The following from Wikipedia's article on Daraprim:

The cost of a monthly course for a person on 75 mg dose rose to about $75,000/month, or $750 per tablet.

In India, over a dozen pharmaceutical companies manufacture and sell pyrimethamine [trade name of Daraprim] tablets, and multiple combinations of generic pyrimethamine are available for a price ranging from US$0.04 to US$0.10 each (3–7 rupees).
In the UK, the same drug is available from GSK at a cost of US$20 (£13) for 30 tablets (about $0.66 each).
In Australia, the drug is available in most pharmacists at a cost of US$9.35 (A$12.99) for 50 tablets (around US$0.18 each).[]

The disparity is shocking, a testament to the massive extortion (your money or your life) Big Pharma is able to legally exert in the US Market. Importing drugs such as this into the US is illegal, because the FDA has not approved their safety.

Some man unworthy to be possessor
Of old or new love, himself being false or weak,
Thought his pain and shame would be lesser,
If on womankind he might his anger wreak ;
And thence a law did grow,
One might but one man know ;
But are other creatures so?

The monogamous practice grew out of polygamy, where the strong, rich beautiful male, got all the babes, unlike those less blessed. If a woman had to choose, she might not mind several other lovers, a superior man who had several lovers. Some sort of natural selection attraction maybe.

Are sun, moon, or stars by law forbidden
To smile where they list, or lend away their light?
Are birds divorced or are they chidden
If they leave their mate, or lie abroad a night?
Beasts do no jointures lose
Though they new lovers choose ;
But we are made worse than those.

The naturalness of polygamy vs the social constructs of monogamy, dowries, and "jointures". What is natural, is corrupted 'made worse' by these constructs.

Who e'er rigg'd fair ships to lie in harbours,
And not to seek lands, or not to deal with all?
Or built fair houses, set trees, and arbours,
Only to lock up, or else to let them fall?
Good is not good, unless
A thousand it possess,
But doth waste with greediness.

Ships ought to sail about, seeking new lands, not sitting in harbors. Good is not good unless it is shared, the 'virtue' of the polygamous.

From Wikipedia

Worldwide, different societies variously encourage, accept or outlaw polygamy. According to the Ethnographic Atlas (1998), of 1,231 societies noted, 588 had frequent polygyny, 453 had occasional polygyny, 186 were monogamous and 4 had polyandry

Difficult topic. Free speech in USA is pretty much unrestricted, with certain exceptions as you have pointed out. It is so unrestricted that Corporations have the right of free speech. People in favor of
Citizens United based it on core First Amendment (free speech) principles: the right to think and speak your mind, to associate with others and to use your own resources to make yourself heard. Overturning it would be a disaster for free speech, from the conservative point of view. It's a lobbyist's wet dream.

The problems with free speech, I think, has to do with what it allows. Frat boys crying for the lynching of black, fellow students, it legal and it is obscene.

Some countries such as Germany are not so relaxed. They have laws against hate speech and they are especially sensitive to anything related to the Nazi ideology, flags, and other mementos.

' Pharma Bro'
Bloomberg:

It creates a weird issue for sentencing. Shkreli was convicted of fraud, which is bad. But that fraud didn't cost anyone any money: All of his hedge-fund investors ultimately made money after Retrophin Inc., his public pharmaceutical company, succeeded. (He was charged with defrauding Retrophin by setting up fake consulting arrangements with some of those hedge-fund investors, but the jury acquitted him of that.) And federal fraud sentencing guidelines are focused, overwhelmingly, on the amount of loss. "Government lawyers are expected to focus on the intended loss, and say that it was in the millions," but the jury concluded that there was no intended loss either: Shkreli, in the jury's model, honestly meant to make money for everyone, and he honestly did.

It seems to me that in order to understand anything you have to do it personally. I don't know how objectivity is being defined these days, but at bottom to know something, you have to know and understand something personally. For example 2+2 =4 may be meaningless to someone who hasn't studied maths.

Lot of ambiguities, like difference (in kind) between physical and mental ways of doing and understanding. You don't really get a feel for riding a motorcycle unless you have ridden on one, but you can understand the principle of riding a motorcycle without actually get on one and you can imagine the thrill of riding.

Same with 2+2...line up the apples and ask someone who never studied math, but who loves eating apples a lot...try to short change them.

People obviously have private knowledge for example if someone is alone in the house and breaks a mug, at one stage they are the only person who knows this.

So it seems coherent to me that one person can have insight into reality based on their own experiences even if they can't express this to others. I have ideas I find it hard to express or convince people of myself but they can be dismissed based on the idea they go against majority consensus or their failure to convince people for whatever reason.

Translation is possible between all existing branches of mankind. Our bodies are similar enough to force us to understand the world in similar ways, sufficient enough to enable us to understanding the world and others in a similar manner and be able to relate our private experiences to others. If something cannot be translated, expressed, or alluded to, if it can't be put into words, sounds or symbols then I doubt its existence.

I think objectivity is conventional agreed upon, established by the cultural norms where you are.

It will always be the way its been.
Organizers, rebels, reformers seize power,
And they know without winking that
Power must be weld, after all
We are, and we have always been
only human

Furthermore, how many racists and neo-nazis are there? Let's say 50,000 in the whole of the US. Would anyone bother to appeal to 50,000 people for political support if they are a (smart) opportunist looking to win elections while risking alienating millions?! 63 million people voted for Donald Trump

There may be a few unregistered racists in the US.

So then "The Real Thing" written in your choice of colored Coke a Cola script

British joke?

"The unexamined life is not worth living"

Do you think the examined life is necessarily a moral life or that philosophy is the correct methodology for examining life. It didn't seem to work out too well for Socrates. He was democratically judged to be impious and a corrupting influence by 280 of 500 Athenians.

2. suffering is not a necessary condition (from 1)

Because heaven is free from suffering... but as you indicate heaven has been assumed. Isn't the argument that suffering is a necessary state of man far more likely, since we have not experienced it other wise, a pain-free existence can only be imagined. In order to support the argument shouldn't it try to establish heaven as a necessary presumption, a condition for our (?) conception of man.

heaven is free of suffering (premise)

What is "heaven"? Or do you mean that heaven is equivalent to freedom from suffering?

'It is what it is', meaning?

Alfred Whitehead equated 'it is what it is', with a things essence. William Safire traced its use back to 1949 by J.E, Lawrence in Nebraska Journal. "New land is harsh and vigorous and sturdy. It scorns evidence of weakness.There is nothing of sham or hypocrisy in it. It is what it is without apology."

Reminded me of a line from a song.... Kacey Musgraves "It Is What It Is , till it ain't no more"

There are many, many more such critical videos. Bill Moyer's just described Trump as an "open sore", a "malevolent fury."..Trump is described here on this thread as a bullshitter. (besides me >:o )

From the OP:

The post-truth world is the result of the ascendancy of the bullshitter, who is contrasted with the liar in that while the liar knows what is true and what is false, and knowingly speaks falsehoods, the bullshitter does not know or care for truth.

Seems to me to be an apt description of Mr Trump. Many people are fed up with Trump, his lies, his family, his 'jokes'. His current approval rating is 35% and his disapproval rating 59% according to Gallop polls, which sounds about right.

He now threatens to close down government if the House does not provide money for his Mexican Wall ($1.6 billion this yr. I think), for a wall? I don't think he cares, it's all about winning for him and he has not had many wins since he has been in office. He creates all these great truths but they sound like lies to most people.

Interesting. So, would statements such as "Every event has a prior cause" and "Every region of space is composed of smaller regions" work here to describe an infinite past or a continuous interval of space? Though I am not sure if they qualify as regresses, I am inclined to think of continuity and causality as being benign if they are so that'd be nice.

There are no real infinities, every event could have been otherwise, logic trumps math in reality.

I don't like utilitarianism for the individual, but I think it plays a role in public policy. The killer robot meme is gaining strength, Tesla’s Musk & Google’s Suleyman & 116 specialists are calling on the UN to ban autonomous weapons (robots)

But I disagree to some extent. Why should we waste the lives of many young people to protect us against what?

A dead machine gets no tears or flowers.

I think emotions are learned, not that feelings are not there from the beginning, but that we learn how to associate feelings with named emotions from others in learning. We learn to associate feelings with emotions in language learning [and as an aside, we learn to play roles associated with certain emotions].

I agree that there are positive and negative emotions, but there is also lust which I think is very different, neither positive or negative perhaps part of our initial sex drive, certainly a strong emotion. Research I've read suggest the positive and negative emotions have their own neural signatures, but that lust has a completely different and dominant neural pattern.

Interesting 7 minute video from Carnegie Mellon U: https://youtu.be/dIclRSpCnHY

if Existence precedes Essence

I think the word "precedes" is one issue.

If Descartes was right " I think. I am". If the essence of what it is to be a man is thinking, then to think is to exist and that is an immediate intuition, not a mediated conclusion...but there is no good reason for the "I" , the ego in Descartes formulation (somewhat like saying god is a person) it is assumed.

It is only by staring into a mirror that the child comes to understand that it is not the mirror. The recognition of one's separation from the world is the result of one's experience of the world.

The original sense of immediacy and intimacy with the world is lost, and when this is understood (some never understand) for what it is, the result is kind of nausea.

[

The aesthetic affect of Michelangelo work its real. It is difficult to believe that marble can be worked the way he modeled the statue. The most startling aspect of the work, for me, was their smooth warm skin tones, how very real it looked.

I think that the aesthetic affect of a work of art lies the effect it has on our perception of it. The perceptual beauty of the work draws us to it. It enables us to experience concepts such as love in death on a new basis.

So yes in a sense "affective realism" on a grand scale. The reality of works of art change the way we think about and perceive the world.

↪Cavacava You wrote that the aesthetic would warm you up in a snow storm. That's affective realism. At a minimum this would ease your discomfort. It may also provide additional and possibly even life saving benefits via the autonomic system. I'd say that was useful.

I was being hyperbolic, however please tell me what you mean by affective realism. I looked for a general statement of position but did not have much luck, explanations of it seemed to me to be all over the place.

The Pieta is not realistic, Jesus and Mary are idealized somewhat along the lines that suggested, but I get the impression that's not the point of affective realism, that its point is that if something affects the observer, it derives its realism from that affect.

I have read of psychological experiments which show that the insertion of a smiling face or a scowling face at speeds too quick for a human to pick up, still affected test subjects perception of reality, how they interpret what they saw. I think that these results are interesting, and it agrees with how I think perception is accomplished.


We bring concepts to perception which limit the things we apprehend (concepts form the material law of an object) this is accomplished by the activity of the imagination, which is the driving force behind the synthetic unity of appreceptiom. The aesthetic affect suggest a freedom of the imagination that enables it to move beyond the limitations of the concepts of judgement. I think in beauty is a freedom that the imagination senses when it is struck by the beauty in an object. An excess that goes beyond our normative conceptions of reality.

Regarding the monuments:

Many of these memorials were dedicated in the early 20th century, decades after the Civil War, and have some relationship with campaigns to promote and justify Jim Crow laws in the South.The year 1911 saw the largest number constructed, which was the year of the semi-centennial of the Civil War. Memorials were dedicated on public spaces either at public expense or funded by private organizations and donors

Wikipedia

They belong in museums, not as public affronts to black people (15% of US population) who were oppressed before and after the Civil War. The argument that many of the United State's founding fathers were slave owners is shite,

Washington and Jefferson did not betray this country, Lee, Jackson and others did, and were traitors, and these statues are mockeries. Put them out of sight, in museums where they can be viewed for what they are.

Hi & welcome to TPF.

Plato in his Phaedrus, analogizes the soul as a chariot, with a charioteer, and two horses, one obedient and the other headstrong.
Reason....Philo....Wisdom (charioteer)
Obedient....Agape....The Good (steed)
Raw Desire....Eros....The Beautiful (steed)

I saw the Michelangelo's Pieta a long time ago and then only briefly. It is his most finished piece of sculpture, he was 25 year old when he carved it, and it is the only work he ever signed, The woman is Mary, his mother. It was designed as a funeral monument. There is a smooth warmth that flows over the statue, like a glow from within, it is like nothing I have experienced since.

You mention material transcendence, OK, I think this work transcends the determinate concept of grief, it frees (but does not deny) our imagination from the concept of a mother's grief for her dead child, it sees Christ's death more as a necessary sacrifice. Jesus is calm, not in agony, and Mary is young and beautiful because of her love of Christ.

Didn't quite get your bit about utility.

Dopamine peaks at a much higher level to get you to make tea than when you're actually drinking it.

OK is this like the difference between a wink and a blink? It is difficult to tell them apart at times. Winks are intentional (I imagine having a nice cup of Jasmine tea, can almost see its golden strands and smell its elegant fragrance), isn't this the thick explanation, and the thin explanation (thin, because it is simply true or false) the physiological explanation about dopamine levels.

Under socially constructed norms, then slavery would have been moral in its time?

No, I don't think anyone can go back in time, literally or figuratively to say what reality was for the individually at various times throughout history. We must judge history based on our own normative understandings and valuations. Similarly we now judge Newton's theories as an incomplete understanding of the world based on our point if view, not his.

Essentially morality or ethics becomes absolute moral relativism, a result that many would reject.

Many would accept a $5.00 bill as payment for a $5.00 debt. Offering a debtor less than what is owned for no good reason might invoke their laughter. Not all norms are all that normative, some norms have evolved along with our understandings, and these continue play a crucial part in the social construction of reality.

I agree with what you said.

What motivates me to make tea is the imagined pleasure that will ensue. And the image of pleasure comes from memory of times I have taken pleasure in drinking tea in the past, and is projected - thrown forward in time, and that is what we call 'desire', the imagined repetition of past pleasure, or the imagined relief from present pain.

Many times I find that I make my coffee in the AM without very much thought (6 AM or so), but the first cup is very pleasureful, even if the initial effort was habitual and not actively imagined, just something I do.

One can act without motive.

But not without desire, which is pleasurable or painful in some mixture (physical/ or imaginary) at some intensity, as necessary for all actions, including doodling.

Grounds
To assume an ontological answer is to assume the reality of socially constructed norms.
To be a moral realist then is to accept the reality of socially constructed norms as objectivly reality

...what measures are permissible to protect democracy? Is it ethical to spread democracy, rather than just protecting it? And what means would be too terrible to use, even to defend democracy?

For example, assume that the only way to protect democracy is to prevent a totalitarian politician from being elected, and in order to do so, you must either assassinate that politician, or postpone the election, allowing some time for the revolutionary fervor of that politician's supporters to die down. It may seem obvious to you that doing one of those is (or is not) a good idea. But why is it so obvious?

If Democracy is assumed to be inherently good, then a democratic society's 'general will' must also be good. Happiness is the highest good for man, it too must be the ultimate goal of a good society which is then the same as the goal for each individual man, the pursuit of happiness. If happiness for each is the result of virtue then happiness for all must be the result of a virtuous. society.

Every democracy is constituted, composed of laws, customs, norms (institutional and ideological) as well as a variety of citizens each with their own agendas. Protection of a good system of government, then is the same as an individual protection of their happiness. Moral virtue.

A good society it ought to be protected. The limit of that protection as set by normative moral laws of the society. Protection from other countries is a patriotic duty, Protection from internal challenges must be met legislatively and judicially.

1. God is the greatest being imaginable

"

Doesn't saying God is a "being" beg the question, since the word "being", implies existence.

Alternately, you could say the idea of God has existence, but I doubt that human thought could confer any existence, beyond its own thoughts.

(And bear in mind, as far as science can detect, the non existence of a universe ought to be far more likely than the alternative.)

My understanding is that non-existence at the quantum level is inherently more unstable than existence, and since the universe does exist, then how could "..;the non existence of a universe ought to be far more likely than the alternative" hold?

If I saw Michelangelo's Pieta in the middle of a snow storm its beauty would still astonish me, warm me up.

The whole physical line of inquiry is fine, but it is a bullshit explanation of beauty of any kind in my opinion. That's the error...it's not an explanation for thought, it is the resultant of thought.

Isn't it a kind of category error. Sure brainwaves may indicate thought, but they are not thoughts, they are brain waves.

I have to split (not in two).
nice chat, Ciao.

I don't believe in his forms, and I think he ended up having his doubts about the perfect realm.

Plato is one of my heroes, but I don't believe or agree with everything he wrote.

My conclusion thus far, of course I think and read about such things.

I don't know god, I don't live with god.

I live in a world that has no reason of its own, only what I give it.