@Banno I understand what you mean.

I think it should be taken as a case by case issue not an outright ban.

People do actually change, and some people are quite capable of discussing in what you frame as a theological sense and what you frame as a philosophy of religion sense too. The main issue is others judging them and not letting go of the fact that someone believes something and making that the whole reason to attack/besmirch them.

Many people here ‘blather’ all kind of nonsense that has nothing to do with religion and they are not banned. Some have even been mods!

Ontology is a whole branch of philosophical enquiry that has a long held tradition in theological circles. Should we ban ontology too?

@Banno How about banning antitheists?

Claiming that ‘god’ is the answer is not really theology.

Possibly … belief in god is not essential for theological discussion

Only if they act with hostility towards others who disagree. I would also say that many not believing in scriptures and such shouldn’t mock.

I think people people can act in bad faith on many issues not just religious ones - I’ve seen it often enough on this forum.

Theology is an area that can, but does not always, assume the existence of a deity or some overarching dimension to reality. This, for those who don’t believe, can be approached by understanding the premise is not something you hold but your comrade in discussion/debate does BUT this premise in and of itself is not under scrutiny (yet your partner in discussion may be willing to go off topic).

If your interest lies in Philosophy of Religion then you must interact with theological believers.

Like everywhere in life not everyone is worth talking to, but it is worth giving everyone a chance to express their thoughts and perhaps find something to build on immediately or in future discussions.

His point was that IQ does not, on its own, a determine ‘success’ in life. There are some physiological parallels with g and physical markers like reaction time and general health.

Psychometrics are not exactly precise and only have any means across large samples and only take into account the average differences. Someone with an extremely high IQ could find it difficult to achieve anything in life simply because they have no one on their level to bounce off so they may be more likely to be lonely. But the g factor is just ONE part of a human. Having a high IQ does not mean you will find it hard to find stimulation or meaningful relationships as other parts of your personality can compensate.

How numerous are these studies? I know that for personality tests and IQ they are decent markers because lots of data has been collected over century or more. For ‘humour’ tests I have no idea about the sample size?

Yes. And it is a good thing people question the validity of certain terms and rehash more archaic terms too.

It is simply down to everyone else to assess their points carefully, clinically and as honestly as possible. If you think it looks wrong, sounds wrong and/or you have evidence to show/infer otherwise then you should speak up or we will all have ti suffer the consequences down the line.

As for Reps and Dems … I’m not American. As for a black woman getting a job she is capable of doing, great! Maybe no one will bat an eyelid about such a thing in a decade or two, just like people don’t make a deal about black actors or scientists being black.

Here is a very basic breakdown: https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/sexual-reproduction#Sexual_Reproduction_Definition

And to repeat, if we were to define a human scientific by visual prompts alone we would not say they have 0-12 fingers because there is a degree of normative classification within biology. It is not physics.

Sex, as a reproductive act, requires (for humans) two sex cells. This is a fact. To my recollection there are no instances of an immaculate birth that have been scientifically verified for humans? As for non-functioning body parts we may as well do away with the classification of males and just call them females with non-functioning nipples?

The constant hairsplitting is a very big problem and seems to give people a reason to interpret the more nebulous science of biology as a form of social science. No, no, no. Not having it. True enough there are grey areas everywhere but they are not vast areas and to declare that there are more than two biological human sexes is disingenuous and, in some circumstances a purposefully attempt, to use colloquial wordplay alongside different scientific contexts to spout nonsense.

Defects are not the norm. We do not go around humans don’t have ten fingers simply because a tiny minority have twelve.

There are TWO sexes. There are males and females. There are exceptional cases where the lines are not so distinct (due to various defects).

Gender, like sexuality, is more flexible. But again, a women and men are generally the default across all cultures, but there is certainly more room for different terms there as the minority size is far, far larger than for sex distinctions. And the default for sexuality is extremely diverse and always has been - although shunned in most cultures at some point historically.

In terms of men and women, I think it is fine to go with trans men and trans women as well. I would certainly not simply except (scientifically) calling a trans woman a woman because it could cause problems medically and in some competitive sporting environments.

It is not massively complicated but some people wish to make it so and others wish to oversimplify it due to prejudices and hang-ups inherited from their personal experiences (or rather lack of them).

I am well aware of cases where males (in terms of chromosomes) have lived as females most of their lives whilst completely oblivious to the fact they are ‘male’ (in terms of chromosomes). I see no reason not to accept people in such cases as whatever they wish to be called (legally too). BUT these cases are nowhere near as common as people who are trans (different distinction completely as it is heavily focused on gender).

I don’t care about Blackburn’s question (and have no idea what it was). I saw you say there are more than two sexes - that is wrong. End of story.

The phenomenologist doesn’t care

It is not something that everyone has an easy time grasping and I’m only giving you a rather stunted version. I only read more about it via studies in the cognitive neurosciences. That is how I found Husserl.

I only care about the ridiculous claim that there is a reasonable claim of being more than two sexes when there aren’t.

In terms of sex (for humans) it is simply a matter of male and female.

I am curious about measurements of humour. That is where my skepticism lies mainly. I know that other traits have been studied for extended periods of time and so there is significant amounts of data AND that can only give a rough outline because psychology is quite a soft science.

You might find this one interesting: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/humor-2021-0054/html?lang=en

Cool! Look for studies against it now. I have never really looked into humour as a trait before tbh.

Except, they have studied both. Humor is more correlated — hypericin

Fair enough. Show me.

Humor correlates with spatial, verbal, and logical intelligences — hypericin

Show me please. Thanks.

So why not admit you’re being dishonest? Did you think the sex of fish were under scrutiny here just because there was talk about a trans swimmer.

Humans have two sexes and ten fingers.

As sexy as it can feel to 'know' it - I know you know this is unknown. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I know I exist.

I am sure there are plenty of other people who can do her job and I bet there are plenty of black people among them too.

I understand why it is a little weird though. It was probably a case of ‘this woman is really good’ and then they find out she is black and the politicians start thinking the usual nonsense. I think the Canadian Prime Minister did a far worse thing by appointing equal ratio of women to men when statistically it makes little sense as there are far more men than women in politics.

To be fair, I understand the argument that having more women represented at the top level will inspire other women to follow and believe they can do it. But that does seem both a little patronising and I think a small increase and active encouragement to het more women into politics would have been a better way to go. I could be wrong though, but no one has convinced me otherwise yet.

Actually it people like me who studied biology long before this became a hot button issue. People like me who do question those claims and are aware that things are not always binary — Fooloso4

Not always … be honest and give hard data. It is a minuscule number. It is like saying humans don’t always have five fingers, but we all know that people don’t tend to have more than five fingers on each hand. In all my life I have never met anyone with more than ten fingers.

Other than male and female can you name another sex that is prominent enough to get near 1% of the global population. Show me the scientific literature too please if you hunk you can do this.

The term gender has often been used synonymously with sex in colloquial speech, but technically ‘gender’ is more or less used something like how we now use ‘race’.

No. If you read a bit about it somewhere you will come across the term ‘bracketing’. This is something like not denying that something exists or not, it is about ‘bracketing out’ any idea of something existing.

It is a little like solipsism yet completely NOT that :D You just put things like that aside and notice objects of experience whilst not looking at them as necessarily there or not but investigating the experience.

He refers to ‘parts’ and ‘moments’. For example removing a leg from a table still leaves it as a ‘table,’ but to remove the mass of the table is simply not something comprehend. Or to think of a sound with no timbre … we cannot. Other views are to notice that things are what Husserl likes to call ‘pregnant’. Meaning when you see the table you understand it as having only a partial view of it yet you experience it as a whole object with inside bits and bits at the back.

Phenomenology lacks empirical measures. But phenomenology is a method of approach rather than a universal view. Its aim is endless.

Correlation is not causation would have been a better way of putting it. Creativity has a tenuous relation to intelligence. So, my concern would be that it is the creative element in better humour rather than some underlying ‘sense of humour’.

Plus if some people have a bad sense of humour they still find each other funny and mate just as much.

Not to mention that ‘emotional/social intelligence’ is not actually ‘intelligence’ (as in the ‘g’ factor).

Husserlian phenomenology is not directly concerned with what is or isn’t. The focus is purely on the experience. The experience is the experience. That is the starting point and it is not finitely reducible.

Meaning whether something ‘exists’ or is ‘imagined’ is of no concern from the phenomenological perspective as the experience (‘real’ or not) is still an experience.

There is no evidence that humour correlates with humour. It does have some relation to creativity though, but how significant that is is probably still a matter of research and investigation.

Creativity would likely still be a good marker for sexual selection, but I would also imagine too much difference in creativity between mates could cancel this out?

I can only answer the first question.

No. It is not a plausible theory at all. You would have to provide some solid evidence for this and I cannot see how you can.

Also, you seem to be talking about ‘laughing’ rather than humour/comedy mostly.

I think you have certainly hit on something important about storytelling. Aristotle wrote about comedy, tragedy and general performance too. Nietzsche also developed ideas on this theme. Theatre and general entertainment in the modern world is more ‘passive’ in its format. We sit and merely observe whereas if we trace back the performative arts we can see how the distinction of ‘audience’ and ‘performers’ has been a gradual development.

For example, in Shakespearean times members of the audience would actively try and attack actors playing villains because the line between ‘real’ and ‘performance’ was not like today. Today at the theatre no one would take a murder scene to be an actual murder. If go back further, or look at different cultures, there are instances where the ‘performance’ is something that ‘audience members’ actively participate in - they take on the role of some character in a trance-like fashion.

As for humour in general there is certainly a common theme of ‘surprise’ and, as Aristotle put it, viewing comedy as something bad happening to someone deserving of the bad element, whereas tragedy is something bad happening to someone perceived as ‘good’ - in simplistic terms. Sympathetic feelings play into the humour, or lack of, as well as simple surprise/shock.

People in high emotional states of suffering will often laugh. People have many different reactions to many situations.

I don’t see how it makes any sense to suggest that physical exhaustion is a precursor to laughter. We do know that hyperventilation can induce certain states, and that physical exertion can create a certain high. In what you are saying there is a very tenuous link at best.

I would say it is justified if one person is rabidly screaming at you and try to bait you whilst you calmly and repeatedly tell them to stop then begin to warn them to stop. If someone is on someone else’s face with spittle flying and they simply won’t back away, and they do as much as they can to prevent you from moving away then hitting them hard, fast and repeatedly is perfectly fine.

The simple, yet crazy, fact is. Some people WANT to be hit and they will not stop until they get hit. I’ve seen it a few times. Some people are like that and some people can knock them down without any real ill will and just walk away. My brother did this on a few occasions because people tended to target him because he had long hair and looked like an easy target to ridicule and assault.

Getting the first punch in can just mean you are faster and more sober than the idiot getting in your face for no reason with clear intent to cause you physical harm.

On the couple of occasions where I’ve been in such situations I learnt to scream and repeatedly slap myself in the face whilst laughing whilst walking around. It worked twice. The would be attackers on both occasions just back away and threw verbal insults looking for a quick exit. I honestly don’t think such a display would work in most situations though I might have just been lucky :D

It was reply to his reply to me. Press @… to go to post.

Yes

Sorry, didn’t realise this was some stupid word game. Bye

I suggest you read the entire thing.

Panpsychism is the belief that every thing has an internal mental aspect. — Daemon

Not for all proponents of panpsychism! If you don’t get it you don’t get it. The fault may be mine entirely but enough is enough. Sorry.

Death will come one day. I promise :)

I was being a tad pedantic ;)

You clearly miss the point of what panpsychism is as an idea. It is NOT necessarily about the ‘universe’ being conscious. That is precisely where I feel some people have latched onto the idea and gone away with the fairies.

To talk about ants possibly possessing some rudimentary form of consciousness is in line with panpsychism ideas.

Not all proponents of panpsychism go the whole hog.