The laws and constants are secondary. It are particles, their interactions, and their collective behaviors, that matter. Democritus told us that already. — EugeneW

There must be a 'The Physics Forum' where such issues are vehemently discussed.

Well, not to give the game away too much... — Amity

Because of my line of work I am offered a PhD thesis, nicely bound and printed, quite often. They are usually an uneventful read, not limited to and most certainly including, my own. Literary quality or nail biting subject matter are just not high on the priority list in general. However, if every page is as poetic as the previous post, then a masterpiece looms and I just have to get my hands on your book Amity. Tomorrow I will dive deeper and see if I can put the pieces of the puzzle together and explore more of that triple D work.

What philosophers are said to do.
No. Not navel-gazing.
'Willy-waving' :blush: — Amity

Of course philosophy is nothing exceptional. It is just performed by people who hope the penis mightier than the sword, or more likely, who have no other option. The language of philosophy is tinged with sexual metaphor as well.

Where do the laws of nature or the constants of nature fit into your notion of reality as mereologically the sum of all things? — apokrisis

I do not hold reality as the sum of all things, it is exactly the opposite I would say. Rasmussen, the author of the paradox seems to hold that idea.

Aren’t you looking at this from the point of view of the current “world of medium sized dry goods”, whereas physics suggests that laws and constants - the absolutely general - are all that constitute our reality at its beginning? — apokrisis

No, I hold reality to be a metaphysical concept, not a physical one. I would therefore also think that 'reality at its beginning' is a square circle. As if there was no 'reality' and will at some point not be a 'reality'. Reality is a concept by which we refer to all that is real for us, or all that is the case. It is an abstraction referring to the most general state of affairs.

So therefore reality is the wholeness of every thing, because - as you say - it aint’t the mereological sum?

And thus reality speaks to the maximally general. Which in physics-speak is laws and constants. — apokrisis

I have no idea what physics would say, I am not a physicist. If when physicists speak of reality they actually speak of 'laws and constants' that is well possible. That does not mean anything though in a metaphysical discussion. though when physicists and metaphysicians speak to each other they will first have to clear away such mutual understandings of a concept.

Well physics does divide reality - as the bounding wholeness of concrete actuality - into the two parts of laws and constants. — apokrisis

Ok. than they run into a paradox. Poor physicists. I do not see though why you would give the keys of metaphysics (conceptual analysis) to physicians (analysis of the physical world).

To fix that dichotomy, you then need a systems logic that can find the unity in such opposites — apokrisis

I recommend dialectics ;)

Do we see things differently according to a priori categories or did difference become a category as the result of seeing differences? Kant claims the former. This is not the prevailing view today. — Fooloso4

Well I would not know how you can perceive 'difference' without a mind wired to see 'difference'. It is also very binary, right, it is the same thing or a different thing. This binary view of things to me seems to belong to the human condition.

That supports my point. They are not invariant a priori categories. Or, more generally, it is not the case that thinking and being are the same if thinking leads to the denial of change. — Fooloso4

Why would it lead to a denial of change? Only if you assume that thinking cannot handle change. I don't see why it would not be able to. I conjecture that it is because one considers thinking to be mere logic or 'quantity', but dialectical thinking is very dynamic. I realize that I am the same person I was yesterday and that I am different from the person I was yesterday.

The relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus is an open question. Some maintain that Heraclitus was responding to Parmenides and others that Parmenides was responding to Heraclitus. — Fooloso4

Ok, but I think we both agree there is more to thinking than monolithic 'sameness' or identity. In your view though it seems like we first have to experience non-identity in order to be released from our slumber that thinking prioritizes identity. I think that assumption, that identity and sameness is the default and change modifies our thinking is not warranted.

It not that he did not realize it, he just thought that becoming is a false opinion. His monastic thinking led him to reject change and difference. This is a good example of why we should not accept the premise that thinking and being are the same. — Fooloso4

No, it is a good example of the dawn of philosophy. He held on to assumptions, namely that 'real' thinking deals with the unchanging, which we questionable.

Feuerbach suggests (as I read him), it's merely an anthropocentric bias (blindspot) to reify – project, literalize – our thoughts (e.g. distinctions) and then thereby conclude 'maps = territory' (even as maps are made by / from aspects of the territory and used to make explicit other aspects – yet never 'the whole' – of the territory). :chin: — 180 Proof

Well, I wonder why I have to accept that the territory is real and somehow the map is not. The whole distinction is a map making exercise, done in order for us to navigate better, but reifying this distinction as something that is a really really real distinction is actually what you are warning us against doing.

It may be useful to do in some instances and to say, well this is real and unchanging and this is a changing aspect of it. At least I think that is where I think you are going with your distinction between tides and sea, but I might be wrong of course. It may also lead us astray if one holds on too firmly to these distinctions/ The problem with the paradox, at least from my perspective, is that it reifies a certain concept, namely 'reality', and then compares it to certain 'res' all things that are.

You have got this backwards. They do not conform to a priori categories of thought. It is, rather, that thought was forced to change to accomodate what did not fit existing categories. — Fooloso4

Well they have to, unless you want to go back to pre-kantian days. We need the category of difference to account to perceive things as different to begin with. We do not stumble into the world as tabula rasa.

Parmenides "categories of thought" exclude change. — Fooloso4

Well Parmenides did not have the categories of thought, or the 2000 whatnot years of philosophical development that came after him. Indeed he was puzzled with the notion of change. He had to deny it as real based on what he could logically fathom. It took Herclitus to clear it up to some extent, in the same river we step and do not step. What he did not realize is that becoming is a category of thought as well. He was not right, I am a Heracleitian, but what he got right was the notion that what is real has to be able to be thinkable. He thought change was logically impossible, that was a mistake.

How about starting a war for resources (the usual reason). They said it was the main reason, or one of them, I believe? You would have to do a better job of explaining why this is. I am not saying people are not driven to violence due to some ‘sexual malfunction’ or some such thing, just that I don’t see how it can be viewed as anything like a main reason for driving someone into war/violence.

I am open to a reasoned account of why this may be so (specifically as an item that majorly entwined with war/violence). — I like sushi

Well, it would take a book probably and I am not going to venture it. Wars of course are fought over resources, however there is always more to it than that it seems. In war more is involved than cold calculation, but also pride, competition. The whole terminology of war is tinged with competition, victory, valour, etc. Remember the parades and the statues, the decorations, and the monuments to people who were usually ruthless killers. Now I think at the heart of all this drive for competition, the show and spectacle one makes of oneself, is to show ones virility, if not individually than socially. The language of war, the movements of its pieces, the dancing of the protagonists, are all sexually tinged metaphors.

If your interest is in being argumentative, I am not interested. If your interest is in trying to understand views that differ from your own then you should begin by not misrepresenting what I have said — Fooloso4

Do not be condescending or tell me what I should be doing. It is impolite.

What is at issue is not the division but that there are these very small and very large things that were unknown and unthought. — Fooloso4

Yes of course there are. No one took germs and viruses into account before... and now we do. However. tiny slivers of matter that make us ill are thinkable, they conform to our categories of thought, there is nothing new to it. the identity of thinking and being stipulates that the categories of thought necessarily mirror that which we find in our world. That is at least what I take to be Parmenides' point, read charitably.

I edited out the wheel argument though, because I thought it would lea us astray and it did. However, I like the discussion about where the paradox in fact comes from. I think it comes from equating reality with the sum total of things. What o you think.

Thinking presuppose being like tides presuppose the ocean – nonidentity (e.g. Adorno, Levinas, Zapffe, Rosset, Meillasoux, Brassier). — 180 Proof

Yes, but being equally presupposes thinking. When I say something is, it means it is at issue for me. A rock, a grain of sand, an ocean does not care one iota about its being. An ocean is not in fact something different from a rock, but for someone for whom the difference matters. Materialists and idealists are just birds of the same feather they absolutize a certain an call it absolute.

"What is" is the horizon – unthought – of thought. In other words, thinking does not include, or reach, the greatest (final) number. — 180 Proof

I do agree with this. We know there is so much more than we can now fathom. "is this all", "there must be more to it" and there always is. However it is thought that makes this distinction. It creates its own horizon.

The divisions are a way of referring to things that existed prior to anyone thinking such things exist. — Fooloso4

So the division between the macroscopic and the microscopic always existed without anyone making the distinction? In who's mind, God's?

The wheel is a human invention, the micro and macroscopic world is not. — Fooloso4

Of course it is, or did they found some sort of sign saying "macroscopic world" when human kind first emerged? The division is human, the classification of one thing as different from another is a human made distinction predicated on the way humans perceive their world. That is the whole point of the identity thesis. Not accepting it in fact leads us to 'metaphysics' of the worst kind, the postulation of all kinds of things that are unthinkable.

Interesting is though that you consider the flaw of the argument to be the acceptance Parmenedian claim, while I think the flaw of the argument is not heeding it. :smile:

The problem is not with thinking that which is not, although more on that below, but with the assumption that what is is limited by what is thought. Until quite recently what was thought did not include quantum physics or astrophysics. We still to understand them and there may be things beyond our capacities of understanding.

As to non-being and indeterminacy see this discussion of Plato's metaphysics: — Fooloso4

Well up until recently there was no wheel either. What is, is limited by what can be thought. that is the thesis of the identity of thinking and being. What it holds is that we must hold that we can comprehend the world for it to be a world at all. It is metaphysics, not physics.

Based on what exactly? That sounds utterly ridiculous and I don’t really understand the obsession with the idea that sexual relations are somehow inextricably entwined with violence/war. — I like sushi

I hold the opinion that sexual encounters are entwined with pretty much everything we endeavor in, so amity's claims seems modest to me actually.

:party: :party: @Amity! That is a very joyous moment and an overwhelming feeling of freedom. It is off topic but may ask you what your PhD is about? I am interested. (Whether the subject matter is accessible to me depends of course, I tried reading a PhD on synthethic organic polimeres once and did not succeed, but those are exceptions).

It is the height of human hubris and folly to think that what is, was, and will be are limited by what we can think or comprehend or given and account of. — Fooloso4

Not really, because saying that 'there must be something that exceed the limits of our thought' as you seem to do, is then still conceptualized as a certain something an therefore thought. Something that cannot be thought, for lack of a better description, since what we are dealing with is the indescribable, cannot be anything for us. Even being is a way of conceptualizing. That which 'is not', is not, as Parmenides indeed held.

The genius of Parmenides is, at least I feel this way, is that he articulated the limits of our thought and by that notion invented philosophy, an inquiry leading to the insight that 'the world' is 'our world'.

1. Everything must have some explanation (PE).
2. Reality in total cannot have an explanation (PU).
3. Therefore, there is no reality in total.
4. If anything exists, then there is the total of all that exists (reality in total).
5. Therefore, nothing exists.

Somehow I must be missing the point... at least none of you gave the answer that is very obvious to me, so probably I am wrong.

The problem as I see it resides in the formulation 'reality in total'. The assumption is apparently that reality is the sum of all things (total).However, indeed, there is no reality in total. Of course we can add all existing things, fine by me, but all those things indeed have an explanation. And so 'the sum of all things' is consistent with premise 1. Premise 2 though targets not 'the sum of all things', but it targets 'reality', the concept we have of a whole in which all existing things ft together, even though we abstract from the actual existence of these things. Reality as such is the most general, but also the most empty concept. I see all kinds of things, but I never see a thing I call 'reality'.

Reality, like being, nothing, becoming, is an abstract concept, a category of thought. Now premise 4 perpetutates the mistake of equalizing 'the sum of all things' with 'reality', indeed if anything exists, the sum of all things exist, but that says nothing about reality because reality is not the sum of all things. It is our conceptualization of 'everything that is the case', but not a sum of things. Because of this confusion the author draws the conclusion 5 but he equates again a sum of things with a mental conceptualization, namely nothing(ness).

The argument can be stated without this mistake as follows:
1. Everything must have some explanation (PE)
2. Reality cannot have an explanation (PU) (Indeed, because an explanation is explains a phenomenon in terms of something else, but reality being the most general concept, we by definition do not have something residing outside of it)
Therefore:
3. Reality is not part of everything

And indeed it is not. Reality being itself an empty totality in which everything else resides, is larger than everything. The paradox arises when one equates realty with 'everything' and the author of the paradox merely proves the futility of doing so.

Of course, everything that is real, must have an explanation. That is true. Reality itself though is neither real nor explainable.

The whole post is quite hermetic I understand, but it can be stated much simpler. Just analyze the phrase 'reality in total'. Is a 'reality in part' thinkable? Does one piece of reality add up together with another piece to come closer to 'reality in total'? The combination of words is gibberish.

I used to think exactly that but I have gradually become less convinced that extinction or even dwindling are anywhere near. — Cuthbert

I agree but what would be the causes for that?

That was 2016 - then Me Too, then Sarah Everard. The expression of fear is getting more confident but I don't see the fear getting any less, because of the 'subterranean norms' and everyday sexism. — Cuthbert

I agree with this too. I do not think there are subterranean norms idealizing sexual violence between strangers. That is generally loathed upon I intuit. However, our society portrays the norm that if you want something you should come and get it, that success is a choice and that if you just want it hard enough success will be there for you. That mentality I consider to be spilling over to the gender relations as well. I just googled around a bit and found this plethora of videos telling us guys how to set up the ideal dating site profile that will get us the match we want. It is sad, everyone trying to be unique in exactly the same way. Authenticity stylized. This kind of commodification of love brings forth the appeal to 'distributive justice'. If love is a matter of goods, why would I have less of a right to them then you?

:up: Elementary Particles was quite good. Sex is like money: some people have a lot of it, most people have some but nothing to brag about, and some don't have any.

But that's about where the similarities end, since nobody deserves sex like how they deserve money (or the means to afford life requirements) — _db

I think that is the root of the problem. We have come to compare everything to money.

It's about maintenance of perpetual power by a certain kind of regressive, repressive male, no?
I know that's a simplification but a useful start to another necessary discussion, perhaps... — Amity

Yes. I wonder which way round the explanation goes. I mean, do men get the opportunity to be nasty because they have power or do they maintain power on account of being already nasty? Well, both, probably. In a matriarchal society would women end up being the nasty ones on account of having power or would the world be kinder on account of women being in charge? — Cuthbert

Well, it raises a lot of very thorny questions and none of the conclusions seem especially agreeable to either sex. First of all, who teaches the aggressive (rather than regressive) repressive male? Or are males somehow by nature bound to be aggressive and repressive and is it best to keep them under perpetual surveillance? If it is somehow a natural defect in males, is it then far fetched to hypothesize that females have some natural traits that cause them to become more easily attracted to a certain class of men?

Secondly, if it is cultural: where does machismo come from? It is a cultural trait perpetuated in a patriarchal society, but as the advantage men have over women due to superior physical strength (in terms of 'bursts' of strength, not tenacity or fitness in general as women love long than men and if the sport emphasizes durability fmelae bodies tend to outplay men's at some point) dwindles, so too should the advantage in terms of societal power. It would make the authoritarian male a species on the verge of extinction.

There are indications however that it is not very clear cut. Feminist criminologists hypothesized that crime rates of women would come to resemble men's. That has not happened.

My hypthesis is that there is a system of 'subterranean norms' squarely in place that keeps the existing structures of dominance and power alive. Both men and women keep them intact. These norms which are perpetuated in everyday conversation, on television, in movies, on school playground and on university campuses and tell us that having a sexually attractive man or women as a partner is superior to having a bright or witty one. From Lady Chatterly's lover to Material Girl by Madonna and from James Bond Maria Magdalen, the sexual always trumps the intellectual. That is no complaint, just an analysis. You and I, all of us, perpetuate these subterranean norms. 'Officially' though we all argue against them and tell ourselves but especially others we all want a partner that is intelligent, smart and kind.

Also, I want to clarify that declaring a war is different from self-defense. If a country is invading another country, the self-defending country should not be considered as declaring war. — Howard

What you claim is that war out of self defense is just. That is the problem, when is self defense justified and by what means may a country defend itself? the state of affairs in this framework is very clear cut, either there is war or there is peace. However, the problem is that of 'casus belli'. What infringement can trigger your self defense justification?

Oxford philosopher Amia Srinivasan has written about this: — Olivier5

Thanks for the resource!

Isn't this precisely the problem? They totally internalize the gaming pressure AND the rules saying which kinda girl/boy is popular and hence likeable by all, and which type of girls/boys is NOT popular hence NOT likeable by all. There's such a thing as a 'canon of beauty', everywhere, but they sacralized it. They carve it into the bloody stone that their brain is made of. — Olivier5

Yes I would agree, though I would not blame their brains. I would point to the societal forces feeding them this kind of morality. It is the story of our age.

Another 'theory' is that of Houlebeck in his Elementary Particles: sexual liberation during the 60's and 70's led to high sexual competition between males, and between females, with the most attractive people screwing all their content and less attractive folks living in eternel sexual misery. Freedom leads to inequality between the haves and the haves not, now applied to sex as well. — Olivier5

Too deterministic and neo-liberal for my taste. It would only work when there is some objective criterion for attraction and only on the assumption everyone wants the same thing screw around as much as possible. I think there are deeply felt anxieties around sex but not of the sort, "hey, I want to do only a prince or princess". That to me smacks of rationalization. "yeah, I do not have sex but I have too high standards".

I would look to a sociological explanation. Sexuality, like many other walks of life have become gamified, framed as competition and considered markers of success. The current anxiety around sexuality is not very different from the anxiety around having the best education, the highest grades, the best most earning job etc. The law of competition is a man made law, not a given

Yes, that's the thesis of The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Interesting note. — Olivier5

↪Amity Yes. This view is in contrast with Freud's, who frequently spoke of how repressed sexual energy can be turned into socially acceptable creativity and hard work through 'sublimation'. Reich says: "it can also be turned into hatred". He posited that as an explanation for the rise of fascism in the 1920s. I read the book a long time ago and was left unconvinced that Reich 'nailed' it. — Olivier5

The theme is rather current. We have turned sexuality into a means of oppression and the vice of this oppression gives rise to violence. Even J.J. Martin argue that Game of Thrones was built around this theme. There is something peculiar in that line of reasoning though, because the solution is so obvious, release the taboos around sexuality. However, that has never been the case. One of the oldest most universal taboos is the prohibition of incest, a law regulating sexuality. If we take both tendencies seriously we have within ourselves the conflicting desire of regulating sexuality and of releasing it.

I think anthropological research could show us how societies cope with these two opposite demand. Does it have something to do with patriarchal structures? Are the 'means of reproduction' somehow the real 'means of poduction in the Marxist sense? Is sexuality how it is practiced among man somehow conjoined to religious ritual, with a similar root as butying one's dead?

Thus, all the question-begging woo-of-the-gaps sophistry called to account (not "trolled") — 180 Proof

Sure. I think the two positions, the metaphysician who fills the gaps and the one that cleans the debris out again, belong together since Plato's dialogues. I consider metaphysics to be part of the human condition. Immediately when we claim that there is something unknowable or illusory, as Parmenides did, we desire to know it. I consider the mind to be dialogical.

My practical question for this thread, is why do Anti-Metaphysics Trolls, waste their valuable on-line time, trying to defeat something that they assume to be already dead, and although perhaps a ghostly nuisance, cannot by their definition, make any difference in the Real world? Metaphysical speculators are merely harmless drudges . . . No? — Gnomon

Well, I can only speculate about a psychological answer to your question, not per se a metaphysical one. My prof. on psychology of law taught me that when you talk to someone and you ask 'why' three times shortly after each other, you will incur their irritation. The reason for that is that you have reached the level of presuppositions and assumptions which most just accept as 'clear' and for which they cannot give any further account. In my view metaphysics does just that, it interrogates what you consider the basic structures of reality. They become hard to articulate and therefore cause irritation when you force someone to.

Men objectify women -> women resent this objectification -> women take revenge on men by frustrating the sexual desires of men -> men resent this frustration -> men take revenge on women by raping them, or raping surrogates via porn. — _db

That assumes a whole lot of intentionality. I doubt such intentionality is there at all.

Sometimes, in order to commit or threaten violence against someone a perpetrator needs to first be persuaded that the victim deserves it. They are said to have "asked for it", as the saying goes, as if a violent act against another person is a kind of polite concession. The instinct for justice is so strong that the perpetrator cannot live with himself having committed such a wrong. — Cuthbert

Indeed, in criminology this is called rationalization of criminal behavior by the perpetrator

The roots of violence in the psyche of the perpetrator are thereby ignored, all attention now focussing on the victim and what she "must have done" to provoke the response. This is all neatly summed up in the expression 'victim-blaming'. — Cuthbert

What is worrying too is that this gaze tends to become internalized. Even for the person being oppressed by violence it becomes a way to sustain the illusion of control by 'blaming' your own behavior. It gives the victim an illusory restoration of control and influence. The wickedness of (sexual) violence also lays in the feelings of self doubt it provokes in the victim. It renders them powerless and self blame is a psychological mechanism to restore the illusion of control.

Sigh. Tobias this thread is a prime example. — Benkei

I do not follow threads on the Ukraine crisis written here. I go to TheInternationalrelationsforum.com or Theconflictresolutionforum or Themilitaryhardwareforum

It is a wonderful song I think. It also has nice philosophical implications. We are similar in difference and as such similarity in difference is the state of mankind. the song recognizes that. As long as we do not see the other as completely other, alien, destruction might be averted.

That should cover the rest of your comments. And Rousseau/ Christian and me are antithetical to one another. I formulate my views on data and philosophy. — Garrett Travers

I myself do not define children as loving, I said they areby nature loving, explorative, game generating, and otherwise not miserbale. An observation born out by data across multiple studies - that was a broad analysis I sent you - and one that, for the vast majority of children, only differs among those with abusive parents. Which is of course, an ethical violation for all the same reasons. — Garrett Travers

We are not that far off actually. I agree with this, I have no reason not to. Except that abusive parents are the sole cause. I was quite a depressed child with no abusing parents whatsoever. The cause for my depression had other reasons. However although they are by nature not miserable, the nature of their game can make others miserable. However, I agree, by nature they are not depressed. On the other hand what nature is, is still debatable. Children are by nature social as well and the social comes with conflicts, so by nature children would also be conflictual.

About the article, I do remark that the correlations found are very small. I do know a bit about epidemiological research and if I see correlations like these I become suspicious, but hey it is a published article so I will leave that work to the editors.

And Rousseau/ Christian and me are antithetical to one another. I formulate my views on data and philosophy. — Garrett Travers

Not at all, you are grown up and embedded in a cultural framework. You can as little disentangle yourself from it as you can from modern day technology. On the whole though I agree with your points made above and concede I could have misread your statements for normative claims.

Then you would see how such advice doesn't apply to my research-based analysis above. — Garrett Travers

It teaches me you confuse a normative analysis with a factional one, not for the first time. Your research is moreover circular. You define children as loving and when they exhibit behaviour that is not loving than that is somehow learned through emulating others. The descriptions though of positive energy allow for both good and bad behaviour.

What I do grant you is that they seem to be less depressed. But well also depression is not a normative category. The good and the wicked can both be depressed. What I do not grant you is that "they are deeply loving by nature". Or only in the trivial sense that thye do not bite the hand that feeds them. I do think by the way that love the the ontological human condition so if you mean it in that sense you might be right too.

However what I take issue with is that you seem to equate this disposition with friendliness, or goodness. If that is the case than somehow this fall from grace in later years must be explained. It can't be explained by behaviour displayed by others as also the behaviour of these others must be explained. In other words how come these originally loving creatures became corrupt in the first place. The whole story seems to play in to a rather Rousseauean / Christian narrative of the uncorrupt child. Given the small associations I suspect the researchers merely saw what they wanted to see, as you do too.

I teach them them, but thanks anyway.

edit: It is a bit fickly to add pics. I google the image than copy the link than I click on the icon with the mountain and the sun. I add the link which I achieved through right clicking 'copy image link'.

I didn't say they did, I never even implied. Look man, I'm not these mystic chumps on this website, dude. If you're going to engage with me on here, I'm going to need you to read what I say and the research I post. — Garrett Travers

Edit: Pointless.

I advice a course on critical thinking Garrett. It will do you a world of good.

Is this really a conclusion you've drawn...? C'mon man, when have you ever heard of a child killing anyone in joyous laughter? And if you to happen to find me an abberation of such nature, describe to me the details of where the child comes from, and I'll show you who the real killer is. — Garrett Travers

No, the point is that the definitions of PE does not lead to any normative conclusions such at those you draw. Yes they care for the ones that feed them, so do cats.

You understand? — Garrett Travers

I understand a great many things, but thanks for your concern. You must also have noticed that all those associations are extremely small. Graph or no graph. I doubt it would meet the criteria for good epidemiological research.

From the movie Cidade de Deus

My point is not that they are prone to depression or not, but that they are nice. I never saw a friendly child in my life or at least, very few.

In depth commentary would require me to read it in depth and waddle through the statistics, but let's take for granted that the research is conducted properly. Here is the definition: "NE is a temperament trait that refers to a tendency to experience sadness, fear, anger, and reactivity to stress, whereas PE refers to the tendency to experience joy, engagement with the environment, and sensitivity to reward."

So let's say children display PE on birth. It just proves that they are joyful 'engaged with their environment' and sensitive to reward. So yes, they relish in the sight of burning spider under a magnifying glass. It is just proves they are joyful not that they are friendly or deeply loving. That someone kills you laughing does not mean he does not kill you.

Children are happy, exploratory, game-organizing for play, and very deeply loving by nature. I've never known of any exceptions to this. — Garrett Travers

Ohh dear...

If you think there is something to agree or disagree with, then, indeed, I disagree with you... :)

There is. — Changeling

I do not see it. They recorded a large amount of brain activity in areas which are also used when dreaming or remembering. What is there to disagree with?

""If I were to jump to the philosophical realm, I would speculate that if the brain did a flashback, it would probably like to remind you of good things, rather than the bad things," he said."

This is pure speculation, nothing to agree with or disagree with either. It could be, could not be. Philosophically speaking there is no saying what you will remember. The mind does not have a 'will' of its own trying to cheer up the ding person. There is no way of saying. However people have reported near death experiences so yeah, near death experiences are corroborated by brain activity. Again nothing that I can agree or disagree with.

Sam26 Tobias agree? — Changeling

Is there something to agree or disagree with?

First of all, get well soon Pinprick.

The difference in harm in this case is due to whatever trauma was inflicted by being robbed. So the examples aren’t comparable, imo. Maybe say a hacker takes money from your account and makes it seem like it’s legitimate taxation. In this case the harm is equal, because it’s the same amount of money you’re missing, right? — Pinprick

No. The difference is in the legitimacy. The hacker steals your money and robs you.. The tax authorities tax the same amount of money as ordained by the government. The first is illegitimate, the second is because the authorities use it to fund projects for the common good and not to enricht themselves. (Of course if they do the harm is equal, but that only proves my point). What matters is the motive. It is a rebuttal of your "huh, every kind of discrimination is equal!" line. Only the most ardent anarcho capitalists and you apparently do not see the difference.

If the act were “good” then no harm would come from doing it indefinitely. — Pinprick

Hmm, do you take antibiotics when you are ill? And if you do, do you take them indefinitely? You might say 'ahh but antibiotics is not a good thing, but a necessary evil'. I would agree with you. Preferential treatment is not a good thing. but a necessary evil perhaps.

Yeah, criteria that actually makes a difference like education, skill level, competence, etc. — Pinprick

Why would that one 'actually make a difference' and the other one would not? It is all a matter of the goals you wish to attain. 'competence' may well be perspectival, bringing a dfferent perspective to the table may make the institution as a hole more competent.

Maybe the president selects a handful of candidates that are diverse and then the senate narrows it down from there? — Pinprick

Might be already how it informally takes place. I do not know how political appointment of judges actually works. We do not have it here. There might well be such procedures because the POTUS will only select a candidate acceptable to the senate majority.

Being discriminated against doesn’t only harm you if you’re part of a marginalized group. — Pinprick

It harms you more because you already have less options to begin with. That is what being marginalized means. See the point about traffic fines above.

I don’t see how it’s ethical to give an advantage to someone because of their race. Isn’t that how races became disadvantaged in the first place? White people were given advantages because they were white. — Pinprick

No. Races became disadvantaged because some people thought they were superior to others and thought up this whole classification of peoples they subjugated, based on things like skin color, facial and bodily features etc. They did not become disadvantaged because of preferential treatment policies aimed at giving everyone an equal starting position, quite the opposite actually.

a2a (not looking at all the other answers...)

edit, I see this has been provided by Jamalrob but rejected by the poster... well I was never any good at logical puzzles.