Well the sun is technically responsible, in the same way blankets have more of an effect on mammals than lizards.
You mean by mammals generating their own heat? I hope you are not ignoring that the sun’s current activity is at a low point and it can not be responsible for the recent increase in heat.
More blankets are made from mammals that from lizards, we’re on pretty safe ground there.
Yes indeed, whooshed the fuck out of me real good.
Well done 
Okay, tell me what Snugglity Wumppitz is.
Come on GIGO, this is silly, my whole point is that “class struggle” is being used in a sloppy, amorphous, inconsistent manner with an internal logical and definitional structure that doesn’t stand up to analysis. That’s my whole point.
Yes, we could define it in any number of ways for any number of situations, but it’ll generally come down to “group conflict.” We might (might) be on fairly solid ground if we looked at conflicts between two groups with roughly homogenous socioeconomic statues for their members, and the conflict was over socioeconomic issues, but even then there are issues. In Texas, for example, the population is overwhelmingly right of the American political center. So while, say, many poor people in America say that the government should increase funding for social programs and tax rich people to pay for that, many poor people in Texas will say that the government should cut taxes on everybody and gut social services.
Does that make it a left/right issue, a class issue, a class issue with political overtones? Maybe a political issue with class overtones?
That’s my whole point. The terms can be used to mean pretty much whatever the person using them wants them to mean, and very often do not offer a predictive or explanatory power.
That’s why we get the kind of silliness Olent was proposing when absolutely all progress and social change only comes from “class struggle”. And how we get the logical snarl that Glutton’s attempts bring us to, in which lower class people arguing for more social services in order to help the poor and more taxes on the rich are part of “class struggle” and committing a “class action” just like lower class people arguing for fewer social services on general principle and less taxes on the rich are part of “class struggle” and committing a "class action.
And, under Glutton’s logic, both an action and its diametric opposite, both whether we define it as helping or hurting a class, both whether it’s undertaken by a group on behalf of their meta-group or has nothing to do with it? Well, it’s all “class struggle” by “class actions”.
If you absolutely require me to provide a definition for “class struggle” I’ll have to remain with the one I’ve already given, which would be “group conflict”.
Now, you might point out that that’s not a very specific or useful definition. I’d counter by pointing out that I don’t believe that “class struggle” is a very specific of useful concept in many situations, and that often even in situations where it does apply, “disagreements over economic policy” or “disagreements over political representation”, or what have you, will be more accurate and useful phrases.
That’s actually a good example of what I’m talking about. The existence, nature and properties of the sun are not in real dispute. There is no such objective certainty for the category or categories of “class”, nor for the definition, context and logical coherence of “class struggle”.
Let’s make this clearer:
In Marxist terms, a class struggle is the struggle between workers and the owners of the means of production. In Marx’s world, these two classes are separated, and the working class is exploited by the owners of the means of production. The only way for the workers to gain is through political struggle against the owners of production, in an attempt to recapture the ‘social surplus’ they believe they have lost to the upper class.
This type of distinction is utterly nonexistent in capitalist countries. You can have impoverished owners of businesses, and wealthy workers. The “petit bourgeoisie”, or the small business and managerial classes, make up a much larger segment of the population. Competition in labor has moved more wealth to workers, and there is significant mobility between all classes.
Class in America is more likely to be the result of age or voluntary choice. The poor tend to be younger than the wealthy. They tend to be people who chose not to go to college. Certainly some lacked that choice, but many people who did not go to college could actually have managed to go had they been willing to sacrifice long enough. So we make choices, and find our own levels of prosperity. We usually get richer as we get older, and we get promoted up into more powerful positions. This makes sense, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
The constant focus on class by the left requires them to believe that there is real class struggle, and that it should be the overriding issue for Americans and be something government should be empowered to change. There is no doubt that there are people having a tough time, and even that there are people who currently need help from the govenrment. But that’s a temporary situation. Ten years from now there will still be 5-10% unemployment, but it will be a different 5%-10% of the people.
Either you believe that the classes should engage in political struggle, in which case you’re a liberal or a socialist, or you’re a libertarian and believe that government should simply help maintain a level playing field, and then let people rise or fall on the choices they make. That ultimately will lead to a healthier, stronger society than will having the citizenry constantly fighting for control of the economy through the political process.
Exactly. Your mammalocity is why blankets are warm, but thicker blankets do insulate better even with less input heat. Just a nit pick. I’m not disputing AGW, just pointing out technicalities can paint a misleading picture.
Baby talk for Snuggle Jumpsuit 
And I could agree more with you if it is clear where are you coming from, as shown even in the recent Sun distraction, this is not hard to do. Nor is there a need to respond with a wall of text.
Now that is what I think it was needed, incidentally I noticed that the term used is also “Class Conflict” and many encyclopedias do report on both.
http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/class-struggle
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Class_conflict
I would thing the “good example” showed how silly it was to resort to Snugglity Wumppitz
If your opposition is based on belief and reduction to the absurd then it is no wonder why we are getting walls of text with little on the way of citations. My main point is that for good or for evil we have to use what current sociologists and philosophers are using. Otherwise it is useless replies to useless BrainGlutton points. And if there is no consensus on the definitions **BrainGlutton **is giving us I would agree more with you.
:rolleyes:
I was just being nice.
The posts of yours to which I was referring as “incomprehensible” – and I thought I had made that as clear as possible without linking to each one – were this:
And this:
And, though not it is not quite on-topic, and I certainly won’t be defending Olentzero’s Marxist position in that debate, this one also bears a look here:
Now, FinnAgain, I have the honor of calling to your attention that “incomprehensible” is, well, the most kind and generous conceivable characterization of your statements above that is in any way rooted in truth. There are many characterizations far more appropriate and accurate, but I’m not entirely comfortable using them outside the Pit. Neither “intelligent” nor “honest” nor “argument” nor “a verbal expression of thoughts” is, or belongs, anywhere on that list.
Which is why I chose the word “incomprehensible” for reference in the OP. In hindsight, a most regrettable error on the side of courtesy.
Oh, and one more thing, and you really need to talk to your doctor about this: Use of the word “monkeyshines” is a possible indicator of advanced senility, regardless of your actual biological age.
I think that merits a :rolleyes:
No, it showed the difference between an objective term with well defined properties and a well defined nature, and nonsense. Would it have made any difference if just like “class struggle” means “group conflict”, I’d said that “Snugglity Wumppitz” meant “things that have to do with the climate?”
My opposition is quite clear, and if you ignore it in order to handwave it away as a “wall of text”, then it’s no surprise that you claim it’s only about belief and reductio ad absurdum. For instance, in that “wall of text” was an extensive elaboration on why I felt that both the term and the use it was being put to were vague and lacked the specificity and elaboration power to service as a rigorous analytical or predictive tool.
As for citations, I’m really not sure what you think they add. Even if every sociologist on the planet used the same set of terms, that wouldn’t make it any more valid than if every philosopher in medieval Europe had talked about the necessity for “a good Christian life”.
No, of course we don’t. We can use our own terms, and/or we can point out that the terms that the sociologists are using are useless/wrong/bad/whatever. If every sociologist on the planet defined “good” as “smashing yourself in the face with a hammer”, would that become good? You’d throw up your hands and declare that from now on, that’s what good must mean if we’re talking in societal terms? Or would you say that it was silly, and we could still discuss what was good but that people using the word would have to define their terms?
That’s just a bandwagon fallacy. Even if every ivory tower academician on the planet used Glutton’s same terms, that wouldn’t prove that they were good terms to use.
x2
Talking about intellectual dishonesty…
And no, your snark was fairly accurate. You did not comprehend my point, or why your argument failed, and even though the first two people to respond to this thread immediately understood both, you still had no response more nuanced than “Nuhn unh!!!”
As for your first example, we’ve already gone over Athens. I pointed out there, and explained here, that the issue was not one of class at all, but only some men (and not any women) fighting some other men for political power. I know you’d just like to snark at my post and try to handwave it away, just like you tried to handwave away the differences between physics and sociology with the factual rebuttal known as an ad hominem [del]fallacy[/del] logical rebuttal.
You’re first instinct towards snark was accurate, the issue is indeed one of comprehension.
You are unable to actually rebut anything I’ve said, because you’re wrong. So instead you handwave it away or respond with ad hominem fallacies.
Hilariously, you just actually quoted your original lack of comprehension and my response. The Gods only know why… but it is a good example. You claimed that I had argued that the Athenian Democracy did not “make a difference”. I pointed out that despite that glaring… textual divergence of yours, I’d never said it didn’t matter, and had in fact listed it as a major societal change. That’s a good example, thanks. People should click on that link and see another reason why they should look to my actual quotes and not your claims about their contents.
And wouldn’t it be something if you actually did more than post it and reply “Nuhn unh!!!” along with some rather sad bit of snarking?
Devastating factual rebuttal, again.
No, one has also to rely on how valid the examples or evidence presented are. The problem here is to deny that no one has done this, and I have seen papers and cites that are coming from sociologists and philosophers that are not Marxist using those terms.
It seems that you are assuming that all sociologists or philosophers are communists or that it would be impossible that serious sociologists or philosophers of today would use those terms.
What I have seen is that current sociologists and philosophers do not dismiss items like classes just because some poster in a message board demanded so, what they do is to compare the predictions made by Marx and show that his theory needs to be changed or dismissed because it is clear that Marx simplified too much.
http://www.stephenhicks.org/2010/03/02/marxs-three-failed-predictions-ep/
Paradoxically, I think that Marx was indeed attempting to be scientific because he offered predictions to test his theory. Many predictions thus have failed, and the demonstration of it came by using terms and methods that can not be dismissed just because some say that we should.
I think it is entirely valid for someone to claim that the terms of the debate are not crystalline in their clarity, and therefore are beneath his stringent standards. Such a person should be allowed to “to take a pass”, and be assured that no further participation will be demanded of him.
Then the evidence, examples, reasoning, logic, definitions, etc… are what matter, not where they’re found. A lack of cites is not at issue. Especially if the discussion is “Olent and Glutton have not defined a set of objective terms with internally consistent logic that form a stable framework for evaluation, description and prediction.”
Bwah?
I’m assuming neither. And as I’ve pointed out to you, it wouldn’t matter if sociologists (or philosophers, or used car salesmen) use the terms, what matters if whether or not they’re good terms.
Discussing the actual problems with defining and using class in analysis is fruitful. That’s what I’m doing. Telling me that X number of academicians use the terms that I’m arguing aren’t good terms? That’s not fruitful. Postmodernists and feminist literary critics both use their own set of terms, and common sets of terms, and analyze the same texts in radically different and often mutually exclusive manners. That doesn’t mean that their terms are always beyond reproach. Why, then, when sociologists and/or philosophers use the same terms (even if they don’t define them the same way), that means that their terms are beyond reproach?
The test of the ideas of any philosophers or sociologists (or lion tamers) is the quality of their ideas, not the conformity with which those ideas are expressed or discussed.
It’s perfectly possible to debunk Marx’s nonsense without using the terms he did (it’s actually quite proper not to let one’s opponent inform the very structure of the debate). And, obviously, I am not dismissing any terms “just because I say that we should.” In point of fact, there was content on those “walls of text”.
If you refer to acknowledge, let alone respond to my reasoning then it’s rather odd for you to claim that it doesn’t even exist and I’m just arguing by fiat.
Well, to explain, I have found that in discussions like this if one has a good basis to claim that the content offered is not by fiat then one should not have a problem coming with cites.
Lets have them.
(And as it is clear that you and him are missing this, this goes also for BrainGlutton.)
If you want him to give a non-hostile response, why don’t you try doing so yourself? And if you don’t want such a response, why complain when you get the opposite?
I don’t think any of your arguments are really bad, but they are needlessly pedantic. He has defined the concept, and you have provided no proof that his definition is insufficient. You just keep asserting that it is.
Also, if you get someone misrepresenting you, there are too choices: either the person is intentionally misrepresenting you, for which a non pit response is pointless, or you are communicating ineffectively. Seeing as you tend to write in an overly complicated manner, my money is on the latter.
I need to point this out also:
Well, they are, as reported by encyclopedias and dictionaries. What it is clear to me is that accepting that the terms are good does not mean that we automatically have to assume that everything the creators of the terms came up with is valid. We should not be scared of definitions.
No.
Dictionaries point out what common usage is. Encyclopedias are hardly gospel, and while their writers tend to be better than Wikipedia’s average, using their articles as a substitute for discussion is an absurdity. The fact that they use certain terms proves that the terms are in use, it does not prove that the terms are good terms to use.
That has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not “everything the creators of the terms came up with is valid”. You’re simply using fallacies.
The “four humours” was the defining set of terms to be used when discussing medicine for, roughly, two millennia. That doesn’t mean that they were good terms, or that someone giving reasons for why they weren’t would properly be shut up by saying “But, all the philosophers, dictionaries and all of those who specialize in leech-craft, they all agree that the four humours are the proper terms to use.” It certainly doesn’t mean you could shut up someone saying that they weren’t good terms, by demanding that they find citations of other people also saying that they weren’t good terms.
You are wrong.
My argument about the use of the terms in question is based on the reasoning I have laid out. You have deliberately chosen to handwave away what I’ve written as a “wall of text”. But my arguments stand or fall based on their own merit, and a cite of someone else making the same argument that I’m making wouldn’t cause it to be any more or less correct.
I have not argued anything by fiat, I have taken pains to elaborate on exactly what my reasoning is. Don’t then ask for additional reasoning if you choose to ignore mine. And certainly don’t ignore mine as a “wall of text” (all 17 grouped lines of it) and then expect me to provide another bit of text that might commit the same sin as being in a “wall”.
I couldn’t care less, honestly and truly. I’m used to Glutton enough to know what his responses to me will be like. My point is that they are hostile and lack content. His response to being proven wrong about the nature of physics and sociology? An insult. His claim here to show how my points were somehow in error? Simply quoting them… and then some insults.
I have no problem with snark, I’m just pointing out that he’s got no rebuttals because all he has in response is snark.
Fictional.
I have argued for exactly why the definition is insufficient. You can pretend that I have not, or you can address what I’ve argued and show why I’m wrong in any of the particular claims I’ve made. Handwaving is also not a valid rebuttal any more than snark is. Nor is ignoring something.
Not at all. Whatever the source of Glutton’s “misinterpretations” (or “misrepresentations” or whatever) of my text, it’s quite relevant that folks should check out what I’ve actually said when he makes claims about what I’ve said. The cause for Glutton’s errors is not my concern in this forum. The fact that they’re there is enough, and I’d like people to read what I’ve actually said rather than what Glutton claims I’ve said, as I quite like having what I’ve said be what I’ve said, and what I have not said be what I have not said.
Keeps things straighter that way.
But that is why I have less problems finding cites.
Lets see an example of how terms are not dismissed:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2009.01248.x/full
What is important to notice here is that the author makes clear that elements of Marxist or liberal theories are not used.
One line goes like this:
This idea does appear on other recent books and papers, that is that the class struggles of the past are tamed thanks to the use of more democracy.
More evidence that Marx failed at prognostication but the terminology is still there. So, not only used by dictionaries, but by the sociologists of today. And no, it does not mean that the use of the terminology is bad just that serious sociologists have to modify and change based on the evidence.
Now, if we only could confirm where **BrainGlutton **got his definitions…
Nope, the reality remains that you are just a poster on a message board, and as I have looked at the subject, your points are not really clear. As you reported valid evidence before, other posters have noticed that lack of clarity, will wonders ever cease?
I will have to note here that by providing a cite you would save a lot of typing, also I would be able to check the expertise and qualification of your sources.
No, let’s not. Showing the terms being used is not the point, as yet again,* I have not disputed that they are used. *
I have not disputed that they are used, I have disputed that they are good terms.
Your first point is pure fallacy. My analysis is either correct or incorrect based on its merits, not whether or not I’m posting on a message board. Your second has nothing to do with whether or not it’s necessary to bring in other people saying the same things I am. If my points are not clear, you’re welcome to ask for clarification or dispute them. So far, much of what you’ve done is to handwave them away.
Again, this is a fallacy. The “expertise and qualifications” of anybody are irrelevant to whether or not the argument they’re making is supported by reason. Again, all the best sorts of folks in the medieval period could have talked your ear off about the importance of not being too phlegmatic, and balancing that phlegm out with the three other humours.
No, this one you can not have. It has been shown by contless examples in previous discussions regarding climate that citations will do more than just show that points are supported by reason.
By your example I would expect that the guys proposing the humours theory as valid to come with citations that would be easy to demonstrate that they are not supported by any scientific organization of today, One can then even find the papers the humours guys published and check if their ideas had any validity.
Of course I’m assuming here that your sources or the places you learned about your points will be harder to dismiss. But the longer this goes without citations then I have to conclude that **BrainGlutton **is more on the money, but not by much.