I would suggest that the appalling lack of insight into human nature demonstrated on this thread would place you firmly into the category of "deficient for voting" should such a thing exist. In fact, your attempts to devalue certain members of society indicate that the health of democracy would be better protected if you, rather than they, were prevented from voting.

I say that my brother is psychologically hurting many of the girls. Part of my evidence is that mothers who have daughters would overwhelmingly agree with me — Tree Falls

People agreeing with you is not evidence. What is it specifically about your brother that makes you sure that his actions have caused harm? Because this is not a clear conclusion based on the facts alone.

The mothers may have more insight into the particular vulnerabilities of their own daughters but it does not follow that they better understand the daughters of everybody else. Besides, your brother is accountable for his own actions within the circumstances they occurred, not the emotional biases of everybody else.

My place is not to judge the man but the best course of action. In this case I think it is for Tree Falls to maintain the integrity of his family and do his best to mend the relationship instead of engaging in power plays with his brother that could escalate and put themselves and others at risk.

Aside from this I am in agreement with Michael and would add that it was entirely the brothers responsibility to check the girls age and be familiar with the local laws. That he did not do this is unacceptable but it does not automatically entail that he is a sexual predator and without knowing more details of the case it would be inappropriate to pass judgment on this.

Boredom is a reminder that life has lots of inherent meanings and that the one we are currently using to frame our experience is not conductive to the development of our happiness.

Your argument so far relies solely on the repeated use of the word 'children'. However, the age range 16-19 years is not considered to designate children when it comes to giving consent for sexual relationships. If you think the categorisation should be changed then that is your opinion and you are welcome to it. However, I was making the point that it is more effective to take each case on an individual basis and consider the intentions of all those involved. In future I would appreciate if you would take my argument on its own merit (or lack of) and refrain from emotional outbursts. The fact is that you condemned the guy from the start and that is not the way to have a reasonable discussion.

Incidentally, I think it is noteworthy that my initial comment which was in part intended to defend to right of young women to consent to their own sexual relationships seemed to provoke an emotional reaction on your part.

the argument that the sex is defensible on the grounds that a person of suspect competence — tim wood

You are assuming suspect competence based on age alone.

I was trying to establish facts about the individuals involved, which I think is a better way to proceed.

Here's another perspective: can I screw all the women in your family? Who knows, they might find it an overwhelmingly positive experience. On that chance, maybe I should screw all the women in your family. Indeed, if you think it through, you'll realize their views - and your views - on the matter don't matter! — tim wood

Just to get this clear, apart from making sexual comments about my family, you are arguing that the views of the females engaged in sexual act do not matter. Is this correct?

Regardless of how your brother rationalises the situation, do you not think that having your support as a brother could be of benefit to him? It sounds like he is getting himself into some dubious situations with shady people and this could be indicative of some kind of crisis. The right support from people who have his best interests at heart could help to reduce the chance of similar incidents occurring in the future. Your role as a brother could help in this regard rather than trying to pursue more coercive methods or retributive justice.

With all due respect, whether or not a girl of 16 yrs old "likes to have sex" is irrelevant when you are speaking sex with a man over the age of 40 yrs old — ArguingWAristotleTiff

No, the individual girls experience of the situation is most certainly not irrelevant and ages are not worth a damn when considered in isolation which is why I was trying to establish whether harm was done.

We had a pretty close, but argumentative relationship before his arrests. Since then, hardly any relationship. — Tree Falls

Did these arguments relate in any way to your brothers attitude and behaviour towards women?

Have you considered trying to rebuild the relationship so that you can be a positive influence to your brother?

Two of the girls complained to the police — Tree Falls

This is cause for concern. Are you in possession of any of the facts relating to the complaints?

Here's another perspective. Many 16-19 year old girls like to have sex. Who's to say that the experience these girls had with your brother wasn't overwhelmingly a positive one. Have you spoken to any of them or have any reason to believe that your brothers actions have caused them harm? If not isn't it somewhat condescending for you to assume that they don't have minds of their own or can make decisions for themselves.

I think that many of the spiritual and religious traditions believe that a "union with the divine" entails a kind of ethical mastery as opposed to the kind of power and gain that one might achieve at the expense of others. Its an interesting question to see if we can disentangle the will to power from the more "benevolent" or "altruistic" elements that might aim at something similar to Rousseau's conception of the general will.

“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.”

― Dōgen

With regard to anxiety I think that it can produce a cascade of thoughts which often are unhelpful because they merely perpetuate the anxiety. In this case an emphasis on the body can help to ground you and make you aware that you are more than those thoughts and put them into a perspective that stops you getting carried away. When you are calm maybe the problem can be reframed in new ways. Ultimately though I don't think meditation is about problem solving but radical acceptance. At bottom there is nothing to fix but only a getting to know more intimately. Here again is the rub of denial if this is used to turn away from problems.

I have a hunch that those who are dismissive of meditation are probably responding to what they see as a negative attitude towards thinking. Often meditation can focus on feeling and bodily experience and classify thinking as unhelpful. Inevitably this sometimes results in "my way is better than your way" with people dissing each others methods.

I'm not sure your answer is convincing because we do not only keep maths that has practical utility. It need only be internally coherent and can be built up deductively using the rules we put into it. It could be many years later that a practical utility is found for a system that was initially believed to be only a mathematical curiosity.

I mean it gives us an applicable framework with which we can make sense and order our experiences. It is a pure form which the principals of physics take up to accurately predict events that we all perceive.

we just feel hunger and that informs our motivation to seek food. — charleton

But then we still get to choose to follow these instincts or not. Obviously we are still constrained by external forces. I don't get to chose to suddenly appear upside down six miles above the earths surface. But clearly my choices allow for the possibility of diverting determinism in more than one possible direction. Is this a roll of the dice, or do I have the power to load the dice in my favour?

The difficulty is that if maths is a conceit, how is it that it can be applied to the world? This was one of the fundamental questions Kant was trying to answer.
Is it invented or discovered?

It's a very useful too but in the case of those who consider themselves mystics it is a tool used to simplify their process of thinking to a degree that is quite astonishing. — Magnus Anderson

I suppose meditation can also have quasi-religious interpretations which seek a way of knowing not captured by discursive, logical or linguistic methods.

No, he says that such a conception falsifies the reality of time. — Magnus Anderson

Would Einstein's relativity of simultaneity not put him in agreement with Bergson? ie. there are moments but they are subjective for different observers.

Meditation is the holy grail of mysticism. Why is this so? Is it not because meditation is a form of denial? — Magnus Anderson

I believe meditation is a technique for focusing ones mind, no? I suppose it could be considered a denial that unfocused use of the mind delivers the truth, or perhaps there is the denial of the ascetic who runs away to live on a mountaintop. There's good and bad denial right. Denial of a lie could be pretty important.

Bergson is opposed to any conception of time as a succession of moments. — Magnus Anderson

Are you sure it is not just the conception of time as only a succession of moments that he is opposed to? As this is a very simplistic and linear way of describing it.

What you are describing is not mysticism but denial. i.e. hiding from valid distinctions. The trouble is that a great deal of discrimination takes place without us being aware. It seems to me that Bergson takes a phenomenological approach to time so he would be interested in discussing distinctions as they appear rather then by comparative measurements of different observers via the objectification of space-time.

This just reduces free choice to a roll of the dice. — charleton

Then this hasn't allowed space for free will and is not the compromise I was speaking about.

I prefer to determine my choices. They have more meaning that way. — charleton

What role do you play in determining them?

What makes them different from the automatic consequences of inanimate cause and effect is that outwardly the choice emerged from an agent whose condition is unknowable to an observer. — charleton

Do you say that the condition is unknowable to the agent themselves?

While I agree that it would be surprising if Kant did not know about this geometry, he had no reason to apply it to space as a whole and for the reasons mentioned above it is irrelevant to his conception of space.

David Hume is wrong. Empiricism is wrong. — René Descartes

Could you give a bit more info, in what respect do you regard them to be wrong?

He'd have said it was obvious if you decide that triangles can exist across 3D space, or on the surface of spheres. — charleton

As far as I'm aware Kant did not mention the geometry of the surface of spheres but in any case that is merely a subset within Euclidean space and as such would have no bearing on the form of our intuition.

When I make a decision, or act in any way it is determined by who and what I am; and through my needs, motivation and volition.. — charleton

If who I am at a given moment is completely determinate then is any choice possible?

One way of arguing is that our intuition is still Euclidean. So in spite of non-Euclidean geometry, our form is Euclidean.

Another way of arguing: you could say that our intuition of space is actually non-Euclidean (or whatever happens to be the correct geometry of space, supposing non-Euclidean geometry is superseded), and Euclidean geometry was merely an empirical concept of that form. — Moliere

But if physical effects external to ourselves can be shown to influence the geometry of space, is this not fatal to the assumption that space is an a priori form of our intuition?

There is no compromise. Just one choice, one probabilistic (or random choice), no matter how small, destroys determinism. — Rich

If a probabilistic determinism allows space for free will then that enough of a compromise for me.

According to Kant, the a priori synthetic truths must be certain from the perspective of the phenomenon and our experience. One repercussion of this is that you could not do a physics experiment which did not obey the laws of geometry. — Agustino

Are you saying that Kant would have denied that any physics experiment could reveal that spacial geometry was not Euclidean?

Kant aimed to say that the propositions of geometry don't derive their CERTAINTY (because he took their certainty for granted) due to the law of non-contradiction (hence the synthetic part). Rather they derive their certainty from their a priority, rooted as they are in the pure form of sensation, space. — Agustino

I was wondering about this. Before Kant, a priori truths were considered analytic and so are true by definition. The a priori synthetic truths may be certain from the perspective of our sensations but does this really make them logically necessary? Could there not conceivably be forms of intuition different from ours that allow for different types of space?

Perplexed by name; perplexed by nature. Seems you want to keep your deterministic cake but want to eat the free will topping too. — charleton

Definitely! :) Yes I would seek to find some sort of compromise. Are you saying you'd be happy to give up free will?

Thank you for clearing that up andrewk, I think I need to swot up a bit on my general relativity.

The essay that posted is actually very interesting in regard to the different types of curvature.

I image that that laws are not fully deterministic or else that they apply over a limited scope. Is it even logically possible for full determinism to produce more than one outcome?

how does matter in motion reach the point at which it can exhibit choice?

If the self is determined, from where does the power of choice arise?