which does appear to require medical and psychiatric intervention, — Tom Storm

At the risk of becoming tedious, what exactly is "psychiatric intervention"; that is, that distinguishes itself as psychiatric?

You may not like the psychiatric approach to mental illness, — Leontiskos

Maybe you think the practice of psychiatry - whatever exactly that is - is like other medical practices. It isn't. Psychiatric treatment is model or theory based, which may not work for a particular patient, and may even be just plain wrong for a particular patient - my example above.

Moreover, more than a century ago - and even still today - psychiatrists had evolved a system of defense for their practices that held that critics were suffering from some pathology. So psychiatry has had a bad rep that it earned, because not knowing what it was doing and being very defensive about it. These days (I think) most psychiatrists are in the counseling/therapy business - they're neither; they're MDs - or they consult with counselors/therapists on prescribing medication. And some take on institutional responsibilities.

Being in no way a mental-health expert, but having encountered some pretty sick people, it seems to me the best treatment is holistic in approach, providing what is needed: drugs if needed; counseling/therapeutic/custodial support as needed, and likely a mix.

Medicine works by identifying the correct diagnosis. Doing this saves lives. — Tom Storm

Agreed. But there's a difference between an x-ray of a broken leg and five or six or more characteristic behaviors from a list of ten.

the analogy with religion is telling.
— tim wood
And what does it tell you? — Tom Storm

That it is a matter of presuppositions and an unquestioning belief in those presuppositions. You list above, in addition to straight-up medical attention that an RN or a nurse practitioner could provide, support, listening, accepting, and again supporting. If that's what psychiatrists do, then why an MD? These are the actions of a competent counselor/therapist, which a psychiatrist might be, but is not trained to be. So it's back to the question - maybe I can refine it - not what do some psychiatrists do, but instead what exactly do psychiatrists do as psychiatrists that distinguishes them as psychiatrists?

You might answer that a psychiatrist is a person who meeting certain licensure requirements and qualifications, is authorized to take responsibility for the care of mentally ill persons. And if you did, I should have to be satisfied with that, but I think we'd both be less than satisfied with that an answer.

I'm willing to consider, but where do you want me to consider redirecting? — unenlightened

In our hypothetical, to the person feeling depressed - noting that depression and feeling depressed are not the same thing, as you likely know perfectly well. A good and possibly therapeutic question to ask those who can handle it, is something like, "The feeling you're having right now, what is it doing for you right now?"

I imagine you can follow through the implications of the question. It comes from a book about Heidegger's Being and Time.

Better, read Enderton's beautifully written 'A Mathematical Introduction To Logic' — TonesInDeepFreeze

PDF here:
https://sistemas.fciencias.unam.mx/~lokylog/images/Notas/la_aldea_de_la_logica/Libros_notas_varios/L_03_ENDERTON_A%20Mathematical%20Introduction%20to%20Logic,%20Second%202Ed.pdf

Looks like a mighty good book. Alas, no cheap used copies available.

But go ahead and keep digging through tiktoks. — Benkei

Like this tiktok?
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
1988, but maybe you have something more current?
In this document here referenced, they make clear they are interested neither in peace nor any peaceful settlement. Whatever their "official" positions or statements, their actions speak much louder.

there is something wrong between — unenlightened

I invite consideration of that "between." Not looking for an argument or even a discussion, merely instead noting a pernicious aspect of it in use: that it misplaces, misdirects, and misinforms. This an old bee in my old bonnet - thank you for listening.

:up: :up: The only thing I can have against you is that Benkei - one of us - I think is one of you.

Thank you, now I know better.

Agreed and understood - that doesn't happen often! Might you say where you're from? Of course I will remember it and use it against you.

what is the result of an interval divided infinite number of times — MoK

That's what I understand as a limit (process) - that can be approached but never reached, but if it could be reached, would yield whatever - the process of whatevering being nothing in itself, but useful as a tool.

And I agree, and I think we're correct. Now, what do you think is appropriate to do about it and about and for those victimized/marginalized?

People who were never slaveowners paying "reparations" to people who were never slaves all on the basis of skin color is one of the most silly and racist things I've ever heard argued by "serious" intellectuals. — Tzeentch

Silly it may be and racist it may be, but not for any reason you adduce. If you live in the US, you are presumably and in fact a direct beneficiary of slave labor. As similarly you are presumably and in fact a direct beneficiary of the US Highway system, even if you don't drive. Of freedom won by men who fought, even if you never wore a uniform. Or of a lot of things the creation of which you had nothing to do.

As noted above, I think reparations are an attempt by society to settle and close an account for the benefit of the payer. More substantive, and more realistic, practical, efficacious and sincere, would be long-term programs aimed at "making right and making whole" those victimized by almost 425-and-counting years of slavery, jim-crow laws, and discrimination. Long-term because if you want an unscarred generation, then most of those scarred shall have to die out, as those who discriminate will also have to die out.

There is no last digit.... Bigger than any countable number. — MoK

Just so, so when you talk about something that "strictly" can be, but which cannot itself be, then you tell me what the sense is.

Go to an auto mechanic and the expectation is that he, or she, will fix your car. That is, a well-defined problem being identified, the mechanic's expertise will be directed at that and to its remedy. Similarly with most medical specialties. Broken bone? X-ray, treatment with best practices, and you're almost as good as new - maybe even better. And so forth with most physical ailments.

And a moment or two's thought will catch that none of this a psychiatrist does. What I think he or she does is, medical model, presuppose that something is wrong, then attempts to find a fit in wrongness in the DSM-V. Finding it, then treats according to the finding and according to the theory-of-the-day about the finding. Or, in a nutshell, while most doctors are concerned with the problems of their patients, psychiatrists are concerned with the problems of psychiatrists: this the underlying model.

This sounds ludicrous and impossible, but perhaps an example will suffice. A well-respected psychiatrist at a well-respected symposium reporting on a twenty-plus years' treatment of several times per week meeting with a older female diagnosed as hebephrenic, and who did not speak! That in the 70s; hebephrenia (I see) no longer a recognized diagnosis.

To be sure, there are no doubt good men and women who are psychiatrists - the original goal to alleviate the suffering of those warehoused in 19th century mental hospitals - but generally, to be any good, they have to not do psychiatry. That leaves referrals, therapy, and prescribing drugs for counselors/therapists who cannot themselves prescribe.

Are you trying to make my point for me? — Tom Storm

Nope, you've made it yourself, and the analogy with religion is telling.

If I understand your answer, it is that a psychiatrist, encountering behavior, using the DSM-V or something like, makes a diagnosis - provides a label - and then.... And then what? I'm asking because I do not know.

If you detect an odor of something Socratic in my question, you'd be right. And I suppose the test of your answer for my purposes is that given your answer absent my question, a person could be expected to understand that it was a psychiatrist whose actions you were describing, and not, e.g., an orthopedist or an oncologist or even a bookkeeper.

Never mind that this has not been the position of the PLO and hasn't been the position of Hamas for years. — Benkei

Really? My quick online research shows just the opposite. Perhaps you can direct me to sources that will make clear that they have changed. Of course, if they have, that makes 7 Oct. even less comprehensible.

I believe when the idea of reparations comes from black people, it is grab for power and money. When it comes from a white person, it probably means that he still feels guilty about original sin, but isn't a Christian anymore, so that he finds some other BS to feel guilty about other than Adam eating that apple. — Brendan Golledge

Do you believe that the US is and has been a land of equal opportunity for all? Simple question, a yes or no should suffice as answer.

I have already qualified myself as a high-school "mathematician" - that being why I try to make sense in English. Let's try this: it seems to me you are confusing ideas of number with limit. For example, the decimal expansion of the square root of two goes on forever, is infinite, so what is the last digit? You want to divide something a "strictly" infinite number of times: great, how many times is that?

Psychiatry is of course poorly understood and one of the great bogeymen of popular culture and many people are incapable of considering the subject rationally ( also like religion) — Tom Storm

Spoken like a true kool-aid drinker. Question: as you've worked with psychiatrists, you must know what they do: what, exactly, do psychiatrists do? If I pay for the services of a psychiatrist, what, mainly, can I expect to get?

as to make himself divine when he was not. — Igitur

Probably you're more familiar with the bible than I am. Where in it does Jesus "make himself divine"?

Well, it hasn't worked so far — T Clark

Are we speaking of what is or what should be? Reconciling the two, making the should a can and doing it, is usually a problem, but at the same time with such problems usually thought to be a solvable problem. I'm thinking you're an engineer; thus am surprised to see what seems to me a defeatist attitude. My view is that, no other issues superseding, street level equality for all is still about 150 years in the future. Four to six generations, and that because a lot of prejudice simply has to die out, along with some corollary things happening. But with a TQM approach of continual improvement, possible and doable and maybe even sooner.

tends to zero. — MoK

Sure, gets smaller. Which in the very expression of which says that there is again a smaller - always. I suppose you can introduce a rule or limit that says at that limit the distance is zero, but then the point is identical with itself. I don't see how you get out of or around this.
t

Perhaps this post help you. — MoK

Um, no. Especially when you qualify it yourself as being hard for you to make sense of and very technical. Perhaps re-read my question - which I imagine you understand - and try answering in the same spirit and language.

That is, two points on the number line, zero distance between them: how can they not be the same point, or number, and if not the same, how can there be zero distance between them?

While I am in favor of reparations, — ToothyMaw

I suppose this means you are in favor of cash payouts of some kind to some people. To whom, how much, what for, and to what end?

I suspect that reparations are viewed by some as a kind of final payment to settle - and close - some kind of account. As such, not for the nominal recipient, but for the benefit of the payer. Would it were so simple! Reparations are usually about either a fine/punishment, or an attempt to restore the victim to some status quo ante. In the case of US black reparations payments for slavery neither appropriate nor even possible. That leaves the problem of defining a whole new purpose and how to achieve it - assuming either are possible or desirable. Not a simple subject.

To my way of thinking, Americans of African decent (and members of other minority groups in different ways) have been systematically and institutionally screwed since day one. The only reasonable accommodation that comes to mind is to mandate compensatory and complementary (i.e., that balances) access to everything that has been denied or deflected, to those who can benefit - call it extended affirmative action maybe on steroids, and to last for as long as the cause exists. Details to be worked out. And this, imo, should include criminalization of bad discrimination to include adding teeth to the laws and enforcing them.

The distance between two points is zero if the number of divisions is strictly infinite so there cannot be a point between two points in this case. — MoK

Question: taking one - the number - as a point on the number line, do you mean that there are more than one ones that are not one on the number line that are at a distance of zero from the point one - that are not one but some other number called one and understood to be one - or not one? Can you please make sense of this in terms a high-school mathematician can understand?

What I find in the U.S. is that Protestantism tends to be narrow minded, — Leontiskos

On its face this is both exactly wrong and nonsensical, even making me think the writer has never been to the US - or in a Protestant church. But perhaps I misunderstand or misread, and he will clarify. Maybe start with what he means by "narrow-minded"?

Protestant, in the US, includes a lot and many. Depending on region and sub-sect, there may well be some persons and individual churches that are seemingly, relatively, "narrow-minded." But my long experience is that Protestant churches are consciously and deliberately broad-minded in that they not only embrace and welcome all comers and take them and cherish them as they are - no circumcision nor anything else required - but would have the whole world equally as welcoming and receptive and accepting. By that I mean the opposite of narrow-minded.

On "problem solving" the only point I have is that for nonhuman animals it would have to be carefully defined/described to distinguish it from human problem solving - and likely differently for any species considered - taking human problem solving to be the application of a process similar to the scientific method, which I do not think animals capable of. E.g., recognition/definition of a problem, statement of a solution, hypothesis, experiment, evaluation, repeat, etc. Not to be confused with learning, which I think lots of animals can obviously do.

Actually, "monkey see monkey do," is imo probably about right!

What do you mean by rational thinking? I have no doubt that animals are good at problem-solving. — Athena

By "evidence of rational thinking" I have in mind that animals can learn and having learned appear to apply what they have learned, replicating the actions of their lesson learned to obtain a desired result. But a greater challenge to you is for an account of "problem solving" by animals - and that won't be easy. Perhaps a start would be a quick description of the process.

Nature or nurture? Why not both? Instinct - nature - given, but any pet owner can recite occasions when the animal exhibited evidence of rational thinking. My guess is that the both killing and mistreatment of animals makes it a necessity to resist acknowledging their "personhood."

Thank you for the reply; I appreciate the effort.

You really do not understand the “We believe,” its significance, weight, or meaning, do you. First though, let’s dispose of questions that are causing confusion. Does God exist materially, like an automobile or a horse; can his existence be proved? Neither my topic, nor questions that interest me.

Do some people say God exists, and do some of them call themselves Christian? Yes to both. The question here is not the nature of that existence but instead what people mean when they say “God exists,” and also what Christians have understood it to mean.

The problem with predicating material reality of God is the requirement for direct evidence. There is none. Further, if there were, then the being wouldn’t be God. To say that God is, is to say that God is something, which at the same time says what he is not – a whole lot of things he is not, and God is not understood as a being who is not a whole lot of things. People pressed on this point tend to explode.

Christian thinkers a long time ago knew all this perfectly well and knew it was a problem. Their solution to make it all an expression of belief, not least because they knew that belief and knowledge are not the same thing, and that you can – must – believe in what you cannot know. Further, that if you could know it, then it would no longer be a matter of belief, their word being faith.

Which is to say that the reality of God is an axiom of Christian thinking, or in different language an absolute presupposition. As such, it is not a question as to any fact of the matter, but rather the historical question of for whom it was an absolute presupposition, and its use. It was and is for Christians, and its use as a ground and justification for Christian thinking.

Ask a person if God exists and if he or she just answers yes, then possibly they’re answering carelessly and informally. If they mean it, then their thinking not in accord with Christian belief, possibly in mere ignorance. But ask a Christian, and he or she will likely answer that the question of God’s existence as a matter of fact does not arise; it is instead for a Christian a matter of faith that he does.

Now, you flatter me in supposing these observations mine and mocking me for them. But in fact you’re mocking Augustine through Thomas Aquinas, a host in between and those that came after. My exposure to these mainly incidental through secondary sources, but the ideas so basic and so clear that they cannot be mistook. Or, that is, in mocking me you mock yourself.

All of which leaves questions as to what modern Christians believe – but that a different topic.

but we know Christianity is false — Leontiskos

Just for the heck of it, what (do you say), exactly, about Christianity is true? And just to be clear, I haven't seen evidence in your posts that you understand the question. But you can start by being careful with what "true" means to a Christian in terms of his Christian faith, and just how that truth works, and why - who knows, you may surprise!

My "thesis," to use your term, is.... — tim wood

No, your thesis is.... — Leontiskos

It's too bad you're not at least a little bit familiar with Christian thinkers and Christian thought across almost one thousand years. You might then have a grasp of the distinction between a belief and affirming a fact, a distinction they found important and which they wrestled with. And which lack apparently makes my posts unintelligible to you, which thus dismissing, and telling me what I'm saying, leaves you talking to yourself - and I can understand that you would find that unpleasant and a waste of time.

My position argues from the point of view that even chaos can’t help but self-organise itself into some form or order. Chaos negates itself. Therefore order emerges. — apokrisis

I read Ramsay theory, what little I understand of it, as saying that in any chaos can be found some order. And that would seem to be different from any idea of "self-organization." Is your order, then, Ramsay-like an inevitable accident? Or is it something else? - setting aside for the moment just how order/chaos is determined and by whom.

My "thesis," to use your term, is that the Creed starts with the words, "We believe...." As such, I'm satisfied it's not just a throw-away line at the beginning of a prayer, but instead a much thought out and carefully weighed expression of how they thought Christians ought to profess their - their what? - their faith. Nor would I call this a "thesis," it is a fact.

You, it appears, want to know either before or at the moment of belief, which turns their thought backwards. Theirs was believe so that you may understand - they were pretty careful in statements about knowledge, that being got, if at all, in the next life. And they were at times harsh with those who claimed knowledge. Thus those claiming knowledge, or that God is real, may and can call themselves Christians, but theirs a personal, likely heretical, practice outside the bounds of correct practice.

The difficulty for followers though is that he did it for others, whereas followers tend to do it for their own salvation, to the extent that they make any sacrifice at all. — unenlightened

But isn't it the case that many people, even most, sacrifice every day for others - even some at crucifixion level intensity?

And now a question: in various places in the NT it says Jesus died for our sins. Where before that does it say that he would die for our sins?

Or:
God exists as an immaterial being. — Leontiskos

Evidence? Apparently it is meaningless to call this a belief, so, evidence?

You can take it as a general rule of life that to say one believes X is to say that one believes X is true. — Leontiskos

Have I disagreed with this? Now you tell us, what makes it true?

The crux as you put it is found in the first words of the Creed, "We believe...", I claim to know what that means, do you? Spoiler alert and hint, it means what it says and not what it does not say.

What sense does it make to believe in unicorns without believing that unicorns exist — Leontiskos

I fumble-fingered away a decent paragraph in reply. It happens sometimes; hit the wrong keys and the text instantly vanishes. The point is that unicorns both exist and don't exist. That leaves the problem of defining "existence." Belief neatly sidesteps the problem. And your dictionary reference nails it,

Believe: to think that something is true, correct, or real — Cambridge Dictionary

That is, that you think it so, not that it thereby necessarily is so..

And I'm not sure what you're on about - and never mind Mormons; that's a topic for someone else. If it is that some people claim that God is real in some material sense, I agree that some do. My argument is simply that Christians, if they make that claim, are not being Christian, and in terms of the Creed, not Christian at all.

Fine for a religious site, but not for a philosophy site; we're not the choir. Go back and read Unenlightened's post and my question to him. Further, as no one (else) can be Jesus, it becomes a matter of what he did and not who or what he was. So what did he do, that others can do, and that only "very, very few" - apparently - actually do? If it's deny yourself, pick up your own cross, and follow, I say many try and many succeed - and maybe trying is succeeding.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."
— Matthew 16:24
Thus speaks the man who ought to know, and according to His standard, there are very very few Christians or have ever been; nor is belief the criterion. — unenlightened

If this is it, then it seems to me there are many rather then "very, very few," although to be sure also those that weren't and are not. But what exactly did Jesus do that makes him his own class of one - and membership so difficult?