"When your brain tries to heal itself, functions that were once held in damaged parts of the brain are then transferred to new, healthy parts of the brain through the process of neuroplasticity. This process is what allows you to regain lost movement, speech function, and other abilities after experiencing a stroke." — Rich

This proves my point, not yours.
I think you might be a waste of time.

If you knock out the main transmission station, things go blank. So? Says nothing. — Rich

With a blunt spoon I can remove your ability to recognise your own mother.
With a short swipe I can remove your ability to either read or speak.

And what makes the brain so special? Neurons? Neurons just transmit. It is a relay center. The Mind permeates the body. — Rich

You can cut off your legs, arms; remove various parts of the body such as the spleen and kidneys; several feet of intestine; you can even gat a machine to do your breathing and pumping blood - all miraculously WITHOUT affecting the functioning of the mind.
If you do ANYTHING to the brain, you change the mind is profound ways.

QED: You are being silly.

The second brain theory accounts for only 1/1000 of known neurones - all of which are expendable, and NOT "throughout the body" as you amusingly suggest.
Your statement about "having a heart" is just childish mysticism of the medieval period .

If you say he attacks Social Media companies, but is not attacking Social Media - you are just being silly.

does not speak against social media in the text you provided, but only against the social media companies, which are some of the the big corporations that are a danger to democracy. And those are the companies you claim Soros wants to give more power to. — BlueBanana

I did not say he want to give more power to anyone but himself. He rails against Social Media by attacking social media companies - quite obviously.
His kind are under threat from the democratization of communications, targeted advertising (which is what he attacks in the surface), is almost completely irrelevant. It's just an excuse to push for censorship.

Calm down, charleton; the old media haven't been around since the dawn of time. — Bitter Crank

Time started when humans began to count it. And it was the elites that imposed time on the masses.

Please don't labor under the delusion that Facebook, Amazon, Google, et al don't plan on manufacturing and manipulating your consent even more than it was manipulated in the past. — Bitter Crank

Soros is just jealous. He's no interest in preserving the newly found rights of you and I to debate right here and now on this page.
Soros' mantra is much repeated throughout the establishment. If anyone has benefited from social media it was Obama and his campaign for president, yet even he is singing from the same song book as Soros, in denigrating the changes that the Internet has wrought in the wake of Trump's populism.

George Soros is a reputable philosopher — Agustino

ROTFLMFHO.

This thread needs more hatred towards the Jews. — Maw

I don't give a rat's arse about Soros' ancestry. You might want to get your head out of your arse and smell the coffee.

Then give me a quote where Soros says anything against social media. — BlueBanana

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/25/george-soros-facebook-and-google-are-a-menace-to-society?CMP=share_btn_fb

Cui Bono?
Soros just wants to have control back.
This is a dangerous myth. Google are not making you behave differently. The Internet is providing a platform for forums like this and a multitude of grass roots political movements which have the potential to completely change the status quo
God help us if Soros and his corporations get control of the Internet.

It's far more true of Main stream Media. And since MSM have always offered fewer choices, it has been far more damaging to democracy.
Soros and his ilk are scared of loosing control, his fears have nothing to do with democracy has he has no interest in it, or promoting it.

One needs a heart to live and pump blood. It's got bugger all to do with being good, you still need a brain for that too.

What do you think? Is this the only flaw in rationality? Does rationality have other shortcomings? — TheMadFool

You are blaming the vehicle, when you ought to be focusing on the driver. If you decide to drive off a cliff it is not the fault of the vehicle.
A computer is wholly rational. Programers have a phrase bullshit in; bullshit out.
If you make an assumption that the Aryan race is superior and ought to rule the world, then it is a short step to rationalise that other races should be exterminated.
If you assume that disease is bad, then it is rational to fund research to find a cure.

If you now reflect on your own post. It is perfectly rational, in that you have taken rational steps at each step along the way. It is also rational to ask others for their input. When you have reasonable and various ideas, you can make a choice based on your personal position and motivation. But if you end up with rubbish it is not because of rationality , but because of how you FEEL about the information.
Hume was good on all this, insisting that it was the "passions" that we are ruled by.

Assume Buddhism is true. What then? — TheMadFool

Reincarnation is only a side issue. Buddha had some sense to talk. The after life shit is still irrelevant.
Even if it is true, since you don't remember your past lives it's just as if you just die. So no real change. I'll stick to my axioms.

you tend to see things in black and white. God /no god.
You have made an assumption to associate me with Krauss as we are both atheists. Yet, as I have told you before the label atheist says noting about a person's position, except in the negative sense of not accepting a god.

That's because you have a very naive view of the world.

My question is how should we view other people in our lives, friends or foes? — TheMadFool

You need to take each person as they come, and ignore the bullshit about karma and reincarnation: there is no universal justice.
Shit happens; then you die. Spread some fun and kindness.
Only with these axioms can you fully enjoy your life and make it better for others, whilst they exist.

Krauss is not very bright.
Although all knowledge is thoroughly derived from experience; that's not the same thing as saying everything is empirical.
Empiricism derives data formally from observation. His idea that women 's and gay's social rights are as a direct result of empirical knowledge is utter bollocks. The information has always been present; the "IS", but in socially realities that does not imply an "OUGHT". Raw empirical data can be used to oppress women and gays as easily as it can be used to free them. And it is in the specific selection of data that either case can be made.
Like most scientists Krauss is naive in the extreme.

OK, I thought we were discussing anxiety as anxiety, not a defined medical disorder entitled "anxiety". — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a bit like complaining," I thought we were discussion bendy yellow soft fruit; not taking about bananas."

It all depends on how you define experience. If you define experience such that it requires conscious noticing, and remembering of something, then it requires a brain. — Metaphysician Undercover

Duh! You mean like anxiety???
FFS

But you ought to understand that all experience is received by the brain. This has to include anxiety.
— charleton

We were looking for the cause of anxiety. That experience is "received" by the brain does not mean that it is caused by the brain. — Metaphysician Undercover

The brain is the source of all experience. Although some hormones are generated in other parts of the body the brain is where anxiety happens.
You can even experience an arm and a leg without an arm and a leg, but you cannot experience anything without a brain.

I'm not treating the brain as separate. It is those who say that the brain is the cause of anxiety who are treating the brain as separate. — Metaphysician Undercover

But you ought to understand that all experience is received by the brain. This has to include anxiety.

Please refer to the remark I made above.

Childish??? LOL
When you stop using pathetic strawmen I might be more inclined to repeat myself. Until then I'll just leave it up to you to pay attention and address the points I actually made and not the ones you want me to have made.

I figured that one's position ought at least be agreeable to known facts. — creativesoul

What is a fact? Philosophy's job is to begin by unpacking those taken for granted things like facts. Philosophy ought to, and does, challenge endemic assumptions.
Reflections on history and anthropology are more likely to reveal alternatives ideas that make you facts look parochial and idiosyncratic.

.... I've clocked up about eight years and over ten thousand posts.... I've been in your position before, and I now think that I was naive. — Sapientia

Is that all???
Urummph!!
I've been doing this for at least 18 years. I passed ten thousand posts years ago. I was probably studying philosophy when you were in nappies.

You want me to rigidly adhere to this one particular meaning of "belief" — Sapientia

It's shame you have not yet learned to pay more attention in all those posts you have been writing.
See the comments I already made above.

Perhaps there is the probability that atheists will find abolishing beliefs easier to grasp, while theists will find it harder to do so. — uncool

On the face of it I have found this to be true in many instances. "Belief" and "Faith" are like sacred words which atheists tamper with at their peril.
"Faith", like belief, is also ubiquitous and vague, and theists like to accuse non-theists of having faith when it is more like ordinary "trust" - the sort of thing you tend to have with a doctor, who deserves it.

The OP may look like a crackpot at first glance, or several glances, but when one actually slows down and looks at evidence, one may see that the OP is not saying anything outlandish, but straightforward instead. — uncool

Indeed.
I not sure what the OP's critics think they are achieving here. So, commonly on such forums people seem only to keen to nit pick and attack for the sake of it without thinking it through.

Try it before you knock it.
What's the point of all this philosophy if you don't put any of it into action.

I do not regard typing to idiots like you as "everyday speaking" obviously.

Although I agree that the one and the other are not the same, the whole thing is still ridiculous. It's utterly ridiculous, at face value, to call for the abolition of belief. A — Sapientia

Personally I have rejected the use of 'belief' from my everyday speaking. If I think a thing is true then I either hold that as knowledge, or I just find myself to be more careful in the way I express such things as aspirations.
So, my personal abolition of belief has had nothing but positive effects on my thinking and communicating ideas. I take much less for granted and am more likely to examine what I think is the case.
Believing is lazy.
Sapere Aude baby.
Believe nothing.

No, that is another reason why you think the abolition of belief not supported by evidence is a good idea. — BlueBanana

So you agree that belief is used as taken as true regardless of evidence.

Since belief IS USED that way, that is exactly why it needs to be abolished, since we have a better more precise lexicon for taken as true BECAUSE of the evidence.



Since you are talking bollocks we'll just have to leave it there.

Since you are talking bollocks we'll just have to leave it there.

I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.

OR..
“I am wiser than this man; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good, but this man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either. I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.”

I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.

Plato, Apology 21d.

I myself know nothing, except just a little, enough to extract an argument from another man who is wise and to receive it fairly.

Theaetetus, 161b

Socrates as quoted in Diogenes Laertius'Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Ηe knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance.

Alternate translation:

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. — Wayfarer

And so we learn even without a reference to ancient Greek that Socrates did not actually say what he is commonly reported as saying.

I agree that there is much brain activity associated with emotions. But emotions are feelings, and feelings involve many aspects of the nervous system as well as the associated organs. So I think that you hold an overly simplistic opinion to say that emotions are generated by the brain. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think your idea that you can treat the brain as separate is simplistic.
But worst than that you seem to be suggesting that you can do without the brain is some way.
Anyone who has lost an arm only to find that it still itches, and feels pain knows only too well what a unique and all encompassing role it has.

Did you decide to write this or was it the Laws of Nature that decided to exhibit humor. — Rich

You are trying to draw a false distinction.

FYI Greek Gods, like entanglement are constructs.

Rich is determined that QM is true!!!

I think anxiety is a heart based condition rather than brain based. — Metaphysician Undercover

All emotions are primarily generated by the brain.