roseweird posted:

i guess theoretically the superego can cripple/atomize the ego with unreasonable or inappropriate demands, however this amounts to blaming god for things, which is fun but not helpful

all the superego does is bombard the ego with unreasonable demands.

swirlsofhistory posted:

okay, this is another iteration of his thesis that we don't judge correctness by comparison to a mental image, (in contrast to the Tractatus), and more broadly that cognitive content can't ground language. but that's not a problem for private spirituality any more than any other private experience or sensation unless someone is going to claim their spirituality is completely unintelligible to everyone else, forever.

roseweird posted:

Lessons posted:

i don't care about consciousness at all w/r/t abortion.

agreed, abortion is justifiable entirely in terms of right to bodily self-determination, but what about infanticide

idk, what about it

Lessons posted:

swirlsofhistory posted:


okay, this is another iteration of his thesis that we don't judge correctness by comparison to a mental image, (in contrast to the Tractatus), and more broadly that cognitive content can't ground language. but that's not a problem for private spirituality any more than any other private experience or sensation unless someone is going to claim their spirituality is completely unintelligible to everyone else, forever.

It applies to 'mental images' (memories? visualizing?), but I don't think it stops there. If you, say, decide to freely interpret your own spirituality and then write your own bible on it, refering back to that bible when you want to remind yourself of it, are you following your own rules? It depends. If you allow yourself to freely interpret the bible like when you wrote it, then certainly you aren't following any rule. What if you try to grasp the original interpretation that you wrote it with, trying to feel for the mental rails you were on the first time? Same problem in the time table. The only way you could be said to be following any rule in your bible is if you didn't really interpret it freely to begin with, like if your interpretation was just denials or affirmations of rules in other beliefs, and so it was parasitic on how those other beliefs were understood, because those other beliefs do have standards to keep them in line – which you then borrowed, turning them upside down for your own spirituality.

roseweird posted:

let's rephrase the question: if i try to kill an infant in public, won't someone stop me, even if that child objectively has no value to any of them?

yes, but because of social conditioning/socially constructed norms. not because there's anything Absolutely wrong with murdering a baby

but then, we might also say there's some sort of emotional reaction. But their appeal to emotions is, again, logically fallacious.

swirlsofhistory posted:

Lessons posted:

swirlsofhistory posted:


okay, this is another iteration of his thesis that we don't judge correctness by comparison to a mental image, (in contrast to the Tractatus), and more broadly that cognitive content can't ground language. but that's not a problem for private spirituality any more than any other private experience or sensation unless someone is going to claim their spirituality is completely unintelligible to everyone else, forever.

It applies to 'mental images' (memories? visualizing?), but I don't think it stops there. If you, say, decide to freely interpret your own spirituality and then write your own bible on it, refering back to that bible when you want to remind yourself of it, are you following your own rules? It depends. If you allow yourself to freely interpret the bible like when you wrote it, then certainly you aren't following any rule. What if you try to grasp the original interpretation that you wrote it with, trying to feel for the mental rails you were on the first time? Same problem in the time table. The only way you could be said to be following any rule in your bible is if you didn't really interpret it freely to begin with, like if your interpretation was just denials or affirmations of rules in other beliefs, and so it was parasitic on how those other beliefs were understood, because those other beliefs do have standards to keep them in line – which you then borrowed, turning them upside down for your own spirituality.

wittgenstein is ultimately going to say every attempt to ground language like this is ultimately problematic. you could rewrite this paragraph to be about the theory of relativity rather than private religion (and if you don't believe me i can demonstrate). the point is that language is grounded in social convention, not cognitive content, which is to a large extent a response to his earlier work in the Tractatus and logical positivism as whole, and as such is aligned against the analysis you're trying to make, i.e. we can rule something out as a grammatical error.

roseweird posted:

things are only ever subjectively wrong, that is why it is inane to plead for objectivity in morality

yeah, sorry didn't see this. i think we're making the same point?