The Philospher's thread

[xssve]

You don't think pretense plays a role in identity? To me, that clearly indicates a distinction between inner and outer identity.

It's not really identity society is even concerned with if you ask me, it's roles - people don't invest in identity, they invest in roles, identity just confuses the issue - nobody really cares that J. Edgar Hoover dressed in tutu's, he otherwise played the role to which he was assigned.

It's why we go after cheaters, even if the spouse doesn't care - it violates our sense of the role.

The only people other than people with identity issues that obsess over identity, are conservatives, religious or otherwise, who have a concept of reality based on confusion between role and identity - i.e., you are the role, no multitasking allowed.

In fact, it's perfectly possible to play a role completely at odds with your identity, congress is full of them.

And I love Paglia, she calls 'em like she see's em' - the real problem with philosophy is PC "Philosophical Correctness" - the human mind is, for all practical purposes, a Black Box: it's an adaptive mechanism, and it'll try anything once, all you can really have any faith in is broad statistical trends that tend to address the particular stressors of a given population at a given moment, some of which don't change (metabolic activity, i.e., economics and reproduction, politics and religion), some of which do - largely the externalities associated with economics and reproduction, r vs. K strategies, asymmetrical distribution of resources, etc.

It's axiomatic there is never anything quite so egregiously erroneous as whatever the current philosophical orthodoxy happens to be, since it's necessarily a product of abstraction. Once institutionalized, the philosophy ceases to adapt, whereas new stressors will continue to emerge, gradually rendering the philosophical model, and the roles based on it, obsolete, as those marginalized by it find ways of end running it.

Traditional Feminism, in the Paglian sense, is an end run on patriarchal values that gradually got up some steam - it renders itself obsolete in direct proportion to how successful it is - the less oppressed women actually are, the more it sounds like whining, while at the same time, some start to realize they may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater in terms of role assignment, i.e., the opportunity costs of overtime vs. time devoted to childrearing, for example - something has to give, and there is a resulting chain reaction, a ripple effect through all the externalities.

The short way of saying it, is that time doesn't stand still except for photons.

That's why roles are largely stressed over identity: roles are relatively predictable, even enforceable - identity is not, it's a roll of the dice.

Really, when it comes to philosophy, the problem is one of universal experience - there isn't any such thing; again, only statistical tends and no way of predicting where a given individual will fall on the curve due to will or circumstance: we are each the product of our times and circumstances - thus, the multiplicity of adaptive mechanisms.

 

[LaRocha]

That's why roles are largely stressed over identity: roles are relatively predictable, even enforceable - identity is not, it's a roll of the dice.

Really, when it comes to philosophy, the problem is one of universal experience - there isn't any such thing; again, only statistical tends and no way of predicting where a given individual will fall on the curve due to will or circumstance: we are each the product of our times and circumstances - thus, the multiplicity of adaptive mechanisms.

It's really difficult making distinctions between roles and identities beyond forcing role to mean an institutional identification that's shared among other participants while an identity is what makes an individual unique among the role players. Just to say that I had to use identity twice but mean two different things. Yet, neither has to be private while the other is public.

You can't have institutional roles and assignations without some sort of universal experience. Folks of similar upbringing and class status will be offered a variety of roles that those less fortunate won't. It's really predictable, who will play what role.

School year books predict future roles certain star pupils will play in society. Whether the predictions are correct or not is irrelevant, because role prediction is part of how people form identities, and how you decide which role you might want assigned to you. If you're weak in math and claim you want to be an engineer(out loud) you'll be corrected. The people in your context are continually correcting you, putting you in your place. Identity is only how you'd wish(a tool) to formulate your role.

There isn't an outside and inside to identity, there's only personal aspiration faced with the judgments of the world, a give and take which forms who you are. You don't form who you are and then hop into the narrative you've created for yourself. I don't think you can separate my roll and my identity.

Read Camille Paglia's Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_paglia

Her page was flagged for years because of how different and personal it was compared to other scholars of her status and profession. It still reads like an autobiography from a personal web page. This is one example of someone attempting to place themselves in an identity and role that they don't quite fit, and she's been corrected by the overseers of the site a number of times.

Not that Martha Nussbaum and other philosophers above and beyond Paglia aren't messing with their public presentations...

 

[xssve]

The fact that inner identity and role assignment don't always perfectly align is not evidence of the non-existence of inner identity - naturally, there are limits on what you can aspire to be, that's a matter of biology, but most people are happiest when their inner and outer identities coincide.

Rather than talking in abstractions, it's usually easier to choose concrete examples: I'm a good example, for instance, I'm a single father due to the fact that my children's mother has no interest in playing the role of mother - now I'm not a particularly good mother, I've never had any particular interest in the role myself, but somebody has to do it, that is a universal experience in broad terms, not so much in the details. I do the feeding and cleaning, and clothing ok, not so good at those things that require a "feminine touch" - decorating the house for Christmas, etc., I'm pretty sadly half-assed at that stuff, and that's part of childhood too.

Simply, children require some certain amount of care and nurturing, a purely biological issue, and women are, on average, rather more likely to identify with the role, they have a whole set of expectations and traditions w/respect to how it's done properly, including transmitting their own cultural expectations - even if these expectations may differ in detail from culture to culture, time to time - which is what I mean by "universal experience" - we all have mothers, but we don't all have the same mother - ever watch wife swap?

It's fascinating to me to watch two people, each equally convinced of the absolute and unquestioned, perfect utility of their particular childrearing strategies, have those strategies challenged and even soundly rejected like that - it's quite dramatic, some of them experience virtual mental breakdowns, and these are people who might live across the street, or even next door to each other, might even commiserate on the "universality" of their experience over the fence, even though beyond that basic attention to biological necessity, their philosophies of childrearing may be wildly divergent.

The devil is in the details.

In each case, the mothers are the product of a certain enculturation/value system, and yes, it is true, that over time these externally imposed value systems become internalized, become "identity" - the Christian mother identifies as a Christian, etc., but the individual human mind is never entirely a blank slate, otherwise we wouldn't need to spend so much time and energy trying to civilize the little savages, we wouldn't have so many different strategies for accomplishing basically the same thing.

 

[LaRocha]

... I'm a single father due to the fact that my children's mother has no interest in playing the role of mother - now I'm not a particularly good mother, I've never had any particular interest in the role myself, but somebody has to do it, that is a universal experience in broad terms, not so much in the details...

Every parent or nurturer of a child plays the role of mother and father, the Universal Mother has a phallus and breasts. The identity of nurturer/provider is a unisex role with a biological imperative. All the stuff we associate with gender and culture is just noise above the universal experience. The roles/identities are fairly similar across the entire spectrum of our planet. That's why the monomyth is so important. Separation, Initiation, Return. Separation at birth, Initiation into adulthood, Reconnection with birth as Mother.

It doesn't matter what's between your legs once you've accepted your identity/role. Everyone has to wade through the noise of the culture, and some never find their identity. Childbearing is only one of many ways of accepting a universal role, some people are priests.

Just to say what I'm trying to say, "Yes, we do all have the same Mother." It's why an infant monkey clings to the warm water bottle disguised as mother over the cold faux monkey mother holding the milk bottle.

 

[Handley_Page]

STEVE

The headshrinking business imposes values on patients; its what we do. The problem is the political struggle for the patient's soul; and its a rare doc who fixes the problem and lets the soul-saving go.

I recall one of my clinical perfessers; he was maybe 5 feet tall, weighed maybe 100 pounds, and was a vicious mother-fucker. I interviewed a female gang-rape victim, and during the course of the interview she characterized the rapists as 'goddamned niggers.' My perfesser went ape shit because I didnt change the aim of treatment from rape trauma to racist soul cleansing. He wanted her mind right first. And his agenda is no different from the evangelist who wants the patient right with Jesus first.

Or the guy who comes in wearing a red corduroy tennis dress trimmed with plaid, red tennis shoes, and plaid sox. 'Chrissy' sez he's depressed cuz everyone laughs at him and calls him names. I suggested he change his costume. His shrink went nutz.

When he came to our facility Chrissy was an employed nurse who lived independently; later we housed him on campus and he had no job. He ran with a herd of borderline lesbian patients from day treatment. His doc was flummoxed that I called Chrissy 'John' and refused admission to the female ward. I put John in the male unit. And I told her, his name is John and I've seen him in the shower. He's a bull who fancies himself a cow. "But he'll never produce milk!"

JBJ, that was one of the funniest I've read in a long time.
You should tell more of those.
The might be a lesson for some. . . .

 

[xssve]

Every parent or nurturer of a child plays the role of mother and father, the Universal Mother has a phallus and breasts. The identity of nurturer/provider is a unisex role with a biological imperative. All the stuff we associate with gender and culture is just noise above the universal experience. The roles/identities are fairly similar across the entire spectrum of our planet. That's why the monomyth is so important. Separation, Initiation, Return. Separation at birth, Initiation into adulthood, Reconnection with birth as Mother.

It doesn't matter what's between your legs once you've accepted your identity/role. Everyone has to wade through the noise of the culture, and some never find their identity. Childbearing is only one of many ways of accepting a universal role, some people are priests.

Just to say what I'm trying to say, "Yes, we do all have the same Mother." It's why an infant monkey clings to the warm water bottle disguised as mother over the cold faux monkey mother holding the milk bottle.

Sure, that works on the abstract level, symbolic level, but life doesn't actually happen on that level, it happens on the biological level - the map is not the territory.

This is the same role logic that says the mother cannot be a priest, the gay person cannot be a parent, as pure, sterile logic, it doesn't allow for exceptions.

In the real world, both those monkeys end up psychopaths.

Much of philosophy and theology in fact, has to do with little else than keeping people "in their place".

It's meaningless because it merely reflects biology, the battles between genetic lines, in order to be meaningful, it has to transcend that primal soup, and appeal to your sense, not your will to power.

Capitalism for instance, is really about swimming against the tide, and, as usual, it's been twisted into yet another justification for unleashing the irrational ambition it was formulated to control.

 

[LaRocha]

Sure, that works on the abstract level, symbolic level, but life doesn't actually happen on that level, it happens on the biological level - the map is not the territory.

This is the same role logic that says the mother cannot be a priest, the gay person cannot be a parent, as pure, sterile logic, it doesn't allow for exceptions.

...

Capitalism for instance, is really about swimming against the tide, and, as usual, it's been twisted into yet another justification for unleashing the irrational ambition it was formulated to control.

Yeah, life happens on the biological level, but culture happens on the symbolic and abstract level. Our culture doesn't deal successfully with Separation, Initiation, Return. Mother and Priest are antithetical, but I think I was pretty clear when I said 'nurturer' has to become Universal Mother. That doesn't preclude anyone from being phallus/breast caretaker to a child. In the case of two parents each still has to play both roles. When there's one caretaker you're still playing the role of mother/father if you want your child to make it through juvenilia and adolescence anyway.

But that's the problem, people can't really play mother and priest, or healer and mother, or shaman and warrior. There's very little to initiate adolescent children into adulthood. Human societies have always been fairly egalitarian, not equal, but everyone has always had a place and a role, pretty much up until the late-stage capitalism of the last 30-40 or so years. The Enlightenment ideals really didn't come into fruition until the last 30 or 40 years, we can't deal with that kind of individualism. We have no architecture/mythology to ready children, parents, adolescents, elderly for stage transitions. It sucks, frankly.

 

[Loring2]

Stephen55 brought up Bertrand Russell. 2 + 2 = 4 does require philosophy, Peano and Frege spent their lives with it. And the Principia Mathematica isn't a pile of gibberish so much as you're a pile of rubbish. It makes more than one argument, the most important argument happens to be wrong. If Wittgenstein could show Russell why he was fundamentally mistaken(if he didn't Godel did) obviously Russell's work wasn't gibberish. Russell didn't turn to mathematical proofs in philosophy, he turned to social theory. His point was math could be shown to fit under the banner of logic. Frege's Foundations for Arithmetik is still relevant to logicians, and so are the Principles of Mathematics. You're an idiot, get off my thread.

How interesting to come back to a thread only to find out that I'm disliked by one of my favorite Jerks; A 'thing' that calls itself Larocha. It's probably human but it's instincts seem to be primal so it's difficult to determine without actually seeing it.

As you can see in the quote above, this 'thing' accuses me of denigrating the works of a would be Philosopher, namely Bertrand Russell and in case LaRocha that you didn't understand clearly the first time. Bertrand Russell wrote gibberish in 'Principia Mathematica' is in fact rubbish (in lieu of gibberish), if you prefer. Further more you admit it in the above quote that the most important argument was wrong.

When the most important concept of a Philosophical work is incorrect then it's foundation is gone.It is then gibberish or rubbish if you will. Therefore you manage to effectively destroy your own selective argument. If it were a dissertation it could not be defended.

I really don't know why Larocha is so insistent that Russell is even an important philosopher. In my opinion he spent the rest of his life attempting to prove that God did not exist. His arguments were obtuse to say the least and I felt and feel that he was intellectually dishonest and I am not alone in that belief I assure you.

I offer you a quote.
"In view of these endeavours I am particularly pleased to note that, in the last chapter of the book, it finally turns out that one can, after all, not get along without "metaphysics." The only thing to which I take exception there is the bad intellectual conscience which shines through between the lines"
Albert Einstein

What is more problematic is the way that Russell disagrees with himself
on vital issues. For example, Russell, a long time pacifist, decided that the
love of the good did not include loving communists. In the 1940’s and early
50’s Russell “had argued the case for preventative war [against the Soviet
Union] repeatedly, in numerous articles and speeches . . .”1 In September of
1953 he went so far as to write in the New York Times Magazine: “Terrible as a
new world war would be, I still for my part would prefer it to a world
communist empire.”2 But just one month later in October of 1953, Russell
suddenly began to deny that he had ever held such a position. Later he
admitted that he had indeed suggested preventative nuclear war against the
Soviet Union, but that he had offered this advice so “casually” that he soon
“forgot” that he had actually said it!
Was he a pacifist or a war-monger? Both! Nothing demonstrates better
the depth of this contradiction in Russell’s thinking than a statement by one
of his former students, T. S. Eliot, who defined the essence of Russell’s pacifism
succinctly when he said that Russell “considered any excuse good enough
for homicide.”
This from "The Intellectals" by Paul Johnson. Harper and Rowe 1988

Finally LaRocha you call me an 'idiot' ... even you know that's probably not true and generally only a fool calls another man an idiot and as far as your ordering me to "get off your thread": It isn't your thread

Now stop being a petulant child and in a PM; Tell me directly how I have offended you.

Your Superior
Loring

 

[Loring2]

Very Interesting

Self-identity as something different from projected identity is the problem most people have. It might actually be a clinical problem in psychiatry.

During my fourth year med school rotation in a psychiatric hospital, (...as a student...) a patient was admitted with a schizophrenic break. He had started as a born again type, gotten deeper into fundamentalism and according to his family, had started showing signs of delusions of grandeur. He disappeared from the radar and a few months later was found in a full blown schizophrenic state.

Not uncommon, religious aspects aside and usually the patient would be treated like any other acute case of schizophrenia. Except....the attending psychiatrist was an ordained minister of a very fundamentalist church (can anyone say Southern Baptist Convention?) and the shrink decided that prayer therapy was the order of the day.

When the patient failed to get better, or as the aging Freudian moron on staff was wont to say, refused to get better, our pious shrink decided to seek help from a distant colleague, who also was an ordained Baptist minister, who helpfully suggested low doses of propranolol, an beta-blocker used to control blood pressure at the time. (This was at the end stage of a practiced by few in psychiatry disaster called "ortho-molecular psychiatry".)

"A call was made" to the head of psychiatry at said institution and the patient was transferred to another hospital. Our pious shrink, who now probably felt like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis, was hauled up before Tissue and Audit (the hospital committee that looks into fuck ups) and recommendations were made. (He was suspended.)

Self Identity and Project Identity and your second paragraph is intrigung

"People who's self-identity is very much different from their projected identity are definitely a problem in clinical psychiatry. It's also a problem around here. That said, the difference between self and projected identity can also be a problem for psychiatrists"

Let me see if we agree as to what you said'

In paragraph 1 you gave us two terms which will be the subject matter you're going to discuss.
A. self-identity - how we truly see ourselves.
B, projected-identuty - how we want others to see us.

You contend that if these two identities are very (too?) different than it becomes a psychiatric problem and the next sentence is the nub of your message if I'm right. "It's also a problem around here." Meaning there is what I've referred to as an "Internet Identity" allowing pseudo expertise then I agree.

Fortunately there are other ways to profile ;people.

 

[bflagsst]

As you can see in the quote above, this 'thing' accuses me of denigrating the works of a would be Philosopher, namely Bertrand Russell and in case LaRocha that you didn't understand clearly the first time. Bertrand Russell wrote gibberish in 'Principia Mathematica' is in fact rubbish (in lieu of gibberish), if you prefer. Further more you admit it in the above quote that the most important argument was wrong.

When the most important concept of a Philosophical work is incorrect then it's foundation is gone.It is then gibberish or rubbish if you will. Therefore you manage to effectively destroy your own selective argument. If it were a dissertation it could not be defended.

I really don't know why Larocha is so insistent that Russell is even an important philosopher. In my opinion he spent the rest of his life attempting to prove that God did not exist. His arguments were obtuse to say the least and I felt and feel that he was intellectually dishonest and I am not alone in that belief I assure you.

Not to step in other people's crap, but you did denigrate the works of Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein:

"Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica was and is a pile of gibberish and so Wittgenstein got drunk one day and wrote a rebuttal which made Russell cry and retreat from his position and turn to mathematical proofs in philosophy."

Wittgenstein wrote one of the most important works in philosophy on one of Russell's core arguments. Namely, logic can be matched up with reality by way of math or language. If Russell retreats from his position that math and logic are interchangeable, he isn't going to "turn to mathematical proofs in philosophy." They both distanced themselves from their earlier work in logic and both became superstars for it. G.E. Moore was the Ethics guy, Wittgenstein was Language, Russell was Social Theory and Education.

I think if you found a room full of philosophers and said, "Russell and the Analytics aren't important to 20th Century philosophy." you would get laughed out of the room. Existentialism and Analytic philosophy is all of 20th Century philosophy, everything else is minor chords. Bertrand Russell's status is so important because he is responsible for Analytic philosophy. Kids wouldn't have to take intro to logic as part of their philosophy major if Bertrand Russell never existed. Philosophy of Logic is still probably 40% Aristotle and 40% Bertrand Russell.

These guys are no slouches nor are they merely historians: http://www.illc.uva.nl/LogicList/newsitem.php?id=3625

Your other point, that every philosophical work has to be entirely consistent from bottom up, shows you're more or less talking out your ear. In Descartes' Meditations he spends most of the book proving that God has to exist. If the principle argument in Meditations is finding a foundation for knowledge, then he never really comes close to completing the task because most of his foundation lies in "God wouldn't deceive me." It gets really inconsistent and borderline silly, which is the reason most people don't read past Second Meditation.

Even "If I'm being deceived, I still know I exist, because to be deceived I'd have to be some-thing that thinks, and if I think, I exist." isn't quite the tightest of arguments for being a thing that thinks and also exists. Kierkegaard says that Descartes hasn't reached any foundation because he presupposes the I(his existence) when he puts forth the premise "I think." so even everyone's favorite part of the program is seriously flawed and most likely logically trivial. Which shouldn't take anything away from Descartes, because it's momentous attempting to doubt everything to find some certainty. If there are people currently doubting to find some philosophic certainty, most likely Descartes is to thank. Just like that group of philosophers who are going to gather this May to discuss the current state of logic in philosophy have Russell to thank.

 

[bflagsst]

Self Identity and Project Identity and your second paragraph is intrigung

"People who's self-identity is very much different from their projected identity are definitely a problem in clinical psychiatry. It's also a problem around here. That said, the difference between self and projected identity can also be a problem for psychiatrists"

Let me see if we agree as to what you said'

In paragraph 1 you gave us two terms which will be the subject matter you're going to discuss.
A. self-identity - how we truly see ourselves.
B, projected-identuty - how we want others to see us.

You contend that if these two identities are very (too?) different than it becomes a psychiatric problem and the next sentence is the nub of your message if I'm right. "It's also a problem around here." Meaning there is what I've referred to as an "Internet Identity" allowing pseudo expertise then I agree.

Fortunately there are other ways to profile ;people.

In paragraph one I believe he's quoting me. The following paragraphs he's going over the clinical, which wasn't really my point. I do think there's a difference between self-identity and projected identity, like two really different domains. Self-identity is pretty weak and really tough to pin down since Freud introduced the possibility that we don't know the reasoning behind most of our feelings, intentions, and actions. LaRocha and Xxsve are really only dealing with the projected identity I think.

My point on the clinical was that most people will be found out as liars and that's a pretty big blow to self-identity. You don't need to go so far as multi-personalities or schizo for it to be a clinically definable issue. Depression and hospitalization, even murder, can result from the conflict between what you portray and what you actually are. I remember this guy never actually got into medical school a few years back, lived the lie as if he had for his family, and he basically had to kill his pregnant wife so she wouldn't find out his true identity. Another doctor in France was about to be found out as a fraud, this guy was a practicing physician who never actually completed school, was going to be found out so he killed his family before they discovered him. Logically it makes perfect sense to these people, they only have one identity as long as the people who matter to them don't find out they're frauds, so if they kill them they can't find out the truth and essentially they get to continue living the 'true' identity they've cultivated.

Talking about how people perform on the Internet is a waste of time. Internet message boards have been around for so long that when a participant enters they almost always assume the standpoint of skeptic. There's no reason to tell the truth, or even believe that you're talking to a group of people and not one person with some neato computer program. Cartesian skepticism should rule the Internet. You shouldn't give out any information about yourself, you're actually more credible that way. If you take stock in any argument just based on that person's real or imagined expertise the problem is really you're inability to follow an argument. It shouldn't matter if real Deepak Chopra appears here or fake Deepak Chopra, either Deepak's argument is probably weak and can be picked apart.

 

[xssve]

Yeah, life happens on the biological level, but culture happens on the symbolic and abstract level. Our culture doesn't deal successfully with Separation, Initiation, Return. Mother and Priest are antithetical, but I think I was pretty clear when I said 'nurturer' has to become Universal Mother. That doesn't preclude anyone from being phallus/breast caretaker to a child. In the case of two parents each still has to play both roles. When there's one caretaker you're still playing the role of mother/father if you want your child to make it through juvenilia and adolescence anyway.

But that's the problem, people can't really play mother and priest, or healer and mother, or shaman and warrior. There's very little to initiate adolescent children into adulthood. Human societies have always been fairly egalitarian, not equal, but everyone has always had a place and a role, pretty much up until the late-stage capitalism of the last 30-40 or so years. The Enlightenment ideals really didn't come into fruition until the last 30 or 40 years, we can't deal with that kind of individualism. We have no architecture/mythology to ready children, parents, adolescents, elderly for stage transitions. It sucks, frankly.

Again, we're back to the role assignment/enforcement issue I cited to begin with.

That's essentially what the counterculture is - people who don't fit into off-the-rack molds, accept the orthodox opinions - notwithstanding, that with all those vibrant, creative personalities end running the system, that's where culture is invented, eventually becoming the new orthodoxy, and a whole new cadre of "socially awkward" individuals are marginalized.

So it goes.

In some ways, that's actually not a bad thing, being cast out of the orthodoxy also means being free of the whole social pressure cooker of behavioral micromanagment it entails: what to drive, what to wear, what to say, who to suck up to - I invariably gravitate to whatever the counterculture happens to be for this very reason - people don't have the same expectations for "weirdos".

 

[xssve]

The problem with the symbolic level is that it's... symbolic - not necessarily practical.

To take an example, physical culture and muscle worship is the product of gay culture in Fifties, it had to do with the worship of masculinity, i.e., sort of a caricature of masculinity, when mainstream culture was full of skinny geeks and fat guys in suits, nobody thought twice about it until Rock Hudson became the iconic image of masculinity, replacing the emaciated, chain smoking, Humphrey Bogart.

Fast forward Thirty years, and we have a cultural obsession with BMI - in fact I knew a bodybuilder who kicked out of the Navy for not falling withing the prescribed BMI parameters, even though he had like damn near Zero percent body fat.

Even the medical community feeds the diet and exercise industry, in spite of the fact that there is very little empirical evidence to suggest that being a little overweight is at all bad for you - there are whole demographics of people simply born with endomorphic body types who are regularly discriminated against - by people who also discriminate against the gay culture the whole thing emerged from. When it reaches that symbolic level, culture is a mindless juggernaut of mass opinion - small surprise it cannot deal with exceptions.

Symbols, ultimately, are only a means of communication, it's their purpose, it's why we evolved the capacity to form them.

It's the process of assigning value to symbols that constitutes the most superficial aspects of culture - in many cases, the symbol becoming more important than the thing it signifies.

This is, by definition, irrational, to take it seriously requires no more intellectual capacity than the average flock of poultry.

 

[xssve]

Thus, it becomes predictable that in an economic shift that equalizes women and men in terms of competitive ability, that asexuality would become an important cultural phenomena, since it's basically the act of neutralizing current gender value assignments, sort of wiping the slate.

It's also predictable that a lot of people are going to confuse reproductive values and economic and status values in the process, since the they are all often interdependent to various degrees, and it'll all have to be resorted and new value assignments agreed upon.

 

[xssve]

To wit:

Subcategories

Asexuals, while typically lacking in sexual desire for either sex, may engage in purely emotional romantic relationships;[11][12][13] terms concerning this are:

* aromantic: lack of romantic attraction towards anyone of either sex.
* biromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of either sex.
* heteroromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of the opposite sex.
* homoromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of the same sex.
* panromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of any gender or lack of gender.
* transromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of variant or ambiguous gender.
* polyromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of more than one gender or sex but do not wish to identify as biromantic because it implies that there are only two binary genders or sexes.

Wikipedia: asexuality

Sounds to me a lot like an outline of the current debate on sexuality raging to some degree on every forum on the internet.

Including the one that has more or less had it's value increased to the point where it's difficult to ignore any longer by the mere existence of the internet, i.e., the debate between sexuality and romanticism, including the difference between sexual and romantic fidelity: is cybering and/or internet porn "cheating"?

Whatever the impression her Wikipedia entry leaves on you, I do think Paglia is one of the few philosophers even attempting tackle these complicated questions. With the multiplicity of often highly militant factions involved, there is no way to do it objectively without stepping on a lot of sensitive toes.

 

[Liar]

My bolds added.

It isn't though liar, it's a thread about Philosophers though your assumption would make it much more interesting.

The thread title is The Philosopher's thread.

So if it is about persons and not ideas, it's actually a thread not about philosophers, but a philosopher.

Now... which one?

 

[LaRocha]

The thread title is The Philosopher's thread.

So if it is about persons and not ideas, it's actually a thread not about philosophers, but a philosopher.

Now... which one?

I already told Loring the answer to this query. This is my thread. Stella started it for me so I'd leave her thread. I don't like how it began though, the quotes are mismatched. Plus, Amicus hasn't even appeared to continue the party.

Ishtat isn't a philosopher or an author on this site. Still, he can visit my thread and make his snide little comments. Loring is the only one banned.

 

[LaRocha]

Not to step in other people's crap, but you did denigrate the works of Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein:

"Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica was and is a pile of gibberish and so Wittgenstein got drunk one day and wrote a rebuttal which made Russell cry and retreat from his position and turn to mathematical proofs in philosophy."

Wittgenstein wrote one of the most important works in philosophy on one of Russell's core arguments. Namely, logic can be matched up with reality by way of math or language. If Russell retreats from his position that math and logic are interchangeable, he isn't going to "turn to mathematical proofs in philosophy." They both distanced themselves from their earlier work in logic and both became superstars for it. G.E. Moore was the Ethics guy, Wittgenstein was Language, Russell was Social Theory and Education.

I think if you found a room full of philosophers and said, "Russell and the Analytics aren't important to 20th Century philosophy." you would get laughed out of the room. Existentialism and Analytic philosophy is all of 20th Century philosophy, everything else is minor chords. Bertrand Russell's status is so important because he is responsible for Analytic philosophy. Kids wouldn't have to take intro to logic as part of their philosophy major if Bertrand Russell never existed. Philosophy of Logic is still probably 40% Aristotle and 40% Bertrand Russell.

These guys are no slouches nor are they merely historians: http://www.illc.uva.nl/LogicList/newsitem.php?id=3625

Your other point, that every philosophical work has to be entirely consistent from bottom up, shows you're more or less talking out your ear. In Descartes' Meditations he spends most of the book proving that God has to exist. If the principle argument in Meditations is finding a foundation for knowledge, then he never really comes close to completing the task because most of his foundation lies in "God wouldn't deceive me." It gets really inconsistent and borderline silly, which is the reason most people don't read past Second Meditation.

Even "If I'm being deceived, I still know I exist, because to be deceived I'd have to be some-thing that thinks, and if I think, I exist." isn't quite the tightest of arguments for being a thing that thinks and also exists. Kierkegaard says that Descartes hasn't reached any foundation because he presupposes the I(his existence) when he puts forth the premise "I think." so even everyone's favorite part of the program is seriously flawed and most likely logically trivial. Which shouldn't take anything away from Descartes, because it's momentous attempting to doubt everything to find some certainty. If there are people currently doubting to find some philosophic certainty, most likely Descartes is to thank. Just like that group of philosophers who are going to gather this May to discuss the current state of logic in philosophy have Russell to thank.

I agree with most of this. You don't have to read it, it translates to: Loring is an idiot.

 

[ishtat]

The thread title is The Philosopher's thread.

So if it is about persons and not ideas, it's actually a thread not about philosophers, but a philosopher.

Now... which one?

Now that's a proper Philosophers point, an argument dependant on an apostrophe. Well said Liar!

 

[LaRocha]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzU7jJBMElM

I think very deeply.