I know I took the path of maximum resistance and the long road around my head to touch my nose, and I forgive you for missing the point, which was, phil. is not Necessarily Always useless masturbation because the profusion of lang. like every organic being that grows produces waste and superfluity… and this should be no objection to doing phil. beyond immediate praxis.
Then I should return the good gesture and forgive you for misunderstanding the relevance of the idea that ideology/philosophy can be counterproductive to the working classes if it has been and/or is responsible for the ideas that structure class consciousness, and the cause of at least some of the failure of socialism because of that counterproductive philosophical confusion of the working classes.
Marx is describing philosophy as a product of a ruling class who’s interests are to maintain their positions of power. The evolution of religious thinking, for instance, is probably the best example of this philosophical subterfuge Marx is referring to.
But because class polarity is nothing like it was in the post-industrial new world of the nineteenth century, class divisions are no longer as clear and therefore there is no real set group of people at risk by doing/thinking philosophy.
The argument is void but not for reasons you give. You missed the point of my initial post.
Again; I am not carrying the communist flag. I used to. Today I am a class traitor and I feel great. All I’ve done is simply mention that there is an interesting point of view which has it that philosophy in many ways can be nonsense and can be a bad influence on a certain class of people. There are mazes of essays on the history and origins of ruling class philosophy (and philosophy in general), what it is and how it can be distinguished, how it evolved and still evolves, what its purposes are, its turbulent relationship to science, and why it is a vast majority of the time, a bunch of hot air… at anti-dialectics.co.uk/. For some people, this is news you know. Eight years ago I cared. Today I don’t. I just like to drop the Rosa Lichtenstein bomb once in a while and enjoy the deafening silence it creates in the mind of every philosopher within a ten mile radius.
James, I want to thank you for posting this video. It was very enlightening.
Actually, I had you foremost in mind when I posted it due to your inquiries about reformation and what is going wrong with the US governing. Of course, there is a lot more to it than merely that kind of corruption, but that part plays a big role theses days while factions are taking over.
Actually, I had in mind that you might have had me in mind. 
Yes, and you were absolutely right, James. That’s exactly why I thanked you. It was very enlightening for that very reason.
I know exactly this phenomenon. It’s as if the philosophical mind gains understanding by dissecting a concept into a complex form–like understanding purple as a mix of red, magenta, and blue–whereas the simple mind only thinks “purple”. Of course, what Satyr is talking about is building concepts from the basic elements to an overall whole, and then that whole gets sold, as a singularly simple thing, to the masses.
However, just as purple is still a color and can be seen by human eyes, the simple concept is still meaningful. It doesn’t carry a different meaning from that of the more basic components considered collectively, but it is a simplification of that meaning. Given this, I think the masses do grasp something when they comprehend the simplified concept. They just don’t have the capacity to dissect it, to see what more basic colors this purple, bland and homogenous as it seems to be, breaks down into.
Yet such doesn’t stop them from trying to philosophize about it as if it had no more complexity to it than their connotative presumptions (politically used against them). And that is why Rational Metaphysics requires stated definitions. As long as the complexity is public information, it seldom becomes a problem even though most people still don’t read it. They end up reading it once they are inspired to question it.
Much of this information is public–it’s all on the world wide web–at least, if we’re still talking about philosophical ideas and legal definitions.
What do you think would inspire the masses to question authority?
Buried under a mountain of deceit does not qualify for “completely public information”. Being hidden is being hidden, no excuses nor plausible deniability.
Which religions do you know best?
Ancient Indian history and languages, especially Sanskrit as the language of the Vedas, should be known by Europeans too, but they are not much known by Europeans - unfortunately. Since 2000 years Europe has been estranging by foreign religions, especially by Christianity that emerged in one of the deserts of the Arabic peninsular. The Europeans could learn much from those religions that are more akin to the European ancient religions.This is meant culturally and strongly relating to the topic of this thread.
I can see that for legal definitions, but not philosophy. I don’t remember the last time I heard of someone try to block another person’s access to the original writings of Nietzsche or Schopenhauer or St. Augustine. But I can certain understand there being a motive to hide certain legal definitions from the general public. However, when you talk about “public information,” I draw the line between what can be posted on the internet without breaking the law, and what is officially classified as confidential information. Take the video you posted, for example. Eddie Craig gives us the legal definitions in Texas of various terms like “vehicle”, “driver”, “transportation”, etc., and as far as I know, he can’t be legally charged or arrested for making this information publically accessible on the web. So it’s possible, and I’m sure that anyone with enough persistence and internet savvy can find those same legal definitions, or any others, if they looked hard enough on the web.
But I agree that there is every motive out there to make finding these legal definitions as difficult as possible, and several red herrings put in place to prematurely end one’s search by offering false definitions. It all depends on your definition of “publical accessibility”. I’m not here to tell you my definition is right and yours is wrong, but only that my definition (that one can legally disseminate such-and-such information or not) is why I say that legal definitions are, for the most part, publically accessible. But you’re right that much of the corruption in the system attempts to reduce this access to a minimum–and in extreme cases, it might be fair to call the description “publically accessible” vacuous.
Oh really. What is the original definition of “God”, “spirit”, or “ghost”? Look at all of the non-sense argumentation concerning those things in the religion forum: “I don’t know what the hell it is, but I sure as hell know that it doesn’t exist.” What is the definition of “Atheist”? There are plenty (I counted 21) dictionaries explicitly explaining it, yet look at all of the people trying to argue that it means something different (the obfuscation/hiding going on under your very nose right now … and in which you participated).
What was Schopenhauer’s definition of “psyche”? Nietzsche’s? What is the definition of the “mind”? What is the difference between those? Look at all of the philosophical tripe going on concerning them, yet no firm definition of exactly what is being argued. How about “metaphysics” vs “physics”? What is the difference? Still argued after at very least hundreds of years. What did Kant mean by the word?
Definitions are lacking throughout Science (a particular philosophy in practice). And now isn’t the time to ask a definition of them. What is the definition of a “wavefunction”? Should be pretty easy … possibly online right now. Yet there is religiously supported notions of a wavefunction being something very different than what it is defined to be … and coming from the science priests, pastors, and their sheeple.
And copyrighting is one of the popular means to restrict or control information throughout the population, used to legally hide information concerning the statistical arguments presented as evidence of need for legal action. For example, HUD (the department for “Housing and Urban Development”) was found guilty of unjustly suing white landlords for discrimination based upon statistical information gathered and assessed by extremely discriminatory means. The legal excuse for not knowing that the information was “tainted” was that no lawyer had the right to access the copyrighted statistics raw data, only their end, highly biased, report.
It was discovered due to one particular white landlord, who was being sued, gaining access to the information anyway and making it public so that his lawyer could then present it as evidence in his client’s defense against the State. As usual, definitions of being “discriminatory” were involved that included merely common, often subtly manipulated, speech (such as a white landlord saying, “I don’t have anything available right now” to a black person asking for a room = “discrimination” as the raw-data material for the statistics used to sue the landlord, yet hidden from the court).
Right, so I should know what the intentions were. There was no intention on my part to deliberately block anyone’s access to the original definition of the term “atheist” or any other term. I was simply stating what I understood, and still understand, the definition of “atheist” to be. Confusions over and obfuscations of the meanings of words, which isn’t always intentional or conscious, are a natural consequence of human nature. Words change, language evolves, and you have pointed out exactly why. Nobody knows the original definition of “God” because that term goes back several millennia (having to be translated into older languages, of course), back to times before they had dictionaries or even had the concept of word definitions. Somebody may have written down what it meant at the time, maybe not. If they did, that original writing may now be lost, or it may not. But nobody’s trying to “block” anyone’s access to it.
Yes, there is confusion over many of the terms we bounce around in philosophical discussions. But that’s all it is–confusion. Everyone has their understanding of what certain terms mean, and there are large enough factions supporting one definition as there are for another that the multitude of definitions remains to this day. But again, no one is “blocking” anyone’s access to the original definition (if there is one).
I don’t even know if Schopenhauer or Nietzsche had a formal definition of “psyche,” (I’m not about to read all of their works just to find out), and if you’re claiming they did, you must have a source. If you have a source, obviously it’s not being blocked.
Even if this is being done deliberately, it doesn’t mean any original definitions are being blocked. Anyone can go to this website and get a definition. If you’re saying this site is wrong, concocted by the “science priests”, then you must somehow know what the original definition is, which again says it’s not being blocked.
And no, I don’t accept that science = philosophy.
I don’t doubt this for a second. Like I said, I agree that the motive is there to try to hide information in the law. But can a lawyer take the legal definition of “discriminatory” and post it on the internet somewhere without getting sued or breaking the law? Apparently, someone did: legal-dictionary.thefreedictiona … rimination
If you can’t find the definition, it is being “blocked”, whether intentionally or not.
Oh, you’re ruling out “intentional” blocking. So what would “blocking” involve then? Can one be “blocked” by his own laziness to search for information, for example? And how does this reflect on your initial statement:
I’m assuming “public information” is information that isn’t “blocked”. So what would count as “public information” in your view?
You raised the word “blocked”, but the truth is that if no one ever mentioned a definition, yet talked about it in any profound way, the definition was hidden already, in the person’s mind (as with almost all of the “Enlightenment Era” philosophers).
Beyond that, the words are used void of precise definition to the point that it takes a tremendous effort to dig up the actual definition, assuming it had ever been documented.
When anything is covered by a mountain of deception, buried, it is no longer in view, easily found by inexperienced people. You, for example, cannot find out hardly anything of value concerning how the USA governance is actually working. Is it because you are lazy? Or is it because there is SO VERY MUCH deception and distraction going on, that you can’t know where to start, much less can you find a compass with which to guide yourself through the maze of misleading inferences?
People are led to believe that the words are fairly simple and straight to the point. Yet they are not. They are obfuscated into connotations that mislead, at times, even by accident. Did the Hebrews ever believe that God was some anthropomorphic being? Did anyone try to deceive people into believing that God was such a being. Or did that just happen by ignorance and presumption, later taken advantage of? You could never figure out which. It is a matter of intended definition from the start. But it isn’t necessarily an issue of intentional deception. The deception takes place anyway. The mountain of obfuscation grows high anyway. Do the masses understand, have they been told by their authorities, that such grandly complex deception is common and underfoot? No, they haven’t been.
I couldn’t agree more.
Yes, you’ve echoed my sentiments exactly. This is why I’ve thrown more than one temper tantrum in the Reforming Democracy thread after getting fed up with how much the information pool is contaminated.
From this perspective, James, I wholeheartedly agree. I’m very skeptical of conspiracy theories that put a single individual or small group of individuals at the head of some grand secret operation, but I do believe in several individuals and groups of individuals conspiring to pull of many little operations here and there. The cumulative effect, however, is something that none of them ever predict or even know is going on.
Yes, this is what happens when people feel strongly, wish to argue, wish to look intelligent, but don't feel like bothering to actually learn anything about the subject they're arguing on. They play word games that don't require any specialized knowledge in the actual field at hand.
There is nothing wrong in feeling strongly about any thing and arguing hard for it. That should be welcomed rather.
The problem is that some people start cheating using language, instead of arguing. They try to fool people. My objection is to that only, nothing else.
This is precisely what Mucter is trying to do. And, as soon as he realized that I have been caught his trick and now using the same against him, he stopped replying my posts, though I will keep pinching him in the back as soon as he continues.
With love,
Sanjay