable end-goal in actuality. And to be honest, I’m not arguing that maximising autonomy, independence and identity is necessarily a BAD thing - but it’s not an achievable end-goal, either. Whether we label this difference as masculine-feminine or not, it’s not a definable dichotomy as such, but an interaction of relative potentialities. I think it is in the imbalance and in challenging each other with a dynamic state of inequilibrium that we give meaning to our thoughts, words and actions, our lives and our existence. This is how the universe has developed thus far, from atomic, chemical and molecular relations to the origin of life, evolution, consciousness and imagination...
Sorry - by ‘shared’, I don’t mean agreed upon in all aspects. A perspective that is shared - as in expressed, discussed, articulated - exists. A fictional character that remains only in your imagination may have an intriguing viewpoint, but its meaning comes from being shared - from allowing that viewpoint to interact with another. A shared meaning is one which is related between two or more people, whether they agree only on its existence or on some aspects but not others.
Quoting Congau
I agree that the idea of asserting ‘multiple truths’ is unhelpful, but I think our ‘open-mindedness’ should always be expanded beyond the belief that we ‘know the truth’, at least. My perspective of ‘truth’ is always relative to yours, and the extent to which they differ offers more information to both of us about a more ‘objective’ and therefore more accurate view of truth than the one we each have.
Then don't do it. However, let us not deny that not everyone fits in the normal range and accept their differences are biological and not "sinful". My only concern is people be well informed and aware of biological differences and accepting of them.
Quoting Athena
Democracy may be a practical form of government that protects against tyranny, but reasonable? No, it isn’t. It’s an eternal compromise which makes decisions based on formal procedures rather than systematic logic hatched by a unified mind.
There’s no consensus on the best reasoning. All actors still think their original reasoning was best, but they can’t get it all, so they have to be content with a part of it.
Ok, let me offer an interpretation of what you are saying that would make it sound more palatable to me:
Suppose you possessed the truth about a certain phenomenon. You had a very strong belief that you were right, but of course you didn’t know it. None of us knows anything, but in this case your belief happened to be true. Still, your belief, though true, would not be perfect and every time you learned about other people’s false belief on the subject and interacted with them, you would expand your understanding of it and get a firmer grasp of the truth.
Just hitting upon the truth has little value for a philosopher if the belief rests on a weak foundation and by “sharing meaning” you can strengthen it.
Do you accept my interpretation?
I would say teachers today do seem to be ignoring the bureaucratic mind set that was promoted soon after enacting the 1958 National Defense Education Act. I was shocked to see a complete refusal that seems to be based on anthropology studies of the importance of relationships to learning.
Now we need to improve the breadth of that education and make it more well rounded, and individualized so all the young people who are not going to college are not cheated out of the education they need for their self-actualization.
No wonder you are so smart. You are Australian. I envy you. Truly I do.
:lol: Using prescribed drugs to manage emotions is not something printed in the explanation of policy but the environment and expectation of "professional" behavior. We have a "Brave New World" mentality. My sister who worked for a state support enforcement division has better stories than I do. Mine is not that great, but I was dismissed for "being too friendly" and my clients who defended me were told the danger of really being friends and not just superficial (professional) friends. When management of the organization changed, I rejoined the organization and I am so pleased with the change in policy! So I am thinking a large part of the problem in schools and bureaucracies may be passing? We have experienced the problems with too much authoritarian control.
The difference really matters when the state takes custody of children. When my grandchildren were made wards of the state, I joined a group of grandparents whose grandchildren were made wards of the state, and we were able to change state policy and increase family rights to keep the children in the family. Now the help families in trouble receive is awesome. It is like our nation went through a very ugly period and I hope we continue in a more human-friendly direction. My son and daughter were in school when things were not good and when they came of age we announced a national youth crisis. That is why I have spent the rest of my life studying what went wrong.
That is extremely helpful information. It would explain a learning curve and serious errors. After independent thinking was killed, I know at least one welfare department began pleading for employees to do more independent thinking and everyone was afraid to do so.
Oh my, you are triggering so many memories! This is totally awesome.
My friends lacked college degrees but had perfect control of a human services office because they knew the community. Sarah, the receptionist, could resolve any problem because she knew the community so well. Then, in came a college graduate with her fancy title and "professional authority" and she was the kiss of death. This "professional", an outsider, told Sarah she was to do none but send people back to her office. Sarah left and within a year this rural community no longer had a human services office.
Perfect! The bad things happened before the book Emotional Intelligence was published. It is not only that we experience authoritarianism can be very destructive, and kind of like putting a stick in the spokes of a wheel, but we have much more research than we had back then. Thank you for helping be more aware of this.
I think the democratic model of industry does maximize awareness, connection, and collaboration and the autocratic model prevents it.
I
That may be so. Our history is not one of balance and I don't think that past was a desirable one. However, it is possible our consciousness will change so much we could speak of a New Age when consciousness is so changed, people can not relate to people of the past.
Your words tickle me. Democracy is not a practical form of government. A republic is a more efficient form of government, and under that form of government is a culture and it is that culture that should get most of our attention.
"Democracy is a way of life and social organization which above all others is sensitive to the dignity and worth of the individual human personality, affirming the fundamental moral and political equality of all men, and recognizing no barriers of race, religion, or circumstance." There are several characteristics of democracy. One of them is to participate in the duties of democracy. The rest are about we live together. Sort of a secular 10 commandments.
Democracy is an imitation of the gods. We argue like they did until we have a consensus on the best reasoning. Effectively this is rule by reason, not rule by authority over us. Democratic people are motivated to obey their laws, because they understand the reasoning of the laws, and know they can be changed if there is better reasoning.
If all actors do not agree and independently think their reasoning is best, we better argue the reasoning until we do have agreement because if we do not get things right, bad things will happen. The consequences of our actions can not be changed by sacrificing animals, saying prayers or burning candles, so we need to be as sure as we can be that our actions are the right ones.
That is a beautiful way of explaining that.
Yeap, that is the essence of democracy. It is about what we believe, not who rules. It is totally awesome and it is not explained in the Bible.
Some of the presidents in the US get there by appealing to the Christians who know the Bible but not the reasoning for democracy, and then we get a president who tells us God whispered in his ear that the coronavirus would pass by Easter, "a very special day" and we could all come together and celebrate the resurrection. Democracy, however, depends on science so we got a decision to extend our isolation until the numbers indicate it is safe to go out and we have the medical requirements needed to control the disease and save lives.
You see? It is about right reason and if we do not agree we better argue until we do, because acting on bad reasoning means things will go wrong and we will regret that decision. That is the reasoning that got us out of the Dark Ages and into an age of reason and science that more than doubled our life expectancy and means believing our children are more likely to live to be old, than they are likely to die by age 3. Right reason, science, has done more to end evil than holy books.
I don’t think truth is something you can possess or grasp, it’s more something you approach, point to or share in. You can integrate a potential expression of truth in how you conceptualise reality, and in doing so point to that truth for others, but any actual expression of this belief is only one manifestation of a perceived potential of more objective truth. The truth of your belief is relative to the language or value structure of the expression, and how you conceptualise reality.
I don’t believe it’s a philosopher’s task to grasp or possess truth itself, but rather to understand and then show others more accurate ways to truth. There are multiple ways to approach the same truth. Some are more accurate than others. Every time you enable your belief to interact with the belief of others - with the aim of approaching a shared meaning - what you strengthen is your awareness of the structural relations by which each of your beliefs can lead away from or closer to truth.
At this level of uncertainty, I don’t find it helpful to assert that an entire belief is false, but we can show where certain structural relations fail in our experience, and see where our own fail when applied to the experiences of others. If our aim is to strengthen the structural relations of our own belief, then the interaction will only serve to limit our access to the truth, regardless of how close we may be. We must be prepared to deconstruct our own beliefs in relation to others if our aim is a more accurate approach to truth.
It doesn’t really matter what a philosopher believes. What matters is the truth itself. The expressed beliefs of a philosopher are bound to change in the course of doing philosophy. If they don’t, then he’s probably stopped doing philosophy, and is doing religion instead.
Exactly.
Quoting Athena
"Sinful" is an ethical judgment. In my opinion, issues of gender identity are an aesthetic matter - they are qualitatively incompatible with the ethical sphere, and should be kept separate from it.
But, to qualify that which is abnormal as normal is very problematic. The application of these terms factors only relativistically, so if the nonbinary labels itself normal, then the binary is necessarily rendered abnormal. The normal can hardly retain its essence and meaning independent of its dialectical relation to the abnormal.
Be careful what you wish for. I think if that happened, if we could not relate to people of the past, then we’d risk repeating errors. For instance, if we cannot relate to how a people could support the rise to power of a leader so narrowly determined to restore a sense of dominance, autonomy and influence as to institutionalise racism and xenophobia and start an international war, then we risk making the same error, don’t we?
I believe the Earth is round. I’m quite convinced by the evidence I’ve seen, but I don’t know it. I know nothing and I would change my belief if some hitherto hidden evidence were to prove that the Earth is flat. However, if my current belief about the shape of the Earth is correct, I now possess the truth.
I’m not an astronomer, though, and my insight into the structure of planets is scanty. I can’t explain in detail why the Earth couldn’t be triangular and exactly why it has its particular form. Scientists who can do that certainly grasp the truth better than I do.
Quoting Possibility
If I am right about the Earth being round, anyone who thinks it is flat, has an entirely false belief.
What good does it do to make sophist twists and turns and suggest that from certain viewpoints the Earth may be validly called flat? In their experience, which is difference to mine, it appears flat. What (on earth!) would I achieve by sharing their experience?
Quoting Possibility
Absolutely!
Quoting Possibility
That’s no prerequisite. Most philosophers probably keep their fundamental beliefs throughout their career. What is bound to change is their grasp of it. X was believed to be true from the very beginning, but in the course of doing philosophy a fuller explanation of why X is true was achieved.
You do know that’s just an expression, don’t you?
Quoting Congau
Not an entirely false belief - in their experience of the Earth, it does actually appear flat. You can’t deny that, because it’s part of your experience, too. It is only when we can explain how their belief is structured in relation to our own that we can show how the illusion is formed and where the errors are. This is why the ‘flat earth society’ still exists - because simply telling people their belief is ‘false’ is not enough, and only encourages their ignorance.
Quoting Congau
Well, that’s not been my understanding. Many philosophers’ writings show evidence of development in beliefs throughout their career, resulting in a necessary distinction between ‘early’ and ‘late’ philosophies that we can often struggle to reconcile. I will concede that it’s not a prerequisite, but it seems to me to be a characteristic of long-published philosophical careers.
I would say sin is ignorance. It is as Cicero said, we would make the right choice if we knew what that was. Making the wrong choice is ignorance of the right choice.
I understand "moral" to be a matter of cause and effect. So when it comes to gender identity What would be the bad of a bad choice? For me, that would be giving up my femininity because humanity needs the feminine influence and I don't want to give up enjoying being a woman. Really, I make a terrible man! I have no desire to compete with them. But if this were the past and I was left on a farm without a husband, I would work like a man to the best of my ability. Theodore Roosevelt spoke of how important women are in times of war, and I am very proud of what women have always done to keep the children alive in good and bad times.
I don't know why you are arguing "to qualify that which is abnormal as normal is very problematic". I don't think I ever did that. What I did is state our gender and our gender identity is not as simple as the normal X and Y combinations. My intent was to say there is a lot of variety and make room for tolerance of differences based on science, rather than leave alone the status quo of intolerance based on religion without science.
Now back in the day, we could look at Sparta and make an issue of population decline resulting from men being more interested in men than women. That would make it a moral problem of cause and effect and in the case of Sparta, I would say it was a cultural problem not the result of the variety of X and Y combinations.
You are so good with words and your thoughts are so well developed. You are awesome.
Oh yeah, our thinking changes a lot as we age, if we are in the habit of thinking. Not everyone is in the habit of thinking, but many are in the habit of avoiding it, and from there they are reactionary. That is a failure to actualize our potential as thinking creatures.
I am confident I would have complete a book about education, culture, and politics, years ago, but I keep reading and learning, and the book always needs to be rewritten as my understanding improves. :lol:
Of course, and that’s how I, and I suppose most people, define the expression “possessing the truth” and I wonder why you would feel compelled to define it differently.
Quoting Possibility
Again you are presenting this notion of “shared meaning” as a pedagogical device, and I have no problem with that. It’s only problematic if you look at it as an ingredient of truth itself. Whether or not anyone actually believes that the earth is flat is irrelevant for how we explain its roundness.
Quoting Possibility
There is the example of the late Wittgenstein who became a fierce opponent of the early Wittgenstein, but there are many more examples of the opposite. Berkeley and Hume wrote their major work as young men and then spent the rest of their lives defending it. For most there is of course a development but the fundamentals remain the same.
You are just cramming positively charged words into your idea of democracy. Reason, science and prosperity are not necessarily associated with democracy. The age of enlightenment (reason) occurred simultaneously with the age of absolutism. The Soviets were excellent scientists. China has seen great increase in prosperity while democratic India remains desperately poor.
Democracy simply means majority rule and nothing more.
It’s not so much that I’m compelled to define the expression differently. But as an ingredient of truth, possessibility is misleading, wouldn’t you agree? Consider two statements by different people:
“I see that the earth is round.”
“I see that the earth is flat.”
Both statements point to a truth about the earth, but neither of these statements alone constitutes a ‘possession’ of truth. Whitehead talks about the problem of ‘concreisance’ - when we use language to make a concept appear more concrete than it is. We may ‘know’ that the earth is round, but we cannot ‘see’ this truth with our own eyes unless we leave the earth’s atmosphere. So to say that we ‘see’ the roundness of the earth is misleading for those who lack the potential information this level of understanding requires.
Regardless of what anyone believes, the bible (in particular John’s gospel) uses three distinct Greek words that have each been translated into the English verb ‘to see’, even though they ‘have’, or rather point to, different meanings. The distinction the author makes relates to how we ‘see’ truth in the world. At one level, we observe truth (material reality) directly with our eyes. At another, we perceive a potential truth (fact), and maximise our awareness of that potential with ‘knowledge’ from the direct observation or measurement of sources whose past capacity for observing/measuring truth (material reality) appears consistent enough to be ‘trusted’. At a third level, we can understand possible truth (meaning) even in what we ‘know’ is not factual. We maximise our awareness of this level of truth by relating our perception of its potential (what we believe) to the expressed perceptions (or beliefs) of others in terms of how each potential/value and observation/measurement is structured in relation to each other.
Truth as material reality is relative to the observer/measuring device; truth as fact or knowledge is relative to subjective experience; and truth as meaning exists as a possibility beyond our own subjective experience - it can only be approached, pointed to, or shared in how we relate to the subjective experiences of others.
This all seems rather unnecessary for those already ‘see’ the truth, but as philosophers, I think we have a responsibility to scaffold our truth structures clearly, so that the scientific method can still be employed (however inconclusively) even at this level of uncertainty.
I think it is (in more ways than not, I believe so). I think our intelligent impetus deems what would have been seen as "cultural/traditional feminine predisposition" type of qualities and characters to be better suited for the future. These are qualities referenced in the idea of 'maternal instinct' such as compassion, a more objective acceptance of individualities and situations, communal service/sharing (less of 'my this and that', and more of 'for the greater good/peace of heart', etc), openness to reciprocity. Basically, a more heart-centred society.
One thing, I think, which is important to realise, is that dominance doesn't necessarily imply subjugation of others' will, independence and individualities.
I think it not only possible but actual. As is the converse. Certainly, through the constant, close interaction between the sexes there is an adaptation of "male thinking" that is somehow less masculine and an adaptation of "female thinking" that is somehow less feminine.
Quoting Athena
It is of the utmost importance. I would likely not care to live in a world/society that displayed only the one type of thinking.
Quoting Athena
This is where my curiosity rises. Potential...what is meant by this? Better? Possible? Preferred? Imaginable? For instance, the pile of 2x4's and nails in my barn has the "potential" to be all sorts of things: a dog house, an addition to my living room, a bike ramp for the kids, a fence, etc etc. But what it becomes will be a function of my preference. Did I deny the lumber's potential by building a dog house instead of adding on to my living room? It becomes all the more interesting a question when coupled with "domination". Potential for domination... I'm interested to hear more about that.
I’d be careful with the use of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ because most people assume they equate to ‘female’ and ‘male’.
It’s an interesting subject. I’m not so sure that philosophical discourse helps cut right to the core issues though. Science can reveal certain truths, but when it comes to human behavior it’s a tricky thing to investigate as almost anyone can find ‘evidence’ to back up their own pet theories.
I’ve come to discussion late. What specifically is of interest to you in this area?
We certainly gain knowledge in different ways (or more accurately we gain strong belief); by seeing, calculating and understanding, sure, but again, that is merely a pedagogical description, that is, a more detailed elaboration of how the epistemological process works. We can literally see simple facts while other facts require more learning, but for the sake of economy, and for the purpose of this discussion (which I thought was about the nature of (objective) truth), we might as well use a common word since what is here essential is the same.
There are facts out there and when they enter our mind, we may call it seeing, perceiving, understanding, learning, observing, experiencing, sensing, feeling, grasping, getting, catching, sharing and any number of words we may feel adequately captures what is going on in any particular instance, but the common denominator is still about something “entering the mind”.
Someone who lived totally isolated would be excluded from sharing, blind people are excluded from seeing and infants are excluded from logical deductions, but some facts enter the minds of all three groups, which means they have access to some truth and as such it resembles any possible approach to truth.
Truth, like any other concept, can be divided into different kinds and categories, but it is indeed one concept and has a common denominator.
Blind people learn to distinguish, value and therefore trust alternative sources of sensory information more highly than sighted people. Infants quickly learn to value and therefore trust consistently positive sources of information, but they do initially make no distinction between potential information (including predictions or imagination) and ‘objective truth’. Someone who lives totally isolated has no way of relating the potential information they perceive in relation to alternative perspectives, so they, too, would make no distinction between their beliefs, predictions or imagination and ‘objective truth’.
Quoting Congau
But we haven’t been able to capture what is going on, have we? We have no objective understanding about what it means for information to ‘enter’ whatever the mind is. There is no ‘common denominator’ of truth - conceptually, I think you’re heading in the entirely wrong direction. This seems like the the kind of careless reductionism that religious apologetics thrives on, and that philosophy and science have sought to prevent.
The way I understand it, there are no objective facts ‘out there’ that ‘enter’ the mind at a spatio-temporal location. All of this metaphorical description makes us feel like we’re talking about actual things, phenomena we only lack sufficient tools to measure, but they’re just words that most readily bring us a sense of comfort or protection, not truth.
Surely the informational differences between the experiences relating an expression of ‘observing’ truth and one of ‘feeling’ truth matters more than their similarities? When we reduce them both to ‘facts entering the mind’, we lose so much information about what truth is and what it means. How do we then get that information back?
The process of understanding objective truth, in my view, involves challenging the mind first to include and relate all possibilities - everything we have seen and felt and observed and learned and experienced and perceived, etc. - into a six-dimensional relationship structure with what possibilities we can unpack from the expressions of others, relative to everything they may have seen and felt and observed and experienced, etc. from their unique perspective. A six-dimensional relationship structure is inclusive of fictional, irrational and illogical information - all meaningful possibility, all interrelated in some way. This is how I approach an understanding of objective truth.
Our most accurate expression of this understanding is then a consciously creative decoherence of this possibility into the potentiality of language and then collapse into words, being careful to remain inclusive of its recognisable (shared) six-dimensional aspects of meaningful possibility, in the same way that an artist carefully renders a scene in two-dimensional space to convey recognisable information about three-dimensional objects.
I am enjoying this discussion, Congau, but I realise we’ve strayed way off the topic of this thread, and I’m conscious of another thread on objective truth which may be more pertinent to what you and I are discussing here.
I don't think either sex should dominate but the example of bonobo and chimps is to question if we are doomed to war and other forms of brutality because it is our nature? I have a preference for peace and family life. That is not exclusively female, but neither is it a chimp choice. It is a bonobo choice. It is the animals that have male and female domination and hopefully, humans work together without dominating. You seemed to speak for working together and I will point out that is not "men being the head of the household" as some males have interpreted their right to rule. We have had patriarchy and that has oppressed people, especially women.
The lonely savage might believe a rabbit has gnawed on a branch (not sure, it could also be a hare), and predict that his trap will catch the rabbit (he has logically placed it close to rabbit food). He imagines how he will go about catching the rabbit (but know it hasn’t been caught yet) and he recognizes a rabbit whenever he sees one (objective truth).
Quoting Possibility
Philosophy and science are about the search for general laws. Unscientific observation is about particulars, whereas science strives to understand general similarities. Quantum physics is the ultimate reductionist understanding of nature and therefore, in a sense the most scientific of all sciences.
In philosophy, metaphysics is the most philosophical branch asking the most reductionist question: What is being? (ignoring the distinctions between a vast range of beings). Reductionism is essential to all higher understanding since cutting away irrelevant differences is the only way to grasp the principle of anything.
Quoting Possibility
How can you call truth objective if it’s not out there as items of potential knowledge, or as what may be called “facts” for short? (As potential knowledge or facts I also include for example moral question even though we can never know that our answer is right. It’s sufficient that there is a right answer.)
You are welcome to take this enjoyable discussion to another thread. Just make sure you tag me.
I will definitely opt for open-mindedness. I am coming from the traditional past and it was not my intent to start a battle of the sexes. I am sort of surprised by what happens when I say being feminine is a good thing.
I went from being the ideal 1950 ideal woman to "just a housewife" in the 70 tys. Some good has come out of the change but also a lot of bad has come out it because no one wants to be "just a housewife". That is very demeaning and so I want to speak of the values of being a traditional woman.
I have some strong concerns about the effect of "liberating women" to be like men. When the USSR did this, at first the economy boomed but then women and children began falling below the poverty level and abortion and divorce rates increased. In the US we can add to this, so has the rate of women and children involved in crime increased as victims and perpetrators.
At first, I thought women's lib was a good thing because I had ambitions and looked forward to having a career, but for some of us, when our husbands walked out in the middle of a long recession, reality did not look as good as the promise. I don't want to get too personal, but the reality for many women is low wages and having to pay for child care and all the other bills with no help and our children are being institutionalized by 3 months of age. Some child care facilities are better than others, but no matter good the child care, it can not benefit a child as parents can. So I am concerned not only for the women who are now economic slaves, but also their children.
As for philosophical discussion, how else can we determine human values? And, and what of the possibility that history could have gone differently? What if we are not doomed to war and brutality?
My belief is that while there may tend to be some noticible differences between "male" or "female" communication styles, as far as general "rules" or specific individuals go", the overarching principles are used both by men and women, and trying to make anything akin to an "exact mathematical science" to it is practically impossible, so I avoid taking dichotomies too seriously.
A female lawyer or a judge in court is obviously following the same overarching "rules" and standards that a male lawyer or judge would; much as a male tennis player or a female tennis player would both still be following the same "rules" of the game, sportsmanship, etc, and performing the same types of "moves" and physical performances (with the exception being the differences in the rules for men and women's leagues).
I try to avoid paying attention to that and all of the accompanying gossip, so I can't comment honestly.
As far as history goes, I don't believe it's entirely "dichotomic", and there have been prominent women in every major historical era that I'm aware of, even if it tended to be "rarer" or less well-known than today; possibly with family, socioeconomics, and other factors having a significant influence with notions of "upward mobility" much less common (e.x. Cleopatra, Queen Victoria, Joan of Arc, just to name a few).
Some ancient female queens, such as some Chinese empresses allegedly even had male "sex slaves" or "concubines".
Sure, from our perspective, each of these is different, but to the ‘lonely savage’ there is no distinction between these thoughts and the notion of objective truth. What he predicts is what he imagines, and what he imagines is what he believes, and what he believes is never in dispute. He has no reason to doubt his predictions, beliefs or imagination while they remain in potentiality, or to question his recognising a rabbit whenever he sees a hare.
One without the other is a disaster.
If women wish to compete with men then they either have to bring men to where they are or meet them head on. Either way, as above, one without the other is a disaster.
The major change for women came into play with family planning. Things have shifted.
He would lack the words to describe each sentiment, but I fail to see why he, as a human being and subject to human psychology, would not go through the same process as any social and civilized man. He would carefully examine the tracks and reach a definite conclusion (he would feel sure, the way we feel when we say “I know”) or he would tilt in one direction (not sure, but probably a rabbit, we say “I believe”).
He knows what it means to imagine (not the word but the notion). He has dreams at night that he knows are not real, and sometimes he imagines being able to fly like a bird, knowing full well he could never do it.
Quoting Possibility
We neither observe nor feel the truth. We observe something and feel something, and it may or may not be the truth (we may be hallucinating or just not seeing as clearly as we think).
I observe there is a computer on my table, and I feel it is there; what’s the difference? In certain contexts, one word is more appropriate than the other depending on what aspect I wish to stress, or I prefer one word for stylistic reasons, but essentially they are the same. “Observing” refers to the visual faculty while “feeling” could relate to any of the five sense, including the visual.
I agree that reducing, resampling or collapsing our understanding of reality is necessary to some extent for any level of interaction, including the scientific method, but reductionism is not how to understand reality. The reductionist approach to quantum physics struggles to settle on a satisfactory interpretation, because the results show that there is no common denominator of truth. It is the nature of the question that determines the answer, not reality itself. Which makes the metaphysical or theoretical approach to quantum physics (determining what questions to ask), and the application or useful interpretation of the answers, as crucial to new scientific discovery and advancement as the experiments themselves or any general laws. The reductionist mathematical calculations either work or don’t work in relation to specific questions. They don’t make sense of the world on their own.
Quoting Congau
What I was referring to was careless reductionism, which fails to take into account the subjective, limited position of who is asking the question and why it matters to them. The difference this information makes to what question is asked is important both to science and philosophy - especially at the quantum level. ‘What is being’ is a perfect example of a reductionist question that has contributed little to metaphysics or science of late, because it ignores who is asking the question and why it matters to them.
Reduction is essential to the sharing, predicting, testing and application of how we understand reality. But every time we reach for a higher understanding, we should aim to maximise awareness, connection and collaboration with diverse possibilities, perspectives and potential beyond our own. Ignoring diversity, excluding differences and other reductionist approaches can help to eliminate uncertainty, but the way I see it, this takes us further from objective truth, not closer to it.
The way I see it, human psychology is in many ways a product of social and civilised man, not the other way around - in particular, our capacity to distinguish between the certainty of knowledge and the uncertainty of belief. The capacity alone has no effect until we exercise it through interaction with the world. For the ‘lonely savage’, that distinction can be made only in the moment of observation. The prediction error or realised uncertainty is noted as suffering, while the certainty is integrated or valued as truth. It is in recognising, observing or sharing expressions of suffering that social animals learn to anticipate uncertainty in predicted interactions, and begin to distinguish value or potential in relation to their observation of objects (and eventually in relation to events themselves).
Quoting Congau
Distinguishing pure imagination from experience is another level of awareness. Even a child often needs to be convinced that their dreams are not real experiences. I think you assume that your ‘lonely savage’ has a broader understanding of his own experiences than he could realistically acquire alone.
I agree that a lone human being can employ the scientific method to acquire certainty. What I’m saying is that without social interaction of some kind, any awareness of uncertainty would always be experienced as an external threat to his existence, not as useful information about the world. So when he carefully examines the tracks, he is aware of no option, no way to entertain doubt, or to feel in any way ‘not sure’.
This is where our perspectives differ: in how we conceptualise the existence of truth.
For you, it seems, objective truth is an actuality. What is potential is not truth, and neither is possibility. Truth, for you, cannot include doubt or uncertainty in any way. Only when we have ignored, isolated or excluded all evidence of uncertainty, can we refer to whatever remains as ‘objective truth’, and then act on it - as one discrete system interacting with another. This is what I see as particle thinking. It is how an individual understands reality at the moment of interaction.
For me, objective truth is inclusive of all possibilities. Uncertainty is a result of the ignorance, isolation or exclusion of truth from our limited perspective, and so we reduce uncertainty (not just our awareness of it) at this level more effectively by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with all possibilities. There is meaningful information (a difference that makes a difference) to be found in relating our own limited perspective (with all of its uncertainty) to the potential information of alternative experiences and perspectives (with all of their uncertainty). This is how we refine the perceived potential and value of uncertain beliefs, knowledge and predictions as an amorphous relational structure of experiential information - which then collapses (or decoheres) according to our unique structures of logic, language, reasoning, intention, will, etc into what you refer to as ‘objective truth’ for the purpose of interacting with material reality. This is what I refer to as potentiality wave thinking.
The way I see it, when we observe something, we cannot observe ‘the truth’, as you say, but the observable information is true when conceptualised in a certain way (ie. as a hallucination). Likewise, when we feel something, we cannot feel the truth, but what information is felt can be structured in relation to other information towards truth.
I observe that there is a computer on my table.
I feel that there is a computer on my table.
The similarity between these statements pertains to my belief: that there is a computer on my table. I understand that this is the only information in these statements that you may be interested in, and so long as you can be certain that my belief is true, then you don’t need any more information.
But the truth in each statement is dependent on the relative positions of the computer, the table and me - none of which you can be certain of from either of these statements alone - and so the difference between these statements also relates to the sensory and other information I’m using to construct my belief. If you are standing beside me, and my table is in another room, how does the potential truth in each of these statements change from, say, the two of us being in different rooms, or from the table being in your room, or from you being blind? How does the meaning of ‘observe’ and ‘feel’ change in relation to this information?
When we act on the information that we have, we don’t exclude as much uncertain information as we might think. We always predict reality to some extent when we act, and our prediction is very much altered by potential, uncertain and value-laden information - as much as it seems like we’re acting only on ‘objective truth’.
:heart: I think I love you. I wish the whole world held those ideas.
I think there are varying degrees in our differences. I know for sure I think differently from others and I am pretty passionate about others having some of the same thoughts I have, but I am also totally frustrated by my inability to find the words that make them clear. That is largely why I started this thread. I was hoping someone would say things better than I can, and that is happening. Others are saying what I wish I could find words for. You sure did an excellent job of that.
One more thought. It seems to me only male-dominated cultures developed technology. Ones with more female influence may have failed to develop technologically?
You’ll have to explain further where you’ve pulled that from?
Okay, as I said in response to sushi, I think only the male-dominated cultures developed technology. If we were all matriarchal, we would still be farming with sticks and communing with the Mother Goddess. But we would also have games to channel our aggressive urges as mothers keep the children busy to avoid problems. :lol: I could be wrong but I suspect the male impulse to correcting a child is more apt to be corporal punishment. Not that long ago it was legal to hit a wife and the law only attempted to limit that hitting. Men on ships were whipped. Slaves were whipped. And still the way we treat prisoners is horrifying!
Women could count on men to defend them. It is amazing how women stay with abusive men and attempt to avoid abuse by being pleasing. I have not observed too many men who attempt to get what they want and need by being pleasing. There are some. They are called "henpecked". Socially that is discouraged because it is not attractive to either men or women. But life loves diversity. And I think today, more men are apt to think and apply reason than in the past. That is in part what inspired this thread. I like the change I see in men. I like it a lot! I like the change for women as well, but who is taking care of the children?
I love contemplating this stuff and wondering, how did some cultures become passive and others become aggressive. I read a book addressing this difference between aggressive people who leave home and venture out into the world and nonaggressive people who stay home and cling to the familiar. Some tribes would invite trading. Mongols killed everyone in their path until a man from China taught Khan to harvest the cities (demand tribute).
Okay, that will require looking through my books to find quotes and I need some time to do that. I do think this point is an important one and should be scrutinized.
Truth is what is. It neither includes nor excludes anything else. The computer is either on my desk or it is not there, regardless of how I feel about it. I believe it’s there or I don’t, neither attitude changes the whereabouts of the computer.
As for uncertainty, strictly speaking I must be uncertain about everything, including the existence of the computer that I perceive so clearly with my eyes and my fingertips at this very moment. I’m not a skeptic, I believe very strongly that my computer exists, but I can’t know it.
I agree that the difference between knowing and believing is culturally conditioned. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are languages that have one common word for “know” and “believe”. If we were to construct a philosophically pure language there certainly would be only one word for both notions and the current distinction could be expressed with a qualifier indicating the level of uncertainty (I believe/know with very little uncertainty. vs. I believe/know with considerable uncertainty)
If we remove this culturally arbitrary distinction, we are on par with our lonely savage. If you doubt that, you might as well think that psychology can’t be practiced cross-culturally and theorize about cultural differences being more important than our common human race.
This takes us back to the main discussion here. The dominant, influential individual will always value certainty above all, and view any uncertainty that inevitably persists in his choice of actions as overwhelmingly negative. The life of our lonely savage is attractive to him: no one questions his decisions or points out conflicting, alternative or unsettling information. Ignorance is bliss. An individual’s social connections and collaboration increase the uncertainty of his autonomy, dominance and influence. He is more aware of the universe, but less certain of his individual position in relation to it.
FWIW, I see an alternative to the self as a dominant, influential individual to be the self as one possible manifestation of truth.
Quoting Congau
I agree that ignoring the distinction puts us on par with the lonely savage - but that doesn’t improve our understanding of truth - it only reduces it. I DO think that psychology can’t be practiced with the same accuracy cross-culturally, and that cultural differences should always be taken into account when making decisions globally for the human race.
Culture is not arbitrary - it’s the uncertainty that diminishes its perceived value in your perspective. The diversity of human culture and ideology reflects the perceived potential of humanity’s interaction with the universe. To exclude this information from how we interact with the world is to limit the accuracy of our predictions, including its uncertainty. You can’t attempt to reduce the potentiality and value structures of the human race to the certainty of a ‘common denominator’ and expect to make accurate predictions. This is the issue with morality, politics, religion, logic, language, etc. It’s similar to the problem faced when train travel made time zones necessary, instead of opting for one ‘common’ world time. And the relativity of time in a four-dimensional reality - except what we’re talking about is a fifth dimensional aspect of perceived value or potential.
Okay, I am ready to offer an explanation of why matriarchal societies did not develop technology. This is a weak argument because it appears no one has specifically paid attention to human social organization and technology. There is a study of apes and social organization. https://www.damemagazine.com/2013/05/10/five-things-we-know-about-societies-run-women/
A separate source of information was a video about how mother chimps transmit information to their children and how female children stay close to the mother and learn from her, while the males wander off and are slow to learn from their mothers. For sure among higher IQ species relationships are very important to learning, but that is not the driver for learning math, developing writing, and the technologies of civilization.
Now there is a technology driving force statement. Living in harmony with nature, as the native Americans and others around the world have done, does not drive technological development. It gets jars and baskets and art and jewelry but not math and writing. Picture writing I would put with in the female side of things, but not the symbolic letters of Jews and Greeks, and darn it but I gave away the book that explained what is important about the change in written language. I just remember the book said this change shifted power to males. But I found this online
It is not that women can't do math. One of the most famous female mathematicians was killed by Christians, putting her in our history, and it is known Pathagorians included females. But I assure you, math is not typically what women talk about. I just do not believe a matriarchy would develop math and they did not develop writing as we know it. Now let us consider architecture that requires moving heavy stones. Not a whole lot of women are going to do that, and my first thought when I brought up the subject is that the civilizations we know of, that may have been matriarchal, did not have large buildings of any kind and they didn't have temples with huge statues of gods and goddesses, nor huge statues of their leaders. They had small sanctuaries in nature. And all buildings were small and modest. No massive government buildings or temples.
The very notion of many gods had to have grown from city living where life was too complex for one god to manage everything and some who study the gods see evidence of the male gods replacing the ruling goddess.
Essential to developing technology is metals and mining them. This is not a female activity. It is the boy wandering around hitting everything with a stick who is going to find that special rock and explore its potential and shove his friend into the hole to get more of them.
What do you think? Is that a good argument for what gender has to do with different social/political organizations and the development of technology?
Very nicely said. Any thoughts on how we shifted from turning to our earth mother for sustenance and comfort to the a jealous, revengeful, fearsome and punishing God?
Wow, that is an interesting argument- "theorize about cultural differences being more important than our common human race". A main reason for starting this thread is I do not believe it is human nature to war. There are peaceful cultures proving it is culture, not our nature, that leads to war.
Quoting I like sushiI forgot my main reason for arguing why I do not believe matriarchies would develop technology. When reading different creation stories it became evident that those with developed technology began with a creation story of male gods killing each other, and killing mankind, not a mother goddess who gives life and nurtures it. There appears to be a link between those creation stories war and technological advancement or living cooperatively and not developing technology.
Testosterone is apparently linked to an explorative function. There are more men with low IQ’s than women, and more men with higher IQ’s than women - it’s far from hard evidence though because it depends on interests and societal expectations and individual choices.
Hypothetically if women were physically stronger than men, but otherwise the same, I still think civilization would have advanced in pretty much the same manner it has (men and women are far more alike than different compared to literally every other primate).
The burden of pregnancy and child birth is by far the biggest difference. Other than that it’s just brute strength (which it not necessarily a tool of oppression or war; yet undeniably came into play during the birth of inequality).
Many, many people have written, studied and researched about how humans developed technologies. Technology accelerated as we found better means of storing and distributing knowledge.
I have no idea how you came to that conclusion from mythological references. The big step was sedentary life.
Different people, different cultural circumstances, different material circumstances etc. make a difference for how knowledge is approached or what kind of knowledge is valued, but it doesn’t affect the truth. The truth is there whether or not anyone knows it/believes it to be true. In different environments people will approach different truths, or value different truths. The savage is oblivious to rare stamp collections and the city dweller doesn’t care about rabbit tracks, but both the stamps and the tracks represent facts – are truths.
The practical mind values certainty, but the curious mind is attracted to uncertainty. Both types are probably represented both among “savages” and civilized people, but even if you are right that the lonely savage is overwhelmingly practical, it only reveals his approach to learning and says nothing about what there is to be learned – that is, truth.
Quoting Possibility
All information is truth and of course nothing should be a priori excluded. Truths about human interactions, that is social science, anthropology etc. are certainly important objects of study for the reasons you mention as well as others.
The way we go about facts (truths) doesn’t change the facts, but it does create new facts (facts about our behavior).
Are we interfering with the women's issues here? Maybe it would be a good idea to switch thread.
I want to be sure you noticed I said there is a relationship between creation stories, gender dominance, and technological advancement or lack of it. Obviously our creation stories justify our choices and visa versa they tell us what our choices are. The Greek gods most certainly begin with a jealous father and a mother who just wanted her children to live and then a war between the generations of gods.
The Egyptian goddess Nut is curious to me because she did not intervene as a mother should when her children misbehaved. Unlike the male gods that kill humans and do punish.
While we have a lady of justice she holds scales because justice is weighed with wisdom and compassion, that is not exactly the power behind law and order, which begins with a male God doesn't it?
I see you have distinguished between a society and a civilization. I had this difference in mind and fall back on the God who does enforce law and order and mother goddesses and the lady of justice who were not the force behind law and order. This is sort of which came first- male dominance or civilization as distinctly different from a small society?
You make me think and I am loving this.
Did north American natives live in societies or civilizations? Was the confederation of the North East natives comparable to the Aztec civilization? I think there were many farming communities that were sedentary but not civilizations. I think there is a technological difference between a stable farming community and a civilization?
I don’t see any evidence - at least you haven’t presented any. If we’re talking purely about mythos there are enough instances of goddesses giving knowledge to humans to make your claim a questionable one.
Cannot for the life of me recall the name of the woman who makes a case for that - I’ll look it up tomorrow.
Neither conflict nor cooperation alone beget technological advancements. I cannot imagine a matriarchal society to have ever existed - in the sense of female domination - because men would just just say ‘no thanks’ when they disagreed and the women could do what? Nothing.
An egalitarian society in the past? Sure! There is evidence of this today in hunter gatherers and suggestions of large settlements in the Ukraine that were recently discovered where there doesn’t appear to be any tell tale signs of a ruling body.
I’d recommend looking at Renfrew. He’s a pretty solid source, but I’ve no idea if he’s focused on gender roles in any of his research papers.
Well, I’d warn that the existence of peaceful cultures is not a convincing argument against the capacity for war being part of our ‘nature’ - only that the capacity for peace is part of our nature as well. My main argument here is that in entertaining both capacities simultaneously and without judgement (moral, logical, rational or otherwise), we perceive a more objective truth about our ‘nature’.
First of all, I don’t think this is so much a temporal shift as a value shift. We still turn to the earth for sustenance and comfort. But the reality is that our ‘earth mother’ isn’t focused on our individual or human sustenance and comfort, but on the general sustainability of all creation - often at our expense. This conflicts with an organic awareness of the individual ‘self’ as highest value, as evidenced by interoception of affect within the organism: prediction error, understood as suffering.
In developing an understanding of our relationship with the world, we have throughout history and culture been torn between accepting that we are an integral but ultimately expendable part of a self-sustaining universe, and entering into a dialogue/conflict with a separate entity that is ultimately more dominant, autonomous and influential than ourselves. The interesting result of this is that, while the experience of men points them towards dialogue/conflict, the position of women - whose experience points them towards interconnectedness - must then be accounted for within this dialogue/conflict: absorbed into the identity of the ‘earth mother’ or of ‘mankind’.
I want to be clear here that I’ve been referring to the particular ‘lonely savage’ in the thought experiment you proposed, who hypothetically has zero opportunity to communicate, connect or collaborate in any way with alternative experiences. In reality, all humans have had this opportunity at some stage in their lives. I believe that even the most practical human mind can develop their curiosity, and learn to value uncertainty.
I also want to clarify another point. When you say ‘the truth’, I believe that you’re referring to only what actually exists in this moment, rather than what information exists. Awareness of, connection to and collaboration with different people, cultural and material circumstances, etc don’t affect what actually exists in this moment, but always affects how we relate to what actually exists - which affects what may actually exist in the next moment. Likewise, our ignorance, isolation or exclusion of different cultural and material circumstances, etc also affects (in a different way) how we interact with what actually exists, which affects what may actually exist in the next moment.
So, while I agree and sympathise with your assertion of what actually exists as ‘the truth’ in an isolated three-dimensional ‘slice’ of time, I disagree that this is an accurate and therefore practical description of objective truth. We cannot accurately define what actually exists as separate from this moment’s relation to both the past and the future, relative to our own awareness/ignorance, connection/isolation and collaboration/exclusion of the potential/value and possibility/meaning of surrounding circumstances. We are unable to consciously act on ‘the truth’ without integrating potential information in relation to our understanding of what matters: knowledge, belief, intention, desire, obligation, logic, etc. In fact, I would argue that if ‘objective truth’ is inclusive of consciousness and meaning (if they are there whether or not anyone knows what they are), then it must be inclusive of potential and possible information.
Consciousness and meaning (what people take something to mean) are also objective information that exists even though it is difficult or impossible to access it. No one knows what Peter is thinking right now and he himself may be confused about the meaning of his thoughts, but they are there and could theoretically be known, for example if telepathy were possible (Is that what you mean by potential information?) His thoughts are just more truths, more pieces of information about items existing in the world. If that is what you mean, we are in agreement, but I definitely object to any suggestion of Peter’s thoughts affecting truths that are foreign to them. His actions, yes, certainly, but not his mere thoughts.
Conventions are shared meaning, I grant you that. They are not foreign to thought but identical to collective thought. Word have their meaning because enough people think they have that meaning, and when enough people change their mind about words, their meaning will change too. Culture, being collective habits, is also dependent on thought or shared meaning. But as objects of study, ideas are objective facts, and the student of ideas cannot change their meaning without making a mistake.
Very good point of argument. What kind of knowledge? I would like to search for answers so do you have any mythologies in mind that I might read? I know often goddesses are said to be wise but wisdom and technology are separate things. I think today we are technologically smart but not wise.
You make me think. You are right about avoiding judgments. I don't doubt it is natural for humans to raid each other but others have questioned if today's warfare is a natural thing. Genghis Khan and his followers were hunters without an agrarian consciousness and hunting is natural to us, and they stayed away from home for a long time. I guess it doesn't really matter what is being killed.
One study observed if children are treated abusively from infancy, they grew up to be strong warriors, So upon examination of info in my head, I guess I do have to conclude you are right and I was being a bit romantic.
That triggers the memory that perhaps our egocentric thinking is not common to all people. Some cultures have a stronger communal identity so that when there is a gathering each one thinks about what everyone is doing together, not "I am doing this right". I think there is something about being competitive or cooperative in this. True as you say this is about how we value ourselves, and that happens in a culture. It seems to for the last several decades the focus has been on competitiveness, but old textbooks in the US focused on being cooperative and sharing. This shift came with establishing the Military-Industrial Complex.
OMG that statement is so exciting to me. For me what you said is science versus religion. It is also Daniel Kahneman's fast and slow thinking with the fast-thinking being common to all of us, and slow thinking, pondering what is so, is less common to us and some people totally avoid it. Liberal education developed slow thinking, education for technology does not, and the result of replacing our liberal education in the US with education for technology is the social/ economic/political mess we are in now.
I love your definition of the male/ female difference and mention that this difference is based on a division of labor. The traditional division of labor shaping our experience of life and self-esteem and a sense of personal power. Are we dependent or independent? What an incredible mix of concepts that make soups of many flavors out of basically the same concepts. I think this influences our left and right politics and the political crisis in the US we are experiencing. It also takes very special people to maintain this discussion. People here are not thinking in terms of black and white, but acknowledge all the shades of grey.
I am fascinated by the way you process this and challenge my perspective. Yes, I think we are closer in understanding here, sort of. If your actions pertain only to yourself as an isolated individual, then it would be easy to disregard Peter’s unknown thoughts as irrelevant to your understanding of what the truth is regarding your potential to act. But if you recognise that there is potential information available to you regarding Peter’s thoughts (however uncertain), and that your potential actions are not isolated events in the world, but would matter to Peter as well as yourself, then you would relate the potential information available regarding Peter’s thoughts to your potential to act, prior to determining and initiating your actions.
I’m not talking about telepathy as such, but the assumptions that we make subconsciously everyday when we interact with the world through concepts. When you say that no one knows what Peter is thinking, that doesn’t mean that no one is making assumptions about those thoughts and acting on them - Peter included. When you talk about how you think and process objective truth as a conscious act, you invariably leave this part of it out, but we all do it, whether or not we are aware of it. We need to be more aware of this inevitable uncertainty in the information we base our actions on, both before and after we act.
You see, I don’t believe anyone (except perhaps those with autism) processes objective truth as simply as the ‘lonely savage’ - although some like to think that they do. As humans, our actions are always determined in relation to this perceived potential/value, most of which we relate to subconsciously. But we have the potential to be more conscious of it, if we consider it valuable.
This is where we differ. You seem to think that we discard this uncertain information as irrelevant prior to determining our actions, but my understanding is that we integrate this information into who we are - into our individual will or potential to act - prior to determining our actions. We position ourselves in relation to the world according to meaning and value, as well as time, space, direction and energy, with every interaction.
Quoting Congau
What you’re talking about here - conventions, collective habits and facts - is probability. We make mistakes, wrong assumptions and prediction errors every day. This is how we learn. As objects of study, ideas only point to objective truth. The student of ideas cannot approach truth in meaning without making a mistake, and being willing to explore the differences between what people think words mean, and how that relates to differences in subjective experiences, value systems and perceived potential.
I have never denied that we approach facts/truths in different ways depending on our circumstances. We value different kinds of information according to what strikes us as useful or just interesting and our actions are determined by what information we have or imagine we have. What we think others think is one piece of information (very often false) that we process and act upon.
But all this doesn’t change the facts that are already there, that have already been produced. What Peter thought about yesterday at noon, not to mention on this date last year, is an absolute fact, now forgotten and inaccessible but if you still try to guess what it was, that guess will have a definite truth value (true, false, partly true). Your thinking about Peter’s past thinking will not change it in any way. A fact remains a fact and truth is absolute.
The future holds facts not yet produced, so of course we can change what will come, and human contact, including guesses about their past thinking, does indeed play a role in our production of new facts. But the facts that are already produced are unalterable and therefore “out there”. (That is even true about my own thinking whatever I think about it now.)
Lynne Kelly was the name I couldn’t recall - ironic considering the point was about memory systems! Haha!
Competitiveness doesn’t have to be about individual or even group-oriented domination and conflict, or about the influence of power, money or accolades. There is a deep connection between competition and cooperation that is too often ignored with particle thinking: the capacity we have to create shared meaning and possibility from an interaction of different, even opposing, perspectives. What drives us to maximise our potential and achieve more from healthy, sustainable competition is a focus on awareness, connection and collaboration, rather than individual domination and exclusion. Competitiveness isn’t about winning or losing, after all.
This I disagree with. That Peter had a thought yesterday at noon may be a fact, but the contents of that thought is potential information. There is no actuality to a thought except the event of thinking. You even said yourself that Peter may be just as uncertain about his thoughts as anyone else.
Athena wasn't a mother. She took responsibility for Hephaestus' child but stuck it in a box and left someone else responsible for it. That is like many working moms today.
Artemis was not a mother. She eventually got associated with other mother goddesses but I don't think she ever had her own child.
Demeter is clearly recognized as a mother goddess.
That may sound picky but it is very important to me. Demeter basically set her career aside when she needed to rescue her daughter. To me, a mother sacrifices herself for her children. I know this is not acceptable today, but for me, it is very honorable and very important to humanity. Our sense of right and wrong is very physical and even when our heads tell us our thinking may not be logical, our bodies will resist changing our position on right and wrong. So for me, a mother must be devoted to her children, and children should not be raised as we raise our pets, as an afterthought to our identity that is not about being a mother or a father. Treating our children as luggage that can be left on a shelve until we are ready for them, is not okay with me. That is my feeling put into words, not exactly a mandate for everyone, but something we might want to think about when we think about family, children, politics and the organization of our of the workplace and how we value mothers. Athena and Artemis do not qualify as mothers as I understand motherhood.
I really know very little of Hinduism and their gods and goddesses. I know I was shocked by the goddess, Kali the Mother and giver and taker of life. It was shocking to me that a goddess would be associated with taking life. But mind you, I come from a culture where the only female role model was Mother Mary. So for me, all the goddesses, all the different role models/ archetypes for women, was pretty amazing.
Yes, that is a laugh. And thank you for sharing your humanness. I think sometimes we take ourselves too seriously and stop connecting as equal human beings who may not know everything, may forget what we do know, and may not always agree with ourselves. :rofl:
:lol: You both must be young to have that argument. I am lucky if I can remember a thought for 5 minutes. My thinking disappears like a puff of smoke on a windy day. There is no substance to a thought so perhaps we should not treat a thought as a tangible reality?
Quoting Athena
You asked for examples of technological inventions (knowledge) from goddesses and I gave you two; Athena is a third.
Who was or wasn’t mother is important why?
Would you please go to our congress and the political meetings to explain that. What you said is awesome. I was a Toastmistress when women and men could have their separate clubs and activities. Today we only have Toastmasters where public speaking skills are practiced. We frequently had speech competitions and we ran for the different offices in the club. But it was always about cooperation. It took me a while to get that. The members lifted me to the top of all positions and I finally got what they were doing and learned the meaning of giving service as the winner who represents the club in a higher competition or the President responsible for conventions and weekly meetings. :lol: Oh lordy, especially when I was made president I realized why everyone was not in the competition. :lol: It is the rookie who gets to be president because she doesn't know enough to decline the opportunity to be president.
Now if our representatives understood what you said, life might get a whole better! Some men may understand this but taking that stand can make them appear weak, like a weak-kneed liberal you know. Here is where the woman can be most helpful, because she is admired for encouraging cooperation, and if she seems to be too pushy, will you know the bad words we say about her.
I need to go back and review everything as it relates to technology and get back to you. Thank you for clarifying, and how in heck did my mind jump to Mothers? Perhaps because I have kids on my mind and the pressure of making masks, which becomes a pressure to spend less time here. There is just too much on my mind and when push comes to shove, Demeter is going to rule me.
The answer to your question comes from Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.'s book "Goddesses in Everywoman" opened up life to me in a way I never imagined. Speaking of archetypes she says
The gods and goddesses are archetypes and I find her books totally amazing! The one for men is "Gods in Everyman". It is amazing what we can learn about ourselves and others by knowing the God and Goddess are mental/emotional patterns and what our childhood experiences have to do with our mental/emotional patterns and setting our future. The cultural demand on women has changed and we seriously lack awareness of that and the ramifications. The purpose of this thread.
I was 100% Demeter. I have worked very hard to shift to Athena, but I am now a great grandmother, and Demeter continues to play a very strong role in my life. Do you know why so many women appear to be stupid? Spend a day with little children and just try to think about something other than the children. Within 5 minutes of trying to think of anything else, the children demand attention and there goes whatever else you were working on. Our present situation of people working out of their homes while the kids are home is insane!
Spend 5 years pretty much isolated with little children, and then try to identify yourself as anything besides the extension of the children's and husband's needs. Try to answer the question, "What do you want". :lol: I was isolated with children and the marriage was not going well, and I absolutely had to have professional counseling to find "a me" that was not dependent on being a wife and mother. Now jump to post women's lib and the expectation of women today. :scream: Stop the bus I want to get off.
I was thrown into a reality for which I was not prepared on any level. I wanted a career and returned to college, but stopped 15 credits short of a degree. And even if I had gotten the degree, I was not prepared to function in a career position. My sister, who is a couple of years younger, took to a professional career like a duck to water and she resented our mother for not advancing her own career and economic position so she could have been a better provider. My daughter has done well professionally and my granddaughter has no problem leaving her children with other people and not seeing them for weeks. I have always totally freaked out because these women have not been the mothers I think a woman should be and I have been very angry about not having the career I wanted. :lol: Thank goodness for Bolen's book. But you might notice, while I am using the name Athena, I am tightly controlled by Demeter. I not only gave up a career for one generation, (my cohort was going to have careers after raising our children). but for the next two more generations as well. I have enabled mothers to have the freedom to pursue their goals. A support I did not have. Someone has to care for the children, and right now we do not seem to value the people who do.
My focus is back to the Mother. An aesthetic or scientific appreciation of nature so not at all equal to having a relationship with our Mother. Our Mother has been presented to us as both remote and uncaring, such as Nut the Egyptian goddess mother, and as caring, the patron gods and goddesses were caring and emotional, and if things were going wrong s/he could be appeased. Loving our Mother the earth, or our Father in Heaven matters a lot. Insisting they are non-existant matters a lot. If we do not think our Mother is real and important, how much do we value the mother? What is the image of what we should be? What are the qualities of the ideal woman?
Their existence is not a separate entity, though. They point to the truth of our relation to all the possibility of existence. It’s not a matter of choosing either the ‘Mother’ or the ‘Father’ as the source of maximum value and potential. There is no objective image of what we should be, or qualitative definition of the ‘ideal woman’. The way I see it, all of this sanctions ignorance, isolation and exclusion to some extent.
Because you’ve generously shared so much of your story, I feel I should share a different perspective. I married young, straight out of university, and focused on establishing a career. After seven years, it became clear to me that full time work was slowly killing my creative spirit, so I returned to part time study for a brief time before taking the plunge into parenting and then moving my mother’s only grandchild three hours away. Throughout this, I kept my career - but the choices and support available to me I imagine were not available for you personally, and I’ve always questioned social ‘expectations’ anyway. Working part time from home with two young children wasn’t always easy without extended family nearby to pick up the slack, but my work was flexible, and I never opted for a stranger to raise my children. When they started school, I changed to a school-based job, and eventually managed to strike a personal balance between being a parent, a wife, a professional and a creative spirit.
I used to resent my mother’s choice to sacrifice her career and stay at home, because it seemed to cripple her sense of her own potential. After my father died a decade ago and I learned more about her devastating childhood, I realised that this traditional home bubble was her refuge, and for her it was worth everything she gave up. I also struggled to understand my sister’s choice to work full time and ‘raise’ kids in full time daycare. But her children have thrived in the environment, and the love both parents give them in the time they do spend at home is of such quality that I’ve learned not to judge another woman’s definition of personal balance according to my own experience.
Quoting Athena
I hope that what you’re starting to picture here is not a male/female difference based on any one value in particular, but more ‘fuzzy’ conceptual structures consisting of many value-related aspects that interact differently for different people, and continue to change and shift with their experience. I recognise that black and white seems to be a cultural preference for the US (or is that red and blue?), so celebrate the shades of grey. But that’s only the beginning. It’s about acknowledging the rainbow of hues, with all their variety of saturation and brightness, as well.
Out of nothing came everything. And without division, there is again nothing. When you think of the Father in heaven what do you feel? When in think of the Mother Goddess, what do you feel? If you answer nothing both times, that is a return to nothingness. There is a Chinese notion that in the last days, male and female are blended, the past and future are blended, heaven and earth become as one.
The way I see it is not ignorance to me. :grin: I love to think of the Goddess and to project myself into her. I do this for my own joy. Mathematicians argue about if math is created by us or discovered. So to the gods, were they discovered or created? Each god and goddess is a concept and together they become a complex concept such as democracy, or a kingdom. Either way, if they are created by us or discovered, both math and the gods work. Of course, not all gods work equally for everyone. It depends on our relationship with them.
You so remind me of my younger sister and a commercial that was popular in the 70tys. We are totally creatures of our cohort! The very clear split between my cohort and the following one is shockingly sharp. My cohort wanted careers, we just thought we should stay at home and raise our children first. My cohort's plan was to return to college and complete our degrees when the children were old enough to leave alone, then we would help finance the children through college, and we raised our daughters to get the college education and use it. :chin:
When it comes to being mothers, I don't think there is a big difference, but the timing of everything is different. Those who follow my cohort attempt to do it all like the woman in the commercial. :lol: And while you resent your mother's choice, did you rely on her to help with the children? Someone has to care for them and didn't you value your mother as that person? That is precisely the topic of this thread. Are you going to resent her or value her and honor her and appreciate her sacrifice as much as we appreciate those who give their lives war? Some of us think nothing is more important then prepare in the young in our family for life. The career is something individuals do for themselves. Caring for the family is not about ourselves, it is about FAMILY, and this the topic of this thread. You wouldn't be my sister, would you? :lol:
The old world order is family order. The new world order is Prussian military order applied to citizens. Family order was started by grandmothers thousands of years ago, but a modern Military-Industrial Complex(Eisenhower's term for New World Order) is far more powerful and some have argued we are like ants and this is our natural organization into a huge anthill. This is not the individuality you seem to value, and I think it is very male. I hope you have a glimmer into the possibility that there is something you are not aware of and it is much bigger than women's rights. What do you think is the ideal institution for rearing our children?
We were about family and community in a very human way that is now threatened.
All facts are potential information. There are just degrees of feelings of certainty coming from more or less convincing evidence. Peter’s thought at noon will probably never be revealed, but it’s not impossible. Maybe there exists a voice recording of a speech he made at the time or maybe some god will reveal his thoughts to you in a dream. What is actual information for you, the existence of the computer you think you are looking at right now for example, is just supported by stronger evidence. Close your eyes and you no longer have any information that the computer is there; it’s just potential information.
Again, my point is not to argue for skepticism, on the contrary, all facts are absolutely existent regardless of our information about them. Our thoughts cannot alter facts that are already there, that existed before we started thinking about them.
Our thoughts and assumptions about the world (including what we imagine other people to be thinking about) certainly influence our actions and thereby we produce new facts, but that is all in the future. What we perceive or imagine about existing facts is directed at the past (even if it’s a fraction of a second into the past) and our thinking about those facts just can’t change them. We are right or wrong in an absolute sense (even though we will never know which).
It is such a pleasure to argue with knowledgeable people! The people posting in this thread create my ideal heaven. We are not fully understanding each other but what is happening here is what democracy is about, and why Athens was such an intellectual explosion, there was a time when they were thought to be a race of genius. Someone mentioned my enthusiasm about the goddesses and democracy is excessive and the discussion is moving too fast for me to get back to that post, so I will say here, it is all of us sharing our point of view that is the democratic ideal. One God and a kingdom can not advance human knowledge as well as many gods and democracy. The Military-Industrial Complex is powerful and it is not the good of democracy.
So we can agree, writing is essential to civilization as we know it? Imagine how we would know the word of God, without it? :gasp: How would we have laws, rather than a ruler's whims, without writing? Law and order is dependent on writing and the power and glory of gods. That is not how women organized the family and the clan. Agree or disagree?
You mention really good examples of a different mental development not dependent on the written word. Celts are the culture that I know best, which was opposed to writing and reliance on the written word. Think Celts and how do we know truth without the written word? Link Celts with notions of liberty and individual power and authority and gender equality. Who or what is the authority over us? The Holy Grail was about a goddess, not Jesus, and we must not displease the goddess because bad things happen she is displeased. There is no book to explain this but there is nature. :lol: Right now mother nature seems very displeased with us or she is in menopause and having hot flashes.
Men could not just say no thanks to the Goddess! :gasp: Are you nuts? :wink: You are not wrapping your mind around believing all life comes from the Mother and she must not be displeased, because at the very least there will feminine if she is displeased.
I love to think about a consciousness that is free of all the truths we assume today, and totally about being aware of the environment in the here and now. Like the iceman that was mummified and now is telling scientists today so much about his life and how his survival depended on knowledge of nature and awareness of his environment. To think more like a free animal and less like a prisoner of civilization. The iceman may not have had a goddess but we can all see from nature that life comes from females. The power that is much stronger than us is the Mother and we must not displease her. Seriously, worshipping the goddess who provides and a good harvest was pretty universal.
Technology is taking that power into our own hands. It is the Garden of Eden or Pandora's box. This taking of power into our own hands presents a threat that we will destroy ourselves and maybe the whole planet. Technology without wisdom is a bad thing, and we all wisdom is a goddess. :grin:
"An egalitarian society in the past?" Never before have we been able to produce so much with so little human labor. We are living as though we have a labor-intense society and that is nuts because that is no longer our reality. So now what? Hey, if I, as a woman, can have protected human rights, why not everyone? Oh, oh I suppose not everyone is familiar with the Older Americans Act. It entitles us to the benefits of society when we are old enough to retire. That includes the right to continue contributing to society. I think most people never knew of the act or have forgotten about it, but it is a model for a better society. Learning of egalitarian societies from the past can improve our imagination about we can manifest today. As we think it, so we manifest it. What will the pandemic do to our shared consciousness at this time in our history?
"Renfrew" I am on it. I will look up Renfrew now.
I don't buy it.
I wonder sometimes if you’re reading posts to understand the information they contain, or in order to personally respond. I am NOT your sister, and I suggest that you re-read what I’ve written and find the errors you’ve assumed about my situation based on your response to certain concepts such as ‘career’.
A career is not always about individual ‘success’ or doing something for yourself. Sometimes it’s about what we have to give to the world of ourselves. My greatest achievement in life is the children I’m raising, but that’s not all I can offer the world. Not everyone is going to be the mother that YOU think every woman should be. I wonder if you value your sister for who she is, or your daughter for how you raised her to value her potential beyond ‘domestic goddess’ - you do realise that your own anger at not having the career you wanted has contributed to your daughter’s ambition? Don’t continue to direct your anger at what she has achieved in compensation for the lack she felt in your life. That’s not fair. She has been the ying to your yang, but she’s a woman too, and as such is valuable for more than her mothering skills.
I get that you don’t feel validated. You’re still striving for domination, autonomy and accolades - you want it for women who care for children, but you seem to think you need to devalue everything else in relation to that individual ambition in order to achieve ‘success’. You don’t. You just need to recognise that value and potential is a complex, multi-dimensional structure, not a gradient between black and white. When my view differs from yours, that doesn’t mean I’m opposing you - my experience just differs in a particular aspect.
Potential information is still information, so you cannot say that I ‘no longer have any information’. What I don’t have is sufficient potential information to answer a specific question asked in relation to a specific experience: I am uncertain of the truth in my relation to the statement ‘that the computer is there’.
A wealth of possible information exists in relation to the objective truth of mine and the computer’s existence. My relative perspective is ignorant of much of this possible information, but more specifically I lack awareness, connection and collaboration with certain potential information in relation to ‘the computer’ and ‘there’ being in the same position relative to ‘me’ during the relative event ‘that my eyes are closed’.
A fact is just an answer to a specific question from a specific relational position; an interactive collapse of potential and possible information in relation to an observation/measurement. The objective truth defined by a fact is reduced by these relational specifics of the question asked.
No, I haven’t really been talking about our actions at all. Our actions are irrelevant to existing objective truths, but I have never said that the opposite is the case. What we think is the objective truth certainly influences our actions. We act from the best of our judgment concerning what exists using any hint of information we deem relevant. If I imagine that Peter harbors negative thoughts about me that will change my behavior towards him, and since I live in a society, I have a lot more potential information to take into account than the lonely savage needs to consider. Granted.
But whatever we do, it will not change the truths that already exists or existed. Yesterday at noon Peter had positive or negative thoughts about me and nothing I do can change that now. How he will feel tomorrow is not the issue here because that is not an existing truth.
Objective truth exists. We don’t know it, but we keep guessing and those guesses result in action and thereby creation of new objective truths. But the truths that existed in the first place can never be changed simply because the past cannot be changed. Our actions (and thoughts) cannot change existing truths. The glass exists at noon. I can break it at one second after noon, but it is still true that it existed at noon.
But I may have potential information related to how Peter will feel tomorrow that enables me to make a prediction, however uncertain, and act on that information. If I imagine that Peter harbours negative thoughts about me that may change his behaviour towards me, then I have a lot more potential information to take into account regarding my actions between now and when I see him at work tomorrow.
Potential information about future events exist now, and are available for us to perceive and to integrate into how we conceptualise an objective reality. This potential information also exists for us to share with each other consciously or unconsciously through language, actions and common experiences, enabling us to make predictions with varying certainty by relating it to other potential information, including potential information we already have from the past and present, of which we may be more certain. This is what we think is objective truth, what influences our actions. Objective truth therefore cannot exclude potential information about the past, present or future.
Quoting Congau
It is also true that I can break the glass at one second after noon, even though it hasn’t happened yet. But I need to perceive that potential information as an existing truth in order to act.
I really did not want to post here because of previously being warned about interaction with the person that wrote the OP. But I am getting bored after being on lock down for more than 5 weeks.
I have been reading most but not all of the thread, and have come to a simple conclusion. The first line says it all.
"male dominated forums"
The forums are not all male dominated because the ladies are banned or forbidden to enter.
So why are they not here?
Because most of them have no interest in being here.
So do not blame the blokes, blame the rest of the feminists that cannot be bothered to join.
Sorry if I upset you again.
Again with the old and the new...
My personal perspective certainly doesn’t value individuality - not sure where you got that from...
The ant colony analogy values surrendering consciousness to the organisation, which then strives for domination, autonomy and influence in relation to the external environment. To illustrate with cultural references, it’s similar to the difference between ‘Independence Day’ and ‘The Arrival’: are we cooperating to distinguish ourselves from an external threat, to survive as the dominant entity, or are we collaborating towards something greater than this current view of ourselves?
And again, I don’t find it accurate to divide this along male-female lines. There are many women who are striving towards maximising or ‘restoring’ female domination, autonomy and influence by opposing male domination, autonomy and influence as a direct threat. I don’t see this as the answer - it’s just more of the same...
The best situation for our children is not an institution at all - it is an ongoing creative process that increases awareness, connection and collaboration, despite anticipating experiences of pain, humility and loss - for our children as well as ourselves. The ancient ‘grandmotherly’ concept of societal order corresponds to this, but there is nothing inherently ‘feminine’ about this as a structure for society - except in your language use.
Quoting Sir2u
I agree with you and thank you so much for that information! Please tell me more about "I really did not want to post here because of previously being warned about interaction with the person that wrote the OP." I suspected that because my posts are completely ignored in other threads and I would love to know exactly how the warning was worded.
If a person is ignored what would be the motive for continuing? Wasn't that warning almost as effective as being banned? You would not happen to know the gender of the person who gave you the warning, would you? I am not into blaming males, but I think there is a reality of differences that prevents women from participating. Please go on, let us explored what happened and why it happened.
Boy or boy we are getting into hair-splitting and I am not sure how this will turn out? The US strongly values individuality but I am not sure what individuality means?
Democracy based on Greek and Roman classics is "collaborating towards something greater than this current view of ourselves". The New World Order is "are we cooperating to distinguish ourselves from an external threat". That is Hegel's the state is God and everyone should be made to conform to the state. However, we can all be as different as the aliens of outer space, as long as we obey policy.
Skip this explanation unless you really want it. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't know if you have watched the TV series Star Trek but Joseph Campbell said it is the best mythology for our time. In the original Star Trek Captain Kirk was the John Wayne of outer space. John Wayne stood for individuality. He knew who he was, and set the boundaries. In the US we had education for independent thinking and Captain Kirk was the ideal male leader.
Star Trek the Next Generation replaced Captian Kirk with Captian Picard. Captain Picard rarely made an independent decision. He comes after we replaced education for independent thinking with "group think". Now decisions are made jointly. There is still individuality but it is distinctly more like that ant colony. That is the meaning of individuality changed, and no longer holds the responsibility Kirk assumed. Individuality coming to mean reliant on higher authority but different, like dying our hair pink or green and putting studs in our face, makes us individuals, but that does not go with responsibility. That is not the individuality of our forefathers, and along with "group thinking", we destroyed our national heroes which were Gorge Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin. Trump would be an independent thinker of old if he were accountable for what he did and said, but he does not! We have experienced a huge cultural shift that is a shift in what "individuality" means.
Captain Kirk and his crew were repeatedly running into societies controlled by computers. Picard on one occasion, questioned if he should follow orders because of the danger the crew faced if they adhered to the orders and policy. Compared to the original Star Trek that was a weak defense of individuality meaning carrying responsibility and being accountable.
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About the war of the sexes. I am really not interested. What I care about is honoring the Mother and the caregivers and teachers and all the people who work in food production who do not have the means to stay healthy because we exploit them and keep them in poverty. I want mothers to be honored and supported in their honorable occupation of the very important task of rearing children. I will point out, rarely did Star Trek have anything to do with family. Talk to me about the value of the full-time homemaker, okay? What she did for the family and the community and what she has to do with liberty! As John Locke said of kings thinking of their masses as children, they are unlike parents who expect their children to become independent. There is a limit to how long we are under the authority of a parent, unlike living under the authority of policy that is different from the authority of a king, only because kings die, but the bureaucracy above us, does not die.
I’d like to be clear about what you mean by “potential” in potential information. (It seems to me you are giving it a double meaning, but I may be wrong.)
One sense would be information that is totally inaccessible but still theoretically knowable, like the location of a grain of sand on the planet Pluto in the year 1843.
The second sense is potential as in not yet determinable.
I observe Peter’s shifty look and conclude that he will attack me tomorrow. Potential information = the truth value has not been realized yet, it belongs to the future.
If you mean the first sense, I agree that potential information is objective truth, but not if you mean the second sense since information about the future does not exist now. (Unless you include the possibility of supernatural clairvoyance, which you haven’t mentioned.) Indications about what might happen in the future does not objectively count as truth about the future. Oil prices have been falling lately and that seems to indicate that oil will be cheap next week. Strong indication, sure, but the truth value of next week’s cheap oil is in no way to be found inside the statement about recent oil prices. Even if the prediction for next week comes true and the causal connection between the two events is obvious, the two pieces of information would not be identical even in hindsight.
Ooops, please excuse me for that. I seem to have gotten you confused with another of Zeus's little darlings. Artemis. Long story, please just forget it.
I am not holding up very well under this bloody lock down, in fact I think I might go crazy.
Quoting Athena
That would depend on your goals, ask Greta Thomborg if she plans to give up because the people she wants to listen to her refuse to listen. Ask the kartrashians and they will tell you that it is vital that they not be ignored, they would vaporize like the ancient gods did.
Quoting Athena
No, when you are banned you cannot continue. And the warning I got was from her, not the forum
Quoting Athena
Us guys are not to blame for everything you know, most things maybe, but not all. Over the many years I have been around there have been plenty of female posters. And possibly quite a few that were females but kept it a secret.
Not many of the serious posters of either gender check to see the gender of the person posting, they are more interested in the content of the OP and the value of the ideas and arguments provided.
If you want people here to take you seriously, give them something serious to think about and discuss. This thread has gotten over 200 posts, not bad.
Potential: the capacity to develop, achieve or succeed, that has not yet been realised.
Information: what is conveyed by a particular arrangement or sequence of something.
Potential information has not yet fully realised what it has the capacity to convey by its particular arrangement or sequence. It is essentially an incomplete relational structure.
The location of a grain of sand on the planet Pluto in the year 1843 is perceived by us as ‘inaccessible’, but if it is theoretically knowable, then it cannot be totally inaccessible, can it? It is, however, irrelevant information - we cannot use it to make predictions about future interactions, so there is insufficient value or meaning in us expending energy, effort or attention towards it. It remains potential information because we perceive negligible value in its particular arrangement or sequence.
‘Truth value’ is an interesting term. You’re referring to a process of collapsing potential information into what it conveys as a four-dimensional relation, and then determining how that relates to an objective view of truth. But the problem is that you can’t collapse potential information without the rest of the relational structure.
I observe Peter’s shifty look, and the potential information I may perceive is that he is likely to act destructively towards me at some point in the future. How likely, when it may occur and other details about the four-dimensional event are dependent on further potential information - some of which I already ‘know’, some I can find out before the event occurs, some will fall into place during the event, and some I may never know.
At this point, I am unable to determine the ‘truth value’ of a particular statement of fact or event (that he will attack me tomorrow), but I can relate what potential information I do have to an objective view of truth without needing to collapse it first into a specific four-dimensional event. I do this by imagining possibilities for the missing potential information that would give me a relational structure - a particular arrangement or sequence - to determine the ‘truth value’. Then I can test predictions in relation to collapsing these potential/possible relational structures I’ve imagined through language, actions and common experiences - all prior to any future event. In this way, it is possible for me to determine ways I can prevent (or reduce the potential ‘truth value’ of) the statement ‘that he will attack me tomorrow’.
But isn’t ‘truth value’ just a binary statement of absolute possibility?
But if we only obey policy, then we can’t really BE as different as the aliens of outer space. Our capacity for diversity is then limited by policy.
Individualism is a relative perspective. To be ‘individual’ is to be indivisible: an isolated and homogenous entity. As it suits us, we can conform to an individual state as God, or an individual interpretation of God, or an individual relation to God - but rarely simultaneously without contradiction. It is the diversity and relations between these structures (which are themselves relational) that reveal the illusion of individualistic perspective.
The ideal of democracy and of Greek and Roman classics is not the same as the reality of it. Greek and Roman societal structures excluded, isolated and ignored elements of diversity within themselves that failed to conform to their limited structural perspective of ‘the state as God’. They were certainly not above distinguishing themselves from an external threat.
I get that we increase our understanding of the diversity and relation between two ideas by applying them to our view of the world, but I think we need to be careful of the tendency to then individualise and evaluate the complexity of reality according to this idealised binary. It doesn’t take much effort in looking closer to see how reality transcends whatever labels we attribute to it or categories we separate it into.
Quoting Athena
I get what you’re saying - as a mother, as a homemaker, as someone who promotes education and is married to a teacher. I understand the value of the full time homemaker, but I also understand that this value is not exclusive to the role of the full time homemaker. I understand how important and honourable the task of rearing children is, but the honour and support we give this task is not just for mothers. And I understand that we structure society on a gross misunderstanding about raising children: that it’s about the conflict between authority and independence.
The role of child rearing is often seen as a paring back of dependency in relation to developing autonomy. But the ancient ‘matriarchal’ view would suggest that autonomy and independence are illusions - we are all eternally interconnected and interdependent - and whatever power or influence that anyone thinks they possess comes from their relationships. To that end, we should raise our children neither to be independent and challenging authority nor to be dependent and submissive, but rather to have the courage to always increase awareness, connection and collaboration with the world.
I am sorry you are having a hard time with the lockdown. I do fine with this way of life as long as I have the internet. But I am gaining weight and seriously need the pool to open up so I can get my exercise. I expect a lot of good to come from the pandemic and I suppose that is what keeps my spirits up.
I think I have made serious and interesting posts and I was seriously disappointed when no one responded, and this is on topic. When the men get together what do they talk about? I have been a member of male groups so I know what they talk about but I am opening discussion with the question.
I have fond memories of the coffee clutches of my younger years, where mothers talk about what is important to them, and it is not what men talk about. I am saying perhaps there is a gender difference
when it comes to what is worth thinking about and what is not?
and at the whole women is not equal to men, that is an fact. but still this childish topic has gained so much popularity. indeed it is fun to see when people have nothing serious to do they create some problems and then try to solve them.
Our contingent ideas about the world are different because the roles we play in the world.
Men compete and females nurture the kids, of course there are exceptions to this rule like any man made rules.
Though females used to not make the rules only to adhere to them.
People are trying to change this rule I don't understand why?
But in a non-dominated men world I assume things will be different, but not in this world!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rq9OvaJyRc
Yes, and I am not accountable because I am just following orders.
Let me begin by saying I am so pleased you are willing to discuss mythology with me! Each god and goddess is a concept and I wish we all understood that.
I am not sure why you have not accepted my explanation of individuality so I will try again. When education prepared everyone for leadership, individuality meant being responsible and accountable and now it does not. When our nation was born, it was not run by policy but by individuals. Our bureaucratic order was extremely inefficient and we could not have the powerful government we have today unless the bureaucratic order was changed. So first there is reorganizing government and this new order crushes individual liberty and power but makes the government very strong, and what follows this change in governmental organization, is the change in education, making the young followers, not leaders.
Trump, the president of the US, is a great example of someone who is as different as they come and completely unaccountable. We don't seem to understand accountability any more because we are so used to following policy which is tyrannical, but we are too ignorant of what government organization is and can be, that we accept the tyranny of Trump and think this is a good thing. This is a serious change in our social organization and experience of life. This is no longer family order. It is the New World Order.
[quote=""Possibility"]The ideal of democracy and of Greek and Roman classics is not the same as the reality of it. Greek and Roman societal structures excluded, isolated and ignored elements of diversity within themselves that failed to conform to their limited structural perspective of ‘the state as God’. They were certainly not above distinguishing themselves from an external threat.[/quote]
Absolutely the Greeks and Romans were totally patriarchal, except Sparta gave their women the freedom of barbarians. Spartan women could manage Sparta without the men, unlike Athenian women who were very sheltered and forbidden to have any of the power of a man, which seems strange because their goddesses certainly had power. :lol: Back in the day, Persians and Greeks accused each other of being effeminate and soft. It was very important for a man to be a strong and skilled fighting man, and Spartans took the prize for being the most devoted fighting men, subjected to abuse from a young age to assure they grew up to be committed fighting men.
Athena was patriarchal and thought it worse to kill a man than kill a woman. I have some problems with that but not totally. I don't want to be as a man, so I am fine with supporting the man who is manly.
[quote=""Possibility"]I get that we increase our understanding of the diversity and relation between two ideas by applying them to our view of the world, but I think we need to be careful of the tendency to then individualise and evaluate the complexity of reality according to this idealised binary. It doesn’t take much effort in looking closer to see how reality transcends whatever labels we attribute to it or categories we separate it into.[/quote]
You might notice I am obsessed with the difference between the Germany we defeated in two world wars and the democracy we defended. This issue of individuality and liberty is hugely important to me. So your comment further down means a lot to me. I bolded that one. We need to nail things to a more concrete reality because I am just idealizing. Effectively, Germany was the Sparta of modern times and the US was the Athens of modern times. But the US adopted German ways and put the US on the same path Germany followed, and replaced the Greek philosophers with German philosophers and now we are what we fought against. When I say Athena is the goddess of Liberty and Justice and protector of those who stand for liberty and justice, no one is relating to what I am saying. I am speaking of hard reality much more than anyone seems to realize.
[quote=""Possibility"]I get what you’re saying - as a mother, as a homemaker, as someone who promotes education and is married to a teacher. I understand the value of the full time homemaker, but I also understand that this value is not exclusive to the role of the full time homemaker. I understand how important and honourable the task of rearing children is, but the honour and support we give this task is not just for mothers. And I understand that we structure society on a gross misunderstanding about raising children: that it’s about the conflict between authority and independence.
[/quote]
What do you mean the value of a full-time homemaker is not exclusive to the role of the full-time homemaker? We are considering using robots to care for the children and in many families, the TV is the babysitter. Teachers seem to be quite sure we have dumped our children on them and we really don't care about them. While policy, where I live, has taken the authority to disciple students out of the teacher's hands, and it is now government managing the education of children, not the parents and not the teachers. :gasp:
If you understand this is a conflict between authority and independence I am thrilled to come across someone who understands that and I would really appreciate your explanation of that!
[quote=""Possibility"]The role of child rearing is often seen as a paring back of dependency in relation to developing autonomy. But the ancient ‘matriarchal’ view would suggest that autonomy and independence are illusions - we are all eternally interconnected and interdependent - and whatever power or influence that anyone thinks they possess comes from their relationships. To that end, we should raise our children neither to be independent and challenging authority nor to be dependent and submissive, but rather to have the courage to always increase awareness, connection and collaboration with the world.[/quote]
:scream: I need a tranquilizer because what you said is so upsetting to me! If I came down with coronavirus I would go to the hospital and tell them just to make me comfortable and help me die, because I remember a different reality from the one we live in and I do not like this one. Your arguments seem to assure we remain powerless to do anything about the change. I keep arguing because it is my hope awareness can empower us.
Is that the advice you would give the German people as the nazi took over? Is that a stand for liberty and justice? I can see a higher morality in what you said and it would be great if we all got there, but Trump makes me doubt if we can get there peacefully. Not only is this pandemic traumatizing but I am really traumatized by how Trump is handling it and his followers marching around with rifles! I have been arguing my basic arguments for many years and kind of like not worrying about global warming because it isn't that bad yet, Trump and his followers seem to be proving me right and I don't always want to be right. It is that bad now.
Unless you want to contribute to the discussion seriously, please stay out of it.
Thank you for a serious contribution. You make me aware of how much my thinking changes and I should have started with a comment about social values because that is what this thread was supposed to be about. What if women from the beginning of civilization women had a more powerful role in defining social values?
At no point can you determine the truth value of potential information. (I now use your definition, which of course is as good as any chosen definition although it was not at all what I had in mind.) The truth value (the binary true or false) will only appear when the potential has been fulfilled, at which point it is not potential anymore.
No statement about future events has any truth value, but all that concern past events have one. No matter how much potential information you have and how much you can imagine, a truth value can never be achieved, in other words you can never know what will happen in the future (even just a few seconds into the future).
(I’m here using the normal loose understanding of “know” which assumes that knowledge is possible. When we say “I knew it would happen”, we don’t mean it literary, but when we say “I know it happened”, we do.)
Quoting Possibility
How can you call this an objective view of the truth? Any prediction is guessing, and guessing, if anything, is subjective.
Language and common experiences are of course collective items but it would be a rather artificial stretch to call them objective.
What are the four dimensions?
No. I said that I think this is a gross misunderstanding of what it means to raise a child - it teaches them that they must choose a side in all ongoing conflicts between authority and independence, which ultimately contribute to as much suffering as they strive to reduce. All you’re doing as a parent is achieving a minimal appearance of force shift in an unwinnable war.
There is no resolution in a conflict between authority and independence because they are not polar opposites. While it appears as if increasing one decreases the other, it is illogical to think that by maximising one we eliminate the other. The dichotomy is false. Authority is contingent upon understanding one’s interdependence. When clear authority falls away, interdependence is necessary. Likewise, independence is contingent upon knowing where authority lies. And when our independence is lost, we look to authority. So, you see, it’s not a conflict at all, but a dynamic balance. Authority and independence are inversely contingent upon each other. This what the yin-yang symbol means.
Quoting Athena
Again, you seem to be reading only to react. I am not saying that we are powerless to effect change. Awareness can empower us, but only insofar as we also strive to connect and collaborate. And I was specifically referring to how we raise our children, not how we react to a current situation. It’s not about observing change and fighting it, or about choosing EITHER authority OR independence. It’s about anticipating the trajectory and doing what we can to adjust it away from potentially destructive outcomes.
Quoting Athena
Idealistically speaking, if everyone aimed to increase awareness, connection and collaboration, then situations such as Nazi Germany or Trump as President would not have occurred. Liberty and justice seem like noble ideals, but keep in mind that in reality justice hinders liberty, and liberty hinders justice. Hitler and Trump are more products of their society than heinous individuals. The Nazis were handed authority, as was Trump. It is the extent to which we have all been ignorant, isolated and exclusive that we have brought about these atrocities - including environmental destruction.
I understand your despair. Not long ago, I was highly idealistic, certain that there was one perfect way that the world should be, and that inasmuch as we were not living in that ideal and couldn’t even determine it, the world was broken. But I realised that in order to create the world the way we think it should be, we need to first accept the world as it is - not to see it as broken, but rather as a work in progress. And eventually I realised that there was not one perfect world to strive towards, but a range of possibilities, and within that a range of potential, and within that my existence as a unique manifestation in relation to all possibilities. So I strive for increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with all possibilities, and in doing so I raise my children to do the same and I contribute in the same way to the lives of others, knowing that what I’m striving to create is beyond any potential I can manifest in one ‘individual’ lifetime of experience.
Maybe a new thread with specific aims would encourage more focused discussion.
GL :)
:chin: What you said is not agreeable to me. The US has recently experienced a huge cultural change and that followed replacing our liberal education and focus on good moral judgment, with education for a technological society with unknown values. For sure this began without full knowledge of the social, economic, and political ramifications, but the main goals have been achieved.
I rather have a good argument than a criticism that does not address anything I said.
I will try again. Are you agreement with education for a technological society with unknown values replacing a liberal education for good moral judgment and defending democracy in the classroom?
[quote=""Possibility"]There is no resolution in a conflict between authority and independence because they are not polar opposites. While it appears as if increasing one decreases the other, it is illogical to think that by maximising one we eliminate the other. The dichotomy is false. Authority is contingent upon understanding one’s interdependence. When clear authority falls away, interdependence is necessary. Likewise, independence is contingent upon knowing where authority lies. And when our independence is lost, we look to authority. So, you see, it’s not a conflict at all, but a dynamic balance. Authority and independence are inversely contingent upon each other. This what the yin-yang symbol means.[/quote]
Oh my, I have a different understanding of history. I thought the American Revolution was about liberty and ending the power of England to rule in North America, and we fought two world wars, to end tyranny and defend democracy. The idea that authority and liberty are not polar opposites may have truth but it can not be the whole truth?
[quote=""Possibility"]Again, you seem to be reading only to react. I am not saying that we are powerless to effect change. Awareness can empower us, but only insofar as we also strive to connect and collaborate. And I was specifically referring to how we raise our children, not how we react to a current situation. It’s not about observing change and fighting it, or about choosing EITHER authority OR independence. It’s about anticipating the trajectory and doing what we can to adjust it away from potentially destructive outcomes.
You are right about me reacting, but that is not all that is happening. I also notice I am experiencing a lot of confusion, and perhaps gaining self-awareness. Compared to you, I am a poverty level street fighter, who does not understand how to things civilly. I do not like this self-awareness. I don't think this is a matter of one us being right and the other wrong. I think it is a matter of money and social position. I think I thought more like you before the 1970's recession. Before that rececession I was one of those "nice people" doing my good thing for "those people". Then I I became one of "those people" as are many people today becoming one of "those people" because of the economic crisis we are in and one of the wonderful things about this economic crisis is learning the people who work in meat processing plants do not have the means to stay healthy and not only are they a higher risk of dying, but they could contaminate our food. Now we care about them. Throughout our history people have risked their lives fighting for a better standard of living and people in your apparent position have not understood the fight. Why fight instead of being nice and reasonable? My mother did not have the economic opportunity women assume today, and my grandmother who was a devoted teacher for a good 60 years, was put in the welfare side of the nursing home where people were fed after the more affluent people were fed. I am thankful by then her mind was gone and she didn't realize she was now considered a charity case.
[quote=""Possibility"]Idealistically speaking, if everyone aimed to increase awareness, connection and collaboration, then situations such as Nazi Germany or Trump as President would not have occurred. Liberty and justice seem like noble ideals, but keep in mind that in reality justice hinders liberty, and liberty hinders justice. Hitler and Trump are more products of their society than heinous individuals. The Nazis were handed authority, as was Trump. It is the extent to which we have all been ignorant, isolated and exclusive that we have brought about these atrocities - including environmental destruction.[/quote]
Now I agree with the opening statement of that paragraph. :cheer: However, there is no justice without morality, and tolerating immorality is destructive to civilization, so it can not be tolerated. To ignore immorality is as destructive as ignoring a pandemic, and a society focused on profit instead of morality is doomed to self destruct. This is not as either/or as your examples of this or that. How does justice hinder liberty? Justice must support morality and only highly moral people can have liberty. Life is full of trinities and trinity manifest infinite possibilities.
[quote=""Possibility"]I understand your despair. Not long ago, I was highly idealistic, certain that there was one perfect way that the world should be, and that inasmuch as we were not living in that ideal and couldn’t even determine it, the world was broken. But I realised that in order to create the world the way we think it should be, we need to first accept the world as it is - not to see it as broken, but rather as a work in progress. And eventually I realised that there was not one perfect world to strive towards, but a range of possibilities, and within that a range of potential, and within that my existence as a unique manifestation in relation to all possibilities. So I strive for increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with all possibilities, and in doing so I raise my children to do the same and I contribute in the same way to the lives of others, knowing that what I’m striving to create is beyond any potential I can manifest in one ‘individual’ lifetime of experience.[/quote]
If I were to give out prizes for best posts you and @Congau would get prizes. The two of you have maintained the discussion, while others dropped in long enough to criticize me and left without contributing to the discussion. :lol: Strange but common behavior.
I have wonderful hopes for what might come out of the pandemic. I think affluence leads to making some social problems worse. It set a high standard of living and suddenly people who thought they would never have to ask for help are forced to ask for help. I think this will improve our collective thinking. I don't think you have lived in poverty and experienced doing so with no one to help you. In the 60's I thought poverty was a meaningful experience that no one born white and middle class could experience. We could run away from home and play at poverty, but as long as the economy was good and we had parents to call for help, we could not really experience poverty. It took an economic crash to teach me the meaning of poverty and how meaningless it is.
We can learn facts about poverty, but facts are not equal to knowledge. However, science is filling in some wonderful details and we have every reason to hope for a better future, and largely, I believe that is because women now represent us in government!
This is the first economic turn down since Roosevelt and Eleanor that I remember being focused on helping the little guy get through hard times. When Reagon was president in the 1980's, OPEC had embargoed oil and our economy had crashed and Reagon turned our war on poverty into war against those living in poverty and we have maintained that war until now. I am not sure we will have a better future without fighting for it.
Note, you have made our communication work. Others have not. We can not make a better future with people who drop in, find fault, and leave. Maybe some females are doing that, but I suspect it is more common for men to behave that way.
Can I take this as an agreement that what you refer to as ‘truth value’ is a binary true/false? If so, then at no point can we objectively know this ‘truth value’ in a statement, even when it’s in the past.
You agreed that facts are potential information. So when we realise the relational structure of potential information, it doesn’t just ‘disappear’. And if some potential information is not realised, it may be discarded by you and me as irrelevant, but it doesn’t disappear either - objectively speaking. What can happen and what could have happened are always potential information, and are always objectively either true or false, whether or not we can know that.
When we talk about ‘knowing’, we talk about the certainty of our position in relation to the potential information that we have. ‘I know it won’t happen’, ‘I know it isn’t happening’ and ‘I knew it didn’t happen’ all relate to potential information I have with regard to a possible reality. So does ‘I will know it didn’t happen’, ‘I knew it wouldn’t happen’, and ‘I know it didn’t happen’. The difference in each statement, objectively speaking, is my relative and limited perspective of all available potential information with regard to this possible reality - ie. the change in relative position and awareness between two four-dimensional events in a five-dimensional reality.
The objective truth in each statement is the same: the occurrence of the event, regardless of temporal perspective, is either true or false. That’s the binary. So what you’re referring to - the ‘truth value’ that suddenly ‘appears’ once the event is in the past relative to our perspective - is, well, relative to our perspective. When we share that perspective relative to the event, then we agree on this relative ‘truth value’. But that doesn’t make it objective.
Quoting Congau
I didn’t. I cannot HAVE an objective view of truth. I can relate potential information to the possibility of an objective view of truth, however, and in doing so increase awareness of the difference between language or common experience, for instance, and this possible objectivity.
Quoting Congau
This is always a difficult question to answer, because dimensions as I understand them are relative concepts and not necessarily spatial, but rather pertain to awareness/information. To state it simply, I would say they are energy/distance, direction, space and time, with the fifth dimension as value/potential and the sixth as meaning.
Not replacing, but collaborating with, yes.
Quoting Athena
From an American perspective, yes, I suppose the American Revolution was about that. I wonder if you’ve ever considered any other perspective in that conflict, though. Do you understand why there is apparently no alternative perspective to consider? Have you considered why the US engaged in both world wars so late, relatively speaking, and then engaged so early in Vietnam and the Middle East? Was it really to ‘end tyranny and defend democracy’, or were there other motivations?
I’ve never claimed to know the whole truth, but I don’t believe we approach it by excluding potential information, immoral or otherwise.
Quoting Athena
I’m not talking about tolerating immorality or ignoring it, but if you hope to destroy it, then you’ll be throwing effort at futility, because morality is a judgement based on a limited perspective of reality - ignorant, isolated or excluded from the ‘whole truth’. A society focused on morality is also doomed to self destruct. You can’t found justice or liberty on a lack of awareness.
Liberty is not contingent upon morality, and morality is not contingent upon justice - that’s just how we like to conceptualise the world - but it isn’t reality. In truth, immorality enjoys undue freedom, and highly moral people suffer injustices. We ensure justice (and morality, too) by reducing liberty. Do you think you get to choose whether or not to ‘tolerate’ a pandemic? Do you think our efforts at isolating are the solution, or are they simply buying us time to increase awareness, connection and collaboration?
The ideal of Liberty, Morality and Justice is one of many trinities whose ‘infinite possibilities’ cannot be manifest in observable reality. It may be mathematically perfect, but if you base your concept of reality on it, then your sense of suffering will be acute, I’m afraid.
I think you might be making assumptions here regarding my relative affluence and social position - perhaps to justify our difference in perspective? I don’t buy it. You’re railing against the perceived injustice of your position in comparison with everyone else. What they have that you don’t, in terms of economic opportunity or health or social validation or influence or power or independence. Yet, if you travel to the remote villages of East Timor, for instance, you will find more joy in what little they have than you can imagine. There, I think, you may understand what the value of family and community really is, without the economic, health, social or political structures that fail to serve you. They are not fighting for equality or validation or a better ‘standard of living’. They are happy with what they have, but they are open to increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with people and communities across the world. And we give to them, not because they ask or demand it, but because they give us an opportunity to care about them, and in that connection we recognise how much we have to give. It’s a matter of perspective.
Quoting Athena
Watch your assumptions here, again. No experience is meaningless - you might have just missed the point of it.
Yes, truth value is a binary true or false.
Like I’ve said several times, we can’t literally know anything. However, things that belong to the past are at least theoretically knowable, whereas future objects are not.
“Peter broke his leg in 2019.” That statement has a truth value; it is knowable.
“Peter will break his leg in 2021.” No truth value; not knowable.
Quoting Possibility
When I agreed that facts are potential information, I thought we were using another definition of “potential”. (I took it to mean “knowable”.) Now that you have defined it as “the capacity to develop, achieve or succeed”, I can no longer agree. (I don’t care how you define it as long as your definition is clear to me so that I can use the same one.)
If facts were potential information in your sense, it would mean they were sufficient for drawing conclusions about future events, but they are not. They don’t have the ability to succeed since more facts will always be needed to achieve greater certainty about the future. They therefore don’t have a truth value.
The statement “Peter’s shifty look means he will attack me” has no truth value, is neither true nor false, even when we can look at it in retrospect knowing that he did or did not attack me.
The ‘truth value’ of ‘he will attack me’ is either true or false. If he doesn’t it is false, if he does it is ‘true’. The fact that he ‘looks shifty’ is not important.
All logical statements are given ‘truth values’ of T or F. This has nothing to do with evidence.
Saying ‘he might attack me’ is an observation not a prediction. All predictions are necessarily true or false.
‘He attacked because it was raining’ is either true or false too. Proving that the rain instigated an attack in the real world is completely different - but we don’t tend extend ‘truth values’ beyond the logical statements they are used in.
My reply to your post disappeared and I am too tired to repeat the effort so I will skip to the most important points. Besides the criticism that my post are not on point is also eating on me. I don't want something as important as the following to be lost in too much verbiage.
Liberty is contingent on morality. Liberty, morality, and justice are a trinity, that manifest our reality, as surely as the three sides of a triangle give it strength. Democracy does not work without that understanding the trinity does manifest our reality.
Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
A moral is a matter of cause and effect.
Only highly moral people can have liberty.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
? Thomas Jefferson
Either you can relate to what I am saying or you can not, and right now, you do not appear to be relating to what I am saying so yes I assume you have not had the same experience.
[QU0TE]You’re railing against the perceived injustice of your position in comparison with everyone else.[/QUOTE]
No, not everyone else has had a different experience. There are some people who share my point of view and would not make the arguments you have made.
I once thought like you. The whole point of my explanation was to say how the experience changed my understanding of poverty.
Thanks to television, I know of people in remote places. You are speaking of a totally different culture. The comparison of poverty in a completely different culture, with poverty in the US, is like comparing apples to oranges.
The word meaningful means. "having a serious, important, or useful quality or purpose.
"making our lives rich and meaningful"
Arguing that my experience was a beneficial and meaningful experience is like arguing fighting for air because of the coronavirus and suffering organ damage for life is a meaningful experience worth having. That is pretty idealistic middle-class thinking not based on knowledge of the experience and when it comes to poverty, that kind of thinking is not to be tolerated! It is like tolerating people drinking bad water because it is a "meaningful experience" to watch your bright and loving child suffer mental retardation or death while being helpless to do anything about it.
I think you keep reminding me to not assume things because you know the problem of making assumptions instead of asking questions.
The distinction of ‘theoretical knowing’ that you refer to here, for me, is between what is potentially knowable and what is possibly knowable, objectively speaking. I agree that there is so little relation to potential information in the isolated statement ‘Peter will break his leg in 2021’ that you can confidently refer to it as ‘not knowable’, especially in relation to the statement ‘Peter broke his leg in 2019’. There appears to be more potential to the statement ‘it is knowable’ in relation to this statement about Peter’s past than in relation to his future, given our perceived lack of potential to perceive potential information about 2021.
You see, all of this is potential information. Statements are limited expressions in relation to limited perceptions of relational structure (ie. arrangements or sequences of information), not isolated things or objects. So, while the statement ‘Peter broke his leg in 2019’ suggests much more relational structure to a binary truth value than ‘Peter will break his leg in 2021’, neither statement can be said to have ‘inherent’ truth value. Rather, both express a relation to ‘truth value’, which in itself Is a binary (one-dimensional) relation to all possibility.
Language messes with our understanding of this. We use the term ‘knowable’ even when we mean ‘potentially knowable’, and assume that we share this perspective, and therefore we share the limited perspective of this meaning. Objectively speaking, we understand that ‘knowledge’ is a relational construct of potential information, but because we interact with most of reality through a reduction of this potential information, and feel our certainty increase with instances of ever further reduction, it’s no surprise that we would want to express our potential relation to truth as the simplest and most certain reduction of information.
From quantum mechanics, we can reduce existence to one-dimensional relation that manifests as potential, which interacts with other potential to manifest atomic relational structure and with that all of the physical universe. We understand that potential consists of a binary relation, which corresponds to the notion of true-false.
I never said that your experience of poverty was ‘beneficial’ or ‘worth having’ at the time. Don’t mistake meaning for perceived value or sensory affect. But what you’re telling me in declaring it was ‘meaningless’ (and by your definition) is that your experience of poverty was not serious, not important and had no useful quality or purpose. I understand that at the time you would have felt a sense of pointlessness, but looking back, do you really agree with that? I think it changed your perspective, so in that sense it was far from meaningless - but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have broadened your perspective. Your approach seems to be now that no-one should ever have to experience poverty as a relative sense of lack. But why? You assume I couldn’t possibly have experienced poverty because I don’t share your point of view, but are you saying then that I shouldn’t experience any relative sense of lack, and therefore never be in a position to understand your point of view?
Quoting Athena
Quoting Athena
It’s not that simple. You’re right in that I have not had exactly the same experience, but that doesn’t mean I have no experience of poverty, or no capacity to relate to what you’ve experienced. If I’m reluctant to share my personal information with you, it’s because of how you’ve responded in the past. I disagree with your assumption that either I share your point of view, or the difference in my experience prevents me from understanding it.
Quoting Athena
Television gives you no indication of a subjective relation to the experience of poverty. You’re missing the point. If you’re relating apples and oranges in order to understand fruit in general, rather than making comparisons, then the discussion can still be useful and informative.
Quoting Athena
I think I have been fairly tolerant of your dismissive attitude towards my perspective during this discussion. I recognise that you have a unique perspective and set of experiences that is meaningful in how I relate to a more objective understanding of reality, but you don’t seem to see it that way at all. I’m not sure how much longer my tolerance is going to hold out if you keep making comments like this.
So: “Peter will break his leg in 2021” is not potentially knowable even for you. That is because there’s probably nothing in the present state of the world that would indicate that that will happen to Peter next year.
The statement “The oil price will be low in 2021” is potentially knowable since there exists something at present that might indicate that that will be the case.
Have I understood you correctly?
If I have understood you correctly, we have reached this far by clarifying definitions, and like I said, I’m willing to accept any of your definitions (whether or not they agree with my previous definitions or the ones you would find in a dictionary). Definitions are not important in themselves, but only to ensure that we are talking about the same thing.
The important thing is: What does it say about reality?
My basic claim at the start of this discussion was that reality consists of objective facts (truths) that are completely independent of how anyone perceives them and that I maintain. If someone is able or unable to use information fruitfully to make accurate predictions about the future or to realize connections between present and past objects, that may say something about different kinds of facts or at least our psychological relationship to them, but it doesn’t change the facts. The facts are the same whether or not anyone perceives them or use them.
I have also felt offended.
I am not sure women would have ever gotten a civilization going. Men seem more capable of getting past personal differences and achieving goals. I know I am not the person who can better.
Before leaving, I want to say, Jesse Jackson said poverty is like living in a war zone. That is very different from pointing to people living simply in a Garden of Eden as a definition of living in poverty.
Evidently explaining the difference an economic crash made on my understanding of poverty, did not convey the meaning I intended. Sorry about my communication skills being so bad and having such an obnoxious personality. I did the best I could.
It’s not about feeling offended - it’s about how you respond to it. I tend to view ‘feeling offended’ as a general recognition that someone doesn’t perceive reality in the same way as I do. But that’s not a bad thing: it’s a challenge to recognise that ‘reality’ includes more than what fits into my value system. The assumption is that if I express a different perspective, then I’m devaluing yours. So there is a tendency for you to try and justify or boost the overall value of your own perspective in comparison, or to reassert your value system as ‘reality’.
I’ve found it more productive, however, to try and relate to your perspective first, but find a way of communicating that shared relation in a broader context that challenges both views. This requires that I be willing to dismantle my own perspective of reality to include what has no value for me as part of a more objective reality.
Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to imagine or relate to a reality or view of truth beyond their own perspective, especially if it challenges their value structures. By relate, I don’t mean agree with or have experienced yourself, but to recognise as meaningful - as having the capacity to inform and broaden your perspective of reality, even if it holds no value for you. Even if it is painful or heartbreaking or immoral or offensive.
I’m not going to apologise for challenging the way you think about the world. I don’t believe any perspective can be ’wrong’, but I will point out missing information that I believe would enable you to accommodate alternative perspectives without feeling threatened or offended. Your personality doesn’t come across as obnoxious at all, by the way - but we don’t really convey ‘meaning’, rather we convey our perspective of meaning. So if you don’t convey what you intended, rather than give up on communicating, be prepared to look for limitations in your perspective: something you’re not seeing. We all have them - it’s part of being human. Our value systems and perspective of reality are more adjustable and expandable than you think; that’s what language, thought and imagination are for.
FWIW, Jesse Jackson is entitled to his limited perspective of poverty, as you are to yours. If your particular perspective was personally satisfying, then we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion. My description of an alternative view of poverty - not as a Garden of Eden, but as a focus less on the intolerability of comparative pain, humility and lack and more on recognising the unlimited potential and value of relationships and compassion - was an attempt to illustrate a broader view of ‘poverty’ that you might have missed in your own experience. I wasn’t dismissing your experience of economic lack, simply because I suggested an alternative value to focus on in a similar situation. Even the most affluent people experience pain, humility and lack, and many are willing to destroy their relationships and connection with the world in their attempts to avoid it. In my view, it is our relationships and connection with the world - and our willingness to be aware, connected and collaborating through experiences of pain, humility and lack/loss so that others’ suffering may be reduced - that gives our own life meaning, value, satisfaction, happiness, etc.
As for women being unable to get past personal differences and achieve goals, I thoroughly disagree, and many of your previous posts would suggest that you do, too. My view is that we need each other’s approach as a counterbalance more than we’re willing to admit, but more importantly I think we need to get over the idea that either men or women (or indeed, you or me) are necessarily better or worse at anything in particular. It’s unproductive, and limits rather than enables us to achieve.
Yes, it sounds like we’re on the same page here. I want to thank you for your patience and generosity throughout this discussion. I’m not always communicating as clearly as I think I am, so I appreciate you taking the time to approach a shared meaning.
Quoting Congau
You keep using ‘objective facts’ as the origin of truth. Although I think I understand why, I believe this is a misunderstanding (and a common one).
Facts are dimensionally located answers to dimensionally located questions about reality (a relation to objective truth). The statement ‘Peter broke his leg in 2019’ becomes a ‘fact’ IFF the statement relates to a shared perspective or view of ‘objective’ truth. That is, the statement refers to a particular spatio-temporal event observed from a relative position in time, expressed in relation to a particular cultural and linguistic value structure. Without those relations, the same statement has an undetermined relational structure to objective truth, and no fact can be established.
Facts do not exist independently, but relative both to the position of the question, and to objective truth. If the question is not asked, then the fact (the answer) cannot exist. So a fact cannot be completely independent of perception, and therefore cannot be objective.
‘Peter broke his leg in 2021’ cannot be a fact (yet), because the question to which this is a potential answer cannot even be asked from this dimensional position. We can, however make the statement ‘Peter will break his leg in 2021’, but as a fact there is so little potential information perceivable to us in the world that it’s barely worth a mention. That’s not to say relevant potential information doesn’t exist, only that it’s too ‘fuzzy’ to determine any degree of certainty.
As for the statement ‘Peter broke his leg in 2019’, this may be determined as a fact from our current position (the question) in relation to objective truth. So long as we share that perspective in relation to both the statement and to objective truth, then we should come to the same probable conclusion about its relative ‘truth value’. To the extent that our relative positions differ, we may still reach the same binary conclusion (when pushed to decide), but our certainty will vary.
There is a limit to how useful it is to change the definition of common words in order to name concepts you feel are not properly labeled. It’s bound to be confusing when your opponent doesn’t realize that you are not using a word in its normal sense.
The dictionary (dictionary.com) says that “fact” means “something that actually exists; reality; truth” and that’s how I have understood it all along.
When you say: “a fact cannot be completely independent of perception, and therefore cannot be objective”, you are rejecting the dictionary definition since you have already acknowledged that truth is objective. “Fact” equals “truth”, says the dictionary and if you insist that fact/truth is dependent on perception, our very faulty perception, it can obviously not be objective.
I must ask you the old question: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
The sound was there, sound waves were emitted, that is the truth, that is a fact, as certain as any fact in the world can be.
So what is the real point you’re trying to make? That the way we process information and draw conclusions about the world around us is relative to our perception in a social context? I guess I can accept that.
I’m not changing the definition, I’m clarifying it. ‘Something that actually exists’ must be real and it must be true; but all truth is not necessarily manifest in reality as such, and neither does it necessarily exist as something actual.
I recognise that your approach to truth and reality is reductionist. Because of this, I have also referred to objective truth and reality as a quantum theoretical approach. Pure binary truth (true/false) is a base relation of possibility, which is necessary to manifest a potential, and interacting potential is necessary to manifest ‘something that actually exists’: actual, observable, measurable fact. So, truth as fact consists of interacting potential information, which consists of relating possibility. I agree that a fact is necessarily true - my argument is that truth is not necessarily a fact.
Quoting Congau
The answer to ‘does it make a sound?’ is contingent upon the potential information that ‘a tree falls in the forest’, not on anyone being around to hear it. As a fact, the sound is independent of perception in the forest, but not independent of the perspective of the question. Its truth value is contingent upon the fact that ‘a tree falls in the forest’, but from the perspective of the question this is potential information, not actual. So, while the answer to the question is ‘yes’, it is truth and it is objective, it is only a fact IFF a tree does actually fall in the forest. It refers to an objective truth as a relation of potential information, but is irreducible to actual fact, despite our mutual certainty.
The definition of ‘objective’ is where I think our main issue arises, though. I recognise that the dictionary definition of ‘objective’ is “not dependent on the mind for existence; actual”. But I would argue that even though what is actual may exist independently of your mind or mine, it is not entirely independent of perspective as such. I recall that Thomas Nagel explores this philosophical notion of ‘objectivity’ as a ‘view from nowhere’, but I may need to go back over my notes in order to clarify my argument, if you’re keen to get into it. This fits with the argument from quantum theory, which I touched on above.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/prop-log/#SH3b
Where is that idea of yours actually coming from? How can that be a clarification of a common word we already thought we knew when not even a dictionary is suggesting anything like it? If it is your intention to introduce an epistemological understanding that necessitates interaction for all our essential perceptions of the world, so be it. Then we can discuss if this epistemology is plausible, but stretching mere words will not get you there. Most people who have learned the word “fact” would think they knew a fact when observing any disconnected occurrence alone in the wilderness. In philosophy I’m not in the habit of calling the masses as my witness, but when it comes to the mere meaning of a simple word, it has no other definitions than what the speakers of a language collectively think it means.
Quoting Possibility
Your distinction between fact and truth (and there is a distinction) is covered by the dictionary phrase “that actually exists”. That tree making a sound in the forest is only a fact if it actually exists. A generally law (a true one) “if x then y” may be true regardless of the actual existence of x, but it doesn’t express a fact since it doesn’t refer to an existing thing. However, if you find a fallen tree in the forest you may deduce that it is a fact that it made a noise when it fell.
Quoting Possibility
“The view from nowhere” may not be very meaningful as a concept and I can see why subjectivists may want to attack it. Maybe it would be more helpful to talk about the view from anywhere referring to a truth that can be deduced from whatever perspective. We look at an object from all sides and thereby get an objective idea of what its totally looks like even though it can never be immediately observed.
As I mentioned, this idea is based on an intuitive understanding of quantum mechanics, which necessitates interaction for all our essential perceptions of the world. If you want to call the plausibility of quantum mechanics into question, that’s not something I’m mathematically capable of getting into. But I will say that most people who have learned the word ‘fact’ do not learn it in the context of quantum physics. If you’re going to advocate reductionism, I don’t believe you can base it on an epistemological understanding of classical physics anymore.
Quoting Congau
You may deduce that it made a noise when it fell, but your deduction remains potential information. It seems to me that your understanding of ‘fact’ rests more on certainty than on actuality. Logical truth is not the same as objective truth - it is based on an assumption that truth=perceived certainty=actuality. Your perceived certainty that there can be no reality whereby the fallen tree did NOT make a sound is probabilistic, not actual.
Quoting Congau
Well, if you believe that objectivity is about what can be deduced from all possible perspectives, then you’ll need to take a closer look at quantum mechanics. But we can look here at how we get a more objective idea of what an object looks like.
This is where we get into dimensional aspects of reality. When we observe or measure an object from all sides, we relate the appearance of these ‘sides’ to each other and structure a four-dimensional perspective of the object’s three-dimensional aspects from the difference between each view. This perspective is more objective than a single, immediate observation (ie. through one eye). As humans, we observe all objects from at least two different angles and, from this as well as past observations (ie. from their differences, not their similarities), deduce an object’s three-dimensional reality.
When we experience an event, however, your four-dimensional perspective is not identical to mine, even if we are observing the same 3D objects in relation to time. You will miss details that I notice easily, and vice versa. By relating our observations of the event from two different four-dimensional perspectives, we can share knowledge of this four-dimensional event that is more objective than either of our single perspectives. The tendency here is to assume this objectivity consists only of information that is common to both perspectives (as per reductionism) - but that’s not how we determine the three-dimensionality of an object, is it?
It is what is different about each perspective, and therefore irreducible, that increases objectivity. Their similarities give us confidence that we are referring to the same thing - a base of perceived certainty on which to construct a more objective view - but to achieve this we need to be prepared to question this perceived certainty in relation to dissenting perspectives. In other words, we need to be prepared to question the objectivity of what speakers of a language collectively think a word means if reductionism all the way down to quantum reality results in prediction error.
Where have you mentioned that before? If anything, quantum physics increases the notion of objectivity. There are no minds in quantum physics, no difference between thinking things and any other thing.
About the difference between fact and truth: A fact is anything that could be scientifically proven if science put it to a test. That doesn’t mean objective truth of course since science can be wrong. There is no such thing as proof in the absolute sense, but we have conventionally decided that things we can observe and deduce as certain within the laws of nature are facts. That’s what any shopkeeper means by “fact” even if he doesn’t express it in those words.
(I once heard a tv evangelist say: “It’s a fact that Jesus is the son of God.” That sentence is nonsensical whatever you believe, but it makes sense if a believer uses the word “truth” in such an instance.)
Quoting Possibility
I didn’t actually intend to convey an idea about how we arrive at conclusions about the true identity of objects. I just suggested that the expression “view from nowhere” plays into the hands of subjectivists who can retort that such a thing is inconceivable. I now realize that any mention of “view” in connection with objectivity is misleading.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/truth-philosophy-and-logic
Well, I mentioned that binary truth relates to quantum mechanics, anyway. I agree that quantum physics increases the notion of objectivity - it does so at the expense of certainty. That’s my point. Quantum physics employs probability and structures quantitative potential information as irreducible wave functions to increase this objectivity.
Quoting Congau
This makes more sense to me. Facts are provable within a shared value system but not objective, despite what scientific language might imply.
Quoting Congau
FWIW Nagel’s book describes objectivity/subjectivity as a matter of degrees, and from what I recall argues that this ‘view from nowhere’ is conceivable (and useful as such), but not attainable.
Probability of course has to do with predicting the future and I assume quantum physicists use complicated mathematical formulas to reach varying degrees of certainty. Complete certainty is never possible because you can never take into account all particles that may enter into your universe. Therefore, what will be is not included in what is when considered as facts. Everything that will be is present as potential, of course, but that has no meaning in terms of facts and truth in any conceivable sense for human beings. This is not cultural or conventional; it has to do with our animal condition inside time and space. Only the past (which includes “the present”) has a truth value and it is absolutely and objectively either true or false: What has happened, has happened; it can’t be changed or whether it is known to us or not, is irrelevant: It is the existing absolute objective truth.
Potentiality doesn’t figure into this scheme since in principle anything is potentially possible. It is only relevant when potentiality is understood as a definite present condition; as for example when all the genetic data about the plant that might come into existence is currently present in the seed, (but the prediction about what the plant might later look like has no truth value since anything could interfere with its development)
Quoting Athena
Thank you, Athena. I was worried that we were messing up your thread since we have gone way off the original topic.
I agree that we’ll never reach complete certainty, and that what will be is not included in what is when considered as facts. But I will argue that potential information - what can be (whether it will be or not) - does have meaning in relation to a human perspective of objective truth. This is because the human perspective is not confined to time and space, and in fact necessarily extends beyond it.
Your use of the term ‘truth value’ seems confused. We have agreed that ‘truth value’ refers to a true-false binary, but you keep using it as if it’s a magically appearing, objective property of an event, not a value we attribute to our relative perspective of that event in relation to possibility. The past, present and future are conceptual representations of our relative perspective of reality in relation to time: they are not actual, stationary objects that have inherent and unchangeable properties. We can relate to the same event from these different temporal perspectives, but its ‘truth value’ does not change or magically appear in relation to time. It is our perspective of certainty (ie. potential information) in relation to that truth value that changes over time.
‘Truth value’ is a logical perspective of objective truth: one that assumes invariable or absolute certainty. I agree that our perspective of a past event in relation to objective truth appears not to change over time, assuming our degree of certainty is invariable. I think we can agree that this isn’t the case. So it’s a misunderstanding to talk about binary truth value as ‘absolute and objectively’ anything.
Once a described event is in the past relative to our position, and the truth value (from our perspective) is 1, then it is still possible for potential information to change that truth value to 0. Likewise, if a described event is in the past relative to our position, and we have attributed a truth value of 0, then it is possible for new potential information to change that truth value to 1. The logical perspective gives no indication as to the uncertainty of our position, and in fact ignores, isolates and excludes any potential information that would contribute to that uncertainty.
Let me give an example. I was watching a TV show recently, where someone referred to evidence they had in their possession from the Lindbergh baby case. Given that Hauptmann was convicted and executed for the crime, the truth value to a proposition that ‘Hauptmann kidnapped and murdered the Lindbergh baby’ would be 1 for most people, even though we can never reach complete certainty. Now, the person on this show was saying that, going over this particular material, he had good reason to believe that Hauptmann was innocent, and that he had been unfortunate enough to have taken on a particular boarder at the time, resulting in damning evidence to be found in his home and possession.
So, if we look at two propositions:
A. Hauptmann was convicted and executed for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby.
B. Hauptmann kidnapped and murdered the Lindbergh baby.
You may say that both events inherently have a ‘truth value’ because they exist in the past (relative to us), whether or not that value is or can be known to us. But you seem to believe that our perspective of objective truth is dependent on this truth value alone. You recognise that we can’t ever be absolutely certain, but then you talk about ‘truth value’ as if we should be.
In my view, we attribute a ‘truth value’ to both propositions based on how we collapse all perceived potential information into facts. We may agree that the truth value of both A and B is 1, but we may not necessarily have the same perspective of potential information or facts contributing to our certainty in relation to that truth value.
So, when new information comes to light, it is our perspective of all the potential information we have - including those on which the facts we have are based and those that are incompletely structured - that may change the truth value we attribute to B.
Quoting Congau
In principle, anything is possible, but possibility is not the same as potentiality. Potential information is relevant when it is perceived as such. The genetic data about the plant is currently present in the appearance of the seed, from which you can perceive potential information about what it can look like later. From this information, you would have sufficient certainty to predict that a nasturtium seed, for instance, is not going to be a tree. If that isn’t ‘truth value’, then we’re definitely not on the same page here.
A truth value is absolute and binary, either true or false and nothing in between. Whatever we believe the truth value of a proposition to be, doesn’t change its real truth value (which we will never know with absolute certainty).
The proposition: “Hauptmann murdered the Lindbergh baby” has one truth value that has existed since the event happened (or didn’t) and will exist for all eternity. It is either true or false and that will never change. Investigators can continue to debate and change their theories about which truth value is the correct one, but it will remain (although unknown to us). Hauptmann did it, or he didn’t, and that is not dependent on the degree of our certainty.
Everything referring to the past has a truth value, but that doesn’t mean we know it or that we don’t change our mind about it.
Proposition with no reference has no truth value. For example: “The king of France is bald.”
Everything referring to the future has no truth value, (but that doesn’t mean we can’t make qualified guesses about the future based on information from the past.)
However, a potential has a truth value since it doesn’t really make a prediction about the future but only refers to something existing in the past/present. This seed has nasturtium as its potential and not a tree. “This seed has the potential to become nasturtium” has truth value T. That potential exists now and could be confirmed through a microscope.
“This seed will become nasturtium” has no truth value. It’s not possible to make a prediction since a lot of seed normally gets discarded and becomes nothing.
Not necessarily:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-values/
Red Wibbles eat Lemons as a propositional statement is considered to be either true or false regardless of what Wibbles are. The same goes for a French King or you may as well argue that there is no clear line between having hair and being bald therefore ‘bald’ has no meaning.
Pick a map to work with and let those you’re speaking to know what map it is.
On the one hand there is objective truth, manifesting itself as past events that can be described with propositions all of which have the truth value T. This truth value will stay the same forever.
On the other hand, there are our attempts to make conjectures about past events, more or less qualified, and more or less based on reliable assumptions (true or false, relevant or irrelevant). We come up with propositions which carry the truth value T if they express events that have actually happened or F if they refer to something that did not happen.
We never know for sure if a proposition has the truth value T or F, but for practical purposes our feeling of certainty is good enough. Therefore, we give the proposition “Paris is the capital of France” the truth value T and “London is the capital of France” the truth value F, although strictly speaking the truth value is always a secret to us.
When we grapple with piecing reality together in our mind, we can never change the actual truth value of anything, only our assumptions and guesses about what it is, can change. We keep assigning Ts and Fs to propositions, changing back and forth, although their real value can never change.
A truth value is binary concept, either true or false and nothing in between, WITHIN the limited perspective and value system of propositional logic. But this perspective is a far cry from objective truth. It’s just a human construction of reality that assumes only one language system exists and that everyone values information only according to the rules of propositional logic. Within this limited perspective of reality, in theory, yes, only one ‘real’ or ‘correct’ truth value can be thought to exist for this proposition ‘for all eternity’ - once the proposition itself became valid as a proposition, anyway.
I recognise that propositional logic is a reductionist attempt to process conflicting information in order to determine a clearer perspective of truth, regardless of beliefs. But the position from which one proposes truth is limited to maximise a degree of logical certainty at the expense of objectivity. This perspective cannot entertain the notion that truth exists beyond our limited human capacity to state it confidently as a formal proposition. We can use propositional logic to get closer to truth where our ideology differs, but not where we differ on certainty.
The thing is, uncertainty cannot be dismissed as a limited perspective of objective truth. You can argue for the existence of a ‘real truth value’ as confidently as you can argue for the existence of a ‘God’. It exists as a possibility - that’s as much as we can be certain of, objectively speaking. “A real truth value is possible” is an objective truth (insofar as it can be stated) - but it doesn’t give us much confidence to act, does it? Because, by the same token, we also understand that “anything is possible”, and we are then tasked with humbly distinguishing the limited potential we perceive in ourselves in relation to it, in order to act.
So, is objective truth what we have confidence to act on, what we (as logical beings) can state with confidence, or what we can understand with confidence (despite it giving us less confidence to act)? This may be an opportunity to start a broader discussion...
I know I’m super late to the game here but I just wanted to :up: :clap: this.