I am declaring that this is abstract expression art, the title of which is "What did the galaxy ever do for you, anyway?" — Bitter Crank

Oh, drat. I almost bid on this, because I thought it was the abstract rendition of "Lenin Giving A Speech To The Workers of the Kolhozmanovszki Iron Works."

Can this art work even be defaced?

I think for an art work to be defaced, first it must have a face. Vegetarian people only buy abstract art, obviously and therefore.

One might argue that the surface of the canvas the painting is on, is the face of the painting. After all, you are facing it.

Paintings therefore (if you buy the one previous line) always get sold at face value.

However, that definition leads to absurd consequences because it means traffic lights would make you less free. — Tobias

I think traffic lights do interfere with personal freedom. Red light means you cannot go ahead. My goal is to go ahead. I am being stopped in achieving my goal, by a control; the control is curtailing my freedom.

I am not saying that your surrounding argument is invalid, but this example does serve the exact opposite of the service you used it for.

In my opinion only Black persons in the United States can truly experience the condition of what it means and what it feels like to be a Black person in the USA. Therefore representation is welcome, more than just as a diversification.

It takes just a little research to see that I wasn't blowing shit out of my mouth, like Ciceronianus claimed.

"On the Connection Between Law and Justice,
by Anthony D'Amato,*
26 U. C. Davis L. Rev. 527-582 (1992-93)
Abstract: What does it mean to assert that judges should decide cases according to justice and not according to the law? Is there something incoherent in the question itself? That question will serve as our springboard in examining what is—or should be—the connection between justice and law.
Legal and political theorists since the time of Plato have wrestled with the problem of whether justice is
part of law or is simply a moral judgment about law. Nearly every writer on the subject has either concluded that justice is only a judgment about law or has offered no reason to support a conclusion that justice is somehow part of law."

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=facultyworkingpapers

So if nearly every writer said the same thing as I did (by the way, this is not an argument, it is just an example of showing you that intuitive figuring out can beat societal indoctrination-- intuitive figuring out in my case, to bending to societal false dogma in your case) perhaps I am not as ill-witted, malevolent, blind and stupid as Ciceronianus claimed in his post earlier in this thread.

By-the-by: the writer of the article quoted partly has put forth an argument that law does serve justice. He opens his argument how most writers on law and justice are either convince that law does not serve justice, or in the least, can see no way to support a conclusion that law serves justice.

Again, this reference should not be seen as an argument to support my case. It is, instead, for you to consider that your socially ingrained adoration of law is viewed by many philosophers, including from Plato's time on, as a false, misplaced adoration.

For the record: I do believe that law has rigid and flexible prescribed criteria to make judgments. However, the criteria to make judgments is NOT to serve justice, but to serve the law. So the more you scream at me that law is not haphazard, it is not biassed, it is geared to be objective, then not only do I agree (because I do) but you are still saying things about the LAW, not about justice, and you fail to equate the two no matter how hard you try.

The law isn't quite the wacky, unprincipled, standardless, unpredictable, haphazard, amoral or incoherent system you may think it to be, intent on finding people guilty on any basis, and festooned with madcap juries running amuck without thought or guidance. — Ciceronianus

Very nice of you to pretend to know what I think, coming up with opinions I did not say, and describing a process in a way I did not prescribe and then attributing all your maligned statements to me.

No, I won't go on the defensive only because you totally exaggerated and altered the thought I presented.

Shame on you for so derisively equating your imagination or malintent to what I actually said.

I should also mention that scientists may have no idea what they’re really measuring. — Joshs

Indeed. Scientists don't know what they measure with IQ tests, they just know that the results are consistent, and predictive.

Perhaps ancient humans could perform certain tasks faster than modern humans for the same reason. — Joshs

The operative word here is "perhaps". Very true.

You are not responding to what I said.
You treat people. We don't know if in the capacity of a physician or not.
You say too many people who are plain unmotivated but could work do not work.
If you are a physician, then your professional obligation is to get these people off of disability benefits.
you are in that position as a physician.

Then you tell us you have no say over admissions and some people just leave.

That does not answer the inquiry I suggested: either you are a licenced physician, then you must get these people off of disability benefits, the lot that you claim are not sick but simply unmotivated;
or else you are not a doctor, in which case you don't have a training to establish a diagnosis, so your opinion that these unmotivated people are not sick is not medical because only a doctor can make a medical diagnosis in Canada (and some nurse practitioners, and some psychologists.... but NPs and clinical psychologists also must report abuse of the disability benefits system).

So... which is it, Book273? An unscrupulous doctor, NP or CP, or else a layman who has an opinion without much substance?

I exaggerated. You're right.

Standards can be thrown out the window, however, in case of a Jury trial.

And I wasn't exaggerating when I said that the legal system's workers will say, "people come to court to seek justice. The law does not serve justice, it serves what it is convinced of it should serve." Or something to that effect.

If Jones sues Perez that Perez did not repay a loan; then it may be true, that justice would be served if Perez was forced to pay back Jones. But Jones is unable to provide a document or witnesses that Perez owes him that money. (Even if in reality Perez does.) Therefore justice is not served.

This is to you in its most simple terms.

I am not saying that people get hanged in random order or people get beaten up in police stations to sign a confession. I am saying that the court will accept what is given to it in an acceptable form... everyone else, and every other argument, can go screw him-/her-/itself.

I am not even saying it's a horribly bad system. ALL I AM SAYING is that the justice system is not in the service of justice. It is in the service of law.

Selecting a judge on the basis race, gender, and “diversity” has nothing to do with justice, I’m afraid, and everything to do with the perversion of justice — NOS4A2

Actually, the justice system is already perverse. It does not serve justice, and you can ask any lawyer and they will say the same thing.

The justice system is about finding "a" guilty person, regardless of his or her being truly guilty or not. If the court is satisfied that the person is guilty, they condemn him or her. What they find actually is unrelated to reality.

Currently practicing in Acute Psychiatry. — Book273

This actually does not state you are a physician. You could be a nurse, a nurse practitioner, an orderly on a ward, or a social worker, even a paralegal. So... do you now, or have you ever had, a provincial license to practice medicine in the capacity of a physician? Please note, that the anonymity of the Internet covers you to say anything without the risk of getting proven false or misleading, and by the same token, I have the moral right to choose to believe or not believe what you claim your profession truly is.

Interesting to read that you reclassified my profession based on the lack of a space, rather than assume it may have been a spelling error. — Book273

Part of my reclassifying your profession was due to your attitude toward your own patients.

If you were a doctor, and you deemed your patients to be not mentally ill, but "playing" the system, then it is your legal and moral duty to get them off of social support, as long as the financial support is for medical / psychiatric reasons. If you can't, then they are sick.

So which is it? You are allowing illegal activity at the risk of getting your license revoked, for people you personally detest, or else you think that sick people who are unable to work should be cut off from governmental financial support?

Now if we redefine disabled to include entitled and unmotivated, then yes, the vast majority of financial aid recipients would be disabled. — Book273

lack of motivation is a sign of depression. You'd throw out all the depressed people off of welfare, because they are unmotivated?

I assume not, you say you see people who are unmotivated without any signs of mental illness. So why do you treat them?

Entitlement, as far as I know (I am not a medical professional) is a major part of narcissistic personality disorder, and I assume that some of your patients have the feeling of entitlement but no other signs of disease. So why do you treat those people?

Because if the unmotivated are depressed, and the narcissists are haughty, then perhaps they are unable to perform in the workforce, partly due to lack of motivation, partly due to social incompatibility.

Can you explain why you treat the non-diseased, or else why you think the disabled should work when they can't?

I think you want to portray yourself as a doctor, since you used the word "my patients". However, physicians don't write "every day" as "everyday". Maybe you are a parole officer? If yes, then I can believe and support your bitterness. You deal with a fragment of a stratum of society, a self-selected group that is not indicative of the whole.

But this thread is not about your persona; I apologize for this digression.

And I do admit that welfare culture is a socially strongly inherited thing. A family on welfare will produce children who will also live on welfare. Most of these people are unhealthy, but there are healthy ones, too, who just can't imagine their lives to live any other way.

In summary: I think you are right, I just believe that your descriptions of the proportions of who can, who is unable, who is willing and who is unwilling are skewed. Your qualitative descriptions are right on, with the provisions of the exceptions as I opined above. However, your quantifying their ratios is off. I also believe that your work involves very frustrating situations, which police officers, probation officers and some social workers experience. This may have jaded you or else made you unsympathetic. I can't blame you for this, this is typical of the workers in that line of work.

I mean she might have SOME insight, but no insight resulting from personal experience. That makes a HUGE difference.

Why not an Asian trans-gender woman? — Harry Hindu

Because she is a man, and has no insight into the plight of the North American Black peoples.

Intelligence is an attribute that is fostered by genetic mutations and combinations when the environment provides preference for survival (and bringing offspring to sexual maturity) by the intelligent; and is suppressed from propagation when the environment provides preference for survival (and bringing offspring to sexual maturity) by the stupid.

I don't think societies and individuals ever were preferred to live and reproduce due to their stupitidy. Maybe brawl and brute strength were given better chances to survive, but innate physical strength is not a measure of stupidity or intelligence.

So by this idea alone, society's individuals are more intelligent now than in cavemen's times.

On the other hand: human intelligence transformed the environment to make it hospitable for the stupid.

So while there was a long stretch in history, during which intelligence provided a survival advantage, that advantage has disappeared. Now only the severely challenged in mental capacity won't mate to reproduce. Not that they would not want to, but the "normals" don't allow them.

The bottom 3 percent (IQ equavalent: 70 IQ points or fewer) gets eliminated constantly, while everyone else below the median has the same chance to produce offspring as those above the median.

This provides for another genetic up-smartening of society, although the pace is substantially slowed.

In today's life, the world only belongs to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. The right to live and succeed is conquered now with the same procedures that confinement to an insane asylum is conquered: the inability to think, amorality and hyperexcitement. — Bernardo Soares

You are stealing your material from the "Sermon on the Mound."

Don't bore me with mere reality! — unenlightened

Okay. I won't do it again.

However, if you are struggling and need a hand up in order to better provide for yourself (single parent with kids wanting to go to school to allow for better earnings to provide for the family) AND (this is the kicker) you tried to do it first WITHOUT getting government assistance, chances are YOU WILL NOT qualify for assistance. — Book273

More shit coming out of you.

What you are describing is that healthy people have to pay for their own education, and unhealthy, sick individuals get subsidies, or grants. This is true, but the way you put it shows that the only difference is that one group is willing to pay their own way, the other group is not willing.

The difference is not that. The difference is that one group is ABLE, the other group is UNABLE to pay their own way. It is not the WILLINGNESS, but the ABILITY or DISABILITY that makes a difference. You are biassing the difference by your own personal bitterness.

Have you ever heard the expression "Disabled"? it means not able.

That's A. B. is that there are only a very few people who are disabled AND are trained in expensive schooling to enable them to work. Very, very few. Again, I don't have the statistics.

However, the Canadian version goes something like this: If you can prove you are useless, as in unable to work, AND unwilling to attempt to better your situation by any means available to you, you will qualify for some sort of welfare payments (different provinces have different names for their programs but the premise is the same). — Book273

You are actually full of shit. The italicized part of your text is untrue.

A socialist utopia is an unnatural fantasy. Unnatural things are unhealthy because we are natural beings. — Miller

You are just a bundle of joy, a harbringer of good news, aren't you.

Once the diagnosis is made, lives are compromised with abandon. — Enrique

Diagnosis is made because people get sick. The lives of the diagnosed are compromised with abandon because of the diagnosed' lack of basic skills to strive and survive in society.

Society responds with alleged cures and treatments. Some of them work, some of them don't, some diagnosed diseases can be helped, some can't. These are the sum results of the nature of the illnesses and the state of medical sciences to date, not the function of some evil government or hypocritical society that creates ghettos for the sick where crime, drug abuse and prostitution are the order of every day.

What I, personally, find inacceptable is this: In my society, Canada, the government decides how to redistribute wealth via the tax system. Each and every government I've lived under since 1972 here, favours the banks, the big businesses, over the sick population. The present cost of sick population, in terms of government hand-outs of cash, is basically and roughly $1200/month/per sick person. Multiply this by 12 and by the number of disabled on financial support, (which I don't know) and you get a number. This number is way, way, way less than the government subsidies to corporations and to industry to keep them in business, and they are kept in business to have people, workers, enjoy continued employment.

I don't have the statistics. It would be interesting to see if someone could support or disprove this theorem:

Canadian governments spend more money on keeping some of the workers of its workforce employed than on the cash disbursements to disabled people.

Why is this bad? It's not bad, per se, but it's unfair. To stigmatize those who are sick and unable, to contribute, and lock them out of mainstream society under the consideration that they are not contributing; while many others are encouraged to work at non-contributing processes, putting in the hours, and getting paid multiple times the amount of monies that the disabled get.

One group (disabled) are kept starving and in squalor; the other group (non-contributing workers) are kept in relative riches. Neither groups contribute.

What the fuck gives?

Just don't take Banno too seriously, — Cornwell1

not a problem, Cornwell, nobody else does either. I just am miffed that it's reciprocal.

Thanks for your reassurance.

No, it shouldn't. If I (A) precipitate you, and I am reborn (B) in a next universe then C is in the middle. — Cornwell1

Wow. I am speechless.

Tobias, I essentially said the same thing several pages ago that you said here. I expect Banno to give you a sophisticated and cajouling answer... and my thoughts earned from him this:

I just hope that my comments here won't be ignored.
— god must be atheist

I've read them. I've not seen anything in them to which i might reply. — Banno

Why is this? If A=B, and A precipitates C, then should B not precipitate C?

If you care to check them, my arguments were posted mainly on page 3 of this thread.

:rofl:

Whew... thanks. This was the next best thing to getting my arguments regarded / noticed / acknowledged.

One day... one day I will learn how to properly spell the referred-to author's name.

For me, not that anyone cares, the issue was immediately decidable. "Can the will overcome and act against itself." Can a tree be taller than itself? Can an ocean be deeper than itself? Or since action is involved: Can a woman get deeper than herself? Can a child get moreplayful than himself? At the same time and in the same respect.

Randt used this "will can't act against itself therefore it's not free" argument using a blatantly absurd construct, as above.

i vote for genetically re-engineered mussc-s

gifted children are always over- represented. (!)

I think drug addicts and alcoholics are seriously under-represented. — unenlightened

bzzzz! wrong. those groups are over-represented.

What if the court was expanded along racial and gender lines to have at least one representative from all groups in proportion to their ratio in the general population? Might be a large number of people on the court, but at least representation wouldn't be a political football anymore? — TiredThinker

solution: members of proportionally mixed races.

Statistically speaking, if the figures in the OP are correct, there should be 1 black woman SC justice for a total of 18 SC justices (6% representation of black women). 1 black woman SC justice amongst a total of 9 SC justices is 11%, nearly twice the 6% proportion of black women in USA.


How does Biden explain this statistical anomaly? — Agent Smith

solution: surgical amputation. two legs and an arm should do it.

Many think that death is one continuous, long state that reaches to the infinite future.

That is a wrong thougth.

Death lasts 4 minutes. After which another death takes over, lasting 4 minute. After which another deat h takes over, lasting 4 minutes. And so on, ad infinitum.

Argue against. If you think mine is a stupid argument.

Now substitute "after which another death takes over, lasting 4 minutes" and substitute it with anything that anyone claims happens after life is over.

A definition that describes it would be a definition that determines it(s nature), would it not? — Janus

I think there is a difference. You determine the food you are cooking; but you can only describe the food that your neighbour is cooking.

Description, as I used it, has no influence on the topic or thing described. Determination has influence on the nature of the topic or thing.

Description is passive; determination is active.

Yes, as I said, it depends on how you define 'will'. So, since the idea has no clearly definitive, unambiguous application I agree it is fraught.
— Janus

Which was, among other objectives, the point of Arendt's essay. — Paine

Is it worth using a mental concept of a thing which we can't agree what it is, since it escapes definition and description; I think it's more embarrassing than not.

And if will is not a thing that we know what it is, how can we so assuredly describe its relationship to freedom?

If Arndt was talking about a thing which she herself admits can't be described properly, then how come she makes such clearly delineated claims about it, which would necessarily presuppose what she is talking about? Which even Paine claims is not the case: "(the concept of will is fraught) Which was, among other objectives, the point of Arendt's essay."

Inconvenient observations like this get heavily ignored.

Some philosophers here are not lovers of wisdom, but haters of truth. The refusal to respond to my earlier arguments also serves this opinion.

Yes, as I said, it depends on how you define 'will'. So, since the idea has no clearly definitive, unambiguous application I agree it is fraught. — Janus

I don't think will is something that seeks a definition that determines it. It seeks a definition that describes it.

Umm. That's a tall order. Happy trails. — frank

:100:

We could also look to see how the notion grew from nescient in ancient philosophical contexts and map the were's and why's of it's progress, as well as consider critically how this family of ideas might fit together.

Which is what this thread is about. — Banno

Why did you not say so, ever, in the OP? I thought the thread was about this:

Arendt's point here is that "it must appear strange indeed that the faculty of the will whose essential activity consists in dictate and command should be the harborer of freedom." In doing so she shows the tyranny of following one's will, and hence that will is contrary to freedom. The will, therefore, cannot be the source of freedom. — Banno

Oh I wish people wouldn't adjust the goalposts when they are cornered.

Not to say you are cornered, Banno, but you did move the goalposts. Why?

I had my say in earlier posts, I'll await your reply to it, and if you ignore it, to me it signifies one or both of two things:

- you don't respect me enough to give serious thought to my points or
- you can't respond to defeat my points.