Yes they do. There are a greater proportion of child abusers in the priesthood than there are among farmers, or soldiers, or dentists. Just as there are among schoolteachers, paediatricians etc. Groups that have access to children, particularly where they have some significant authority and are implicitly trusted by parents tend to attract abusers. The priesthood is one such institution. — Pseudonym

That's reversing cause and effect. People who want to have easy access to children choose jobs where they do and who have enough authority to get away with it. But it is certainly very sad to see how many profess knowledge of the divine and yet allow themselves to do something as vile as to prey on children.

Any thoughts? — Sam26

edit : meh, nevermind.

Are you trying to say that it doesn't matter what value a person brings to the company? Does just the occupation title matter? — Coldlight

Well, not the title, but the work contract, yes. That's the Law!

I think this is the point, about whether this 'striking' feeling enables something to be beautiful or whether you are merely projecting your instinctual desires to something fleeting. — TimeLine

Hmm, not sure I would agree that the feminine beauty I refer to is 'fleeting', that's part of why I didn't refer to the pictures of the women I posted as simply beautiful, but more as so-beautiful-as-to-be-almost-surreal. Kristen Kreuk isn't just beautiful, she re/defined what feminine beauty means to me. Same thing for Stephanie Corneliussen. Beauty of form is not fleeting, the world is truly richer thank to the manifestation of such perfection of form. Their beauty is not metaphorical, it is not something that leads me to regret not having a chance to mate with them, it's not a wish that my gf would look like them. It's just that some rare women causes me to experience something such as emotional pain, but more diffuse, and it is only intuitively evident for me to say that this is an experience of beauty.

Rosa Parks is beautiful because she represents something more than just this fleeting appearance, but that honour, courage, compassion elevate her to something more than just our desires, to something eternal. — TimeLine

I would not deny this, but this is only true thanks to contextual information about Rosa Parks. Someone who did not know of her accomplishments would not be wrong in saying that she is not a women of great beauty of form. But once informed, I doubt this wouldn't influence their vision ; kindness of spirit is the one universal law and a great source of beauty.

Then you make some further suggestion about individual worldly processes that produce entities en masse.

Apart from coke bottles and model T fords, did you have some natural process in mind here.

What kind of process produces beaches for instance? There are loads of those everywhere. — apokrisis

I'm not a physicist, but I would assume a constant in the action of water currents upon small particules in relation to geographical features? The entirety of philogeny would be the explanation of the process leading to a current living being.

It's because those processes leads to mass production of similar entities that we are warranted in speaking of category and kinds, not because the world is structured categorically. In the same way, predication is only seen as so central to our worldview because it is the most natural format of value-attribution for us to handle. All statements can be reduced to non-predicative forms without loss of meaning, and all basic attributive statements can be reduced to existential judgements à la Brentano. Again, imho.

The rest is typical nominalist evasion. — Wayfarer

Damn. You got me. Like a spotlight on my nominalistic villainy. :-}

do your encounter a beach as well as the grains of sand? — apokrisis

Gotta say, this stomped me for a while. I had to ponder the fuck outta that one.

If I encounter a beach or if I encounter a grain of sand depends not on the world itself, but of a combination of the scale of my being, of my perceptive expectations and of my linguistic performance. Same thing for a forest and the trees. I can't distinguish between a drop of water and the sea unless I take them apart, because I'm not constituted in such a way that it is relevant for me to do so naturally. Same thing with air. This does not say anything about the world, but about the conditions of my relation to the world within such a scale. In the same way, the propensity of lumping in kinds entities does not, imho, speak of the world, but of our cognitive capacities in regard to that world.

If individual worldly processes tends to produce entities en masse, then that is something that can be attributed to the world.

except for -well - any general noun. — Wayfarer

Well, is it phenomenologically correct to say that you encounter a general noun? What you encounter is text, its only once interpreted that you attribute to a certain piece of text the role of being a general noun. It is more an operation on the text than an encounter of any kind, really.

Just a dental reflection on race differences. — Bitter Crank

No one denies that there are traits which are distributed almost exclusively across some populations. That's the same when people mention how medications sometimes add warnings that Afro-Americans shouldn't take these, and how that support race theory. It's just besides the point entirely. A 'racial' understanding of human society is devoid of true meaning because we never applied the selective force necessary for racial differentiation to human reproduction, i.e. breeding.

An additional reason why this is devoid of meaning is because it is entirely superfluous. People's identity are not tied to race, but to heritage and location. Contrary to your last picture, we are not turning into nothing because we acquire a better understanding of the real sources of semblance and difference amongst humanity.

People who are threatened by the perceived collapse of white culture have a weak identity, at the core. That's the best I can put it. If you want to find pride in your heritage, study your ancestor's history. They shouldn't claim shit other people have done simply because you share skin colour. Better yet, they shouldn't seek pride elsewhere then in themselves and their own accomplishments.

It seems like the scientific method is just the application of logic, reduced to 'scientific' axioms — MonfortS26

Well, if it is, then Frege, Russell, Carnap and al. sure lost a hell of a lot of time trying to build-up their lingua characteristica.

Some of them actually are. Hate tats all over the place like that, ruins the rest of her. — Sir2u

I don't get the negative obsession with tattoes. Stephanie Cornelliusen is a woman of sublime grace and beauty, someone who actually causes me existential pain to look at, and you are going to tell me this is all ruined because of a few lines of text on her back and arms?

Why just women and not men? — TimeLine

I went with what makes me experience beauty in the most striking manner, so most likely my posting women before, let's say, old large librairies would have to do with the instinctual wiring that comes with mate selection aesthetics.

Men can be beautiful too, but they simply do not strike me as such like a beautiful woman does.

Funny that they happen to be celebrities. — TimeLine

That's only incidental, it's easier and a lot less creep to find and post pictures of celebs already online than it is to secretly take a picture of the beautiful women I met everywhere all day.

a defence of justification shall not fail by reason only that the truth of every charge is not proved if the words not proved to be true do not materially injure the plaintiff’s reputation having regard to the truth of the remaining charges.

Reread. That only tells you how the court behaves when there are multiple incidence of a libel in a single cause.

As for Fair Comment, that's because statement of opinions cannot lead to a libel cause. Statements of facts and statement of opinions are to be distinguished by the court.

From the Canadian Bar Association:

"A statement may hurt your reputation, but if it is true, anyone who says it has a valid defense if you sue them for defamation. They just have to prove, on the balance of probability, that their statement is true."

https://www.cbabc.org/For-the-Public/Dial-A-Law/Scripts/Your-Rights/240

When professors openly subscribe to and promote post-modern ideas, and then some students tell one another about it, it's not the student's fault; it's the fault of the professor. — VagabondSpectre

Well, Bar website tend not to give the full picture. This part only applies to Fair and Accurate Report in a newspaper. Again, the Law is very clear :

Libel and Slander Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12

Where plaintiff to recover only actual damages

(2) The plaintiff shall recover only actual damages if it appears on the trial,

(a) that the alleged libel was published in good faith;

(b) that the alleged libel did not involve a criminal charge;

(c) that the publication of the alleged libel took place in mistake or misapprehension of the facts; and

(d) that a full and fair retraction of any matter therein alleged to be erroneous,

(i) was published either in the next regular issue of the newspaper or in any regular issue thereof published within three days after the receipt of the notice mentioned in subsection (1) and was so published in as conspicuous a place and type as was the alleged libel, or

(ii) was broadcast either within a reasonable time or within three days after the receipt of the notice mentioned in subsection (1) and was so broadcast as conspicuously as was the alleged libel. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12, s. 5 (2).

means that a libel suit can be pursued and won despite the alleged facts to be true, because a faithful publication of a misapprehension of facts in a newspaper that led to a full retractation can still lead to actual damages being paid.

Perhaps are you thinking about the requirement for a criminal defamation suit? That's not necessary. It's always easier to go the Civil Law route.

These are for you. This was my horse Dasher whom I loved dearly and broke my back with but he is living a great life in Northern Arizona. Dasher was a true athlete. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

He's glorious. I have to admit, horses are one of the "higher mammals" that leaves me a bit like a cold fish. They are absolutely beautiful beasts, but I can't be near one and not feel like he is one moment away from caving my skull in.

I guess I might have been on the receiving end of too many cavalry charges in my previous lifes.

Also, quite obviously : women-so-gorgeous-they-appear-almost-unreal.

Not in Canada. Libel and slander covers anything which is stated as factually true, even if it is broadly believed, and the truth or falsity of the claim is not to be evaluated by the judge. Otherwise you encourage "scorched-earth" defences, where when you would want to libel about one thing, you libel about the whole life of the person you attack, and then force the court to go through every embarassing details of the life of the accuser. Even if you end up found guilty, you've done more damaged by way of the judicial process than by the infraction itself.

CCQ 1457. Every person has a duty to abide by the rules of conduct which lie upon him, according to the circumstances, usage or law, so as not to cause injury to another.

Where he is endowed with reason and fails in this duty, he is responsible for any injury he causes to another person by such fault and is liable to reparation for the injury, whether it be bodily, moral or material in nature.

He is also liable, in certain cases, to reparation for injury caused to another by the act or fault of another person or by the act of things in his custody.[/quote]

Peterson did not just offend. He offered to create a Watchdog website tracking and scoring Higher Ed teachers according to their degree of Marxism/Pomo-ism. That's libel right there.

Actually, I don't know exactly what laws govern free speech in Canada. In the US, the first amendment concerns what the government can and can not do: — Bitter Crank

Free speech in Canada is not absolute, we define "Reasonable Limits", acceptable and justifiable in a free and democratic society, as per the Canadian Charter of Rights.

For example, telling someone they should commit suicide here is a serious criminal offence that can land you a decade in prison, weither or not suicide actually ensue.

Jeez, just make more job for him, will ya. :P

I find that animals hold the most beauty for me. Mostly mammals. The grace and strenght of movement exhibited when higher quadrupeds enter in motion is my personal definition of the sublime.

The notion of generals and particulars fails the test of naturalness? — apokrisis

Well, I've never met a general anything, so there's that. :)

I think we still resort to prelinguistic questioning. A perplexed look, for example, is very similar to one that a dog/cat sometimes expresses. — TheMadFool

It never remains prelinguistic for long. The perplexed look is either a lead to an exclamative thought or a sign that leads to an explanation of another's thoughts. Our brains have stewed too long in a symbolic universe not to constantly fall back to that mode of relation.

Can you expand on that. How does language infect reality? — TheMadFool

It infects our relation to the world, forcing us to constantly name everything, predicate everything, conjuguate everything. It coopt everyone of our cognitive functions and obscure their reality, relegating them to the nether of subconsciousness. It turns us into infectuous agents, categorizing, ordering and itemizing everything so as to relate easier to it, as if that was any easier than just living in it. And in turn, it obscure the reality of the world, by legitimizing questions regarding the existence of concepts. Dogs and cats aren't idealists.

Of course, this infection is a sort of commensalism, it is for the most often either neutral or positive for the host. It can also be incredibly negative.

So the world is present in the grammar of predication, or whatever. It is present in its most generalised possible form. It is a view of how the world works boiled down to a most abstract view about the necessity of certain relations. — apokrisis

This is where we part. "S is P" is not the structure of the world, it's just the easiest format of valuation we can operate with.

Personally, I think every individual carries the mark of both good and bad. One is good sometimes and bad at other times. So, it's impossible to identify yourself with either in an exclusive sense. — TheMadFool

I don't get this level of relativism. If one is 'bad' because he takes hard drugs and almost everyone around considers this to be bad, but is 'good' because he is otherwise an upstanding citizen, who has influenced the lifes of everyone around in in such a positive way that no one could ever say they regret anything about that person, wouldn't it be appropriate to say that that person is a good person? That whatever flaw he has are entirely dismissable?

I guess what I mean is that, even in morality, isn't there multiple scales to the universe? That however much good can one do a one local scale might be undone by a single wrong done at a higher level? Or that a generality of wrongness at lower scales might not be enough to account for all the good done at a higher one?

One way or the other, the answer is : Trump was a mistake.

Do you think non-symbolic (non-linguistic) inquiry is better/worse than having language-based questions? — TheMadFool

Well, I doubt it would make much sense to deny how linguistic inquiry is capable of so much more than non-symbolic inquiry. With a question, you can bypass every effort needed to find the answer by yourself, which is why it's so goddamn annoying when people constantly prefer to ask questions instead of seeking answers for themselves. They expect all the labour's fruits with none of the labour. I would be hard-pressed to find a line of argument to justify that prelinguistic world interaction is more powerful than the linguistic one. That's not what interest me.

Is there something interesting in the questioning tilt of a dog's head than all of the questions in philosophy? — TheMadFool

Yes! Absolutely! I have always been completely convinced that there is more truth and wisdom about the world contained in the interactions of a toddler with its toy, of a dog with its owner, in the way you walk into a house for the first time, then in all the books you'll ever find about the subject. But that's more about my existential approach to knowledge than about the subject, really.

Language infects and transform everything it touches. Once thrown in the world of language, there is no stepping back, not in any meaningful way for philosophy and epistemology, anyways. The tilt of the dog's head, the large, fixated eyes of the cat with it's exclamative vocalization, these are our last anchors back to this prelinguistic reality.

And it's not like language doesn't come with its own cost, too. It warps just as it infects reality. As someone who was suicidal for a while, let me tell you, your own language can kill you just as easily as someone else's gun. It doesn't have to be all that dramatic either. Shame doesn't make much sense to prelinguistic beings. A master might be able to shame his dog, but I've never seen a dog shame another.

Wouldn't you agree, tho, that an entity disposed toward seeking information about a state that is current, is not doing something in an entirely different scale than an entity which is asking "why" in the hope that some other agent will provide him linguistically the same information? The first entity would be said to be disposed to ask "why?", if it had any linguistic performance available.

Do you consider yourself a Good person?

Yes. I have never cheated on a gf or sent anyone a d!ck pic.

That's not a Law. — Rich

Yup it is. A contrario, it means that no living being are not composed of membraned-incased cells. I mean, you are free to fret about weither or not its a Law, but you might want to reserve that argument to someone who doesn't his Law degree :P

Without time and space the rest have no basis.
They should have evolutionary precedent. — charleton

Time and space have structural priority. They are, in a way, the first "dimensions" that must be exploited in developing any functional structure (and, in many sense, even structures without functions).

However, from the point of view of the unit of life, Time and Space can well be superfluous. Living time reflect dynamical recurring values ~ different degrees of lighting, heat, energy (night and day, summer and winter). There is a nearly infinite possible combination of these dynamical values, and the vast majority are not "part of our time". Minute cyclical variations in the degree of ambient radioactivity isn't part of human time, but it might be for unicellular lifeforms which might be destroyed by any un-predicted change in that value... or such things.

"What?" doesn't even have a direct translation into French, being variously 'que', 'quoi', and 'qu'est-ce que'. I don't think the French have a radically different way of viewing the world to us, so I don't see how the singularity of a question like "why?" indicates that it is in some way more significant than, say "what colour?". — Pseudonym

"Quoi?" is an acceptable way of asking "what?" in French, but you have to be careful with your intonation, because it can easily be perceived as rude. It's more often a way to signify that you haven't understood what was just said...

He is regarded by most of today's edifice of social science as the ground from which sprang naturalistic science of biological diverisficaiton and evolution, human cultural change and economic and political development, and psychological and psychotherapeutic dynamics, as well as liberal theology. — Joshs

Huh... no?

Perhaps you have never raised a dog or a cat? A perplexed look is pretty much the same thing as the question "why".

So, with this said, where do you draw the line between legitimate protesting and immoral violence? — rickyk95

In Law school I was taught that the Criminal Justice system has 3 main purposes : the defense of a social state in which the Law is respected, the pursuit of greater social stability and equity, and the vindication of victims, so as to prevent extra-judicial retaliation.

If that last part is added, it is because it is absolutely justifiable, where there is no hope for any institutional justice to be served, for individuals to take actions in their own hand. Anything else are some romantic delusions about what Justice is supposed to be.

Here's a definition of violence - Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. — T Clark

Here's another : La violence est l’utilisation de force ou de pouvoir, physique ou psychique, pour contraindre, dominer, tuer, détruire ou endommager. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence

Translation : Violence is the use of force or power, physical or psychological, to impose constraints, dominate, kill, destroy or damage.

This probably says something negative about me, but the violence to grammar bothers me more than the sexual identify issue. — T Clark

Yup, this is a pretty fucking idiotic attitude to have. Especially more to be conscious about.

On the other hand, it is my understanding that less than 1/2 of 1% of people in the US are transgender. Black people, who make up more than 10% of our population, — T Clark

The fuck does that have to do with anything?

If a black person ask of you not to call him 'a black man' because he finds that to be insulting, does refusing to do so constitute psychological violence? I'd say yes. Its the kind of shit attitude that bullies have.

The First Law of Biology: all living organisms obey the laws of thermodynamics. A corollary of the First Law is that life requires the temporary creation of order in apparent contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics. A second corollary of the First Law is that an organism at biochemical equilibrium is dead.

The Second Law of Biology: all living organisms consist of membrane-encased cells. A corollary of the Second Law is that the cell is the only structure that can grow and divide independently of another life form. A second corollary of the Second Law is that all life is programmed by genetic instructions.

The Third Law of Biology: all living organisms arose in an evolutionary process. Two corollaries of the Third Law are that (1) all living organisms contain homologous macromolecules (DNA, RNA, and proteins) that derived from a common ancestor, and (2) the genetic code is universal.

- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11270-008-9925-3

No, what is silly is using poetry and heavy mysticism and pass it as rational discourse.

'Creativity', 'imagination', 'patterns', 'Bergson'. There you go : that's the extension of your grasp on the subject, and it is entirely defective.

The so-called "mystical' Laws of Nature are those of medicine, of cognitive science, of applied psychology. Pray tell, what the fuck can you say about aphantasia? About Face Blindness Syndrome? About Exploding Head Syndrome? Nothing useful.

I have a hard time swallowing pham’s argument. Supporting the conditions that create violence does not necessarily mean one is committing violence — czahar

You have to understand the degree of danger. In the U.S, a trans person is 14 times more likely to be murdered than a non-trans person. There have been wars which were less dangerous to soldiers. So, given the situation, I feel it's okay if we use a very dramatic language, because it is a very dramatic situation.

I have a friend who is currently transitioning. It is hard because on many accounts I feel like I'm losing my friend, because he is changing into the kind of woman which I wouldn't really want as a friend. In a way, I also find his attitude somewhat insulting toward women, because he acts as a caricature of a women in many aspect. I have been told it's normal at the beginning, as transwomen try to get into a more "feminine" mindstate, to overact a lot....

But anyways, what is clear, though, is that I have to change even my smallest linguistic habit. Just adding 'man' or 'dude' in the middle of a sentence, even as emphasis, will make him flinch visibly. A client called him 'sir' about a dozen times in a call the other night and he had tears in his eyes. From what I can see, trans who start down this road "feel", in a very real way, like we feel jealousy or anger or pain, that refusing to recognize their transition is psychological violence.

There is no general definition in math that tells us what a number is. — fishfry

Why wouldn't ZFC count?

I'm sorry. I tried, but this sort of half-assed mysticism gives me nausea. :s

That would describe a map. Google Maps is much more than that.

But by your account, it's also a mind. It observes our searches, memorizes them better than we could ever, and optimizes its behaviour accordingly.

Suffice to say, no one should say that Google Maps is a "mind". And that's because it has only a minuscule fraction of the cognitive functions we have access to.

I would say that the Mind is the observer that learns (memory) and created new patterns from what it learns. — Rich

By that account Google Maps is a mind.

Jesus, what bloody bullshit...