Posted: Oct 06, 2017 4:13 am
zoon wrote:I don’t think it’s something we just invent, it’s more analogous to language, it’s a way of thinking that’s heavily wired into our brains by evolution.
Whose brains? Do you have any data, let alone a theoretical model? No, I don't think you do. I think you have some opinions. You're taking what people say as evidence for something going on in their brains, and that's fair enough, but the best you can say is that it's something going on in the language centers. I think you're trying to say that it's something more than or just different from that, and you're bullshitting.
That many families involve childcare is, I suppose, something you could call 'hard-wired', but you don't really know that much in detail about how most people treat their children, other than what people say about how they were treated as children. Then you make a big leap to talking about something analogous to language, but implying it's different. I'm not saying your conjecture is automatically wrong, only that you're far to confident in issuing your dicta about 'ways of thinking'.
You'll be bullshitting about this until you get the message about what's involved in bullshitting. The phrase 'way of thinking' is what's nothing more than a bullshit opinion. It doesn't speak about data. That most people aren't constantly beaten by their parents is your best evidence of something hard wired by evolution. If you eat all your children, your species goes extinct. Derh.
romansh wrote:Of course this type of manipulation is quite useful ... but then is it moral?
So you're asking whether 'moral' is something more than a dictionary definition based on common usage, which is a good question. So is this kind of theorizing is anything more than analyzing how people use language? If you're arguing that it isn't then you're offering serious input into yet another endless ratskep confusion trying to analyze the way people use language. What is the deal? Are you and archibald and zoon technical experts in semantics? I know I'm not. I'm an expert in looking at and commenting on idiotic discussions at RatSkep, although over the last six months or so, you're managing not that badly to keep up with me on post counts.