But he couldn't bring himself to be comforting, and he told me I had to learn to fight back and be a man. Even now, all these years on, this appals me, for I think he was saying, this is who I am, I'm not going to comfort you, I'm going to Tell You The Truth As I See It. — mcdoodle

Interestingly, its another case where there seems to be no application for 'truth' or 'honesty', because it is a command - 'Be a man' = 'Stop snivelling and learn to fight'. And the same kind of command is hidden in every external declaration of one's nature. Here is a simple slipknot that will suffice to hang any dog with its bad name:

" You're always defiant and argumentative."
"No I'm not."
"See? You're doing it again."

I'm not sure what the Catch number of that is, but there is a hidden command, or at least an unhidden provocation, to be the thing that is being complained of, to the extent that the opposite response, "Yes, I suppose I am." is equally, if not more so, argumentative and defiant.

We do not know exactly what drives a young child away from the inter-subjective toward the inner-subjective, the reasons for this I think can be infinite. The fact is that it does happen to us all, to an extend, some more than others. I do not think that we can say whether it is something good or bad, — Metaphysician Undercover

What I was hoping to illustrate with my anecdote was that intersubjective communication is - in the beginning at least - nonverbal. And I wanted to ask you because you asked,

Where does honesty lie in this approach? — Metaphysician Undercover

, whether the notion of honesty could apply to my mother's nonverbal communication, and if so, whether it was honest or dishonest?

I'm inclined to think that she did not any more want the intimacy I presumed, and conveyed it by subtly ridiculing me for wanting it, without actually denying me by pushing me away. And I cannot say in this situation, and in so many others, whether this is honest or dishonest, because it is the relationship transforming itself, and in the transformation, both my and my mother's identities are transformed (mine more so). I suppose one could translate this into English as the instruction, "Grow up." where being grown up has a particular social meaning, of physical separation with attendant implications of emotional independence.

I think such emotional independence is an aspiration of modernity at least; Facebook is full of exhortations not to let the bastards grind you down, but to be happy in you private enlightened bubble. And yet one sees even on this most cerebral and disembodied of sites, that the emotional tone of posts communicate themselves such that some threads become frivolous, some fractious, some fairly serious some fairly congenial. As if in each thread one is participating in and contributing to an intersubjective emotional being. Whether it is good or bad to be influenced or uninfluenced by the emotions of others rather depends what those emotions are, and what they are about, but moreover, our agreement or disagreement about goodness and badness is itself a matter of intersubjective emotion.

I do not see how stereotypes are relevant. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

In order to love or hate a group or type, whether it's gender, class, race, or whatever, you first have to stereotype them. Mysogyny is contempt for women as you say, it is stereotyping them as inferior and then treating them as inferior. you seem to have a difficulty in grasping this, so let's try the ideas out on race for comparison.

Suppose we as a society think that black people are inferior to white to the extent that we treat them as property. They cannot vote, or make decisions about their lives or jobs, or appeal to the justice system. You get the picture.

Now I say to you, "they are so lucky these black people, they do not have to worry about losing their jobs, or what the government is going to do, they do not have to fight for their country, and my friends and I do not hate our slaves, we love them. And yet a clinical psychologist told me that black people are socialised to hate whites."

You might think I had missed something.

Gotcha. Stay safe.

Excellent! It's always reassuring to find that one is not alone in one's fanciful ideas. Ha! I'm almost saying that individuality is madness... Anyway here's an anecdote.

My birth family was typical middle-class English cool, unexpressive, non-touchy-feely; 'not bad' is the highest accolade in our language. I remember, I must have been 4 or 5 yrs, going to my mother, as children do, for a reassuring cuddle. Nothing significant was said, but the cuddle was - it's hard to explain because it wasn't verbal - somehow exaggerated, almost sarcastic. "You're too old for this" was somehow conveyed to me, and I never went back for another. Ever since then, my blood has run cold, like a true Englishman. My traumatic initiation into the solitary cerebral self. I wonder how such a rejecting acceptance would be seen by @Metaphysician Undercover in relation to trust and honesty?

My guess is that the laypeople just talked to the patients, maybe went for walks with them on the hospital grounds, spent time with them. Maybe ate with them in the hospital cafeteria. They were 'nice' to the patients. If psychiatric hospital staff are not cruel to their patients, they are often not "nice" to them. They keep their clean crisp distance.

People who become psychotic by way of mania (bi-polar) or schizophrenia are likely to recover their sanity through medication and good psychiatric care (talk therapy)--and/or maybe by the passage of time.

I don't have any reason to doubt that the Finnish patients liked the interaction they had, and benefitted from it. But the kind of fast fix that an American insurance company would love, I'm not so sure. — Bitter Crank

I guess the same. The way I would put it, that is closer to the intersubjective model, is that being treated humanely is humanising, and being treated as mad is maddening.

Yes please.

Individuals are not there (in any strict sense) before interaction; they are constituted, in important respects, in and through interaction. Intersubjectivity (partial sharedness) comes about on the basis of interactivity:
• Persons, social beings, are partly constituted in/through self‐other relations.
• A person (self) can embody ”dialogical” emotions: shame, guilt, pride, complacence, complaisance,
conscience, consciousness, compassion, empathy/sympathy, morality (right/wrong), etc. are all emotions that would be impossible without direct or indirect relations to others (situationally but above all culturally).
• The distinction between individual freedom (at the expense of others ́ subordination) and solidarity (actions in others ́ best interest) are based on dialogicality and interactivity. Searle (2008) discusses other related notions like the phenomenon of human civilization, and monologisation with the consent of others (e.g. in some democratic organisations).
There are many other issues associated with intersubjectivity. I will mention a few here, and refer to Linell (2013e):
• There are several levels of intersubjectivity, different in degree of awareness and other dimensions. One distinction, with intermediate degrees, concern taken‐for‐granted (unreflected) intersubjectivity vs. reflected intersubjectivity. Rommetveit (1974: 56; RETH: 81) says about this: “Intersubjectivity has to be taken for granted in order to be achieved.” That is, we must trust that there is some common ground to begin with, if we want to achieve more reflected types of intersubjectivity, e.g. through negotiations or through bringing something into language. This raises the issue of the relation between intersubjectivity and trust: everything that we cannot know for sure but must take for granted or shared (intersubjective). Trust is a phenomenon closely linked to dialogicality; it is at the same time elusive and ubiquitous (Linell & Marková, 2013a, b, and references there). — Linell

from here

I need to read some more, so this is a directed random fragment of fragments. Let me just remark that there seems to be a foundational, unreflective immediacy of intersubjectivity that is prior to language that can be exemplified by mother and child relations that are non-verbal in the first instance. And this bodily immediacy persists in dialogue generally as 'body language', and is only eliminated as a major factor in virtual worlds such as this.

Here, I am my utterances and nothing else, except for the social world of dead white males and occasional others that I sometimes invoke by link or quote. This disembodiment weakens the connectedness of our relations here, and the freedom of expression that confers - at least you cannot interrupt and finish my sentence for me - only serves to amplify our disconnectedness. Nevertheless, there are, I think still, to a limited extent, possibilities of the most abstract coming together in a mutual understanding, of 'being of one mind' about something. This one-mindedness is still embodied, of course, and if circumstances permitted, might result in our clapping each other on the back and heading for the pub.

And you think that being confronted by the police; members of the public not noticing or caring that you are being assaulted; etc. are not good examples with respect to men?! — WISDOMfromPO-MO

You miss my point, I fear. I do not deny that your examples are the result of gender stereotyping, nor do I deny that they operate in these cases to the advantage of women. My claim is that they stem from exactly the same stereotypes that in the vast majority of cases operate to the advantage of men; the same prejudices that women are not worth hearing out in a discussion, operate to suggest that they are not worth arresting, and need our help in a domestic.

Excuse the graphic parody, but it is as though in the good old days, you were to justify women not having the vote on the grounds that men don't get doors held open for them. The conception of women as weak, irrational, and the opposite of all the manly virtues sometimes works to their advantage, but this does not turn misogyny into misandry.

Why does this topic have to be about 'me'? — Posty McPostface

Well what it's supposed to be about is how 'me' is a social construct, so this ...

I should also mention that places like this forum and the old PF, have given me a sense of stability. Listening to what a fictional Marcus Aurelius would say in my mind also helped. Philosophy itself is a dialectical art that began with the dialogues of Plato and Socrates, and if you take a harder reading, then all philosophy is a sort of dialectical art according to Hegel. — Posty McPostface

... is exactly on topic.

There isn't much I can say to any of that. The claims are apparently both unconfirmable, and denied out of closed-mindedness... — Wosret

Hey, dude, I'm only shooting the messenger, because he seems to have bought the message wholesale. It's not clear, it's not confirmed, it's not been properly investigated. It is interesting, and particularly so because it seems to come out of, or play into, a rather interesting philosophy, which is what I would rather be looking at than defending a practice I don't have any experience of from summary dismissal.

If that makes sense. — Wosret

Yeah, it makes sense. But this makes a tad less sense.

those numbers are remarkable, and if it were true why isn't it quickly becoming the standard treatment? Why it is not even really being substantially investigated? The article suggests that it's simply because the results aren't nearly as remarkable as that documentary claims. Not in fact as good as the standard treatment from what it looks like. — Wosret

If the remarkable figures were true, it would have become standard practice.
If the remarkable figures were true, they would have been investigated.

They haven't been investigated, therefore they are not true.
It is not standard practice, therefore it does not work.

There is an open-ended scepticism, and then there is a closed-minded scepticism. Well there is enough hope that this...

if we assume that they were the ones with schizophrenia then only 53 per cent of those with schizophrenia were medication free. And this is roughly consistent with the Merck Manual and the definition that outcomes for a simple psychosis are better than for schizophrenia. — your link

... is overly pessimistic an assumption, especially taken in conjunction with the fact that we are talking about early intervention and a diagnosis of schizophrenia requires that, "Continuous signs of the disturbance must persist for at least 6 months, during which the patient must experience at least 1 month of active symptoms (or less if successfully treated), with social or occupational deterioration problems occurring over a significant amount of time.", to justify some replication elsewhere and further trials.

It's odd, that. It almost seems to define schizophrenia as incurable - if it got cured, it wasn't schizophrenia. Kind of like death - if you come back to life, you can't have been dead.

It doesn't look like there's going to be much discussion of intersubjective consciousness. :(

but can find information that suggests that much of it clearly isn't true, and what may be simply hasn't even been properly investigated. — Wosret

Links?

This is the basic claim:

In the 1980s psychiatric services in Western Lapland were in a poor state, in fact they had one of the worst incidences of the diagnosis of schizophrenia’ in Europe. Now they have the best documented outcomes in the Western World. For example, around 75% of those experiencing psychosis have returned to work or study within 2 years and only around 20% are still taking antipsychotic medication at 2 year follow-up.

Source.

If this is substantially true, it is remarkable, and if it is false, it should be very easily falsifiable.

This brings me back to the pragmatics of said therapy device. There's little hope that despite how effective this therapy might seem, it will never take any hold in countries where the mainstream narrative or course of action is to refer a schizophrenic or bipolar to the psychiatrist and prescribe the pills. — Posty McPostface

It's being trialled in the UK by the National Health Service, and there is a training course.

I don't know where the US is a the moment, and from the pov of one seeking help, it's going to be a very slow process rolling it out, because of the need to properly train and also adjust the institutions. But in the longer run, I am quite confident that if it is as effective as it is claimed to be, it will be taken up everywhere, because although it is expensive in terms of commitment of resources, if it gets people off drugs, out of hospitals, and working and contributing, who would otherwise be sucking up resources for a lifetime, then it is an absolute bargain. Money will convince even a scientist. ;)

Edit: In the meantime, there is apparently other stuff going on in the US of A ...

I wasn't being sarcastic, I do want to educate myself. All references gratefully received.

So, I would suggest this interaction has more to do with belonging in a accepting social group than with language. The personality profiles of these people, do they struggle generally in group settings? Do they feel alienated and isolated in their everyday lives. Do they feel that nobody understands them? Are they the bottom of their social heap? — MikeL

I'm not that familiar with dogs, or the dog whisperer. Do dogs suffer from psychosis? What you are describing seems more like neurosis at a guess. Regarding social groups, there was an interesting experiment (I forget the reference) where researchers pretended to be ill, and got themselves admitted to mental hospital. They had no difficulty fooling the doctors, but the real patients were not taken in at all. Which indicates that contact with reality is not divided such that the sane have it all and the insane none. What I imagine the dogs have in common with OD therapists is 'presence'. Certainly it is not all about language, but language is fairly dominant in human relations.

It doesn't have to be different. I'm just saying what I think of what I'm gathering. Though I don't have the greatest amount of faith in communication, if I did I'd probably talk more. — Wosret

It doesn't have to be different, but I sense that it is different. But I'm not clear about the difference. I feel I am not quite being understood, and from what you say here, you feel somewhat the same way. Perhaps that is the best we can manage at the moment, to communicate that there is a disagreement or a misunderstanding that neither can quite articulate? Perhaps we need a third party to help us, or perhaps we should just leave it there for now?

But the very idea of re-examining anglo-american philosophy from the second person point of view is, I'm told, quite a hot topic in some corners of academe. This summer I've been reading Stephen Darwall's 'Second Person Standpoint', (written in 2006) which proposes basing analytic ethics upon our mutual regard and respect. (One odd thing about it is how reluctant he is to use the word 'you', as if that wasn't part of the point)

There is also a whole strand of Continental thought issuing mostly from Mikhail Bakhtin about dialogue. I'm interested in how to apply this, not so much to ethics as to the philosophy of language. A Swedish guy called Per Linell has been working away at this for years, rethinking things dialogically. Everything we talk is talk-in-interaction, on this reading. We bring our presuppositions to the table, adjust as needed to communicate, act or not as we fancy and move on to the next interaction. — mcdoodle

This is all very new to me, so thanks for the homework assignments. I'd speculate that Darwall's reluctance could be to do with a notion that a publication is a format in which the use of 'you' to address the universalised reader would be somewhat dishonest posturing - that that sort of writing is not dialogical, but monological.

I'm not sure what you're telling me that's different to what I'm telling you.

Are you seriously suggesting ...

If so, you are talking arrant nonsense ! — John Gould

No, I'm not. I'm reporting with references that other people have studied what is being done in Finland, and have found that it has far better results than conventional interventions. Now if you want to call this arrant nonsense, and be taken at all seriously, you had better put forth something at least as substantial by way of evidence and argument, because authoritarian fulmination alone cuts very little ice round here.

I don't understand. Are you attempting to reject, or downplay the notion that parents are authority figures? That adults in general are to a less extent, and even elders are to adults? It definitely isn't like a logical necessity or anything, and they definitely aren't authorities on every single thing, but this is still clearly the case. — Wosret

I'm trying to characterise, in your own language, the process of individualisation. The relation of parent to infant necessarily begins as a person-object relation, in which the parent is the author and authority, and the infant is a dependent object. The task is to conjure from this relation a new relation between individuals, by invoking the interiority of the infant, just as God created man in His own image. One teaches a child to talk by talking to them as if they can talk already. In a sense one acts in defiance of the reality of power relations and thereby creates a new relation with a new being, a subject. The rejection of the parent as authority is a necessary part of the process of individualisation, just as the Fall is a necessary part of the creation of humanity.

And just as the OD therapists defy the reality of psychosis by insisting on treating the psychotic as an equal.

There is a way to think of this as a narrative process starting with the initial narrative we tell our selves, the difference between "I"(Author) and "me"(Narrative). This initial differentiation gets the ball rolling. — Cavacava

I'm not sure I understand this initial distinction, but the notion of narrative self seems to have potential, that I will exploit anyway.. Perhaps you can say more?

Where does honesty lie in this approach? — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a really hard question. It seem absolutely vital, and central to the whole approach - of discussing the patient in the presence of the patient. But then I hear Cava asking 'what is the truth of a narrative?' Here's a story:

Human beings are more or less dysfunctional computational machines that have no other function than to produce more dysfunctional computational machines with no function.

This is a story that gets told - let us presume honestly - in which case it uncovers, declares, narrates, how that person relates to themselves, and to others in some meaningful way. People think it is true. Now my own point of view is that this story has about the same truth as The Pilgrim's Progress, which is also an honestly told story of human nature.

The patient comes in an tells the therapist that I have a disorder.

Therapist replies, 'says who?' — Posty McPostface

Yes indeed. This is a narrative you are relating that outlines a relationship being established between two people or characters. In this sense, psychiatry and anti psychiatry are competing narratives. One of the themes of conventional psychiatry is that if the patient is right in their claim, then their judgement should be dismissed. This is the logic of the order/disorder narrative, that it establishes a hierarchy of ordered and disordered, and hence reliable and unreliable narratives. The conventional therapist would reply, 'I'll be the judge of that.' Whereas the anti psychiatrist would say, that's not you, that's the society you are in that is disordered.
but I'm not so sure that an OD therapist would reply 'says who?', because the patient has just declared his identity in the form of a disordered relation to themselves, which from the OD stance, is taken to be an honest, valid and true depiction of their relations with significant others.

Which takes me back to the beginning of this post, that I cannot quite make sense of the distinction between the narrative and the author - honestly, they feel like the same thing.

Yet, the theory is the foundation upon which the therapist stands in relation to the patient. I've never head of psychosis without BPD or SZ, and bipolar disorder or schizophrenia are quite devastating diseases that need to be treated with something more than talk therapy. Perhaps, I am wrong, but... — Posty McPostface

So, are you, in saying this, the patient?

If you were the patient, and I was the Open Dialogue therapist, and you were talking about your own experiences in terms of devastating diseases and bipolar, and so on, then my understanding is that I would not be trying to re-educate you into talking about social identity or some such. They quite explicitly do not do that in that situation.

What they might do, that I will do here, is suggest that your response seems to be saying more than one thing; advocating for a patient who cannot access such a treatment, advocating for 'something more than talk therapy', which might be taken as being a defence of conventional treatment, and also suggesting an inconsistency in what I have been trying to describe and come to an understanding of. So in a way, you are apparently speaking as a patient, as a conventional therapist and as a philosophical critic, all in one post.

But to answer my own question unequivocally, you are not the patient, because I am not an Open dialogue therapist, and we are doing philosophy, not therapy. So my attempt here to reframe the issue of mental health in a new language and theory with other philosophers is not in contradiction with the principles of open dialogue. I have suggested that there are parallels between what we do here by way of dialogue, and what they do there, and that the way we do it can be more open or closed, and might even at times be therapeutic, at least in the Wittgensteinian sense. But this is not me treating anyone for anything, but trying to learn philosophically, from this therapeutic practice that has been reported.

Open Dialogue as a practice stands on its record of effectiveness as measured conventionally by studies of medium to long term outcome. And from what I have read, it is defensible in comparative economic terms as well. I would like to find a socio/psychological philosophy that is compatible with this practice, and possibly apply that understanding appropriately to our own dialogues here, and that is quite enough of a job for an old loony like me, without taking on anyone else's problems.

The relationship one has with one's parents is quite a different thing. — Wosret

Yes indeed it is. That is because it is primary. Authority figures are like gods - personified objects. Woe betide if your parents are authority figures! They will tell you when you are hungry and when you are not, instead of responding to what you tell them. The intention of the parent to understand enables the child to learn to talk, and learn to be conscious.

With antisocial children, I've read that they seem to be done by four. If they aren't properly socialized, so that they're too mean, violent, or prone to withdrawal at four, so that their peers reject them, then they're pretty well done. Arguably all of the most important parenting takes place just up until they can talk. — Wosret

Yes again, at four, one can engage with peers to the extent both have emerged into consciousness, but one does not have the stable security of self to properly parent another, which is what would be needed.

The sorts of things no one will talk about, or can talk about. — Wosret

'What sorts of things are they?', he asks unfairly. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one acts out.

Before peers, there are parents. Which is to say that to have peers, to see peers as peers, is already to have established the identity of the intersubjective self; I am like you, in that we are individuals. So it is parents that educate (literally lead out) one into the mystery of selfhood, that teach one a language of interiority and thus a repertoire of expressible feelings. For virtual other, I think Wilson in Castaway, or any child's doll or imaginary friend. Or historically, the multitudinous gods and goddesses and spirits, which is why the psyche is expressed in mythological terms: Psyche, Narcissus, Oedipus, etc.

Anyway, there is a historical, cultural foundation to interiority, that can be for whatever reason impoverished in a particular case. Say my parents brought me up with sufficient physical care but little emotional care. Their lack of interest in my subjectivity leaves me unable to relate to peers as peers, but only as objects, and that is also how I relate to myself; my own feelings and those of others are like the weather - stuff that happens for no reason. I might find myself killing someone because I don't like Mondays.

Since I rarely if ever talk to anyone, that's my general mode of being. — Wosret

Cool. But I'd like to drag you out of your virtual world (says the internet philosopher ;) ), and insist that you not occupy the role of patient and object of discussion more so than that of therapist, philosopher. We are real others, virtually present, with whom your mode of being must necessarily be more dangerously co-creative.

Of course if the notion of a shared inter-subjectivity implies the co creation of new shared reality (a third kind), as integral, then unconsciously our relationships must also develop a third kind, perhaps as our automatic, unconsidered reactions in our relationship with others. — Cavacava

I think that 'new' is out of place.

According to this "stronger" meaning, intersubjectivity is truly a process of cocreativity, where relationship is ontologieally primary. All individuated subjects co-emerge, or co-arise, as a result of a holistic "field" of relationships. The being of anyone subject is thoroughly dependent on the being of all other subjects, with which it is in relationship. Here, intersubjectivity precedes subjectivity (in the second, Cartesian, sense, but subjectivity in the first sense, of experienced interiority, is implicit throughout). The fact, not just the form, of subjectivity (in the second, Cartesian sense) is a consequence of intersubjectivity. Here, the "inter" in intersubjectivity refers to an interpenetrating cocreation of loci of subjectivity-a thoroughly holistic and organismic mutuality. — Quincey

If this is correct, that consciousness is made of relationships, and refer back to the edit link in the op for details, then all that is new is the understanding that individuality is born of sociality. The newest reality is the sense of self, that develops from being treated by an other as a subject and not an object. One learns to treat oneself as a subject by being treated as a subject. And the circumstance that one is not so treated - not fully - is what 'drives one out of one's mind'.

And this simple principle immediately transforms the whole approach to the patient and implies that the 'objective view' taken by Western psychology is itself the epitome of the maddening process, which explains why it has so little success.

The only issue I can see here is that of the American doctor telling a patient that they have a defect that some drug can address, based on some neurological understanding of the etymology of a disease and the stark contrast with the doctors in the film to soothe and calm the patient into accepting and understanding their condition. — Posty McPostface

I think this is a gross underestimate. These guys are curing the incurable, and you don't do that just by being soothing. It is quite difficult to see though, because their talk is so practical and mundane, and there appears to be no theory or dogma. And the practice, as Cava, complains, is not available to us.

One has to imagine the difference, between me telling you what your problem is, and me asking you what our problem is. This is what I think is happening out of the idea of intersubjective consciousness. So if X is depressed and suicidal, this is not a malfunction of X, but a manifestation of a malfunctioning social environment. So the 'doctor', in entering that social environment is taking on the whole. I think this gives a hint of why there are at least two therapists - one to fully immerse themselves in the social environment, and one to anchor them in a more healthily functioning environment.

But even here, in trying to characterise it, I am imposing my own language, of 'malfunction', 'therapist' and so on. This is fine, because I am not doing that therapeutic job here, but it inevitably misses the openness, the presence, that a real encounter provides. That immediacy of response is what I think is missing from the relations of someone who is psychotic. If whatever I say or do, I get a mechanical, stock response, my need to become visible to the other increases to the point where extreme and almost random - because effectively meaningless - behaviour is the only way to communicate one's existence. One acts out the feelings imposed...

So the restraint of the therapists is the vital factor; not to impose a theory, a diagnosis, a course of treatment, but to allow the opening of negotiations, perhaps for the very first time.

I voted substantive mainly because you seem to have ruled it out by setting up the idea that an ecosystem is equivalent to a bunch of billiard balls. So the image you provoke in my mind is of a deterministic system, such as life-game. In such a world, glider guns, gliders, and all the myriad more complex constructions are strictly reducible to the deterministic laws. In such a world, Mr Irreductionist is simply wrong, and the disagreement is substantial.

On the other hand, if the world is not deterministic, Mr reductionist is simply wrong.

Too bad they could not share an actual session with a patient. — Cavacava

Yes indeed, and I cannot find much patient testimony either. It's understandable. The best I can find so far is a couple of case histories here, and this newspaper report.

Yes, and rightfully so. It's MINE! — Agustino

No it isn't. the whole world rightfully belongs to me. Jesus left it to me in his will.

Property is theft. To claim possession of some part of the world is to seek to deprive others of it. Therefore taxation is partial restitution.

Logic is like music theory. First we make music, and then we theorise about harmony and dissonance and so on. So first we talk, and then we theorise about the logic of language. Which means, I think, that logic cannot tells how to talk, any more than music theory can tell us how to make music. It may be convenient for the purposes of logic to say:

Superman exists, but just isn't real.

But it is well to remember that this is just another song about Doh being a deer, a female deer. Existence is prior to to talk, and talk is prior to logic.

Have you seen the videos I have seen where actors play a couple having an argument in a public place? It is an experiment. When the man verbally abuses the woman and shoves her, strangers intervene. When they switch roles and the woman verbally abuses the man and shoves him, nobody intervenes. Apparently the outcome of that experiment--the different response to a man being assaulted by a woman--is due to "the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls..." We can't attribute it to misandry--misandry does not exist. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Well if I were to speculate, based on my own prejudices, I would say that this result is due to the notion that women are 'the weaker sex'. Now it is arguable whether weakness is something one necessarily dislikes - do you want to argue it? When weakness provokes aid, it becomes an advantage, and I dare say that there are other advantages to being identified as inferior, like not being seen as a threat in strange neighbourhoods. But it doesn't seem like the greatest example of misandry.

Fire. Makes the indigestible digestible, the uninhabitable, habitable, and keeps the predator from predating.

The people running the show are hard core criminals. — David Blomstrom

It's odd how criminals always have a hard core, whereas we have a soft core - presumably. And yet you run a hard hitting below the belt campaign - I thought hitting below the belt was what criminals with hard cores did to people with soft cores?

I think this is an unproductive way of looking at humanity, to divide us into the righteous and the criminal, and ask how the righteous can defeat the criminals, because you will inevitably find that the righteous must become criminals to win. Which defeats the purpose.

Instead, let us oppose criminality in ourselves and others; let us support hitting above the belt; let us vote for honest politicians, and those who do not provoke us to hatred to gain our support. Let us oppose criminality, but support criminals to become more honest, and haters to become more loving.

All the loving in the world won't stop the U.S. government from waging eternal war or exploiting other countries, for example. — David Blomstrom

True, but all the hating doesn't seem to do much either. On such a grand historical scale, it is impossible to analyse what effective action would consist of; still I would suggest that a reduction in hate all round is the way to go, rather than the opposite.

One might say that the US is somewhat of a loud-mouthed bully and littler lout in our big round playground. We need to deal with that and restrain their bad behaviour, and eventually persuade them to put their considerable talents to better use. Unfortunately, it does not seem that we can rely on the Good Headmaster to do it for us.

There seems to be a conflation of tolerance with forgiveness here.

An incident from Educating Greater Manchester: A white van is delivering to the school, and some kids are inspired to draw rude things in the dust on the back. The head tells us it's the sort of thing he might have done himself as a kid, but the reputation of the school is at stake, so he comes down quite hard on the kids, all the time trying to hide his smile.

It does not require hatred to prevent wrong-doing; love can be quite as vigorous.

You have no purpose, you are purely decorative.

I've hit a wall recently, in that I can't honestly accept anything to be true but I'm also too early into studying philosophy to remedy this. — Bryan

You might get various and contradictory answers from people here or elsewhere, and still not be able to accept any of them. It seems likely, because all you will get is some stuff being said without authority. But why should this appear as a brick wall? You put up a post, and I put up a reply, and I for one don't have more than a hazy idea of how it gets from you to me and back to you and all the other folks who read and comment. But that doesn't slow me down as much as a brick wall. I take a best guess and whatever seems like good advice at the time, and proceed with due caution, prepared to learn and change. I've been doing that for 65 years now, and plan to continue a few more years. And I would say that it is certainty that has the effect of a brick wall more than uncertainty.

'Fraid so.