It might possibly be the case that ADHD or ADD are not "real" disorders in the way that some other conditions indisputably are. Certainly, some children and some adults have difficulty managing sustained attention and some people are 'hyperactive'. The problem with this condition is that it hasn't been fully determined whether it is a "brain disorder" or an artifact of the children are raised, or a side-effect of bad environment.

But not all mental "conditions" are vague and nebulous. Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, psychosis, paranoia, obsessive compulsive disorder, and so on are indisputably abnormal. That said, there are psychiatrists like Thomas Szasz and others who propose radically different interpretations of abnormal psychology. Personally, I don't believe them.

That said, I also think too many people are assigned the diagnosis of "depression". Depression definitely exists, but so do a lot of other real-life situations that leave us in turmoil and which if solved, would leave us much more functional. LIKE: too much drinking, prolonged unemployment, abusive relationships, bad work-life situations, bad environments, and so forth. Too much noise, bad architecture, low grade culture, stupid art, heavy traffic, high concentrations of idiots, morons, and imbeciles per square mile, and so forth are all contributing factors. Lots of people feel dysfunctional, and are, in fact, dysfunctional -- but they are not mentally ill. They just resent living in the shit holes they are stuck in.

Could it be that our primate-brain is what has granted our kind with social characteristics? — Perrydiculous

Of course, that is precisely the case. Primates are social creatures and the primate brain is what makes us social. We are social of necessity, since we take a long time "to become" and "becoming" is a social process as well as an individual process.

The "laws of nature" seem to be derived from observing many instances of observation from astrophysicists observing the cosmos to nuclear physicists studying sub-atomic particles, and others studying everything in between. So, the laws of nature are descriptive. Sometimes matter and energy behave in some way which effectively contradicts the law, and then the law has to be rewritten. These "legal" challenges don't occur every day, but every now and then they do.

The same laws that I described as "descriptive" can be treated prescriptively. We know how gravity, force, and mass interact, so when we launch a rocket to Mars, the laws of nature prescribe how much thrust is needed, when, for how long, and in what direction. Think of the Cassini Mission bouncing around the complex gravitational fields of Saturn and its various moons. NASA wouldn't be able to program the on board computers or alter the programs without an exquisite understanding of precisely what the laws prescribe. When NASA scientists' understanding of the laws of nature aren't quite exquisite enough, rockets miss their targets and go sailing away into the brightly light yonder. around the sun.

If you fall off the roof of a very tall building, be assured that your plunge toward earth is altogether in accordance with laws which will not be amended before you become a large splat! on the sidewalk.

Partially Examined Life — Wayfarer

I checked out The Partially Examined Life and listened to a bit of their podcast on Richard Rorty. It started out with these 4 would-be philosophers-who-thought-better-of-it introducing themselves with a bit too much male giggling for my taste, but then they got on with it. I listened to some of the podcast... points raised:

• not getting stuck in our evil national past, any sort of "original sin", which leads to passivity.
• remain an "agent" and self-loathing is something that "agents" and nations can not afford.
• have (get, maintain) hope and pride in the national project projected into the future. A complete lack of national pride also leads to passivity.
• the Left should be hopeful, not just critical, and it needs to hold onto anti-authoritarianism
• the society we work toward should be characterized by less needless suffering and more diversity in remarkable--larger fuller imaginative individual--human beings

I recommend a visit.

So how about Mr. Chopped Liver himself -- Woody Allen. Not a chance, I'm sure, but he'd be a good guest.

I was wondering if the mods had considered inviting intellectual celebrities to participate in the forum? — m-theory

So what am I, chopped liver?

It doesn't always work.

Posting images from your desktop does not seem to be possible at this time. If you have an image on a web site, though, capture the image address and then paste that address in the address box of the image command (click icon on the text box) like this



The "image address of your avatar in the post above is http://i-6uf0utvje8gy-cdn.plushcontent.com/uploads/userpics/615/n9PJRBAH0A2TQ.jpg

↪Bitter Crank Can we say then that the insubstantial is unreal? Or is it just immaterial? — mew

A good answer is that to exist is to be the subject of a predicate - that is, roughly, to exist is to be spoken of.

So Santa Exists. — Banno

Pay attention to Banno.

Abstract things are immaterial. "Beauty" as an ideal is immaterial. So is "ideal" immaterial. "Immaterial" is immaterial. Immaterial, and "insubstantial", the way you are using it, are no bars to being real, though.

If I say, "The Kingdom of Zirkon" located in another galaxy far away, is a great place to live." then the Kingdom of Zirkon exists. I just called it into existence, as Banno said, by speaking of it.

You might object saying, "Maybe Zirkon is a great place, but unfortunately it isn't 'real'." and you would be correct. It exists, but it isn't real. Just as Santa exists and is not real (so I have been told, anyway), or Oz and its wonderful wizard exist but are not real.

So, an atheist can say "God exists."

A lot of philosophy sounds like some sort of annoying word game.

Here is a list of things that exist.

Mew (the actual person who is represented by "Mew" and her avatar).
The tree outside your window
The number 3 (or 2, 1, 356, etc.)
Jupiter (the god)
Jupiter (the planet)
Galaxies that are too far away for us to see
Sub-atomic particles that are too small to see
The Wizard of Oz


As you see, the list includes things that are physically substantial and real (like you, the tree, the planet Jupiter); concepts like numbers; things that are too small or too far away to see, but which existence can be inferred (sub-atomic particles and the first galaxies); things like the god Jupiter and the Wizard of Oz -- who have existed only as religious or literary figures.

The verb "to exist" covers all of these, but "to exist" doesn't make the insubstantial "material". No one will ever run into Baum's Wizard of Oz anywhere, ever. But the Wizard of Oz is still a "real literary creation" which exists.

Make sense?

I don't know what any of these mean: holographic model of the universe — mew

That's OK. Nobody else does either.

Right. There is "no course of history" to alter. The "course" of history wanders all over the place all the time.

I don't think anybody had suggested that you should either buy or sell stock on the basis of this thread, but like you and your comic-book-buddies, it is amusing to think about "what if" scenarios.

If you're going to get adventurous, try romaine long before you try kale.

Does the US make the world more politically stable such that without the US there would be more war and overall oppression of the world population? — m-theory

In the world that has existed since... what, the 1600s? 1700s? there have been enough reasonably large national powers that having a dominant power has (perhaps) been useful. The British, French, Spanish, Russians, Germans, Chinese, Japanese, Austrians, Portuguese, Arabs, Indians, etc. have all had competing and not entirely compatible interests. It seems like it has been useful to have a sufficiently dominant power to mediate, restrain, and stomp on, if necessary.

The United States was not always this player. It used to be the British Empire. We will not always play this role, and my guess is that China will take over. China will probably not be any worse than us, though they will certainly have different policy preferences. It just doesn't seem possible that a country with a billion plus people, a large dynamic economy, and something of a command economy won't eventually wish to be top cop.

Be sure to take this with several grains of salt.

Maybe your doomsday scenario (of the US going flat out broke) will be rehearsed in what's left of the United Kingdom after Scotland, Northern Island, Wales, Cornwall, and SE England leave.

It has become necessary to ration eggplants and zucchinis, aubergines and courgettes over there, because of bad weather. But it's a foretaste of things to come.

They are also rationing iceberg lettuce. Oddly enough, the "iceberg" lettuce were spoiled by being frozen. You would think that would be good for iceberg lettuce, but it's not. There is no need to eat iceberg lettuce anyway. It doesn't taste all that great and it's not very nutritious. Eat more Kale. Kale tastes just as bad as iceberg lettuce, it's more frost resistant, and it's notoriously nutritious.

I move we do away with both kale and quinoa.

What if the US ceased to exist, suppose the bottom just fell out on the economy and there was no reset button.
Do you think it would drag the rest of the world down with it, or would some other actor step in and assume the role of superpower? — m-theory

It's difficult to imagine conditions that would flat-out bankrupt the United States and not torpedo the rest of the world economy at the same time.

But, suppose such a thing happened...

The world would lose a major food supplier (corn, wheat, soybeans, meat, etc.)

The U.S. is the largest importer, just a little ahead of the European Union. If the US went belly up, the world would lose a 2.3 trillion dollar customer. We all import around $18 trillion, so losing the US share of buying wouldn't be the end of the world economy, from that perspective, but it would definitely be noticed.

The world would lose its biggest arms supplier -- which might or might not be a good thing, depending. No doubt the slack would be taken up quickly.

The US has been a consistent and long time innovator, but the rest of the world is perfectly capable of coming up with bright ideas. Given enough money, at least a moderate level of freedom, and ideas will start bubbling up.

The world would lose a great deal of pollution.

Europe, India, China, Brasil, Israel, South Africa, and some other small countries have capable people who can create new things.

The United States didn't amount to much when the French Revolution happened and Napoleon got going. In our two-bit war of 1812 (while Napoleon at the gates of Moscow) we were lucky we didn't become a B.E. possession again.

Ahh, Spain... Why and how would Spain have become a world power again? I can't remember... was Spain's throne still part of the Hapsburg Family Holdings at the time of Napoleon?

I am trying to imagine how the world would be different without a ww1 and 2.
Didn't these two wars lead to a lot of technological progress — m-theory

You are probably thinking of stuff like... developing the several technologies invented or ramped up to manufacture two kinds of atomic weapons, computational devices to speed up decoding German codes and to calculate artillery trajectories, antibiotics, radar, poison gases (like ricin, mustard gas, Zyklon B and other fine products), the jet engine, ballistic missiles...

War was the occasion to press on diligently where peace was not quite so pressing. All of these things could have happened without either war, just as Teflon (non-stick pans) didn't require a moon-shot or digital photography (invented to solve the problem of retrieving photographs from spy satellites) didn't require the cold war.

Dynamite and TNT were invented quite apart from warfare. Nitroglycerin was invented in the 1840s as a headache remedy and TNT was first a yellow dye -- not too warlike. Figuring out how to make "dynamite" was Nobel's achievement.

M-theory, I'm surprised you didn't catch that... SWP. Socialist Workers Party -- the Trotskyists.

"Did not exist" means "ceased to exist" or "never existed in the first place"?

If "never existed in the first place", then

The history of the British empire would have been different -- it would be much enlarged. the B.E. would have had a much larger share of the great soil and mineral resources located in the North American colonies. Assuming that the B.E. expanded elsewhere as it did, it would have been much more powerful in the 20th century -- perhaps sufficiently powerful to suppress Germany--avoiding WWI and WWII.

On the other hand, whether the American Colonies under B.E. management would have been as successful in exploiting the resources is hard to say. How industrialized would the American Colonies have become? It doesn't seem like it would make sense to haul Mesabi range iron ore and Appalachian coal all the way to England to be smelted and made into finished goods. Perhaps the B.E. would have spun cotton into cloth in the southern American Colonies. Perhaps not.

The French Revolution would probably have occurred anyway. The B.E. might not have been able to prevent the Russian Revolution. Whether France would have sold it's large swath of North America to the B.E. is hard to say. The B.E. would probably have just taken it in due time.

The Native Americans might have fared better. Maybe, maybe not. Mexico might have preserved its northern territories.

We would be living under Pax Brittanica rather than the Pax Americana. Britain wasn't all that kind to its colonies, and it might not have been all that kind to its North American colonies.

Brexit would be something the Europeans were thinking of, rather than the other way around.

Queen Elizabeth would still have grown old on the throne, if the whole waste of the royal rat trap hadn't been thrown out by now.

Children end up being liberals simply because they're a lot more likely to be exposed to liberal thought and influences. — Agustino

Oh, come on. You surely don't want a bunch of stuffy 8 year old conservatives.

Youth are liberal (even radical) because they have nothing to lose, if for no other reason (and there are other reasons, too).

According to Christians, that's exactly what the God of Abraham did, in the person of Jesus Christ. — Wayfarer

That's what I said:

He has appeared as the Incarnate Christ — Bitter Crank

But, according to them, He left 'the Bible', which they say is the 'inspired word of God'. — Wayfarer

I guess we could count the Bible as a rather large calling card.

I thought you'd never ask. There is a lot of information; you'll have to peruse and find yourself on the map.

So, which shows did the libs like and which did the God fearing like? — Hanover

Duck Dynasty’ vs. ‘Modern Family’:50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural DivideBy JOSH KATZ DEC. 27, 2016

Americans have been clustering themselves into cultural bubbles just as they have clustered in political bubbles. Their TV preferences confirm that.

Temples, prayers, rituals, behaviors, etc. are proof that belief exists, not that God exists.

That roughly 6+ billion people participate in various behaviors connected with belief in God, or gods, is a testimony to the strength of belief. If 2 billion people say they believe Jesus is God, does that make it true? How about the 4 billion people who say Jesus is not God?

Anyone who seeks proof of God's existence will be sorely disappointed. That last statement does not reject the existence of God, only the likelihood of ever finding proof.

The way we conceive of God places God outside of the sphere of what we are capable of knowing. God is a transcendent being who is beyond our knowing. We could have conceived God the way many people have conceived other gods: present in this world, having a specific shape and location (the statue of the god = the god), and has very specific interests -- like fertility, or wisdom. Followers of the God of Abraham didn't take that approach.

The God of Abraham has never appeared in person, according to the religious record. On several occasions He spoke to people; He inspired the prophets to speak on His behalf; He appeared in other guises a couple of times (the burning bush, the pillar of fire, etc.) and He has appeared as the Incarnate Christ and the none-too-distinct Holy Spirit. But God Himself, God Almighty, Immortal, Invisible, has never appeared in person.

God also has not left calling cards, glowing blobs of divine substance, or anything else. We have conceived God as being approachable by faith or not at all. It's faith or nothing. Take your choice.

"Hard-Pressed Skeptic" would make an excellent handle for someone. Keith Haring figure in a vice grip for the avatar. OR

"personhood" is a philosophical concept, but it is also a legal concept. Legal personhood begins whenever we say it does. Some jurisdictions would like to say it begins at conception, but this raises procedural issues. Is a 2 week old "person" eligible for benefits of some kind? Can someone sue on behalf of a 2 week old person? If the mother miscarries, should there be a police investigation, and possibly a trial to determine the possibility of murder? If a pregnant woman dies by gunfire, is the shooter guilty of more than one murder? (In some states the answer is 'yes'.)

What we generally say is "Personhood legally begins at birth, whether the birth is vaginal or caesarean." A live birth is indisputable. Fetuses are quite disputable.
\

"Congrats" or maybe, "Which bath houses were those?" would be an appropriate response. I'd tell you but they are closed. Sorry you missed out.

Therefore right after impregnation a fetus have soul and so it is a valid human. This means that Christians believe that abortion = murder. — Takerian

The tiny little problem with this argument is that neither believers nor heathens know anything about when, or if, a fetus is ensouled--or, for that matter what a soul is, what it does, whether it has experiences, whether it is eternal, where it was before conception, where it is after death, and so on.

Not only do we (believers and heathens) not know the answers to these questions, there is no divine or scientific source that tells us the answers. The only one who could have provided the information (Jesus) didn't happen to say anything about it. Had somebody asked him those questions, he probably would have said, "It's way above your pay grade."

Neither believers nor pagans need worry about these issues, because in neither case is it up to them to decide (when a fetus is ensouled) nor to do anything about it. God is, presumably, abundantly capable of taking care of these matters. It may be that babies are not ensouled until they are named, circumcised, or baptized. We just don't know, and we don't need to know.

Regarding murder... it isn't ensoulment that makes a killing murder. It is the deliberate action of one person acting on another resulting in death. If you think abortion is murder, or not, think what you want -- but the term "murder" doesn't depend on a soul.

the clever ones ended up being devoured by lions — Sapientia

As well they should be. Where would predators be without stupid prey? One doesn't always feel like cleverly outwitting supper.

I had sex in gay bath houses where the Holy Spirt was definitely present and active. It was... divine.

Just curious where you'd been the previous 7-8 years. — Terrapin Station

Living under a rock may have been a contributing factor, but as a socially incompetent loner, there was no great benefit in being up to date with my would-be peers. Also, I grew up poor in a very small town. To be in the swing of things, such as they were, in this wretched berg meant either joining the even-more-outré in-crowd (which I wasn't exactly invited to do) or join the A-list in-group), but that was not a real option either.

Very small towns in rural America are great places to be a child, or to complete the dying process in quiet solitude. In between they are pest holes. Escaping to even a small state college campus was a relative heaven on earth.

Were I to have avoided this tragedy of the stagnant backwaters, I would have had to have grown up in New York City where I might have blossomed on time and fully. I would have needed progressive parents, nearby gay bars and docks to cruise on, more money, more self confidence, a circle of people like myself, and so on. As soon as the new affordable time machine comes on the market...

I think there’s somehow something about contemporary popular music – it’s ingenuity of invention stimulated by the sheer singularity of the drive on the part of the popular music industry to achieve commercial profit being an example of how pragmatically efficient the Capitalist ‘system’ is at meeting and stimulating demand btw – that’s just so symptomatic of an aspect of the ‘Esprit’ of our Age! — Robert Lockhart

It's an old story. Didn't Plato say something about the wrong kind of music being able to corrupt a society?

"Do I hear a Waltz?" The waltz originated in the 1600s in Austria, and was pretty much "folk" dance. When the waltz was introduced to high society in the early 19th century it was considered somewhat immoral because the young upper class folk dancing it were just a bit too close, a bit too exuberant. We all know where THAT leads.

My first exposure to exuberant rock and roll dancing was in college, 1964. I was sort of appalled and sort of interested at the same time. Maybe I appreciate the spirit of rock and roll (in its 1950s-60s-70s guise) now much more than I did then.

Keeping the above in my mind let us now consider the theory of evolution whose basic message is we retain and pass to our progeny traits with survival advantage. If this is true am I wrong in inferring that our minds, its processes (including fallacious thinking) are life-critical traits we should be actually cultivating and reinforcing instead of avoiding and purging from or minds? — TheMadFool

Evolution developed the ability to think logically--at least sometimes, in instances where there was time to think.

"Logic" isn't a product of evolution; logic is the product of our ability to think and the capacity of our culture to develop certain kinds of thinking.

In any event, when it comes to lions, tigers, and bears in the bushes, deer and humans rely on flight or fight responses which have nothing to do with logic, or thinking either.

We have to also factor in the community too. — TheMadFool

And, unfortunately, restorative justice is not the general practice, at least in the US.

GHANDI was playing on the phrase, "an eye for an eye". He was, of course, a pacifist, and "an eye for an eye" justice would tend to be violent. But "an eye for an eye" is also a figure of speech. It sounds like a vengeance system, which it is to a certain extent. Vengeance tends to be self-perpetuating.

Have we moved away from the proportional justice system? To some extent we have. Most countries, and most states in the US, do not carry out capital punishment for murder. There is at least some proportionality. Though, life imprisonment for 3 drug convictions is clearly disproportionate punishment. Many states have established sentencing guidelines which judges must follow, as a means to equalizing punishment. One person shouldn't get 5 years in prison for stealing a car, while somebody else gets 5 months.

In restorative justice (which is generally applied to young offenders) an effort is made to let the punishment bring the person into closer alignment with the community that has been harmed. So, graffiti artists, petty shoplifters, and the like are diverted from the juvenile justice system (or adult criminal justice system) and are confronted by a group of their neighbors, who work out a means of "restoration" with the offender.

This approach is not proportional punishment based--it attempts to rehabilitate the deviant person very early before they have an established criminal pattern.

One thing about idolatry: you have to believe in God in order to commit this sin. If you think there is no God, then there is no "idolatry". God proclaimed Himself to be without a form that we could look at and worship. This formlessness, however, is not a feature of many other theistic religions. Many Hindus, for instance, believe that the god actually exists as the idol or statue. That's where god is.

So... the message is: have no images of God, and no other gods, imaged or not. (Palestine was rife, apparently, with Baal temples on high places, images, and so forth. So was Egypt rich in concrete forms of the gods).

Calling things 'idols' that we like a lot (sex, drugs, rock and roll, money, prestige, whatever...) isn't idolatry, really. Elevating these things to idolatrous status is stretching it. There may be a problem being engrossed in accumulating money and prestige, but that comes under the category of distractions and short-term goals. You can not serve too masters at once -- you can't serve God and mammon at the same time. But again, that assumes one believes in God. No god, no mammon.

There are differences of opinion about when a fetus is "ensouled". Some think from the moment of conception, some think later--perhaps at birth.

Some people are concerned about abortion for reasons not directly relating to the issue of personhood, ensoulment, etc.

Some people feel that a woman's alleged 'absolute right to decide about abortion' conflicts with the interests of the father. Some are concerned about women having rights at all over her own body. Some people think of pregnancy and birth as a deserved ball and chain for women who have engaged in premarital or extramarital sex. Some people think that all persons are sacred and that there can't be too many of us.

While some religious authorities disapprove of both contraception and/or abortion, "most Christians" make up their own minds about these issues (and others).

Combining the genes of a male and female always results in at least somewhat unpredictable results. None of the techniques you list are possible now, because we don't have sufficient information about the function of each and every gene.

At some point will have the capacity to perform all of the suggested procedures.

Deleting gene errors that cause significant-on-up-to fatal genetic flaws seems morally proper if the error can be deleted without causing other problems. All the other possibilities mentioned involve too much corporate or state meddling in the lives of individuals and the future of the species. Customizing a child with CRISPR at the direction of the parents strikes me as morally dubious as well.

We do not know whether it is advisable or not to increase intelligence by gene editing. Same for strength, longevity, immune response, and so forth "Sirius" is a novel by Olaf Stapledon about a dog who was bred to have human intelligence (it also had to have an extra big head to hold the extra big brain.) You are proposing similar actions without knowing anything about outcomes of the decisions--just as the scientist had not thought through the future of Sirius.

What gene editing enthusiasts forget is that organisms are the successful product of a long process of evolution. Diving into the genome and starting to "fix" or "improve" on nature always entails risks. Our bodies are ourselves, not just raw genetic material to screw around with.

That seems intuitively false to me. — Agustino

Be that as it may, idle beliefs are worth less than actively lived beliefs. Actively lived beliefs are more effective than idle beliefs, because one is interacting socially with like minded people, and behaviors -- rather than just beliefs -- are reinforced by the group. "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." James said. This is true pretty much across the board from Marxists to fascists, with stops along the way for liberals and conservatives. A Marxist and a conservative who do nothing with their beliefs are ciphers, as far as the net difference their beliefs make.

Why do you reckon this is the case, given the conservative beliefs with regards to marriage? — Agustino

Inactive beliefs are less important than active practice. It's one thing to live in a progressive or conservative community; it's another thing to be engaged in that community. One can never darken the door of a church, but have great concern that the worship be conducted in a particular manner.

Engagement in a religious community will affect life-outcomes (like divorce) much more than sitting at home and nattering on about religion and the #)(%#*(@!)#(%& government, Obamacare, feminism, et al.

Being conservative, per se, isn't the critical factor in reduced rates of divorce. It's active involvement in religion that is correlated strongly with reduced divorce rates. Being conservative and secular is not correlated with reduced rates of divorce.

couples who are active in their faith are much less likely to divorce. Catholic couples were 31% less likely to divorce; Protestant couples 35% less likely; and Jewish couples 97% less likely... Christianity Today

Other factors might also contribute to lower rates of divorce, like economic stability, population stability, lower rates of alcohol and recreational drug use, and the like.





At a quick glance, it would appear that marriage and divorce rates are something of hodgepodge. While some contiguous areas have higher or lower rates of marriage and divorce, a clear connection between political behavior and marriage or divorce would be difficult. The country didn't change between 2012 and 2016. What changed was the candidates and the style of campaigning. Obama's outgoing over-all approval rating was far higher than Trump's in-comimg approval rating -- something of an aberration in itself.