• Solutions to the discontents the market creates.
    ↪Question
    I don't believe capitalism can be made into what it is not.

    "bad infinity"?

    The best that can be expected in a capitalist economy with democratic politics is to control capitalism, and capitalists, to limit their rapaciousness. We have had episodes of restrained and unrestrained capitalist activity. Of the two, restrained capitalism was better -- but it was still capitalism.

    Western Europeans have done a better job of restraining capital, allocating far more money than we in the US for social goods. This works especially well in boom times. Whether Europe will be as generous when hard times come, don't know.

    There is nothing God Ordained or Eternal about capitalism. The demise of capitalism isn't the same as the end of the world. Capitalism might be especially inconvenient now and in the future as we attempt to ameliorate global warming.
  • Religion will win in the end.
    One of the variety of religious experiences...

    tumblr_oomyd58CKP1s4quuao1_540.png
  • Religion will win in the end.
    religious people handle adversity better than atheists" Mongrel said. — Jeremiah

    A statistical analysis would certainly be a good place to start. — Jeremiah

    There are enough atheists, certainly, to gather a large sample, and more than enough religious people. I would hope whoever has done, is doing, or will do this kind of analysis succeeds in defining exactly what they are measuring, because (as I said above) religion is part of their integrated personality. For atheists, whatever set of beliefs they hold are part of their integrated personalities.

    I think it will be difficult to prove that believing or not believing makes a difference because it won't be possible to isolate belief (or no belief) as a measurable variable. It will be found to be tied in with too many other factors.

    For instance, I count myself as a non-believer, but I was raised in a devout Protestant family and didn't reject belief in God until middle age (30 years ago). If I do well or badly in a crisis situation, to what part of my history can that be credited? Some people have never formally abjured their faith, but on close examination they don't seem to ever have seriously believed or practiced it. There are people who have deep beliefs about God's power, their own righteousness, and the power of prayer, but when they get sick they go to the doctor--right away. Is their good health a result of faith or prompt medical attention?
  • Religion will win in the end.
    Your standard for evidence is pathetically low. — Jeremiah

    So Mongrel hasn't provided decent evidence that religion helps. Maybe her standards for evidence are low, but what kind of evidence would you accept?

    We can look at surveys, we can look at long lists of anecdotal reports, and narratives that testify to the benefits of religious belief in times of disaster. It's something, but it's hear-say. There probably isn't any "proof" one way or the other. No brain scans, no blood tests, no behavioral observations or measurements.

    For many, most?, religious people, "religion" is deeply integrated into their personality. It can't be pulled out as a single, measurable factor. It is the strength of the individual that gives faith the power to comfort them, rather than the other way around.

    My own belief about religious relief is that many (most?) people get through disasters (or don't) on the strength of their personalities, and that religious comfort is, if not incidental, not the critical factor. Indeed, believing in prayer and divine intervention and then having one's children die must surely result in an additional burden of severe cognitive dissonance. "Why were my prayers not answered?" "Where was Jesus for my (son, daughter, father, mother, sister, brother, spouse...)?" "Why does God allow this to happen?"

    On the other hand, some Nazis working at the Jewish killing pits in captured territory during the invasion of the USSR were humbled that, "The Jewish men walked to the pits like heroes."
  • Religion will win in the end.
    Religion provides a ready-made framework in which to find meaning in events. True? — Mongrel

    Yes, I think that's true. The problem that the ir-a-anti-non-un-religious have is composing a narrative without the gods to account for, and provide meaning to, the ghastly events that disrupt or end lives. I think it's a tough assignment to produce a de novo narrative that both explains the horrors of life and at the same time provides comfort to the survivors.

    If one can't come up with a narrative (like, if one lacks knowledge of various religious and philosophical themes) then one is going to face the cold wind blowing from the future [The Stranger, Camus] without so much as a tissue of protection.

    A well-read atheist could, for instance, turn to Ecclesiastes and read that there is a time to live and a time to die. The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Time and chance govern our lives. We are grieved, but we are the survivors. A live dog is better than a dead lion.

    To lose a child (a spouse, a parent...) and be unable to place the loss in a larger context has to be chilling and caustic.
  • Religion will win in the end.
    I don't have any scientific articles. — Mongrel

    Research has been done into the relative success that the religious and non-religious people have in coping with adversity, prolonged stress, serious illness, and so on. I wasn't able to lay my hands on a specific reference just now.

    If my memory (and common sense) serve me, the differences are not altogether unambiguous. For one thing, not all religiosity is the same, and not all ir-religiosity is the same, either. Some factors that might make a difference are not religious in nature. Supportive friends, for instance, make a difference. Ones psychological make up, quite apart from religion, has something to do with how well or poorly we cope with trouble.

    Parents who stand at the bedside of their dying child acting like we're at a barbecue or something. they're atheists. — Mongrel

    Parents standing by the bedside of their dying child (parent, spouse, dearest friend...) might be coping with the awful inevitability confronting them by displaying levity. Fatal illness and death can take a long time, and after months of being the pillar of strength and support, one might well give way to frivolous chatter.

    There isn't any master narrative that defines how people should deal with the appalling misery of life. Mostly, we learn how to suffer and witness suffering through "on the job training".
  • Religion will win in the end.
    ↪Ciceronianus the White
    I thought every school boy learned that the Indo-European language root of salvation was sol (whole).
  • Religion will win in the end.
    When you broaden your worldview, all you see are vicious idiots everywhere. It is not religion that is the problem. It is humanity. We are cancer. — TimeLine

    Oh, come now. Take a laxative and calm down.
  • Religion will win in the end.
    Then you have millions upon millions dying in the Middle East. — TimeLine

    How many "excess deaths" do you think there are?

    The world death rate is 100% -- and has been for a long time. Of course there are people dying in the middle east. As well there should be; it's over populated, like much of the world. And in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and South America people are also dying--millions upon millions. Do you realize that in our species' history, BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of people have died?

    You'll be sounding like Carl Sagan, before long. "Billions and billions..."
  • Religion will win in the end.
    I don't think the conditions that require illusion are ever going away...not for long anyway. — Mongrel

    You've stepped into rather deep water, there.
  • Unconscious "Desires"
    Are you saying that "I" learned how to walk, or my motor cortex did? — Bitter Crank

    "You" learned how to walk; the learning was largely accomplished in the motor cortex (which is part of "you"). "You" were never 'conscious' of the details of walking (proprioception, balance, adjustment of back, abdominal, and extremity muscle groups, etc.) but the conscious "you" was aware that you were moving about, and shared in the excitement, the pride, the thrill of moving about.

    Yes, but I can focus on each breath I take and and change the rate of my breathing. — Bitter Crank

    Indeed, "you" can. Controlled breathing overrides the automatic brainstem control of breathing. Controlled breathing requires the focus of the conscious mind. When "you", the conscious mind, is focused on breathing it can't focus on very much else.

    What I am groping for is a way of saying that "you" are composed of many functions; one of which is the function of consciousness. There are other, equally important functions that are not conscious. The not-conscious functions are no less "you" than the conscious function is "you". To borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman, "you" contain multitudes.

    If I have not answered your question, then I admit defeat in supplying you with what you want. I just don't have any more theory about how the brain works. I intuit that somehow the brain coordinates the many essential functions of our brain, including our experience of consciousness. I have not the vaguest idea of where or how that is done.
  • Solutions to the discontents the market creates.
    The market alone doesn't breed wants faster than slums breed rats. What happened to the market to cause it to generate an infinity of wants was capitalism. Capitalism doesn't seem to aim for stasis: It aims for growth, and in order for growth to occur steadily over a long period of time, new wants and needs are absolutely required.

    Cassette tape players, CD players, and MP3 players and their associated media were all new wants to replace the old want of 331/3 rpm vinyl records. Cell phones are a new want to replace land line phones. Fashion is 98% want on top of an ancient need for clothing to protect the body.

    All the goods developed for new wants worked -- they weren't scams. Their necessity wasn't dictated by low quality; it was dictated by a need to destroy a former investment and offer a replacement investment. That's what keeps all sorts of firms solvent.

    So, there isn't any solution to the rampant waste of perpetually new wants without abandoning capitalism. Abandoning capitalism means changing the way we live, which would entail some good things no matter what angle you look at it.
  • "Western Culture" and the Metric
    I think "Liberal Capitalist Culture" is actually a fair descriptor. Or as the Soviets used to call us: "Decadent." That sort of thinking is actually QUITE present in the progressive circles, and it occasionally scares me. The whole "Property is Theft" and redistribution of wealth thing is coming back in thought, disguising its true nature. — SleepingAwake

    Welcome to the forum, by the way. Your maiden trip out is doing well.

    When it comes to decadence, the Soviets were in no position to accuse the kettle of being black.

    The whole "property is theft" thing (Proudhon, French anarchist. 1840) is probably not coming back all that much. There are some members of the impoverished chattering classes that like the idea, but generally it isn't popular. Americans aspire to wealth earned the old fashioned way, through yankee ingenuity and ruthless exploitation. That most Americans aren't going to get anywhere close to wealth hasn't discouraged the aspiration.

    I like the idea--property being understood in the Marxist sense as capital, not private property like one's small goods, and maybe a small house, a car, a wedding ring, etc. The property that really constitutes theft is the form owned by the to 5% to 10%: outright ownership or shares in factories, warehouses, rental properties, agricultural land, railroads, shipping, and so on.

    Socialism is a piece of Western Culture, along with democratic or representative government, capitalism, free trade, pizza, single malt whiskey, martinis, and The New Yorker.
  • Religion will win in the end.
    Religion is like opium. — Mongrel

    It's always a good idea to go back to the original text from which Marx's "opiate of the masses" came:

    Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

    The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

    Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
  • "Western Culture" and the Metric
    ↪Wayfarer
    What more than live in paradise could they do?
  • "Western Culture" and the Metric
    ↪SleepingAwake
    Is this sort of sarcastic, erudite, insightful answer what you were looking for?
  • "Western Culture" and the Metric
    Isn't 'Western culture' a term for global 'liberal' capitalist culture? GLCC — Wayfarer

    That's a good term, certainly for the recipients of GLCC. We grew up in the bosom of global, 'liberal' capitalist culture, whether we knew what that was when we were growing up, or not. But culture is complex and is layered. We don't all live in the same layer, and we who grew up in the donor GLCC homelands were not 'recipients', at least not until recently.

    and suddenly felt that I knew who I was — Wayfarer

    One day when Wayfarer asked his mirror:

    "Mirror, mirror, on the wall in the bath,
    Who am I, really?"

    It answered:

    "You are a child of the global liberal capitalist culture, and you can leave those apostrophes out.
    I will show you Californians; you are them and they know who they are. Behold a documentary.
    They brush and floss daily. They wash their hands. They flush the toilet. They live in paradise.

    Now, go to bed and leave me alone."
  • "Western Culture" and the Metric
    Western culture is the culture of contemporary Europeans (since 1400, + or - a couple of weeks) and parts of Asia (i.e., Australians, parts of Russia); North Americans, parts of South America; parts of Africa (i.e., South Africa).

    Contemporary western culture has been strongly influenced (to a greater or lesser degree) by ancient Near East, Greek, and Roman cultures, and to a lesser extent, pre-Roman native European pagan cultures.

    Western Culture is embodied in: languages, literary, plastic musical, and architectural art forms, jurisprudence practices, [edit: economic organization], behavioral norms, and religious traditions, is influenced by climates, geography, natural resources, and race.

    Geography and natural resources have enabled several small European countries (some parts of European empires, such as the Hapsburg Empire) to have an outsized role in exploration and colonial activity.

    I feel as though it was [is?] an umbrella term created to strawman all American and European ideas into being considered "bad" or "wrong". — SleepingAwake

    This is a phenomena of affluent, naive, college educated, young people who have recently discovered that evil is resident in their own culture, and that countries with a lot of power can do things that weak countries can not do -- like dominate, exploit, and colonize. Various influences such as late-stage feminism, postmodernitis (a brain inflammation causing confused thinking and obscure language use), the cultural needs of corporate managers who wish to operate globally, a variety of marxist-inflected theorizing, and the like have produced this.

    Trends come and go. Have patience. This, like a bad smell, will eventually dissipate.
  • Islam: More Violent?
    Here is the definitive article.

    There have been 1,516,863 gun-related deaths since 1968, compared to 1,396,733 cumulative war deaths since the American Revolution. That’s 120,130 more gun deaths than war deaths -- about 9 percent more, or nearly four typical years worth of gun deaths. And that’s using the most generous scholarly estimate of Civil War deaths, the biggest component of American war deaths.     — Wayfarer

    Does America have a gun problem? Yes, absolutely. A severe problem. I am only disagreeing on the details 1,617,000 deaths? Probably not, but even 500,000 would be too many.

    Definitive? Punditfact?

    Let's say there 33,000 gun deaths a year. We could say that since 1968 there have been 1,617,000 deaths. Reasonable assumption? Sure, if you assume that the same number of people were shot dead every year -- which isn't the case.

    In 1950, the rate of gun deaths was 5 per 100,000. Ah, 15,000 deaths in 1950. No, 7,600 because the population was 152 million in1950, not 320 million. In 1950 and 1960, the rate of gun deaths was 5.1 and 5.0 per 100,000. In 1970, 1980, and 1990 it was 8.8, 10.4, and 9.4 per 100k, respectively, and the population was increasing each decade. In 2014 the rate per 100k was the same as in 1950, with twice as large a population.

    Here is a chart from the Bureau of Justice showing the trends in homicide: tumblr_ooke8iyO2I1s4quuao1_540.png

    Not every death is a homicide. In fact, 2/3s of the gun shot deaths were suicides by middle-aged white males.

    Further, homicides are not distributed evenly across the population. Young, black, males living in specific sections of specific cities in specific states account for a very disproportionate number of the homicide deaths. (Not that its OK that the largest number of homicide victims is young, black, and male. It's just that most demographic groups are not similarly violent. That the largest number of suicides is among middle aged white males is likewise very significant, even if most people have far lower rates of suicide.)
  • Unconscious "Desires"
    It also stands that at one point in my early life, I couldn't walk. Are you saying that "I" learned how to walk, or my motor cortex did? — Harry Hindu

    Learning how to walk when you were transitioning from crawling around on the floor to standing up to taking steps was DIFFICULT. If you had to learn how to walk as an adult (as happens to people who have had brain injuries) it would be VERY DIFFICULT.

    Yes, but I can focus on each breath I take and and change the rate of my breathing. — Harry Hindu

    That's a major hunk of yoga, right there. The reason why consciously controlled breathing is psychologically significant is that the conscious part of your brain normally doesn't deal with breathing. When you are thinking about controlling your breathing you have to stop thinking about your 401K, or whatever...

    What I experience is a representation of me sending a series of coordinated nerve impulses to various muscles in my body so that I can walk, which is my will to do so and the conscious knowledge that I am walking. — Harry Hindu

    Yes, your consciousness constructs that representation. But that representation and 50¢ won't get you a cup of coffee. The part of your brain that actually coordinates movement isn't accessible to the conscious mind, but (apparently) the motor cortex has access to the conscious mind--else it wouldn't know where you wanted to go.

    ↪Harry Hindu
    OK, like I said, I'm "playing with this idea". I'm about at the end of what little I know to play with. I now need the assistance of a research neurologist. Do you happen to have one handy?
  • Islam: More Violent?
    what makes terrorism such a massively significant political issue? Is it the death and harm it causes or the widespread outrage it causes as a result? — VagabondSpectre

    In a previous post (neglected) I pointed out that important decisions are often made irrationally, or I'll add now, "apparently irrationally". The body count doesn't rationally merit the level of reaction we have seen. But note, without vigorous reaction and vigilance, we could have seen a lot more terrorist attacks than occurred. (That's not provable, of course.) People are irrational about certain kinds of accidents. They are cavalier about auto accidents and deathly afraid of their passenger plane crashing -- even though the former is vastly more likely than the latter.

    Whites are afraid of getting shot by black men, even though white folks are not the usual victims of black killers. Blacks are angered at white police shootings of black men, when a far larger number of black men are killed by other black men.

    People are more afraid of foreign terrorists than they are of domestic terrorists. The Oklahoma City court house bombing by Timothy McVeigh was, by any standard, very bad. Yet, there was less angst about that bombing than much smaller attacks by Islam-believing terrorists. Indeed, the US ATF task force that started the fire at the Branch Dravidian compound in Waco, Texas (that's way-co, not whacko) to which McVeigh was responding, supposedly, was pretty bad too.

    On and on. People don't respond rationally to these sorts of events. What is really crazy, though, is that legislators who are elected and paid to make decisions that are more rational, and less irrational, than your average citizen's reaction, frequently fail to make sensible, rational policy.
  • Islam: More Violent?
    ↪Wayfarer
    I am in favor of rigorous gun control, suppression of ammunition manufacture, gun seizures, and a bunch of other repressive measures that could be directed against guns, gun owners, and gun users. That having been said, who produced the figure that more Americans have been killed by domestic gunfire than all the Americans killed in its wars?

    Since the Revolution, 1,354,664 Americans have been killed in one major or measly war or another. War dead tend to get counted. How did they arrive at the figure that more than 1,354,664 Americans had been killed by gun violence since the nations founding?

    If the annual death count was as high every year as it was in 2015, sure -- one could calculate out that in x years there would be over a million. But... the annual human harvest by gun fire hasn't always been as high as it is now. The population is larger now than it has been previously (of course). Who was keeping track of gun deaths across the country in 1907, for instance? 1853? 1799? Well, nobody was keeping track until relatively recently.
  • Comparing Mental states
    Most theories of perception accept that there is an external reality but claim with evidence that it must be represented to us in the brain. So on this picture What we are perceiving is a construct. I don't know how naive realism could explain the idea we could have direct unmediated access to an objective reality. In this sense reality might be hidden from us. At the same time I do feel I have immediate access to reality. — Andrew4Handel

    So, this is one issue. I agree with this view. There is a real world (the cosmos on down to your room) which has real properties. We are immersed in this reality, but we can not apprehend it first hand. The "apprehender" is locked inside the skull and all it knows is what its senses tell it. We are always at least one step removed from 'raw reality'. We have a construct of this "real world" which works, most of the time. All life in the cosmos has to deal with this real world, and since animal sensory systems are a lot like ours, we can assume that senses work pretty well for creatures that are not, apparently, building 'constructs'.

    I too think in terms of "my consciousness". We clearly have something called consciousness. It is self-aware. It is one facility in the brain, perhaps "first among equals" or maybe just an equal among other equals.

    I am not suggesting that we have more than one conscious facility. It would be very confusing if there was more than one Speaker of the House. But other facilities in the brain (like memory) must have a direct tap into what the Speaker of the House is up to. Otherwise, it could not furnish information when needed. It would not be able to recall what the Speaker of the House heard yesterday while I was eavesdropping on the worker in the neighboring cubicle.

    So, again:

    Where do you suppose "thinking" is done in the brain?

    How does the memory bring to the fore information that has not been requested for about for 30 years? And how does the memory manage to forget a meeting you (somewhere in there) didn't really want to go to in the first place?

    The motor cortex has to receive a feed from the visual cortex to be able to move you through the world. It needs to know where the holes, curbs, bumps, and big cracks are--pretty much in a continual stream. If it doesn't have this information (and It has to receive other information too, like information about how slippery the side walk is. This doesn't come from the visual cortex, it's picked up by the sensory system in the feet and legs which detects surface texture (hard, smooth, and slippery).

    We aren't aware of all the things that are going on, live, in our brains because (PERHAPS) we have a deficient construct of how the mind works. Maybe we have put way to much emphasis on the conscious mind (one part out of 100 parts) and not enough importance on those other parts which are neither un nor sub conscious. They just do their thing apart from the conscious mind, They may even share awareness and consciousness among themselves which the Speaker of the House (THE consciousness) just doesn't have access to.

    I don't happen to have an fMRI machine or a high end EEG in the kitchen, so I can't test this theory.
  • Comparing Mental states
    Here's the word and the image:

    tumblr_ooj03yCkLE1s4quuao1_250.jpg

    Sacks writes about language and the deaf, and how lacking and then receiving sign language changed their experience. I don't know if anything similar has been written about the blind. If someone had been blind since birth, they would not, could not, dream or think in visual images. How could they? For one thing, they wouldn't have any visual images, and much of the visual cortex would have been taken over for non-visual processing.

    But, the blind would utilize other senses -- touch, taste, smell, and sound in their dreams. They might dream about a passage they read in braille and feel the braille words. It would be difficult for them to describe these dreams to a sighted - visual image dreamer, and visa versa. To each other, it would make sense quicker, better.

    Because consciousness is our only access to reality. — Andrew4Handel

    I wonder. I have lately been thinking that our consciousness, which we tend to think is like the pinnacle of the pyramid with the all seeing eye (image on the dollar bill reverse side). I've been thinking that maybe it is just one facility among numerous facilities that the brain operates. It seems like the pinnacle because what we hear and see, do, say, and think seems to be housed in the conscious mind. But maybe it isn't. (I'm not suggesting that mind transcends the brain; I don't think it does--at all.)

    We know we have very Important, even critical, brain functions that we are not conscious of:

    Memory; (we remember things, but we have no idea how memory is arranged; we have no way of auditing the contents of the memory.)
    Movement; we have no conscious control--(except in a very difficult way, and then limited) over how to make our muscles move to produce coordinated and useful actions--like typing on a keyboard.
    Vision; we have no knowledge and generally little control over how signals from the retina are interpreted and then integrated into a cohesive view.
    Thinking; as I sit here writing this too you, the words are being fed to my fingers from a non-conscious source. I don't know how this happens.
    Emotions; very important; we do not get to decide how we are going to feel about something a good share of the time. You meet somebody for the first time; you don't just like them, you fall for them head over heals. They turn you on every which way. You didn't intend this to happen, you didn't (perhaps) want this to happen, but it did. Or, try as you might, there are people that just strike you as disgusting.

    and so on. I'm not saying our brains are not plastic; I'm not saying we are robots under the control of mysterious forces. I'm only saying that the Individual person has many systems between his ears not only keeping him alive but make him who he is, enable him to make his way forcefully in the world, and only SOME parts are accessible to, or part of, the conscious facility.

    The motor cortex which moves us around, has to be aware of the world around it, has to know how the body is arranged in space from moment to moment, has to take directions from some other part of the brain (the way finding unit) and does this outside of our conscious mind. It receives information, makes decisions, and issues all sorts of instructions second by second--without telling us anything about it. We don't know and we don't need to know what is going on there.

    A good share of our brain's always-on activity is not "un-conscious" -- it's just mostly not accessible to "THE consciousness where we live.

    Take the "enteric brain" -- the nervous system that operates the gut. Do you really want to know, minute by minute, what it is dealing with? Probably not. Messages from the enteric brain to the cerebral brain are usually bad news: Alarm bell sounds, bright light blinks... Incoming message, red alert... "Contents of your gut are going to be expelled in 9 seconds, whether it is convenient or socially acceptable to you or not." and then it is expelled. Unless you were paying really close attention, you had no idea what was coming down the pipe, so to speak.
  • Philosophy Club
    Rules? We don't need no stinking rules.

    paraphrase from Blazing Saddles
  • Islam: More Violent?
    50 people dead from a terrorist attack is 'morally worse' than 50 people dead from a disease. But it doesn't follow, for example, that the US should spend 250,000 times more per death on terrorism than strokes ($500,000,000 vs $2000 each). Nor does it follow than it's a bigger threat to us. Nor does it follow that it's worse for society overall in a non-moral sense. — WhiskeyWhiskers

    As The Onion reported recently, the death rate in America remains at the all-time high of 100%. All 320 million of us are going to die, and 1/3 of the deaths will be from strokes. So, at $2000 per stroke, we will be spending $200 billion. Feel better about the stroke budget? It's probably higher for cancer (1/3 of the deaths, roughly) and heart disease (another third down the drain).

    Feel better?

    Yes, a rational budget of alarm and financial expenditure would direct more money toward cancer, auto safety, strokes, heart disease, suicide prevention, firearm control, healthy behaviors, and so on. But you may be vaguely aware that humans make many important decisions on the basis of raw emotion rather than rational deliberation.

    Raw emotion was drained out of traffic accidents a long time ago. (MY auto accident was horrible; yours was just background noise.) As one ages, more and more people one knows drop dead from cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Maybe it's sad (but then again, not all that sad) but it isn't shocking. It happens too often. And we have to die of something.

    Terrorism is tuned to an unavoidably noticeable pitch. It happens rarely enough that it doesn't become background noise.
  • Comparing Mental states
    Someone told me that they didn't dream in images — Andrew4Handel

    Don't believe everything people tell you.
  • Comparing Mental states
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    You are quite right that we can not actually experience other people's mental states. One might debate whether we can even "experience" our own mental states, since our mental states are 'what we are'. But let's not go there.

    People with shared language (which presupposed a great deal of cultural sharing) can communicate a great deal about what they are experiencing to each other, and from these communications we have built up the concept of what constitutes the usual human mental repertoire. We also know that some people's experience deviates from that averaged repertoire in fortunate and unfortunate ways.

    Maybe you can meet someone briefly and remember their name and face for years afterward. Names and faces tend to fly out of my memory like alarmed pigeons (unless they are really hot, or something). You and I might both be totally crazy, and our craziness will be totally dissimilar. Or we may be geniuses, but not at all in the same way.

    Words can effectively communicate what our mental states are like, but it takes a lot of words to do the job well. Just saying "he's manic depressive" doesn't tell us much. Labels are too short, usually. "Paranoid schizophrenic" just doesn't tell us enough about somebody's mental state, if we really want to know what that person is experiencing.

    "You seem happy today." "Yes, I feel happy, but let me explain how and why. Have you got an hour?"
  • Art, Truth, & Bull, SHE confronts Fearlessly
    Sometime you need to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation.
  • Unconscious "Desires"
    the motor cortex is not conscious — Bitter Crank

    Let me clarify: The motor cortex, which operates the motion of the body, is fully aware of what your body is doing--otherwise it couldn't successfully move you around. The cortex is 'conscious' of proprioception, for instance. It has to be aware of that in order to keep you upright while you are walking.

    The visual cortex in the rear of your brain is aware of the impulses coming from the retina. It processes those signals, and puts together a cohesive picture of the world--for your conscious mind, among other parts, to enjoy and make use of.

    There are various parts of the brain that are aware of what they are doing, but your conscious mind isn't aware of them, most of the time. The enteric nervous system operates the digestive track--a very complicated batch of processes that your central nervous system is mostly (and happily) unaware of. You don't want regular dispatches from the bowels about what is going on there. When you do hear from the gut, it's usually bad news--like something is going to be expelled in the very near future whether it is convenient for you, or not.

    So, various parts of your brain are aware and interacting in ways that your conscious mind is not a part of. That's a very good thing, because if your conscious mind were aware of all that stuff, you would have no time left to think.
  • Unconscious "Desires"
    But then why do I experience having control of certain aspects of my body. — Harry Hindu

    Because "you" are in control of your arms and your legs. It's just that "you" extend beyond the function of your conscious mind. Besides, your conscious mind doesn't actually do much in the way of controlling motor functions. Do you know how to send a series of coordinated nerve impulses to the various muscles of your body so that you can walk? No, you don't. I don't either. Walking is controlled by your motor cortex (it's on the top side of your brain) and the motor cortex is not conscious.

    There is top-down processing happening, and it seems that there is also bottom-up processing going on as there are things that happen in consciousness that will did not precede in making it happen - like breathing. — Harry Hindu

    Breathing, blinking, heart beat, etc. are controlled in the brain stem--one of the most 'ancient' structures of the brain. There are small clusters of cells that keep your heart ticking away, that make sure you keep breathing--until one fine day they don't, and then you're dead. There is also a small cluster of cells in the brain stem that send you into the oblivion of sleep and another cluster of cells that wake you up. When people have strokes that wreck this wakefulness center, they don't wake up.

    The deep breathing of yoga is effective because it is a practice of your conscious mind over-riding something that is normally automatic and unconscious. You have to consciously decide to "breathe deeply" and selectively relax muscle groups.

    But consciousness is where I'm aware of this stuff happening. Could it be said that I could be aware of these things without being conscious? If so, how? — Harry Hindu

    When you are conscious you are aware that you are walking around, and you will that you walk to some particular destination (like to the mailbox). But your conscious mind is not in control of the physical details of walking.
  • Art, Truth, & Bull, SHE confronts Fearlessly
    Not sure I understand what you are saying here, are you suggesting that women are treated equitably in corporate America? — Cavacava

    "Neither males nor females, neither Jews nor Gentiles, neither gay nor straight, neither young nor old, neither caucasians nor negroes nor asians nor aboriginals" are treated equitably in corporate America. There are super-elites, elites, and sub elites (that's maybe 5% - 15% of the population), then there's everybody else. Everyone below the sub-elites down to the proles are subjected to various and fairly vigorous forms of inequity. Above the elites there is inequity too, but I am not concerned with how males, females, Jews, gentiles, gays, straights, whites, blacks, and asians are distributed within the elites. If a white woman graduate of Wellesley who was born with a silver or gold spoon in her mouth and who wants to be in the 1%-5% isn't hired into top level management or BOD at Apple or Exxon, I just don't care.

    Doesn't this symbolic confrontation point to the shame of the social injustice inveighed against women in corporate America? — Cavacava

    Corporate America is shame itself. Remember what the statue placement is about. It's NOT about women who are struggling to earn a living wage. It's about getting women on boards of directors. Who is invited into the corporate board/power centers? Jane Iverson from Scranton, PA with her BA in accounting from Scranton State College who has a not-appealing job in NYC where she can hardly afford to live? No. It's Vanessa Bush of Chicago's Gold Coast (and the Hamptons) who was worth a few million from the night of her conception, and who knows her way around the elites because she has always been a member of the elite.
  • Art, Truth, & Bull, SHE confronts Fearlessly
    ↪Cavacava
    It's disruption without a cause. Would that make a good movie? Who should the male lead be? Does it need a planetarium as part of the set? Maybe in this flick, the angsty guy could hang around one of those soulless corporate plazas in New York.
  • Art, Truth, & Bull, SHE confronts Fearlessly
    She represents more of that silly feminist, social justice, anti-capitalist nonsense that will do and change absolutely nothing — Thorongil

    She could represent that for you, and I would agree that as far as social justice goes, the whole thing is rank nonsense.

    In fact, the object of SSGA and McCann was to speak in favor of the benefits of having women (not little girls) on corporate boards, because executives at SSGA think that corporations with some women on the board do better financially than boards that are men-only. One would not guess that by looking at the juxtaposition of the sculptures.

    So, the origin of the project was not anti-capitalist. The folks who put it there are all about capitalism. On the other hand... Getting wealthy women on Fortune 500 corporate boards has nothing to do with social justice, and I would hope that serious feminists would not think that getting hundreds of wealthy women into the boardrooms was the goal of their movement.
  • Art, Truth, & Bull, SHE confronts Fearlessly
    as a work of art it must 1st be able to stand on its own as a work of art. — Cavacava

    When we know the wherefore and wherefrom of an art work, we can't take it on its own merits without some mental gymnastics--which are, of course, well within our operational capabilities.

    Had she been cast in Sofia, Bulgaria by an artist who had never heard of the State Street Global Advisors, McCann Advertising, or the Bull, we would be in a better position to say that the sculpture should be taken on its own merits. That isn't the case here, and it wasn't the case from the start.

    The Bull, of course, isn't an art work that can be taken on its own merits either. Its wherefore and wherefrom preclude our naiveté. The bull-girl combo is mid-brow political messaging.
  • Art, Truth, & Bull, SHE confronts Fearlessly
    ↪Cavacava
    It's late for this information, but...

    State Street Global Advisors, which manages some $2.5 trillion in assets, signaled its solidarity with the day’s demonstrators (International Women's Day march). The company installed a roughly 50-inch-tall bronze statue of a defiant girl in front of Wall Street's iconic charging-bull statue...

    ... Fearless Girl is part of State Street’s campaign to pressure companies to add more women to their boards.

    The thinking behind the statue and its placement (which Adweek called a stunt) was engineered by McCann Ericsson Advertising (which had $7.6 billion in revenue 2015). It was art commissioned as part of a public corporate campaign.

    Advertising agencies and their corporate clients deal in Truth, of course. It says so right there on the landing page of the McCann Ericsson:

    tumblr_oohn8kREx01s4quuao1_540.png

    tumblr_oohnezjpV21s4quuao1_540.png

    Who needs philosophy when large, intellectual, ethical corporations reveal TRUTH as part of their mission? Move over, Aristotle, and make way for the Thought Leadership unit.
  • Natural Law, Rights, and the USA's Social Contract
    ↪ernestm
    Ernest, it's hard to imagine a less felicitous way to interest people in your writing than the approach you have pursued here. Peevish to start with and it goes down hill from there.
  • Art, Truth, & Bull, SHE confronts Fearlessly
    ↪ernestm
    So if the SOL is actually a male god, why did the sculpture supposedly use his mother as the model? Maybe either she / he is actually transgender?
  • Art, Truth, & Bull, SHE confronts Fearlessly
    ↪Question
    I thought they ALL wished for the perpetual bull market.
  • Art, Truth, & Bull, SHE confronts Fearlessly
    But it's unclear to me what, if anything, the bull was originally supposed to suggest. — Noble Dust

    What do you think a horny, powerful, pawing, snorting, twisting bull would represent--little girl sisterhood and apple strudel? Cream cheese? Got Milk? No. it's clearly a symbol of aggressive financial optimism and prosperity. Bulls have balls, like the big-bad American Economy, so look out little girl, or you-know-what will happen to you.
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