So is this basically "we should do philosopher kings"?

Rape is not fulfilling the need to reproduce, its an unintended side effect of hormones.

Biology is objective, but evolution is not perfect, that doesnt disprove the objectivity of biology and the morality developed based on it.

I don't know what your native language is or where you are from, but I still want to add that I feel like the problem regarding the written language that you mentioned was something I didn't think of. I was talking about the spoken word specifically. So, I guess what you are saying is true, but - correct me if I'm mistaken with this assumption - together with your second point about native speakers correcting each other, I will still argue, that both of those phenomenons definitely happen more regularly when the language in question is English.

Maybe due to it being an internationalized language, so you never really know who you are talking to, unless you are seated square in front of them; or maybe due to English not being coherent regarding its own pronounciation, so people are more prone to point out what they consider to be 'faulty'..? Anyways, I have observed native English speakers doing that to each other quite a few times, while I can come up with exactly zero occurences of this in my own native language, which is German. This leads me to conclude that this happens with differing frequencies, depending on the language.

r/enddemocracy

At one time it wasn’t.

That’s the point.

Can someone ELI5? I'm feeling a bit confused. Is this whole argument for reason as a political system over democracy pointless if the aim of such governance is the welfare of a population who define their welfare based on a variety of social values and ethics?

Seems like a chicken or the egg scenario.

Or is the argument saying that people should base their values solely on reason? Seems like a potentially facist line of reasoning.

It's true that we stop discerning differences between sounds that don't carry meaning in our native languages, as you said, but I think it's possible to regain the ability later in life if you become very accustomed to the language and you find those differences mattering in your every day linguistic environment.

I gradually became fluent in Japanese over the 6 years I lived in Japan, and just last year I realized the way I had been pronouncing ん "n" in some contexts was wrong, but I only realized because I first noticed the way a native speaker was saying 千円 "sen-en" (the way I'd been saying it) was something more like se-yen (which maybe explains why in English we call it yen instead of 円 "en").

There were other pronunciation things I realized over time like this. So it takes a long time, but in my experience you can re-learn to make differentiation like that, and you really do start hearing things you couldn't before.

What does 'shape' mean here?

I'm even more interested in learning Arabic after this, do you reckon if knowing Urdu (vocabulary mainly but i can read a bit) will help learning Arabic?

This isn't entirely related to what we're talking about but...

> Yes, ASL and other sign languages are full-fledged languages in their own right.

I don't have any mute/deaf friends so my only exposure to SL was random clips in movies/tv shows and signing in like the news or whatever. But the impression that those gave me was that SL is essentially a way to "say" words by signing them, little more than subtitles.

But I watched the latest season of The Circle and there's a deaf girl there and hooooooly shit is there a lot of emotion and mannerisms that can be delivered through SL. It's legit fascinating to see someone like her communicate that way. She has an interpreter with her that not only understands the words she's saying but also the way she's saying them and it's amazing but also kinda obvious like I don't know how I didn't realize this before? Of course a language that relies on hand gestures can be extremely animated.

Everything eventually boils down to pleasure and pain.

Boba tea bubbles are rounded objects, but I do get your point with kiki.

I don't understand the usefulness of determinism. If it is true that free will does not exist it still seems more useful to believe that it does at least to an extent.

Personally a lot of things in my life are modeled around the idea of free will and have it as a foundation. I view myself as having chosen my job, chosen what to eat. What to do as a hobby etc. At a personal level it seems that believing in determinism instead of free will would wreck much of the foundation of how I organize and go about my life.

It seems that this is true for the vast majority of people and is reflected in society. With other major beliefs there are work arounds that allow you to change how you live your life and move on if you change your belief. If you switch religions you can adopt new customs. Similarly if you become Atheist you can focus on non religious things to adapt your lifestyle.

The same could be said for other major belief changes, like political views, moral values, historical understanding etc.

But I don't see how this works with determinism. How do you effectively run your life if you don't believe that you have control over how you run it. It seems like an oxymoron.

Not saying determinists can't life a full and nice life, but I don't understand how determinists cope with not believing in free will. It just seems like believing in free will whether or not it is true is incredibly helpful.

There is an elephant in the room with (1) - I have a lot of popular support - that people don't talk about. It is a problem that is the cause of most violent conflicts today.

And the problem is this: Yes, let's say we accept that popular support is the source of legitimacy. But popular support among who? What should the divisional unit even be?

The Alabamans don't want to have their policies dictated by a Californian's vote. A deep Red community within California may even want their government to "get their hands off" interfering with their life.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish minorities in Turkey and Iraq demand autonomy from Turks' and Arabs' votes. Catalonia and Hong Kong want autonomy. Who gets to separate, and why? Yes, more votes within the voting arena wins - but what are the boundaries of that voting arena, and what is the basis for it?

The world has never arrived at a satisfactory answer for this. In the 20th century, the international community applied a strongly racial logic, separating nations post-WW2 and post-colonialism on the basis of race (and sometimes, religion). But this was always deeply flawed because of multiculturalism. So what is the rightful divisional unit? There is no solid answer.

>systemic racism, gender pay gap,

Do you have anything from this millennium?

If you want to see the fate of Democracies, look out the windows....

>If anything, it shows that words can indeed have special meaning to many people, meaning that extends beyond the boundaries of language.

The meanings of words does not extend beyond the boundaries of language.

I think you should read Fabienne Peters work. Her book Democratic Legitimacy is a good place to start. She also wrote the sep article on political legitimacy. This will help you categorize these various views you want to engage (normative v descriptive legitimacy, procedural v. Instrumental legitimacy, moral v epistemic approaches).

One challenge you're going to have is that if democracy is entirely instrumental then who is deciding these outcomes the democracy is meant to achieve? The point of democracy is that we all get together and debate what the good life or good society is without one person or group imposing their view on another without sufficient justification.

A second area to work on is defining what you mean by reason. One of the big debates within this field is what counts as a public reason and what limitations can be placed on reasoning. Kevin Vallier and G Gaus have written extensively on this. You argue that reason has legitimacy but not democracy, yet democracy is the arena where we share and debate reasons. If we had a God's eye view or AI computer that knew all the correct answers then we wouldn't need to share reasons but since we don't have that, democracy is the opportunity for us to deliberate as equals without imposing our own conception of whats easonable on others.

Actually, experimental psychology and neuroscience - you're quite funny. I'm getting my PhD currently, and I can tell someone has an insecurity problem since you feel the need to disparage me behind your keyboard. I also research linguistics fyi, so I'd really like a single opinion from you on this topic matter. Where exactly is the "nothingness"? Have you yourself actually considered there are a great deal of linguistic uncertainties to be hashed out between monolinguals and bilinguals? If you actually think what I wrote is just filler then you can't even see the point and that's just rich. Maybe don't disparage someone for the way they speak, I approached this topic raising a different and new perspective and it's people like you who make earnest discussion impossible.

Failing to recognize the sensuous quality of words is a failure of perception on your part pal

Yes, ASL and other sign languages are full-fledged languages in their own right. I took an ASL class once and I don’t remember much but I do remember that it has different grammar from English.

Some english speaking natives will newer understand how some other language can enrich human expression.

I am both a native English and native Arabic speaker. Having known both languages since early childhood, and having become proficient in the use of both, I would say that, along with other major differences, Arabic is more of an onomatopeic language than English. A simple example is "Maazah", or sheep. Maa is the sound sheep make, while sheep has nothing to do with with the actual characteristics of that particular animal species. "Sheep", however is phonetically similar to the word "shear", which is the act of cutting the wool away from sheep. I gave this example because it illustrates a difference between newer Western (Old English c. 550AD) and older Eastern (Arabic c. 500CE) languages. In newer languages, words tend to be born of relative object descriptors and functions (this is especially true in Germanic languages), whereas words from older languages tend to be born of feelings, expressions, and heard sounds. This illustrates a key divide in frame of reference between speakers of old and new languages. As the English language pervades much of the East today, these subtleties of native languages are being lost, though it is indeed debatable whether what is lost is the beauty without the loss of meaning. Many Eastern traditions view sounds as sacred objects in and of themselves, for example Mantras, which are thought to contain energy and information separate from yet entangled with the meaning of the words. In other words, a word is not just a symbol. Ancient theological texts from many cultures claim that the "word" predates creation, a fascinating proposition, even if you don't believe the stories and myths. If anything, it shows that words can indeed have special meaning to many people, meaning that extends beyond the boundaries of language.

You could be living a healthy life style, eating balanced diet, exercise everyday, and one day you are walking down the road, maybe you are 35 years old with 2 little kids, a boy and a girl walking by yourside, and some drunk teen who have been out partying all night swerve his new sports car his daddy bought him into you and your family killing all of you, ending your bloodline forever despite all the effort you have made to built your life into a perfect one.

Unfortunately it requires a lot of unlearning. While this is more of an observation through experience - there is no ONE way to make a sound or even a specific phoneme, it is a spectrum. In very much the same way your ‘walk’ is uniquely formed from more or less a blank slate, so is the way you use your voice, mouth, etc.

So to properly process and form phonemes that your native language doesn’t have is an additional challenge and if it requires unlearning bad habits you have exponentially more work to do. That says nothing about the other mechanics of the mind-body connection