Great stuff. Thanks!

Did the conspiracy between good and evil against Job make any sense to you? — Shawn

That's what I mean by 'diverse narratives'. The story of Job is like the story of Adam and Eve or Noah and the ark. It's not an historical narrative, it's a literary narrative which tells the story of one man's unshakable faith in goodness of God.

It's difficult to understand the Bible if it is flattened out into a simple story of conflict between abstract 'good' and 'evil' and frosted with a layer of literalism. I highly doubt that you are a biblical literalist.

From what other sources can we learn the nature and desires of God? — Vera Mont

On the one hand, we created God so we can know everything about God. On the other hand, our God character says He is unknowable, and not like us. Thus we can have it both ways: When it is convenient, we know what God wants, doesn't want, what God likes, what God hates, etc. Or, when it is convenient, God can be an unknowable mystery.

When I say "we created God", I do not mean that we cynically, duplicitously, created God as some sort of great scam. The millennia-long dead authors of god-tales were likely in great earnest. They lived in a pre-scientific world where there was a lot of unexplained, unexplainable events that needed some sort of explanation. Not least was the very existence of the authors and all his kin, friends, enemies--the whole world.

We don't have any problem accepting that gods like Zeus or Odin don't have an objective existence, because those gods were officially retired. There are quite a few gods that various peoples still believe exist. In the fulness of time, millennia, these too will be retired or replaced.

Yes, this is something that is ambiguous about the Bible. — Shawn

Remember that the Bible was not, after all, written by the Holy Spirit in one go. It's a collection of diverse narratives for various purposes--NOT a unitary whole.

:roll: Dueling Bible verses.

Psalms 52:1
1 Why do you boast of evil, you mighty hero? Why do you boast all day long, you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?

1 Kings 14:9-10
You have done more evil than all who lived before you. You have made for yourself other gods, idols made of metal; you have aroused my anger and turned your back on me. 1- I'll fix you!

2 Chronicles 29:6-7
Our parents were unfaithful; they did evil in the eyes of the LORD our God and forsook him. They turned their faces away from the LORD’s dwelling place and turned their backs on him. 7 And God smote them, verily, giving them the royal shaft.

Isaiah 5:20-21
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. 21 Get it straight, people.

Matthew 12:34-35
34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

It is difficult for me to imagine any priest or scribe, prophet or psalmist, positioning God in a position favoring evil. Still, an all-good all-powerful creator and the vigor of evil are a circle impossible to square.

My solution is to shift the responsibility for evil from God to the smart-assed apes who, like the people addressed in Isaiah 5:20, couldn't tell shit from shinola. But then, why would a good and omnipotent god allow some smart-assed apes to wreck everything? One solution to that problem is divest God of omnipotence. God might be all knowing, but unable to head off trouble at the pass. This is 'God who suffers with us".

@Shawn: It's stuff like this that drives the faithful, screaming and tearing their hair, out of the churches and into the bars.

Some people treat evil as an active agent--the devil at work. Others have characterized evil as an absence--absence from God; absence of love; absence of peace; absence of joy, and so on. Some blame God for the existence of evil, others blame humans. We have lots of evidence for the case against human beings being the source of evil.

I don't know -- I feel -- your idea that "evil is one of the reasons people abandon faith in God as an omnibenevolent and all good being" is not so. I believe that millions abandoned faith in God out of their indifference; secularism; implausible claims by the church; uninspiring preaching and liturgy--stuff like that.

does it seem true that God dislikes evi — Shawn

According to the Bible, God very much dislikes evil in its various forms.

One of my Articles of Faith is that we humans can not help but come off as evil) or bad or damned unreliable or a dozen other negative traits). We descended from the trees with animal drives and simple emotions designed for survival, and over a long time built a big brain on top of that. Our emotions may be primitive, but they still drive us. Rationality and emotionality are mixed together between our ears and therein lies our problem: We have an effective executive intelligence to carry out our crazy wishes and absurd urges.

We do OK when we are not striving to get to the top of the heap Then we are neither very bad nor saintly. We are in the safe middle. However, when we are revved up to get to the top of the heap, whatever that heap consists of, we find ourselves throwing the better angels of our nature under the bus (ambition as a primary source of evil). That's when we create evil.

I disagree with @LuckyR that inquiring into the nature of love reflects something significant about the inquirer. I hope your rough patch is smoothed out soon. Families are often the site of failed love, unhappily. It isn't that the structure of "the family" is flawed; it isn't that "love" isn't enough; it is just US, flawed, inconstant, fickle beings that we are. What was it that Tolstoy said? All happy families are alike? Or was it all unhappy families are all alike. Happy or unhappy, WE are kind of all alike, and bring about the same kinds of problems in infinite variety.

One thing I've seen in my own family: long term stress erodes good behavior.

It came to me as a force of nature - immediate and uncaused - automatic, like a switch being switched. It's a feeling of affection, respect, interest, protectiveness, and commitment. Most importantly, it's unconditional - it doesn't expect or require any response or acknowledgement. — T Clark

Sounds like storge, described as the natural love and affection of a parent for their child; the most natural, emotive, and widely diffused of loves.

According to the Apostle Paul, "Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." (I Corinthians, 13)

According to John the Disciple, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)

Some nice looking gay guy said: "Love is a combination of lust and trust." Word Is Out, 1976

The Greeks said that there are at four kinds of love: Eros, Agape, Filos, and Storge. Storge [pronounced 'stor - gay'] is the natural love and affection of a parent for their child. It is described as the most natural, emotive, and widely diffused of loves.

Love III by George Herbert, 1593-1633

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here":
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

Bob was robbed! Typical. Avant guard artists are prone to passing off indifferent blobs as somehow inspired works of art. Rubbish!

What Bob desired was an artist who understood the meaning of 'statue' (even if it meant a vulgar gnome). Michelangelo didn't send a block of granite to market with the title of "David". He expended his talent and labor to extract an actual, detailed representation of "David" from the block of rock.

The artist who Bob was dealing with also submitted a heap of gravel to the Museum of Modern Art, for which he was praised by idiot savants in the art world.

There are certainly good, great, and very great artists working today, but there are also operators who are flim flam artists passing off crap as art.

Any material can be employed to express an idea, but it takes labor and talent to achieve the expression,

Psychopaths have a bad reputation. Extreme psychopaths are intolerable in society, but a very smart executive with maybe 5% - 10% psychopathic tendencies is likely to be highly effective, and likely to be an asshole. If an slightly psychopathic executive of Microsoft or Boeing needs to lay off 1500 employees on Christmas Eve to maintain the company's profitability for that quarter, he will do so; and he will sleep just fine and have a nice Christmas Day.

One feature of being an asshole would be the ability to make decisions for the good of the collective without experiencing any discomfort for the individuals whose lives were ruined. Whether a touch of psychopathy is the same as being an asshole is something that will have to be studied by university researchers.

Proportionate narcissism seems like a necessity for a healthy personality. It provides the motivation to take care of one's self. Donald Trump's very disproportionate narcissism, high self-regard, indifference to the facts, and so on doesn't seem like psychopathy to me, but it does make him an asshole.

We can differentiate mental illness or instability from asshole behavior. Mentally disordered individuals may very well behave badly -- not because they want to, but because at the moment they can't do otherwise (they'll be accused of 'acting out'). A lot of troubling private and public behavior is traceable to mental illness rather than the presence of assholes.

Making careful distinctions is all well and good, but there are also a lot of people whose diagnosis is "asshole".

On a more serious level, my current daily read is The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro. It's a very thorough and scholarly biography of Robert Moses 1888-1981, the 'master builder' of New York City, whose various civil engineering projects destroyed a lot of neighborhoods. He also built a lot of public parks.

Moses was certainly an asshole, which seems to have also been a feature of both his grandmother and mother, both of whom were highly opinionated, arrogant, and imperious people. Yale-and-Oxford-educated Robert Moses started out as a self-sacrificing idealist of the Progressive Era and, as he was taught and learned how politics actually worked, became a self-serving autocrat in the field of parks, public housing, and road construction.

Moses may have been given an asshole tilt by his mother and grandmother, but in his 30s began learning how to be a complete asshole. Power was the key. Moses learned the hard way that without power, one's ideas were never fulfilled. He thus set about finding power, and once found, used it for "the public good" (all those parks, public and private high rises, and freeways) and to generate more power.

Moses became the boss of the agency that built toll roads in New York, and the cash from the toll booths (many millions of dollars) was the key piece in establishing his unfettered power. His style was that of a tyrant asshole, but he did build a lot of good stuff, too, like the numerous parks on Long Island which had previously been kept off limits to the public by the wealthy people whose huge estates were there, and by the previously insular communities on Long Island. There were, before Moses, no public beaches on Long Island.

So, Robert Moses was a self-made asshole.

Long before Aaron James published his erudite book on assholes, the term had spread its meaning from "slightly annoying" on one end to "flagrant rejection of decency" on the other end. For the mild form, "Everybody is an asshole except me and thee, and even thee..."

Donald Trump is, of course, a consummate asshole who is in flagrant disregard of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was another asshole, famously called out by Boston lawyer Joseph Welch, Counsel for the Army on television:

"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency at long last?"

One thing about assholes: everybody has one. Well I suppose unfortunate people who have had colostomies don't, but that's beside the point.

Question: are assholes (under the severe meaning) becoming more common, and are they becoming worse? It seems like being a complete asshole is similar, no matter when or where one existed. Some people just have a fairly thorough contempt for other people--any other people. They have been appearing among us at a fairly stead rate, and they aren't getting worse. They were worse to start with.

What to do about them? Labeling an asshole 'asshole' clearly has no effect. Assholes don't care about our feelings on the matter. If someone cares about their reputation enough to stop being a total jerk, then they are not an asshole. If they don't care, well, then they don't care what we think. We can put away our guns and go home.

What relationship exists between "total jerks" and "assholes"? Does the first lead to the second? Which is worse? How much difference does the intensifier "fucking" affect our estimation of jerkhood or assholery? Is a 'fucking asshole' worse than an unmodified asshole? How about all those fucking jerks out there?

Then there is bullshit, which none of us have EVER dabbled in. See On Bullshit 1st Edition, by Harry G. Frankfurt 2020

How about that - "kibosh" and "kvetch" in the same response. — T Clark

Admirably diverse. Kibosh has Irish roots, kvetch is yiddish. Kibosh has a nicely gruesome origin -- referencing methods of execution:

Slanguage, A Dictionary of Irish Slang"]. Coles' dictionary of "difficult terms" (1684) has cabos'd "having the head cut off close to the shoulders". It isn't clear to me what the relative advantages would be of having one's head cut off further up the neck or closer to the shoulders. At any rate, putting the kibosh on something is a most assertive and definitive act.

The meaning of KVETCH is "to complain habitually", like @NOS4A2 whining about suppression of misinformation.

I'm not familiar with the laws regarding false advertising. I assume it is considered a type of fraud. — T Clark

The federal Lanham Act (1946) allows civil lawsuits for false advertising that “misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin” of goods or services. 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a). The FTC also enforces false advertising laws on behalf of consumers.

It's interesting that laws against false advertising weren't passed until 1946--if that is indeed when such protections were first put into place. A lot of "snake oil" products were advertised and sold with impunity, at least in the earlier 20th century, and generally false claims were made about a lot of products. "Caveat Emptor" is still a good idea, because lying, or intentional misrepresentation, hasn't disappeared.

Lying, misrepresentation, failure to inform, misleading manipulation of images and information, pettifogging, outright fraud, etc. are endemic, particularly when corporate prerogatives and profitability are at stake. Misinformation is the lifeblood of the petroleum industry, for example.

Most of us live under a capitalist system of property which is owned by individuals or collective entities like companies or a statez. J P Morgan Bank may own the building in which it does business, but an old New York family may own the land on which the building sits, and will collect rent from JP Morgan for decades to come. The space above the land had to be acquired too, by buying the "air rights" of owners of nearby low-rise buildings. Below the bank building are the tunnels and tracks of New York City's subway, which the city owns and could not be moved.

Most of us are surrounded by layers of ownership. I own my iPad on which I have stored books; I don't own the software that operates the iPad, and I don't own the copyright of the digital books that I have bought, nor do I own the electronic media system that delivered the book to the iPad. Amazon collects information about my reading habits. If a lot of other people who are reading the same book highlight a certain passage, that text will be underlined in my copy and updated over time. So, in some ways, I don't really 'own' the books I bought from Amazon.

"Intellectual property" is another complicated arena of ownership. Who 'owns' the content of the posts in this philosophy forum? Can @Jamal take our incredibly brilliant, insightful, creative, and amusing texts and sell them to a large publishing house which would edit them into a big glossy coffee table book selling for $59.99? Would we sources of content be entitled to a share of the fat check Jamal would receive? Or would we, more likely, just be shit out of luck?

It takes about 12 years to become a psychiatrist. A good therapist will probably need a masters or a doctorate -- that's another 3 to 5 years, minimum. The motivation required to be a psychiatrist (or a heart surgeon, whatever) is different than the motivation to be a psychotherapist (not thinking of Freud, here).

There are people without MDs, MAs, or PhDs--even without BAs, who--because they are healthy, intelligent, reasonably insightful, good listeners, and kind can help people they know through rough patches of life. For a lot of people that kind of "helping volunteer" is all they will need.

This is a very old study -- it's maybe 60 years old now, and I can't vouch for its quality. When I was in graduate school in 1970 we discussed a study in Wisconsin where psychiatrists, counselors, and laymen (people without any training in therapy) were each assigned several patients with fairly serious mental health problems. Each "therapist" provided the kind of therapy they thought would be beneficial. What was remarkable in the finding was that patients who were treated by laymen did as well as patients assigned a trained therapist.

What this shows is that either a) one kind of therapy is as likely or unlikely to work as a different therapy, OR that some kinds of mental illness (like schizophrenia) are resistant to psychotherapy. This strikes me as consistent with reality. A kind, insightful, skilled psychiatrist can use medication to suppress outbreaks of psychosis. All the kind insightful talk in the world probably won't help. On the other hand, a schizophrenic or bi-polar person is likely to enjoy the social contact of talking with a kind, friendly, thoughtful person, whether that cures them or not.

The motto of The Radical Therapist", a leftist, anti-psychiatry mental health zine from the early 70s, was "Therapy means change, not adjustment." That seems like truth for people who are unhappy; frustrated by their life circumstances; in chronic debt; in abusing relationships; stuck in bad jobs; and so on and so forth. The kind of change a lot of people need is possible and doesn't require professional help. It's just damned hard to bring about. So, a lot of us remain unhappy, frustrated, unfulfilled, and so on.

Psychiatry has little to offer people who are merely very unhappy, other than tranquilizers and antidepressants.

The people who really need psychiatry are those with major mental illnesses -- bi-polar; schizophrenics; psychotic disorders, OCD, CD / MI, and the like. Changing one's life circumstances might improve life for someone experiencing episodes of psychosis. Or not. It won't cure them.

My own experience with psychiatry -- antidepressant and sedative therapy on the one hand, and extended talk therapy on the other -- is that they help one cope with the life one is living but not liking. In the end what helped me was major change, not adjustment. I can't claim that I engineered the kinds of change that helped. Life changed and I started feeling much better.

I've seen major mental illness up close--in partners and relatives. It can be pretty ugly. They needed all the psychiatric help they could get. And it helped. Bi-polar, MI/CD, and the like are not really 'curable' but they benefit from the benefit which the medical model of psychiatry can give.

There certainly are abuses by the pharmo-medical industry. I suspect that far too many children are being 'identified' with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and being prescribed stimulants (which in children have a 'paradoxical' effect). This idea was being studied in the late 1960s, early 1970s in Boston in largely black elementary schools. (I was working at a hospital at the time where the research was being done, though I wasn't involved in it.) Drugging overly active black boys seemed like a good idea to both the schools and the doctors.

For these disruptive boys what was needed was change -- better homes, better communities, better schools, better opportunities, better environments -- not therapy.

We are culpable for a lot of high crimes and misdemeanors (some of them in progress RIGHT NOW) but how can any species hold itself responsible for what has developed over millions of years.

Thanks. I'm sure the philosophical segments are interesting. But I steadfastly disagree with human exceptionalism. — Vera Mont

We are unexceptional in that we are the product of evolution, like every other species is, bacteria to sequoias. We designed ourselves no more than any other species did. We are on the continuum along with every other animal.

Where we ARE exceptional is that we are much further out on the continuum (than other species) in our ability to reason, invent, think, etc., and enact the rational and irrational motives driven by our far superior lust for aggrandizement.

We may or may not be responsible for that over-weening lust to achieve grandly.

That's the misfortune of the other organisms on the planet -- we were let loose on the world by an indifferent process of evolution. It probably won't work out all that well for any.

Crows and parrots seem to have hit the intelligence jackpot much more often than other birds, but birds--any bird, pick a bird--are capable animals meeting many of the challenges they face.

A science fiction writer said, in a story about animals--I forget the title and author, "In the jungle, everybody is thinking!" Even brainless plants have the means to warn other plants of threats, and are able to mount targeted defenses (within a fairly narrow repertoire).

It is the nature of this world that no organism gets a free ride. There are ALWAYS dangerous threats and tempting opportunities to be navigated.

Another glittering generality: Human civilization, as it has evolved to the present, has become incompatible with the most optimal balance of resources of the natural world. What should we do about it? Were we able (which we are not) we ought to be far-sighted about the long-term consequences of our industrially powered production--everything from our own numbers, to the automobile and airplane or laundry detergents and cheap meat.

There was a lot of fuss in sea-side tourist resorts a few years ago. People couldn't resist feeding the sea-gulls (herring-gulls) with sandwiches and potato chips. Then the sea-gulls took to swooping down and grabbing them from their hands as they were munching them. I haven't heard any complaints recently. People must have learnt not to "open-carry" goodies along the sea front. — Ludwig V

I would post a link to a New York Times piece on gulls from a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure you would find it secured behind their pay-wall. Gulls are pretty smart, and they are good observers. They like to eat food that other animals are eating: "If she's eating it, it must be good. I'll just have some of that!" That goes for a gull's approach to what humans--and other gulls--are eating. Gulls show up when the food shows up.

They are good parents; both males and females care for the young. So, a plus there -- they don't hatch and then abandon their chicks. (Elsewhere I read that pigeons are good parents too, so their children are neither seen nor heard. On the other hand, I don't know what, besides popcorn and the like, urban pigeons would have to feed their little chickies.)

The science writer recommends watching the gulls closely for individual differences; in a sea of gulls dive bombing your hot dog, that might be difficult, but give it a try.

I hope that's tongue-in-cheek. — Vera Mont

Oh, no! Totally serious. (Ouch! bites tongue)

So when a new thing does the opposite, the first reaction is surprise, quickly followed by delight — Vera Mont

Long ago I saw an episode on Ira Flatow's Newton's Apple where he asked how a helium balloon in a bus would behave when the vehicle began to move. One would suppose that the balloon would move to the back of the bus, as the forward momentum occurred. Shockingly, it's just the opposite (do try this at home). The balloon moves to the front of the bus. (Enough of the heavier air moves to the back of the bus, forcing the lighter balloon to move forward.)

One shouldn't waste scarce helium on experiments that have already been done, so take your helium balloon to an MRI lab where it can be recycled for more important uses, like scanning brains. Or inhale it to achieve a Donald Duck kind of voice for a few seconds.

Very often to see how many times their adult caregiver will retrieve it for them — Vera Mont

Has anyone determined what the average number of retrievals a caregiver is willing to perform before the object is thrown out the window?

The grey squirrel is a good example from the US — Ludwig V

The upper midwest of the US doesn't harbor many red squirrels, so I'm not familiar with their behavior. Grey squirrels are everywhere around here. They usually are grey with a white belly, but they sometimes are black or white (not a seasonal change).

I've read about the terrorism directed at your red squirrels by the Yankee grey squirrels. Social scientists and psychoanalysts have not been able to determine what, exactly, is the source of this inter-squirrel hostility.

The urban grey squirrel readily exploits human behavior. The smart squirrels on the University of Minnesota campus follow people carrying paper bags. If you stop, because you happen to like squirrels, they'll go so far as to climb up your pant leg to access the presumed food in your bag. This is somewhat disconcerting.

It's not hard to let them eat out of your hand; even to sit on your knee and eat the offered peanuts. I've established such a relationship several times since I was a kid. I'm more fastidious as an old guy, and would just as soon NOT have even cute rodents sitting on me.

the dog's actions cannot be explained by applying the gaze heuristic, because that heuristic deals with tracking moving objects. The dog is not tracking a moving object — cherryorchard

An impressive example is a dog tearing after a Frisbee, then leaping to catch it in its jaws. But other animals do this too. An eagle dives to catch a rabbit, but the rabbit, no genius in the animal kingdom, swerves sharply at the last half second, and the eagle ends up with dirt in its grip. Eagles are fed and rabbits are not over-running the countryside, so the eagles are successful often enough.

Quite some time ago I read that infants have a limited built in knowledge about the world. This was demonstrated by showing the baby a helium-filled balloon, and then letting go of it. The balloon, of course, rose to the ceiling. The baby exhibited an expression of SHOCK! Objects are supposed to fall when released. I'm assuming this was done more than once, and on at least several babies. (Sorry, too far back -- don't know where I read it, but it was not in a tabloid newspaper.)

So, what are the swallows and robins supposed to eat — Vera Mont

The worms that early birds get are something of an ecological problem. The native earthworms of North America were scraped off by the last glacial period and are still recovering. When the first people arrived in North America, there weren't many worms crawling around in Northern areas. The Europeans brought big fat earth worms with them -- not deliberately, but in plant containers and root bundles. The big fat earth worms prospered and have spread over much of the "wormless zone"--in between southern Canada and north of Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, etc.

How could big fat juicy earthworms be a problem?

They are a problem because they eat all the leaf litter on the ground. The native worms weren't big and robust enough to do that, The Euro-worms, however, are. When it rains, the bare soil (no longer covered up with a thick layer of leaf litter) erodes more, washing away the top soil, including the fertile worm castings.s

What to do, what to do?

Native earthworms can, of course, be planted in northern forests, but that isn't going to get rid of the Euro-worms. Pay birds a bounty on each big earthworm they eat? Imagine the difficult bookkeeping problem that would entail.

I haven't had to wash the windshield all summer. — Vera Mont

It seems to me that insects (using it as a general term) are scarcer than they used to be. Mayflies (order Ephemeroptera) used to be extremely plentiful near rivers and backwaters. One rarely sees them now. I haven't seen many butterflies of any kind in the past few years. For that matter, I don't see many house flies, either. Mosquitos seem to be holding their own.

People who live in crop growing rural areas certainly see more insects than urban dwellers. Hordes of a Japanese beetle imported to prey on aphids that feed on soybean plants collect on houses in the fall. They aren't harmful, but it 'bugs' some people. They look like lady bugs but when rubbed reveal a very bitter odor. Flies would be a lot more common around barnyards, hog pens, cattle, and so on.

In various places where researchers have counted insects, the numbers are down from the past. I am not sure what impact declining insect numbers have on birds, because global warming affects birds negatively in a number of ways. It can't be good.

OK — Ludwig V

I don't think either one of us is right, or wrong. I don't know enough about how the brain works to be right or wrong. I'm just guessing and passing on ideas I've picked up here and there.

I dislike some of the ideas I've come across such as the statement "The self does not exist." Maybe there is no lobe in the brain that houses "self", and maybe 'self' is generated by different parts of the brain, BUT, however it is produced, 'SELF' EXISTS as a durable, cohesive entity. My guess is that the 'self' is generated by the brain and social interaction from birth onward. An example of early self building might be the two-year old who, having learned the word, deploys "NO" as an expression of this new self that has a little power and choice. The "terrible twos" are a time when young children have come into possession of their self. And then we spend the rest of our lives cultivating 'selfhood'.

Some animals seem to have a self and some do not. An alleged test of 'self' is whether the animal recognizes itself in a mirror. 'Elephants do, dogs don't. On the other hand, the dogs I have lived with all seem to have diligently pursued their self-interests and preferences. I don't know any elephants.

So, question: How do you think the self is composed? Does DNA play a role? When does the self form--does it arise gradually or suddenly? Can we 'lose our self"? (not talking about literally losing our heads, or terminal brain disease which destroys the brain)

A question which has come up in discussions of the afterlife (about which none of us know anything): Does our self survive death? (To quote Flannery O'Conner, one of my favorite short story writers: "I belong to the church without Christ, where the lame don't walk, the blind don't see, and the dead stay dead.") Even if I don't believe in it, I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife of zeroed out souls who are without the selves they possessed in life.

We know a bit about the brain, but not very much. — Ludwig V

If it is the case that neither of us knows more than just "a bit about the brain' than your claims about your self, and my claims about my self, and what our respective brains are or are not doing, are both based on insufficient evidence. We have reached an impasse.

But you could only describe it as thinking if you are prepared to say that a computer thinks. The brain is, after all, a machine. — Ludwig V

I have not, would not, call the brain "a machine". After some brains invented computers, people started comparing their computers to brains and their brains to computers. My brain loves my Apple computer, but a computer is to the brain what a screw driver is to the brain: an sometimes useful external object,

a computer is to the brain what a screw driver is to the brain

That is the third version of the analogy. The Invisible Copy Editor, which is located on the underside of the Frontal Cortex next to the Olfactory Center, received a BAD SMELL alarm, indicating that the first version stank. My self was alerted, and I tried out a couple of different versions. Now it's back to Auto Mode.

The least obtrusive and most reliable way to discover how other animals think is to observe them in their natural habitat, solving the problems nature throws at them. — Vera Mont

Which is how Lars Chittka figured out so much about The Mind of A Bee, his 2023 book about bee perception, cognition, and success. One of his observations is "Bees live a very fast life; they have about 3 weeks from leaving their wax cell as an adult to their likely death. They have to actually learn a lot--it isn't all pre-programmed in their genes. In order to do this, their neurons seem to be far more efficient than ours. And they have very capable sensory capacities -- a sense of smell, touch, taste, hearing, the ability to see different parts of the spectrum than we do, a directional capacity, and so on.

When they land on a flower--which they did because the flower met certain specs--they can immediately tell whether another bee has recently foraged there. If so, they fly off. They 'know' it takes a flower a few hours to refill its nectar dispensers.

It takes a lot of unobtrusive observation to discover these things, something bee scientists have been doing for decades.

But the suggestion that I and you don't exist is absurd. — Ludwig V

It isn't that 'I' or 'you' don't exist; rather, the identity that I have doesn't occupy a specific region of the brain called "the self" -- at least they haven't been able to find it, and they've been looking, What seems to be the case is that various facilities in the brain maintain our identity as a seemingly solid self.

If it's a fiction (which wouldn't be my choice of words) then it's a fairly solid fiction in a healthy, intact brain.

Why do you separate composing from typing? — Ludwig V

Several different areas of the brain are involved in composing this sentence. Obviously Broca's area, (language production) is involved; thought creation areas are involved; memory, etc. None of these areas control motor functions (like typing). So, once the sentence is ready, the motor centers are in charge of the typing.

Granted, the brain has some degree of plasticity, and an unused area can be recruited for some other purpose, but in adults, especially, this isn't a quick process. For example, were I to be blinded, the visual cortex would have a lot less to do. It might be recruited to process sensory input from the fingers in order to understand braille.

The idea that saying something is somehow unspooling what the brain has already done just pushes the issue back a stage into an infinite regress. — Ludwig V

There isn't "something else unspooling what the brain has done". The brain itself is managing the process of issuing a statement from inspiration to expression. Broca's area alone can't produce speech without coordinated effort by the motor system controlling tongue, lips, jaw, and breathing. Brain injuries and brain manipulation (during surgery) reveal that different areas of the brain control different aspects of our whole behavior.

I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. — Ludwig V

That's why I asked, "who are you?"

No matter what you say, what you think, what you do, it issues from the brain labeled "Ludwig V". What the neurological researcher is saying is that the "representation called the self of Ludwig V" is not doing the thinking, Almost everything the brain does is silent; we don't hear it thinking. We can't watch it retrieve a memory if a grade school teacher; we can't observe it coming up with a new idea. It feels like "we" are doing the thinking, but that's part of the fiction of the self.

Ludwig: Your brain is doing your thinking, it's just that "your thinking" happens in your brain below your radar.

Hey, show a little gratitude. The brain controls everything about you from your happy smile to your asshole and everything in between. You don't want to know everything your brain is doing. Yes it does your thinking, which you want to claim. Why don't you claim the task of keeping yourself upright when walking; blinking regularly to keep your eyeballs moist; keeping track of your temperature, blood pressure, heart beat, and breathing; waking up every morning (rather than not waking up); registering a patch of itchy skin; and hundreds of other services going on all the time?

You don't claim all these functions because you probably feel thinking is more noble and important than managing your bladder and rectal sphincters. Well, Ludwig, just wait until those bladder and rectal sphincters stop working, and you'll no longer consider their control beneath your dignity.

Thinking is just one of many things that we are not 'personally' responsible for.

I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. — Ludwig V

And who are you? Where did you come from? Who do you think you are?

So, some neurological researchers and thinkers propose that the 'self' -- you, I -- is a convenient fiction. The self is a creation of the brain, and we don't know how this is accomplished. As a fiction, the self is an extremely compelling story. But, you know, as I type this, it is somewhat clear to me that "I" am not composing these sentences. I'm reading them as they appear. The composer is a mental facility composed of various brain circuits. This facility outputs the text to the motor facility which causes my fingers to move in just the right way to produce this text.

"I" have edited the text; I decided to change some words here and there. But again, Neurological research shows that the decision to act is made BEFORE we are aware that we want to act. The "I" editor operates a couple of beats behind the brain circuits that actually made the decision.

That's OK, because most of the time the various parts of my brain are in accord on the importance of keeping "me", body and brain, together in one piece. Risk-reduction circuits in the brain try to keep "me" from getting beat up in The Philosophy Forum, and possibly killed (figuratively here, for real out on the street).

There is a lot "I" don't like about these loosey-goosey theories of self, consciousness, and all that, even if I grant them plausibility.

One could argue that the powers are less secret than they seemed to be back then. — Ludwig V

When it comes to our power of thought, it's still hidden. We don't know at this point how the brain thinks BECAUSE we do not have access to enough of the brain's processing to figure it out. Yes, we have fMRI, EEGs, direct measurement of neuron's firing, etc. But these just don't reveal in anything close to granular detail how the brain produces the self, consciousness, novels, symphonies, mechanical inventions, and so on and so forth. There are clues, but the case isn't solved by a long shot.

Will it be solved? I don't know. Depends on the stability of civilization over the next century or two. The brain's 90 billion neurons (give or take a half dozen) and their trillion trillion interconnections are literally beyond our reach at this point. C. elegans' brain (all 300 neurons) has been fully charted, but that's a far cry from even a rat's brain, let alone the extraordinary brain of Ludwig V.

If we don't figure out what ever neuron does, that's fine. We don't need to know. Our brains are not so reliable that they should have more knowledge than they can safely use.

No, mate. I don't participate in guiri things. — javi2541997

Google said 'guiri' means "uncouth foreign tourists, usually those with Northern European looks".

Well, of course thrifty Northern Europeans would have to go south to find tomatoes cheap enough to throw at each other. On the other hand, the Northern European Lutherans around here (the upper midwest of North America) aren't accustomed to engaging in public disorder, especially a public food fight. Are you sure it isn't Russians and Bulgarians who are the guiri?

The availability of fruit emoji's might be sufficient reason to move the whole TPF site to Discord! One could use the pineapple emoji to efficiently welcome new members, for instance (pineapples were once a symbol of welcoming, so I have heard). Banana and banana peel emoji's would have several uses. Sour grapes, kiwis, nuts, cherries, peaches, apricots, eggplant, raspberries (the Bronx cheer) rotten tomatoes, etc. Speaking of tomatoes, did you participate in the big Spanish tomato fight?

I just find Discord an ugly user interface with annoying operating features. I generally avoid social media sites like FaceBook et al, because I don't like having content pushed at me. I prefer to "pull" content by actively seeking content -- as one does with TPF or on-line newspapers. The drivel quotient at most social media sites is high, too.

All that said, sites can go down, and it can be a rude shock, especially if it lasts for more than a short (minutes, a couple of hours) time. The old PF site went down for several days once and it was quite distressing. It IS a good idea to have a location where news about the outage or outrage can be shared and digital antidepressants can be dispensed. .

Welcome to TPF; I don't like discord, either.

I deleted my account. Solved several issues with one click.

I used up my available chances to edit my account, so now I have to wait 3 days. Fine. 3 days, 3 years, whatever. Screw it.

What are we at risk from? — Amity

Brain worms, mostly. Robotic devils, viruses up the ying yang, subversives of every variety -- nothing too unusual. Dark mode is very dark, indeed -- an outcropping of the dark web.

Personally, I resent having to deal with yet another sign-in rigamarole. It wanted a password. Safari produced a non-memorable password, but doesn't seem to have put it anywhere. Now I'm stuck. Fuck.