What characterizes the mindset associated with honesty?
1. What characterizes the mindset associated with honesty? Considering that individuals may occasionally engage in falsehoods, how do we conceptualize the mindset of honesty? Is 'honest' a noun or a verb? Can one still be deemed an honest person if they occasionally engage in deception?
2. Inequality is the root cause of dishonesty.
e.g. good <-> evil, rich <-> poor, beautiful <-> ugly, young <-> old, high <-> low, correct <-> wrong, have <-> not have, strong <-> weak, left <-> right, subjective <-> objective, absolute <-> relative
For each unequal situation, we can find a dishonest example in daily life.
e.g. violence: strong <-> weak, hypocrite: correct <-> wrong.
This world is not equal and we cant change it externally.
But there is a way to deal with the inequalities and be peaceful & honest.
What is the way?
[new thread]
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14869/what-is-the-way-to-deal-with-inequalities/p1
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Chinese medicine says about 5,000 years ago,
everyone lived one hundred years without showing the usual signs of aging.
I read the following paragraph which describes the society of that time.
I don't quite understand it, so I started this philosophy discussion.
Chinese medicine is always studied together with philosophy.
-The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine (Maoshing Ni), chapter 1-
The accomplished ones of ancient times advised people to guard themselves against zei feng, disease-causing factors. On the mental level, one should remain calm and avoid excessive desires and fantasies, recognizing and maintaining the natural purity and clarity of the mind. When internal energies are able to circulate smoothly and freely, and the energy of the minds is not scattered, but is focused and concentrated, illness and disease can be avoided.
Previously, people led a calm and honest existence, detached from undue desire and ambition; they lived with an untainted conscience and without fear. They were active, but never depleted themselves. Because the lived simply, these individuals knew contentment, as reflected in their diet of basic but nourishing foods and attire that was appropriate to the season but never luxurious. Since they were happy with their position in life, they did not feel jealousy or greed. They had compassion for others and were helpful and honest, free from destructive habits. They remained unshakable and unswayed by temptations, and they were able to stay centered even when adversity arose. They treated others justly, regardless of their level of intelligence or social position.
2. Inequality is the root cause of dishonesty.
e.g. good <-> evil, rich <-> poor, beautiful <-> ugly, young <-> old, high <-> low, correct <-> wrong, have <-> not have, strong <-> weak, left <-> right, subjective <-> objective, absolute <-> relative
For each unequal situation, we can find a dishonest example in daily life.
e.g. violence: strong <-> weak, hypocrite: correct <-> wrong.
This world is not equal and we cant change it externally.
But there is a way to deal with the inequalities and be peaceful & honest.
What is the way?
[new thread]
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14869/what-is-the-way-to-deal-with-inequalities/p1
-----------------------------------------------------
Chinese medicine says about 5,000 years ago,
everyone lived one hundred years without showing the usual signs of aging.
I read the following paragraph which describes the society of that time.
I don't quite understand it, so I started this philosophy discussion.
Chinese medicine is always studied together with philosophy.
-The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine (Maoshing Ni), chapter 1-
The accomplished ones of ancient times advised people to guard themselves against zei feng, disease-causing factors. On the mental level, one should remain calm and avoid excessive desires and fantasies, recognizing and maintaining the natural purity and clarity of the mind. When internal energies are able to circulate smoothly and freely, and the energy of the minds is not scattered, but is focused and concentrated, illness and disease can be avoided.
Previously, people led a calm and honest existence, detached from undue desire and ambition; they lived with an untainted conscience and without fear. They were active, but never depleted themselves. Because the lived simply, these individuals knew contentment, as reflected in their diet of basic but nourishing foods and attire that was appropriate to the season but never luxurious. Since they were happy with their position in life, they did not feel jealousy or greed. They had compassion for others and were helpful and honest, free from destructive habits. They remained unshakable and unswayed by temptations, and they were able to stay centered even when adversity arose. They treated others justly, regardless of their level of intelligence or social position.
Comments (163)
Also, welcome to the Forum!
But that's where it falls apart. Are you really supposed to tell the SS where the Jews are hiding?
I would say there is not one universal "honest mindset". People are honest for various reasons:
* A sense of moral obligation to be honest
* A sense of dignity in being honest
* A fear of the consequence of being caught in a lie
* A desire to connect genuinely with the other person
* A pragmatic desire to forgo maintaining a web of lies
And so on. Each might have a characteristic mindset. I don't know if there is a unifying state of mind that unites them all.
Quoting YiRu Li
I always thought the tendency to nounify something which seems more of an attribute, and adjective/adverb, was a little strange. Due to this nounifying tendency of English, honesty becomes something you can "have" or "not have", an object you carry around with you, and may lose one day. Due to this linguistic quirk, one may wonder, what is the "essence" of this honesty? What is it made of?
Quoting YiRu Li
Honesty, like most things in life, is not a black and white quality. One may be more or less honest. Even if you occasionally lie, you may still be considered basically honest. I would suspect that there might be something mentally wrong with a person who literally never lied.
Welcome, YiRu!
Someone who values their own self-perceived "respect" so much that would condemn an innocent to a terrible death for its sake, operates under a deeply flawed moral system, I think most would agree.
Honesty often makes you vulnerable. It takes some inner strength to embrace that vulnerability, and that's related to your values. For instance, if you've made a mistake and it could impact someone's well being, being honest shows that you care about others.
I am not a deontologist. So am free to agree with you. My understanding is that as lying perverts communication, a deontologist cannot, ever, lie, to be consistent. But i agree with you at least intuitively.
To be combative and free. To be honest requires acting and speaking in a genuine manner. Doing such will lead to necessary conflict. An honest person can only be honest if they are strong willed.
Deontology merely means a rules-based ethical system. The word itself does not imply a specific set of rules. A ruleset which included "Above everything else, do not lie", would be flawed. Kant, for instance, was more sophisticated than to include such things in his deontology.
No. This is under the assumption that we generally label deception as a negative aspect of humans. That said, we often lie to avoid what we deem as unnecessary conflict. I think it is reasonable to lie from an efficiency perspective as causing conflict can inhibit/scupper more progressive lines of investigation/communication.
People are easily fooled, and the easiest person to fool is yourself.
https://www.merton.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/inline-files/Roman-Evans.pdf
From the above:
"From a deontological point of view lying is always wrong (as is deceit for that matter), on the basis that communication is a process needed for prosperity and that truth communicates but a lie does not. Therefore, on this basis lying is always wrong. In the case that there is a clear and moral alternative to a lie then of course anyone would agree that this point of view stands true. But one might ask What if a lie prevented an action worse than a lie from occurring? And this essay would answer that from a deontological perspective the lie must still be wrong as a lie is always wrong."
(I understand the Isenberg definition to in fact be Kantian from Arnold Isenberg's essay Deontology and the Ethics of Lying - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2104756 - but i don't have access)
Another, though, i've just pulled this one out for mentioning Kantian ethics specifically:
https://books.openedition.org/obp/4433?lang=en#:~:text=That%20is%2C%20if%20the%20consequences,be%20morally%20acceptable%20to%20lie.
"That is, if the consequences of lying are better than telling the truth then we are morally required to lie. The deontologist the Kantian or Divine Command Theorist for example thinks that lying is always wrong. There are no situations at all when it would be morally acceptable to lie."
Neither. It's an adjective: An honest person is one who can be relied on not to cheat, deceive or mislead others. Honesty is the characteristic such a person displays.
However, being an honest person does not necessarily mean that one never tells a falsehood for any reason, and never withholds information that is requested. Honesty may be tempered with kindness, loyalty, discretion and tact. The mindset is one of social responsibility (no community of humans functions well without a good deal of mutual trust.) and personal integrity (One takes a certain pride in being forthright and upright.)
I don't think anyone in life ever gets away as 100% truly honest though so I think we have to be honest with ourselves and others and allow some leeway in our definitions and standards
Quoting Vera Mont
As Vera said, it is an adjective. I don't know if you are looking for a philosophical definition, but in terms of philology and vocabulary we can define 'honest' as: telling the truth or able to be trusted.
Honesty is a situational behavior, not a permanent trait of a person. Do not burden someone with that label because it isn't always necessary to be honest at all times. White lies serve the purpose of kindness. Of course, honesty serves that purpose as well.
Quoting YiRu Li
An adjective, if I take your question literally.
I will assume you are not ignorant. I would side with saying it is something you are rather than something you do but clearly one without the other is kind of meaningless.
What I mean is some people try to be honest whilst for others it is just who they are. I would have reservation about anyone claiming again and again that they are honest.
Not sure I understand this part - what's a mindset? Do you mean a personality?
Quoting YiRu Li
Who knows? The question is a bit vague.
Criminals can be very honest with each other and follow a code, even if they ultimately profit through dishonesty and terror. How a person presents to us will often depend upon the context. A father may be honest to his family and dishonest to his boss. Combinations are endless.
I generally think people are a mix of honest and dishonest choices and the context is important. Can I trust this plumber to do a job for me? Can I trust my friend? These are situational.
However, the more philosophical question, is my friend virtuous, may be unanswerable and not entirely relevant to my experience of them.
Are you asking whether this is a fundamental property, that one either is or is not honest?
From my perspective, honesty is the prerequisite for accurate communication, which is the foundation of cooperative social activity. So in addition to being intrinsically or inherently desirable, honesty is also selected for pragmatically.
Lets go to the very roots of the question.
Maths is not honest when it tells you that 2+2=4, because that moment Maths is hiding from you all the contradictions and absurdities that it contains, such as imaginary and irrational numbers. If Maths, that we assume as the most elementary base that we can conceive at the roots of the world, is dishonest and contradictory, if nature itself is dishonest, how can we be honest? This means that the very concept of honesty is just a product of our creative imagination, like winged horses.
We can try to be honest, because we need to criticize the metaphysics of Maths, but we can only proceed in a very humble way, by vague, weak and generic attempts, referring to our creativity, poetry, humanity, making use of a lot of criticism and self-criticism, nothing more precise or definite than this.
Without that mindset, honesty doesn't exist.
For example, you are (we assume) being honest in your questioning. But your terminology is unclear. Does this reflect a lack of honesty in your mindset?
Autism?
Honest is not a noun or verb. It is an adjective.
Honest does not a verb like "rage" does. I feel rage. I am raging. It is like 'calm' as in you can only say "I am honest". This is an English question more than philosophy.
Honesty implies truth. Your choice whether or not to tell the truth is always your choice.
You can behave honestly. You can tell the truth. You can be trustworthy.
And others...
I doubt the OP is asking about English grammar.
Rather, she is asking of this something, "honesty"
* Is it fundamentally a thing? Something you literally possess, like you possess objects?
* Is it fundamentally an action? Something you do, or don't do?
* Is it fundamentally a quality? Which an agent may or may not possess?
The grammar is not important. English accommodates all three modes. Though perhaps it is telling that the root "honest" is an adjective, that is to say a quality. But it is probably an error to read too much into that.
I am pretty sure I caught that. Hence me not assuming ignorance. I interpreted it as Action versus Innate Qualities or some such thing.
Your google-sourced sources are... weak. What do you think of the wiki?
Disagree.
Supports my contentions
You disagree, and think that offhand comments in a rando student essay and an open source British high school textbook are strong sources? Or that they are strong because they support your contentions? Or that the wiki supports your contentions? How so?
Because it posits a system in which lying is violating a duty. Which supports my contention.
That said; I dont care. Ive never seen any deontological writing invite dishonesty for any reason than paradox.
"Honesty" is part of a person's character; we practice honesty. It's an optional behavior, not something we are born with.
Where does it come from?
We learn to be honest; we learn to be dishonest. Proper, moral behavior is taught to children, perhaps explicitly, but perhaps more implicitly, Guilt is an essential part of moral learning; we feel guilt when we fail to behave properly. For children, right and wrong, proper and improper, moral and immoral tend tp be more black and white. As the child grows up, black and white become shades of gray.
"I can not tell a lie; I chopped down the cherry tree." George Washington said, in the fable about the first president of the U.S. Maybe little George couldn't, but but the time he was an adult, big George was as capable of lying as anyone else.
A minimal level of honesty is required. "We can't do business if people are not honest." I can't quantify "how much" is necessary. Certainly, we need to be honest with ourselves -- we need to be aware of when we are lying and when we are telling the truth.
It is a behavior profile that typically flows from one's psychological outlook. Thus CAN definitely change (along with one's psychology) though most don't change much.
In my experience the mindset most conducive to honesty is self confidence, since lying is frequently deployed to cover for the psychological inability to acknowledge personal shortcomings.
I still don't know what you mean by mindset. Do you mean worldview or value system?
If born too tall or short, does it cause a fear of standing out, I.e. of a secondarily derived cause that could affectively bar a deontological formative background: as an example of a window of opportunity to change the emphasis by verbal manipulation?
How can you read too much into it? That's the whole point: honesty is a quality. "Honest" describes both a facet of someone's character (the way they are) and the way in which they behave.
Honesting is not something one can do: one can tell the truth, give fair measure for the price, refrain from coveting another's ass or ox or manservant or maidservant, be faithful in marriage, keep one's promises, return borrowed tools, give accurate and unbiased testimony, etc.
Adjectives can describe both of those conditions, plus several others: matters of taste, like sexy or ugly; matters of happenstance, like sick or lucky; ephemeral matters, like rushed or startled; transient matters, like interested and disappointed.
People are born with a genetic predisposition: potentials, capacities and tendencies. Whether they develop into specific character traits depends on many factors in the environment and in the social influences to which the individual is exposed.
Vera Mottt
YiRu Li
Therefore affect(affectation) may trump an effective way to determine an honest mindset, regardless of the meaning ascribed to it., therefore its uncertain to evaluate it on basis of a prima facie contension
I find it quite hard to understand how one could have a 'conclusion' such that it results in behaviour, which is not a direct result of external.. everything...
Can you elaborate on how one might come to that sense of honesty without an external guiding/enforcing mechanism?
I did not say there was no contribution from the individual only that people are a product of their environment. I have worked with a lot of prisoners and career criminals over the years. In getting to know them, I can't think of one example where the person wasn't a product of disadvantage, abuse or trauma.
I certainly can - some people are just misguided in their emotional reactivity; this is the sense of 'misguided' or 'misfiring' emotions. Thinking you've had a disadvantage and behaving just so doesn't mean that actually happened. But this doesn't defeat your point - it's an anomaly and for the vast majority of people they never even survey their internal maps so it's hard to put much at their feet.
Maybe - although I'm not sure what emotional reactivity is - if you are referring to difficulties with emotional regulation, that is generally the result of trauma or brain injury.
Quoting AmadeusD
Interesting. If your interpretation of my words are that some people justify their behavior (or lack of virtue) on the basis of fictional backgrounds - I probably don't accept this. Not much further we can go with this since we probably hold different presuppositions.
But we were talking about dishonesty rather than emotional regulation and violence.
The emotion arising from a perception. The reaction to an event in emotional terms. Quoting Tom Storm
No. I am telling you that i, myself observe this among criminals (particularly career criminals). It is not uncommon for an underlying attitude of aggrievement with no basis in reality to motivate a continuing disrespect for the law and courts. A perceived slight from the 'state' can do this, for instance. And I don't think anything i said inferred fictional. Up front, I noted misfiring or misplaced emotions. The subject may believe their plight is actual, when it is not, and react accordingly. Unfortunately, the legal system will
act accordingly to the 'actual'.
Quoting Tom Storm
My comment was regarding motivations for dishonesty. I don't think i mentioned violence?
My suspicion is is you dig far enough such a reaction is likely to be a consequence of a personality disorder which will itself be the product of significant shortcomings/adverse experiences in a person's upbringing. Being easily slighted is a classic symptom.
Quoting AmadeusD
Ok.
(this may be for a nother thread, but I like this line, so....)
Hmm, a fair suggestion, but I am actually noting that your supporting features are those to what my concept applies. I suppose it would be helpful to know what your context is; but without that in hand I'd say there's going to be a big divide between how I, as a legal mind, would interpret and dig through claims, than would a social worker looking to rehabilitate. It is in their interests to buy into the subjects story. It is not in mine as i am victim-oriented; I want the facts as far as they can be established.
As an example, i regularly, though not frequently, come across offenders who claim in their, what's called a s 27 report here in NZ, that they suffered familial violence or abuse. In these regular, but not frequent cases, it becomes quite obvious that actually what happened was their parents were perhaps restrictive in a way they didn't like - so from a young age, they formed a ridiculous and misplaced view of their family and reacted as if that was a fact. I'm unsure this is controversial. The failure rates of rehabilitative efforts seems to comport with this general theme.
Maybe but these sorts of thread can become quite poisonous and political.
Quoting AmadeusD
I suspect that this is unhelpful language or framing as it leads with the very popular media cliché that the helping professions are soft and subject to bullshit. That may be true on occasion, but no doubt there are similar popular tropes that can be applied to lawyers and they wouldn't be helpful either.
I have no issue putting people in jail if they are a danger to community. I also side with victims.
My background is 33 years in the field working in addictions, homelessness and suicide prevention with vulnerable communities - I currently manage psychosocial programs and support services for a large community organization with a hospital psychiatry partnership.
I'm not in a position to demonstrate whether this is accurate or not. I can say it doesn't match my experince. What I have often seen is families of origin with 'official stories' of nurturing and harmony which are untrue. Also quite often, the experiences of abuse are not from immediate family but come from other sources - scoutmasters, priests, school camp instructors, friends, parents, relatives, etc.
With these matters, we generally end up trying to resolve two questions 1) Are some people just bad? 2) To what extent are people responsible for the choices they make? Attempts to address these matters can become a cesspit of cultural politics.
e.g. I finally can accept myself, then I suddenly realize and feel that I can be honest about my situation with others.
One could be honest because telling the truth gives you blessings in the afterlife. It's not that that honesty, right now, is what matters but because there is a judge after death who will look at your life and be able to tell that you lied or not that you tell the truth.
But I have to say that I think this is one of the worst ways to be honest: it works, but that person is saddled with so many bad feelings just to ensure something that is more easily recognized as worthwhile without anxiety or guilt -- I am committed to honesty, but honestly, the only reason I am so committed is I've come to see how stupid I am. It's because I trust others that I think honesty is a good policy, and in so doing it seems to mostly work out even though there are times where I've been betrayed.
So I'd say there is no one thing that characterized the mindset of honesty. It could be anxious, it could be self-interest, and it could be out of a simple desire to be good.
Or, if we are like Kant, it could be due to an obsession with universality :D -- but I don't think that's usual.
Yeah, re-reading my post I was extremely sloppy lol, so sorry for that - I meant to superficially extend the example to many origins - that kind of misapprehension is actually more often placed on police and justice in general, in my experience. Hence, the context being important as to what we each see from the subject/s.
Where I live, we have swathes of two particular groups (i want to be extremely clear I'm grouping them via their defense positions, not their belief in the position - that would become your issue outlined below):
1. "Free men" who believe the law doesn't apply to them - they feel the system is 'rigged', 'corrupt' or whatever else you can think of - and as a result of this utterly absurd position, offer violence to those attempting to enforce the justice system; and
2. Groups who believe that due to their membership of a social/racial/religious group, they are per se disadvantaged by the justice system - and the result is as above.
So, I'm not trying to say there are 'bad people' (though, i would posit there are as a result of mental illness). But people don't like being impeded. People don't like being told their views are wrong. People also like 'standing up to the man' etc.. and these misguided emotions often land people in prison.
Quoting Tom Storm
Fully agree, and to the former: No. That saves the cesspit :)
I see what you mean.
I suppose that, to me, doesn't smack of 'honesty' but self-awareness.
Quoting AmadeusD
I know what you mean. I would still be looking for environmental factors to account for this. But perhaps there is also some kind of 'disposition' that accounts for people being susceptible to certain foundational stories or behaviors - but the moment a person's actions become antisocial I suspect there is a more complex story involved. We are, of course, walking right into the antediluvian, nature versus nurture debate and whether there is libertarian free will or not.
Nice talking to you about this. You've given me much to ponder.
Yes, i recognized this and pulled back from it at the end there with 'No' lol. I suppose the potential for determinism's truth admits of that well.
Likewise - As i'm never on your side of the table, as it were, I am always interested in how things are seen from that perspective.
As a final note, While i probably put less emphasis on the causative nature of this, addiction is such a massive, and under-dealt-with element in criminal behaviour.
Honesty, yes, may be motivated by different influences.
But that's not the same thing as an honest person. The one who is only honest because he's afraid of being found out and punished is fundamentally a dishonest person. If he finds a foolproof way to do it and is sure he can get away with it, he'll be an embezzler or a fence or philanderer. An honest person won't do those things, even if he's quite sure he won't be found be found out.
The devout believer, on the other hand, knows that Someone is always watching and he can't get away with any kind of wrongdoing. He's not particularly honest or charitable or righteous or whatever he's faith demands - he's merely obedient.
Actually it is, as was pointed out, the form is "being honest"; when "Jack was being honest", "being honest" was what Jack was doing. On the other hand, this seems equivalent to "Jack was acting honestly", that is, Jack's actions had an honest quality.
I think this gets at the deeper question: the English form can be of action, quality of action, quality of agent. Which one is it? Or can the same concept encompass all three? Or are these related but distinct concepts?
ie adjective describing an action
Never "Jack honested to Jill about his gambling addiction.", but rather 'confessed' or 'admitted' or ' revealed' Those are words that generally denote honesty without specifically naming it, since to deserve the description 'honest', similar actions would have to be habitual.
Quoting hypericin
You can encompass a concept or several concepts in many ways, just as you can obfuscate them by misapplying language.
A kind of disinterested pleasure that arises when one acts according to the known facts, regardless of special interests, biases, desires, preferences and so on.
Speech or gestures associated with honesty are sometimes used dishonestly, and, conversely, suspected for being sanctimonious or political. Cynics are quick to ridicule anyone in public who appears to be honest.
I suppose the honest mindset has little interest in how it appears, or whether it is associated with honesty.
Again, the English is "Jack was being honest to Jill about his gambling addiction".
Can you reframe what you said in more direct language?
-Tom Storm
my question is what is a mindset? How are you using this word? Is it personality or worldview or a habitual disposition?
The question revolved around determinism versus the free will issue, and the pre-cultural, age that didnt concern with the psychological aspects that a mind set had to contend with, ergo the affect/effect dualism could not have said to have occurred as dualism, in those times.
The reasons for this the movement away from deontology per solidly grounded rules by which causation could be presumed to play a part,(effect); except by relevance to spatial relationships that could literally judge a ground relating to actual causes effecting actual observable witnessed events.
That example at a certain time transformed into the movement of relationships between the observable which became slowly understood as the original event which must have been the earliest non observable event.
The transformation into the critical phase, where everything became doubted, became an extreme shift to support that Whole that became synonymous with God and which was supported by that type of reasoning.
The transformation for affect from effect was the result of such critical thinking, converting the original spatial , defensive territorial protection of early cave men referred to, to the evolution of the spiritual defensiveness of a generic, out of the cave protection against the natural elements and its supernatural counterparts.
The reach for this security , once its absolute manifestation has been shown to consist of a singular event, found that acknowledgement eroded over time, and the new vision required new sources of power to take up the slack.
Simulation toward that goal again turned 180 degrees toward negating that threat as an unproven absolute, and thereby dialectical logic replacing the loss by processing data through natural to artificial means .
The mechanistic reformation of a material exclusivity, changed simulation of events into a link between nature and its axiomatically reactive vindication of its effectively described transformation to an affective equivalent.
I am embarrassed for the expansion to more volume and perhaps more confusion, and my only defense is the unavailability of prior discussions .
If this be the case, I must attest to my ability to recall subtle nuances that can not naturally be accounted for.
To sum up, to answer your question, it is dispositional that is, a deontological movement of willfully disposing the three elements of personality, general disposition and a particular world view into the singular content , a de-differentiated phrase denoting the three in one concept of state of mind a melange, a sentiment, encapsulating more of a feeling state , which Sartres self thought man had expressed as a nausea .
Exactly. Being is a verb. Honest isn't.
Exactly. Subjectively, we don't think, "Jack was being, in an honest way." Rather, "being honest" is a unit of meaning, that happens to be expressed in two words, no different than if the proper English was "Jack was honesting." That just sounds really bad, because it is ungrammatical, but not because it is semantically nonsensical.
Quite a number of terms here I would need an elucidation of to give a particuLely meaningful response - but I THINK I agree overall
Nope. I need to know what you mean to give a meaningful response to your statements. I can clarify anything to myself, but all that does is take me further away from whatever you meant to convey into my own solipsistic machinations (in reference to your claim there :P )
Thanks for making the effort to clarify but I'm afraid I can't make sense of your response.
And thanks for that, and again I dont mean this as a sign of intending not to clarify, but the sentiment quoted above is nearly impossible to separate from Nietzhes resentment, broadly speaking.
C
A real clarification will assuredly follow.I promise .
For instance -
Quoting Bella fekete
What is, "the pre-cultural age that didn't concern with the psychological aspects of a mindset had to contend with...
I don't understand what this sentences means and I don't know what it is referring to in this discussion.
Then you write:
"ergo the affect/effect dualism could not have said to have occurred as dualism, in those times."
Not sure of the meaning here either.
Also if you are wanting to quote another member, highlight the sentence or paragraph and click on "quote" then it automatically shows up as a quote in your reply.
A tantalizing vignette. Can you provide a couple of examples of the type of thing you mean by 'deception' and then how we might understand this deception via a metaphysical mode?
I must say I find most of this fairly much incomprehensible I largely hope thats just me - it doesnt seem to address the objection at all
Quoting Vaskane
A clue
I dont recognise what youre saying in any way relative to what I said.
Your terms are vague and so my response would be pointless. End.
Not helpful.
My initial issue is that I cannot clarify, myself, what he means. Thats objectively true. So yeah the response are just incomprehensible in the face of that. I appreciate hes being poetic but its unhelpful.
You genuinely appear to be off on a random tangent
This is absolute nonsense. If I dont know what you mean, I cant adequately respond. Thats a fact. I have no clue how you think this response says anything other than that you like to sound cryptic.
If thats your vibe we can just agree to not interact lol because it will be fruitless as I have zero interest in wading through self indulgence of this kind
I'd rather not be involved in your self-indulgence :)
Let me make myself very clear: I do not care.
I don't care how many stolen iterations of other people's quotes you can fit into a sophistical wall of text. I do not care that you cannot understand a basic insight into grasping meaning. I do not care that you think of yourself as an arbiter.... I just don't care.
I wont be responding further.
I don't look at the world in a binary way, everything is a form of gradient, statistical, or a matter of probability. You cannot be only honest or only not honest. Instead, the morality around subjects like honesty has to do with the amount of honesty you live by and in which situations you are not honest. If you are honest in all situations but those in which such honesty would hurt others or put you in danger, then that would in my book make you an honest person.
A uniquely bad thinker. This may be our difference, lol.
I dont care.
Actually its the notifications.
I cant mute you.
Again, prefer interacting with adults.
Take care mate :)
The mindset of morality is social awareness, the formation of societies is directed to the common survival and well-being of the individual. Morality applied to an individual in isolation makes no sense, but self-interest is served in the relations of the common expanded concept of the self. Societies among other things, are survival mechanisms. One is born into a social contract, and part of that contract is to serve not only one's own well-being but the well-being of the collective of like selves.
May I interject here a bit?
The Eastern way i IS the Western Way, way way back. Big Brother has always been watching us, and we lost that along the way, and now that same way He is recreated artificially.
Proof: China was technologically very foreward looking and now the West is simulating IT
In my view, a soft Kantian ethical framework functions best. The categorical imperatives in my opinion are naive in their absolutism and centered around only the individual's responsibility, but a softer line in which you combine the first imperative on being honest and tell the truth with the epistemic responsibility of making sure each situation does not lead to harm should guide most people. Basically, always tell the truth, but always focus on being knowledgable enough to know that said truth does not in itself harm.
Quoting YiRu Li
It might be because western philosophy is more rooted in the analytical while eastern focuses more on the experiences, the phenomenological, at least that's my take on it.
The one takeaway I've got from eastern philosophy that in western philosophy seems to go missing is the power of a holistic perspective. Most sciences focus on specific areas and rarely combine everything into a holistic overview. It's mostly when such a holistic viewpoint is applied that we get breakthroughs, but it seems to get lost in the scientific and western philosophical day to day practices. Einstein's general relativity is a good example of a theory that has a holistic perspective that includes most physics up to that date.
In looking at what practical use philosophy has, I'm certain that western philosophy has a better approach on many subjects, but including the holistic approach of eastern philosophy elevates it.
Actually, I think we should ditch the whole eastern vs western concept, since it's mostly just a historical perspective on how different cultures thought about hard questions. Instead, the actual status of philosophy has merged so many approaches from so many corners of the world that the only true method is the one that takes the best approaches from all, ditch the crap, and combining it in a modern framework.
There is value to the way non-western philosophy approaches different topics that breaks free from the chains that western philosophy has in its rigid logical nature. But at the same time, western philosophy is better at universalizing concepts on solid grounds forming logical and empirical foundations. So in my opinion, using non-western traditions in exploring ideas sometimes works better and then take those concepts down to earth with western traditions to evaluate their validity as universal concepts.
This is also lacking today, especially online. Being curious into other people's perspective before arguing against them would solve many problems in the world today.
:lol:
Definitely Hitler
-flanell jesus
.no kidding aside, when an apparently private exchange becomes public domain and the distinction between humor and poetic license follows indigenously , then a pause may become a throw back to the uncertainty of those distinctions.
:up:
In the late Spring and Autumn period, Confucius, accompanied by many students, traveled around lecturing. One day, they had to pass through Pugu, on their way to the state of Wei. At that time, the Wei state official, Duke Gong of Shu, had occupied Pugu. The people of Pugu detained Confucius and his followers. After some negotiations and discussions, the people of Pugu made a request to Confucius: "If you promise not to go to the state of Wei, we will allow you to leave." Faced with the adamant stance of the people of Pugu, Confucius had no choice but to agree and made a covenant with them not to go to the state of Wei. However, once Confucius passed through the city gate, he directly headed towards the state of Wei. Confucius's disciple Zigong asked, "Can covenants be violated?" Confucius replied, "Covenants made under coercion are not even heard by the gods! The most trustworthy person is not bound by agreements made under duress. Otherwise, that would be foolish."
Of course, one's word given under coercion is inhibiting one's will, it is an offense against the individual. When people talk about moral facts, they are missing a vital point, facts are circumstances and/or events present or passed. Morality is based on the identification of one's self with the self in others, this even extends at times to other creatures other than humans. We identify in a creature as a like self, a like self that like us, has the capacity for suffering and joy. This is an abstract concept in a world where life lives upon the lives of other creatures. Being aware of this makes it a hard reality for a compassionate individual.
Self-interest is the seed out of which identification with others fosters the compassion that is the glue of society. Honesty is a default position self to self, one generally lies to deceive or just to maintain one's comfort level among one's peers, it is a warping of reality, however but in some degree it might be a necessity to social cohesion. We are a pattern of species with little variation, where variation is increased you have a differing of species in which the essence is in common, or as the Upanishads states, the self in one is the self in all. The starting point I would say to be honest is our common carbon-based biology, and our common essence across the board.
What characterises the mindset associated with dishonesty? My first impulse is to notice that the mindset must typically include a notion that some advantage will accrue, either personally or tribally.
Consider the deceptive body of a stick insect. It (metaphorically) declares to the world and particularly to its predators "Ignore me, I am a stick." The Blind Watchmaker learns to lie, and simultaneously in the evolution of the predator, tries to learn how to detect a lie. Such is communication between species, in which morality plays no role. Nevertheless, the advantage of deception is obvious.
Imagine a tribe of smallish monkeys in a jungle environment; they have various calls of social identification, and perhaps some to do with dominance and other stuff, but in particular, they have two alarm calls, one warning of ground predators, and one warning of sky predators. One day, one rather low status monkey, who aways has to wait for the others to eat and often misses out on the best food, spots some especially tasty food on the ground, and gives the ground alarm call. The tribe all rush to climb up high, and the liar gets first dibs for once on the treat. This behaviour has been observed, but I won't trouble [s]you[/s] myself with references.
Here, one can clearly see that dishonesty is parasitic on honesty. Overall there is a huge social advantage in a warning system, but it is crucially dependent on honesty, and is severely compromised by individual dishonesty. Hence the social mores, that become morality. Society runs on trust, and therefore needs to deter and prevent dishonesty. And this cannot be reversed because the dependence is one way, linguistically. If dishonesty were ever to prevail and be valorised, language would become non-functional. The alarm call would come to mean both 'predator on the ground', and 'tasty food on the ground'. that is, it would lose its effective warning function and its function as a lie.
This is the key to the narrative regarding honesty (or dishonesty).
In my previous post, I maintained that honesty is a situational behavior, not a permanent trait. And that works with the fidelity of a given society or population.
Trustworthiness (fidelity) is, to me, the word more appropriate with a trait. (I can argue for this if anyone challenges it).
-unenlightened
A very insightful critique, raising indelible? Questions about the reversibility of the traits hard wired to mindsets which tend to appear fixed within both the unfortunate little monkey, whose effort to wolf down the delicious piece of food , he was able to glean from the ground up, and jump at the chance, has also been hardwired , as the alternate could be life threatening.
As it is in reality, such unfortunates are usually wage a war of attrition before expiring, and both sides of such emerging(ensuing) battle share in this primordial struggle, a dog eat dog, monkey eat monkey kind of correlate, where they axiomatically, develop a kind of mutual regard foe each other.
Unfortunately for both, the little monkeys vile becomes a tool by which emerging properties, traits are oft mistaken for inadequate realization of the primary relation, and ironically the little monkey, some of whom can emerge from a long line of such types, develop a kind of private communication by which they can unnoticed , jump to the delicious morsel and feast hastily before being discovered.
And so he thinks, while the crowd below, angrily trying to follow suit, generally fail, because the requisite height becomes unreachable due to a slight edge of compensatory agility, which those still grounded, were unable to match.
Both are hardwired to accept to various degrees this state of participation, bound by a lack of progressive realization toward their long term significance developing awareness toward a realization that their cooperation within their community should include longer termed transitory movements that could end the standoff by repeated attempts to hasten to get to the treat on top.
So what are you really saying? Might makes right?
Quoting Vaskane
-Baker
yes and recollection lost, is the emergence of evil.
Lelepanr
genes over memes, lets configure it.
Your English is a bit off, but not too badly. Basically a lie can only work in a community that expects truth. Clearly there is no community of 'predator and prey', so there is no conflict between the individual interest and the community interest.
But I think there is a lesson here for humanity that in order for everyone to put the community before self interest, everyone must benefit from the community, and not only the dominant members. Someone has put it this way - that the most dangerous person is someone with nothing left to lose. Like that monkey. So with the morality of truth must also come the morality of fairness, and equality.
So a society that is stratified by race or class in a totally unequal way becomes more like a predator/prey arrangement where morality breaks down because society is fractured.
Got it, and slow learning is compensated by extremely high preception, and as such, the.continuous spectral image releases the boquet of lotus flowers, but extreme patience may be a foreshadow which should fill the void
-on the part of the little monkey, that is
Given that, even within the quoted passage, i note that these are 'misguided' emotions, I would say it's fairly clear this is not my position personally. It also wasn't actually what i was talking about.
I believe those individuals think they are fighting people who do believe 'might is right'. I make no comment on whether that's the case, other than to say i've seen it manifest by way of a either misinformation or misguidance time and time again. That was all i was commenting on :)
Quoting baker
Not quite sure why you've noted these together, but the latter was applied to me for a period of close to eight years.
Vaskane's reply following the above comment makes me less inclined to interact with him. Whether that's his fault or not isn't concerning me.
Yet you can't have an ordinary conversation with ordinary people.
(I studied law for a while, btw.)
(I use this list format for clarity only; not at all a function of exasperation or anything like can sometimes be inferred)
1. No. Legal professional - still working my way toward lawyer unfortunately lol but I do work along side lawyers daily and essentially perform their functions without my signature.
2. That's true to a certain extent, and in certain ways. Nominally, the law should not function beyond quality in terms of those disparities. If you have a shitty lawyer, not a lot can be done. But you're right to point out the aggregate reality of that problem.
3. For uneducated people**
4. Yes, but that is misguided and unhelpful to both their case/s and the overarching claim being made.
You're a lawyer, right? What one can readily see in practice is a gross inequality before the law, depending on one's socio-economic status. If one has money for a good lawyer, one can get out of pretty much anything. If one doesn't have such money, even an administrative mistake by a government official can mean the end of one's existence. We're not living under the rule of law; we're living under the rule of money. Money, with which law can be bought. And so for someone who doesn't have much money, dealing with the state really comes down to might makes right.
-Baker
Touché,
The difference between de-facto and de-jute procedures are not exactly immune to total impression convenient interpretation of the black letter, mostly hidden in fine print. , which little subtlety disqualified me as well.
1. No. Legal professional - still working my way toward lawyer unfortunately lol but I do work along side lawyers daily and essentially perform their functions without my signature.
2. That's true to a certain extent, and in certain ways. Nominally, the law should not function beyond quality in terms of those disparities. If you have a shitty lawyer, not a lot can be done. But you're right to point out the aggregate reality of that problem.
3. For uneducated people**
4. Yes, but that is misguided and unhelpful to both their case/s and the overarching claim being made.
seein is not necessarily perceiving, sometimes perceptions bar a message, and here is a continuum an autist can swear by.
Preceptions may bar perceptions in very drastic ways which require extraordinary measures to clear up,
:heart: . The fasting of the heart
In my 20's I worked as an aid and welfare rights adviser. I realised with some alarm that many of the most positive and entrepreneurial of the poor people I was trying to help would do well - would benefit their families, themselves and society as a whole - to lie, as long as they were cunning and bold enough not to be found out. Welfare systems mostly impose a very high marginal tax rate on those earning small amounts of money: that's why small-scale builders and helpers of all kinds ask you for cash, so they don't have to declare it. It's one reason why I'm for a basic universal income: it promotes honesty.
Likewise, if you're a member of a category that those in authority discriminate against, honesty is of doubtful value. Those in authority may despise you for it, your fellows will judge you naive at best, and you're more likely to end up in trouble/jail/humiliation.
Whether it's me or you, I have no idea what you're getting at.
It is more likely you're not groking responses to your ideas adequately, and responding as such.
Yeah, when youre strange, in a strange land, that died in mcarthur park in the rain, like the Chevy in the levy, in Paris.
A wonderful set of references.
It appears you are firmly incapable of considering other, polite, possibilities.
That said:
Quoting Vaskane
Ignoring your continuous ad hominem,
Fine. Nothing abhorrent about this, but... This is a waste of my time, and I don't have the time to wade through misapprehensions, when you could (if capable) just answer directly what you mean, to avoid putting the other person through a slog that you could have avoided with a modicum of good faith.
Again, if this is your vibe, go for it. It isn't mine and my issue is that you seem to have a pretty deep and untouchable superiority complex, in which i have no interest. But thank you for elaborating, nevertheless.
Quoting Vaskane
Unless you';re claiming to have overcome sense perception, this is built-in to every conversation ever had. Doesn't have a reason to be said here.
It is not my problem if the emperor has no clothes, Vaskane.
Quoting Vaskane
Bizarre. Can you let me know your reasoning for this? Rather htan your claim?
Quoting Vaskane
I have. Multiple times. But your job here, it seems, is ignoring everything relevant to maintain a position of both superiority, and aloofness which allows you to avoid, altogether, speaking without extreme affectation.
Again, Not my vibe. Enjoy :)
It's a known turn of phrase. I'm sure you can clarify for yourself ;) .
You've quoted my first response, and your second response, in reverse order. Whether that matters, I don't know, but it's incorrect.
Quoting Vaskane
Nothing in the quoted piece suggests anything of the sort.
And in fact, I feel no need to clarify as the comment stands on it's own.
You've not shown me any reasoning for hte quote I questioned.
I allowed for that possibility - thanks for confirming.
:up:
Quoting Bella fekete
Tell me what you mean.
Take care.
:clap:
Great post!
How do you think this account of morality meshes with inequality?
You describe dishonesty as a tool of the low status, as a means of achieving a more equal share. Moral norms are introduced to counter the dishonesty strategy, and in general all the strategies that benefit the individual at the cost of the group (this for me is just our notion of "evil"). This moral system imposes a cost on uncooperative behavior. This cost can take the form of loss of social capital, loss of privileges, at the extreme, exclusion and death, and today loss of property and freedom.
But then, given the initial, natural state of inequality of social (therefore hierarchical) species, morality only exacerbates the inequality. The high status can well afford the social capital cost of immoral acts (and today, the financial costs as well). Moreover, to be high status means that just as benefits are disproportionally maximized, costs are disproportionally minimized. So they can very easily afford the discounted costs. Therefore, the high status are able to exploit immorality to entrench and increase their positions.
Whereas, for the low status, immoral acts become a very risky gambit. They can hardly afford the costs. Failure can easily mean exclusion, injury, and therefore death (and today, devastating financial costs and prison terms). Therefore, the low status are ill equipped to exploit immorality as a means to normalize their low status.
What do you think? Is increasing inequality an inherent feature of moral systems?
Sorry to be disingenuous, but then, sure, everything repositioned and , or disposed, suffers sense of critical perception of disorganization, whereas quick fixes, short cuts suddenly jump out of nowhere and imply unintended perceptions that may allude to a sign which does not come close enough to a clearly constructed idea.
That this procedural shift necessarily implies some other mind set which approaches a sense of dishonesty, is questionable , and exhibits a preceptive bias, which usually is merely a matter of opinion, that may not rise to the level of a superiority complex.
Just a passing through comment but the opinions do not suggest and form of judgement, while sustaining an allowable neutral attitude, which can shift loves love delicate balancing act proportionally and grossly out of joint, that creates the very dissembling quality interpreted on opposite positions on the fulcrum.
It wasn't a comment on the OP. And again, don't know if it's your writing style, or my lack of comprehension but it's hard to work out what you meant if it applies to the rest of our exchange.
I think Vaskane has a superiority complex because of the outright ego-centric claims his made as directly against other posters/people raising himself above them in various aspects. And whether his right, that is certainly a complex.
Thats another matter of opinion issue, what Im getting it subsists in your comment on my sixties musical menus as applied to the a set of referential successions, and how that applies to your current comment of cutting off any connection with Vaskanes superiority complex and my possible inference to other references, with which they may or may not be linked.
And that means little, but is a fairly common method of unintended or intended instances of obfuscation ,.
Such literary devices, may even liven up an otherwise stagnant progression of some design.
Bella fekete
A wonderful set of references.
-AmedeusD
This reference is the one alluded to
Please highlight the text you want to quote, and press 'Quote' in the little blue box. Otherwise, I do not know you are responding without checking the thread :)
Okay. Thank you for that - i still cannot put together a coherent point from your post. My noting that those references are wonderful had nothing whatsoever to do with the wider thread besides alluding to being misunderstood. And, unfortunately, I cannot understand you :P
This is an excellent set of thought-provoking prompts. Thank you for the OP.
In my observations, the mindset (or paradigm) associated with honesty generally includes a combination of the following qualities:
Therefore, the word "honest" can be a noun, verb and adjective; sometimes simultaneously. And yes, I do believe a person can be considered honest, even if they occasionally engage in deception.
It's interesting to see a Confucius case:
The Master said: If you don't try to anticipate deception, and you don't plan for your not being believed, yet are the first to be aware of these things, aren't you a worthy? - Xian wen ??[14:31]
Thanks everyone's reply and made this question clearer!
A new question based on our discussion:
Inequality is the root cause of dishonesty.
e.g. good <-> evil, rich <-> poor, beautiful <-> ugly, young <-> old, high <-> low, correct <-> wrong, have <-> not have, left <-> right, subjective <-> objective, absolute <-> relative
For each unequal situation, we can find a dishonest example in daily life.
e.g. plastic surgery: beautiful <-> ugly, hypocrite: correct <-> wrong.
This world is not equal and we cant change it externally.
But there is a way to help us deal with the inequalities and be peaceful & honest.
What is the way?
I think it should be avoided as much as a rabbid racoon or a rusty blade with tetanus.
The foundation of compassionate behavior is in identifying one's self with the self in others, only then does compassion arise. Where there is no identification, there is no compassion, and no what might be called proper, kind behaviors. I know honesty is not always considered kind, but it is, honesty does not contribute to a delusional world, or a delusional individual, it does not bring chaos into the world.
:up: