Hanover
Davidson, I think, would tend to say that mental state A is the result of brain state B, but that it might also be the result of brain states C and D. Hence mental state A is not dependent on brain state B; and the need for a novel term. — Banno

So you take it that supervenience means a cause but a non-essential cause? My hand pain supervenes with a splinter being in it, but it could also supervene with a hammer hitting it?

The interesting thing about a supervenience relation is that it's not a causal relationship. It's just telling us that there's some kind of ontological connection between two things. So when we say the mental supervenes on the physical, we're saying that if we had two humans who were identical in every way physically, they will necessarily have the same mental state. — frank

I think this is what I was saying above to @T Clark, but one of the problems often brought forth by the substance dualist is that there is not empirical proof that brain state X always causes behavior Y because fMRI results do not show that for every instance of behavior Y the exact areas of the brain show activity.

What this would mean is that brain activity supervenes with behavioral activity 100% of the time, but the precise brain activity down to the neuronal level is variable. That means that for person A who is an exact replica of person B (down the neuronal level), the substance dualist would not necessarily commit that the two would exhibit exact behaviors. Sometimes brain state A yields behavior X and sometimes Y.

What's wrong with "dependence?" — T Clark

Because I think supervenience can reference and unentailed correlation.

For example mental state A supervenes upon brain state B in that without A there is no B and without B there is no A, meaning if and only A then B, but it's a correlation where dependency isn't necessitated.

A materialist would reference this type of supervenience as entailment because they believe B causes A.

A dualist would agree there is supervenience between A and B, but would deny a causative link, meaning they would disagree that it is entailed.

For that reason, the word "supervenience" does not mean dependence. It just means the presence of A and B occuring at the same time, but sometimes caused and sometimes coincidental.

This is the source of the mind/body problem for the dualist who has to explain why every time I have thought X, I have a neuronal event Y, but the two just happen to exist parellel to one another.

These trials would be a wonderful forum for Trump to prove the election was stolen. Doubtless he will, which begs my question: why does he keep trying to delay the trials? If you had proof an election was stolen against you, wouldn't you on our soapbox every chance you could get? — RogueAI

Your question seems meant to prove that Trump fears trial because he knows he's going to eventually be found guilty because otherwise he'd look forward to offering the proof of his innocence.

This assumes that what Trump wants most of all is to prove he's innocent or that the election was truly stolen. Trump doesn't care about that. What he wants is to be President. That's why he said the election was stolen. That's why he went through all those lawsuits, pressured local elections officials, and then tried to block Biden from being voted in.

His complaints about whether the process is delayed, expedited, modified, or whatever are targeted to getting himself re-elected, and he's playing this really well. Over 50% of Republicans say they will vote for him and less than 15% favor DeSantis, who is in second place. It's a dead tie with him versus Biden right now. These idictments are helping his cause. He kept himself center stage for 4 years while out of office and now he's a martyr.

What Trump wants is to be President. He's not in the business of setting the record straight or in proving his innocence.

Years from now in the American lexicon you'll have a word Maga as we have caesar but probably with slightly less flattering connotations. — Benkei

The long history of that hijacked phrase.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again#:~:text=%22Let's%20make%20America%20great%20again,at%20home%20marked%20by%20stagflation.

Show some fact about your previous usage of "plus" that demonstrates that it wasn't "quus." — frank

These analytic truths are arbitrary, so there is no correct usage outside your agreed upon rules.

You chose 57, but 59 would have been better because the number after 59 is in fact 1:00.

If we're dealing in synthetic truths, we see the same thing. The rules governing planetary travel show a predictable course and the coordinates can be predicted so that it would appear which number would follow next, until something interferes with the travel. Would we then say we're not following the word game because the next in sequence wasn't predictable from the last in that one instance?

Sounds like you're trying to shed the responsibility of earning sufficient money to pay rent, furnish the place, pay utilitities, and otherwise burden yourself with those commitments so that you can be you, outside, free, and able to pursue your passions.

My advice is to do that. Run free. See what happens. Life is all about picking your adventure.

Might not work out like you expected, but who am I to know.

You mean Thanatos Sand and Thanatos Sannd were the same person???

Did a little research for you so that you can schedule accordingly.

Trump's current trials are set as follows:

The D.C. case - Conspiracy to defraud the US by overturning an election - January 2, 2024.
The Manhattan case - Improper use of campaign funds - March 2, 2024.
The Miami case - Illegal possession of classified documents - May 20, 2024.
The Atlanta case - Conspiracy to change the results of the election - Not yet set.

It should be a busy campaign season for him.

My thought on the 14th Amendment thing was that it was interesting. It seems to give a basis to disqualify any person from federal office who has engaged in "insurrection or rebellion," which could be stretched I suppose to mean someone who attempted to interfere in an election. The historical context is somewhat problematic for such an interpretation considering the "insurrection and rebellion" that amendment referenced involved folks most literally taking up arms and killing US soliders in an attempt to remove themselves from the union. What Trump did, while nothing I would defend, was distinct enough that I could see it being difficult to convince many that it was a literal insurrection or rebellion.

It's also not clear who gets to decide here whether it was an insurrection or rebellion. The current indictments themselves don't use those words. Would it be Congress' duty to make such a finding, or maybe just one of the houses, or perhaps the courts. Maybe the journal article discussed that. Seems all academic talk mostly for law professors to ponder over. The way, I fear, we must put an end to Trump is to not elect him. The power is in the hands of the people, probably the way it was intended, and we can blame no one but ourselves with the outcome.

As to bail, I've read that the thought of Trump ever going to jail is around 0%. I'm told the Secret Service has weighed in and declared any sort of jail time would create a national security issue that they couldn't protect. I know you want to see the perp walk out the door and into the patrol car, leaning forward with cuffs behind his back, then streched out on a bench waiting for a friend to come by with some cash to get him out. Let's not think so big and instead just hope we don't see him back in the oval office, feet propped up on his desk.

I don't disagree with what you say. My larger point was to say that it is just as valid to posit a teleologucal basis for a link between event A to event B as it is to posit a causative basis.

Determinism demands A necessarily follows B as the result of an invisible causative force.

Fatalism demands A necessarily follows B as the result of an invisible purpose driven force.

Since both rely on a mysterious invisible force, it's no more rational to accept one or the other. And of course it need not be all one or the other. It could be some things are causative and others telelogical.

The accusation that evolution entails teleology is common, and basically, with some nuance, wrong. — Banno

Entailment is a logical, not physical property, so one cannot logically deduce that event X will cause event Y, nor can one logically deduce event X will occur to fulfill purpose Y. What actually happens in the real world is known empirically, not through a series of syllogisms.

The question then is what links X to Y? Causation is a possibility. Teleos is a possibility. Neither answer is empirically provable.

How hot is the 20 year old and how hot is my mother in this thought experiment?

Also, if I'm important enough in this town to decide who lives and who dies, the town is fucked regardless.

My considered opinion is that when we speak of "aliens", we are speaking primarily of stuff we've seen in movies, which I expect has little or nothing in common with actual aliens if there are any. — Baden

Yet the witnesses only speak of sightings that are very much in human terms, just super human. As in these other worldly critters can move faster and are more agile than us, like they're maybe 100 years more advanced than us, or maybe just 25 or 10, who knows? Maybe they are us. That's the old boring standby.

My point though is well taken though, which sounds a bit narcissistic I guess in that I'm taking my point well, which is that there is a tendency in polite society to say things like "interesting perspective" when what we really mean is "interesting someone as rational as you appear would have that perspective."

That's usually the response I get to my religious views.

My most interesting trait is my self-awareness. I'm even aware of it, which makes it all the more interesting.

I think I just did the best saying. — Baden

Sort of. You started out better by calling it all bullshit, but as others seemed to be offering more tempered views, you turned diplomatic and said you'd look into it, but you won't because, well, it's all bullshit.

The evidence seems to support that UFOs are comprised of elusive lights or dark objects in the sky that dart about but leave no physical trace that can be subjected to further review and they reveal themselves to a select few.

Isn't that the best we can say?

"Ergo there are aliens" seems quite a leap from that.

Interesting. I'm an atheist and it seems clear to me that there are atheists - usually secular humanists - who are essentially apologists; preaching, evangelizing, proselytizing on behalf of godlessness and the superiority of secularism. Some of this seems an understandable reaction to fundamentalism. Even more understandable when you hear how many secular humanists were former evangelicals themselves. — Tom Storm

I agree with this. I think the reason a secular humanist bristles at the charge that they are evangelical is that it asserts a moral equivalency to them and the Christian fundamentalist, the very group they condemn. They of course deny that accusation, which was the subject of a thread on the dogmatic atheist.

There is also a subset of atheists whose atheism seems to be forged by trauma or at least disenchantment, but it seems to go beyond just an evolved disagreement with a prior held theistic belief based upon the vitriol of the posts, sounding like someone after a bad breakup who insists they're over it.

This is a subset of course. Others' vitriol might just come from theists representing to them a form of regressive thinking or a status quo that is antithetical to the progressive mindset. The objections do seem disproportionate to the significance of the theistic opinions unless one attaches a malice to the theist, that he must want to oppress women, homosexuals, and whatever else, and that no theist could hold otherwise.

Of course there are theists who do exactly as these atheists claim, but their views aren't interesting or representative of those expressed here, and the smugness of hearing people state the obvious, which is that the literal events of the Bible didn't really occur and the like, as if their power to discern the obvious is superior to anyone else's, adds to the clutter of the religion based threads.

But to the extent a theist emerges who insists a polar bear walked from the North Pole to Mesopotamia to board an ark to save himself from a pending deluge, have at it with the ridicule

And then there are theists whose atheism was abandoned for theism, who get little attention because it doesn't fit the narrative that atheism is the natural progression of the philosophical mind. I think the assumption is that something must have gotten broken for an atheist to revert to theism, like addiction, or loss, or at least something scared them in the dark of night.

That's a particularly annoying accusation. As if theism is a coping mechanism for the psychologically suffering. If only the theist had the fortitude of the atheist, he could deal with the bright light of reality, or however the argument goes.

And then there is a final subset of atheists and theists who have something interesting to say and who add something to the conversation. That's were I'd think we'd all aim to fall.

My two cents:

I tend to favor a less expansive definition of evangelism so as to keep conversation as open as possible on the topic. On the religious side of things, evangelism is clear because it tends towards a dogmatic support of a particular theology, which does not offer much to discuss by those outside that particular tradition. But as long as the person is willing to consider the problems in their position (like, for example something like the logical problems with the triunity), I think it's fair game.

On the atheist side of things, what constitutes evangelism is less clear because that term is typically assigned to theists, particularly Christians, and particularly fundamentalist ones. I know that's not necessarily the case, but I do think it's why atheists bristle at being called evangelicals, especially when that term is most often used to describe a way of thinking entirely contrary to their way of thinking.

I suppose at some point we moderators might need to hyper-define "evangelism" so we can conduct a more legalistic analysis to be sure we're applying the standard properly across the board, but what I can say (and speaking here of someone who is very much a theist) is that the comments of the sort that say "it's all bullshit" aren't very helpful. Whether those sorts of comments are a form of evangelism or not, as a theist, I can only ignore them. They don't add to the discussion, cause me to rethink anything I previously believed, or explore the reasons I might have for the belief. I'd say the same in the non-religious context, like if someone said my interpretation of Kant was "stupid as shit" (or the like) without offering any more explanation.

So, more than focusing on what "evangelical" means, maybe not enter a conversation if your objective is just to throw rotten tomatoes at the other side. This isn't to suggest that you must allow theists to get away with making unsubstantiated comments, but if those responses are not substantive, the response will likely be in kind and the conversation will quickly become derailed.

There are things that bother me, also. Misuse of the apostrophe is one of current ones; it the apostrophe seems to be disappearing from the vernacular. I think that people get confused about it and so leave it out. — Ludwig V

They are attempting to remove the apostrophes from street names in England, which is upsetting to some: https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2014/01/22/grammar-is-off-the-mark-for-apostrophes-on-shropshire-road-signs/

In the US, I don't know that I've seen the apostrophe in street names, like if it were Baker's Street, I would expect it to be Bakers Street. I'm not as concerned about that sort of thing because it's an arbitrary street name and they can name it whatever they want.

are they logic, or do we just memorise them because they have been part of our vocabulary for centuries? — javi2541997

Both. Those languages with more irregularities pose more serious problems for non-native adults than anything else, but that might be an evolutionary stranger danger attribute. Knowing who isn't from your tribe can matter, especially historically.

But I speculate.

My mind is twisted in this point... so the correct form is: I have come home and not "I have came home" — javi2541997

"I have come home" is correct. If someone said, "I had came home, " I'd think either they are non-native, not as formally educated, or millennial.

He had seen (not saw). He had done (not did). He had gone (not went). He had run (not ran). Perfect tense takes the past participle.

Regular verbs are predictable, while irregular are chaotic for a child or learner. — javi2541997

I'd just point out that irregular verbs are difficult for adult, non-native speakers, but not for children. They may make errors at first, but it's generally not difficult to distinguish a non-native speaker who learned as an adult versus a non-native speaker who learned as a child.

In terms of what makes languages hard to learn, it's not just having to learn exceptions to general rules, but all sorts of things go into language difficulty: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/learning-the-lingo-the-5_b_997685

When some modern words came into common parlance, such as fax, no one had its past tense form, but obviously everyone adopted the regular form: "faxed". It's less chaotic. — javi2541997

But we have computer mouses because of the general rule that we accept the more modern forms over the older forms when we create new words, but maybe it would make more sense to say I have computer mice if I have two mouses.

I do see why you'd say the Childs are coming for dinner as opposed to the Children are coming for dinner if Mr. and Mrs. Child were coming over. I always liked that joke.

One thing you see in languages spoken by people from many different backgrounds is a reduction in word designators because they are largely unneeded. For example, in modern English (unlike older forms), we say I walk, he walks, they walk, we walk, you walk. Note that the word only changes form once, but then compare the various ways you'd have to say that in your native tongue.

One thing that grates on my ears is the common misuse of the past participles in the past perfect, as in, "I have come home" versus the incorrect "I have came home." I used to hear that only among the uneducated, but it's everywhere now. A point could be made that these identifiers are irrelevant.

At the first glance irregular verbs would seem to have no reason to live. Why should language have forms that are just cussed exceptions to a rule? What do you think? — javi2541997

Some of the verb endings are irregular because they originated in other langauges and then were brought into English.

There are languges with no regular verbs and there are languages that have far more designators than English.

Well, when we explore space, we don't see any Boltzmann brains, which suggests the density is very low (or we occupy a special place). — RogueAI

But your OP postulated there were an infinite number of things, but here you reference our world which doesn't have an infinite number of things, so this empirical evaluation doesn't help us.

The rebuttal:

NPR isn't what it used to be — BC

It's really not. I've been disappointed in what they believe is newsworthy and in the great efforts they make to show their alignment with various causes. I also don't think their reporting is always in good faith. As an example, my son went to college in the inner city and the area was gentrifying, with his low income apartment on the chopping block. NPR came out and interviewed him assuming he was a local resident and not a suburban student transplant. He explained that he felt that if low income housing were mandated, the cost burden would shift to him to make it sustainable, and that he would expect to pay more for where he would eventually live. You may disagree with his analysis, but the way they hacked his quote up, you'd have thought he was Bernie Sanders, sorely upset with the capitalistic system and mistreatment of the poor.

In any event, I take the position that objectivity is an impossible standard, and not even one worth pretending to advance. We all have some perspective and point of view and those biases are inevitable. I think the better practice is to try and be balanced, which means offering competing perspectives without favor toward one or the other. That is a difficult task given the consumer driven market, meaning one shops for news at the place where they expect to get the news they want.

The solution then for those who are looking for balance would realistically be to look at various news outlets, meaning if you want a real perspective, first go to Fox, then make your way over to CNN. That approach might be a good one, but the likely result is that you'll settle on the one where your preference lies. There's no reason to keep trying the competitor's burgers once you've figured out what you like.

Nietzsche was right in calling democracy a slave morality. — Merkwurdichliebe

The criticism of democracy in light of the Trump example is not that democracy is a slave morality but it's that it allowed its leader to abide by a master morality and be above the law.

That is, N opposed democracy not because he thought the general public too stupid to select competent representation, but because he thought it crushed the uberman's quest for dominance by imposing the rules of the slaves upon the masters.

Trump might be seen by N as an uberman, so much a master that he was able to live by a master morality despite specific democratic structures that were designed to make sure he was not treated as above the common man.

am pretty sure that vaping is accounted for in smoking statistics which are derived both from sales records and from health surveys. — BC

Not sure that's correct: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/27/health/cigarette-smoking-decline/index.html#:~:text=The%20percentage%20of%20adults%20who,are%20becoming%20even%20more%20popular.

The question of "what would happen if women became fully equal to men" isn't answered as your OP proposes. It is actually opposite as you predicted:

"The answer: the more egalitarian and wealthier the country, the larger the differences between men and women in temperament and in interest. And the relationship is not small. The most recent study, published in Science (by researchers at Berkeley, hardly a hotbed of conservatism and patriarchy) showed a relationship between a wealth/egalitarian composite measure and sex differences that was larger than that reported in 99% of published social science studies. These are not small-scale studies. Tens of thousands of people have participated in them. And many different groups of scientists have come to the same conclusions, and published those results in very good journals.

Given that differences in temperament and interest help determine occupational choice, and that differences in occupational choice drives variability in such things as income, this indicates that political doctrines that promote equality of opportunity also drive inequality of outcome."

This is to say, in Scandinavian countries where women have the most equality and can choose to do however they want, they choose female stereotyped occupations, leaving a reasonable explanation that when you eliminate social pressures and create freer choice, the biological pressures become more evident and revealed. That is, genetics heavily drive feminine and masculine behaviors, so your OP assumed outcome would not occur.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-the-gender-scandal-in-scandinavia-and-canada

Another way to play is to ask what could logically follow as next in the series. As people respond, you tell them if they are correct or not. The ones left guessing get additional hints from the prior correct and incorrect guesses until finally they get it or they beg someone to tell them the answer.

So the idea is: we, corporate America, will present you dumbass consumers with the options we’ve decided and a couple buttons to push. That’s freedom and democracy. At least it’s not that great evil, communism. — Mikie

Drugs have traditionally been through the black market, which isn't part of corporate America. I've heard that many still prefer to buy marijuana the old fashioned way and not at dispensaries.

The point being that addictive substances find their way into the most restrictive of systems, even in prisons. It hasn't been into recently that a legalization movement has been afoot.

I guess you can say that street dealing is the most basic form of capitalism, but I would think that sort of trade would exist even in Marxist system (assuming it is non-totalitarian).

But the thing is, smoking is much less common now than it was 30 or 40 years ago. — BC

I wonder if that has just been offset by vaping and now marijuana. That is, more alternatives.

Yes— isn’t it great that racism is behind us? — Mikie

The Court did not hold there is no more racism. It said race could not be considered a reason to permit or deny admission into college under the Constitution. Unless you can show their reasoning is flawed from an interpretive perspective, you're just arguing you're unhappy with the result.

think the point is we choose our taboos (at some level) and we can examine their individual merits. unenlightened's point about sexualization and nudity is at the very least worth thinking about. — Baden

I wasn't dismissive of it. I was trying to arrive at a reason why the nudity taboo ought be reconsidered. The basis provided by me was not that nudity necessarily leads to arousal, but that it's a social norm related to modesty. My suspicion is that it's possible to desensitize ourselves from arousal when watching others have sex as well. My question is why we ought abandon a social norm because it makes things less workable for 0.5% of the population.

Do I have the right not to shower alongside a fully physically appearing female who identifies as male? I think I do, else somewhere we've assessed his right to avoid the discomfort of showering in the women's shower higher priority than mine.

Telling me to get over it and deal with the naked person of whatever stripe is next to me sounds as reasonable as me telling him to get over it and shower somewhere else.

other words, there seems to be a hierarchy of accountability in societies based on factors such as wealth, class, culture, etc. that feeds into larger issues surrounding how agency is treated. — schopenhauer1

There is one legal standard throughout a jurisdiction, meaning the same leash laws apply to the poor and the rich. That's why lady liberty wears a blindfold.

Obviously law enforcement occurs differently throughout the city. There is both the feeling that law enforcement under-enforces in the poor areas as to certain crimes and that it over-enforces as to others.

I suspect the disparities result from practical considerations, class issues, race, and politics.

In some neighborhoods they get mad when the trashcans stay out on the street too long. Others are trying to keep the needles out of the alleys.

And of course the evidence of the Naturist movement is that it is perfectly possible to dispense with the taboo on nudity without dispensing with the taboo on public sex. — unenlightened

What is wrong with the taboo against public nudity? Why must it hinge upon proof that it violates the taboo against public sex is my question?

That is, I'm just saying the rule of modesty justifies the rule against mixed nudity as it justifies the rule against public sex. Why make some taboos taboo? Can't it just be that I find showering beside children not my own uncomfortable enough that I'd rather maintain that rule? It's not like fear of arousal is what makes me not want to see most of my neighbors having sex.

Oh yes, it signifies that we have to change all our taboos if we even question one of them, and I am advocating that. — unenlightened

Mine is a reductio argument, not a strawman, asking why change one and not the other unless you can show how in principle they're not the same.

Being autistic, it is definitely the case that I can be poor at anticipating what other people will and won't understand, at least until I've gotten to know the person somewhat. — wonderer1

All you say may be true, that you fully comprehend without having an easy way of showing that to others by reducing your thoughts to conveyable language, but would not that still make you a complicator under your use of the term?

I think you did provide important counters by pointing out the way those who are neuro-atypical process and communicate, but I imagined a complicator or simplifier to be someone who offers information to others for clarification purposes, but if you're imagining those terms to describe a person in terms of what goes on internally for their self-clarification, then that would be a difference in how I considered the terms you presented.

To the extent that one can internally be a simplifier and be unable to show it due to an atypical neurological process, that would draw a distinction in the way we might have been defining your vaguely defined terms. That is, I instinctively thought of a simplifier as that professor who could simplify concepts for me, not as someone who might have the thoughts clear in her head but unable to articulate it to me. But yes, I'll concede there are those who do understand but cannot articulate it well, but I'd call those complicators, not because they're confused, but because they leave me confused.

Maybe that makes me a complicator to you under my definition of the term.

Yes, but why respond to a post when snark is easier?

Let me restate it:

You've identified that public nakedness is taboo and argued it is without justification. I've indicated a justification beyond it being a community standard isn't required and that any change to it should come organically, as opposed to decree, especially one motivated by a select few being inconvenienced by the standard.

Beyond that, I pointed to another taboo, which is that we don't have sex openly in public, despite that taboo resting on the same rules that prohibit public nudity, which are generally considered the modesty rules.

That is, we needn't place all these taboos on the agenda to consider them for change and dramatically restructure our social norms just because we now face challenges from a very small minority as to what a man or woman is.