Of course modern AI is becoming a necessary tool in neuroscientific experiments, but maybe there is a limit to the extent to which we want AI's to understand us better than we understand ourselves? — wonderer1

A passive-aggressive front allows you to hide behind the pretence of innocence, even victimhood. Meh. I think your arguments are just poor. — Banno

Bottom line The learned belief system for democracy with liberty is- democracy is rule by reason and all citizens need education for good reasoning. — Athena

I agree with you that I am far more anthropocentric than you are. — universeness

I think by now, you know that I celebrate that difference between us, and I would love to convince you to be less misanthropic than I think you are.

Individually, we have done surprisingly well at letting the law or God carry out our vengeance. In groups, we have much less self-control; in mobs, none at all. — Vera Mont

I just do not understand how you arrive at that. — universeness

I assumed, that you have previously agreed, that humans create meaning and purpose in ways that no other existent we know of, can or does. Do you disagree with that? 

How would you respond to a poll question like:

Ignoring any bias from being one, do you think the universe would be a better place without humans? — universeness

I am not sure which mammals you are referring to with 'other higher mammals' ...

(A) taking customary questions and/or answers for granted (i.e. living somnambulantly)

(B) faith in miraculous answers which we do not know how to question (i.e. living religiously)

(C) contemplating fundamental questions which we do not know how to answer (i.e. living philosophically)

... it is the soul that gets reincarnated; that thoughts, feelings, the body are not the self. — baker

... if we are to survive as a species. — NOS4A2

Individually, we have done surprisingly well at letting the law or God carry out our vengeance. In groups, we have much less self-control; in mobs, none at all. — Vera Mont

... the interpretation of the pagan philosophers who acknowledged that there was but one God [Brahman, Dao, Void, Substance] and considered the many gods of traditional religion to be aspects [maya, ten thousand things, atoms, modes] of the one God. — Ciceronianus

The overweight undereducated white men are terrified of losing their ascendancy; many white people are afraid of becoming submerged in a population of darker hues; many urban people are afraid of replacement by automated modern industry; many rural people are afraid of becoming outmoded, irrelevant. Any far-right figurehead who assures them that they are important, valued, worthy of ruling the world the way they imagine they used to, will be followed. — Vera Mont

The majority of Jewish people in the diaspora and in Israel for a long time have favored a two-state solution ... it's a national question, it's a land question. This is also the expressed view of the United States Congress, of American Jewry, of the United Nations, of the European Union ... and of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. It's what the majority of people involved in this dispute want. Why can't they get what we all want? Why is it made impossible? Because in both communities the veto is held by 'the party of God' ... — Christopher Hitchens, 2009

Eternity [is] not before time temporally because it is the absence of time. — Gregory

Let's take one of your previous examples (of a philosophical statement that you say is non-propositional): "Consciousness is fundamental to reality"^^. Are you saying that, in principle, that statement is not truth-apt? — Bob Ross

Are you, likewise, saying it is a non-cognitive statement?

Netanyahu helped create Hamas, just like the US helped create Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc.

He used Hamas specifically to sabotage the PLO to avoid having serious talks about two-state solutions and other peace plans.

[ ... ]

The US committed de facto genocide in Vietnam, and it wasn't enough to secure them victory.

This method (sadly) has been tried, and it has failed every time. turning the perpetrators into the very monsters they claimed they were fighting. — Tzeentch

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. — reportedly spoken by the commander of the Albigensian Crusade, prior to the massacre at Béziers on 22 July 1209

The Trump anomaly is a symptom, not the disease or the cause. All he, as a deeply disturbed individual, wants is attention - all of it, all the time, by any means - and he's getting it whether he succeeds or fails in his aspirations, whether he steals from a city or a charity, whether he keeps a promise to his allies or throws them under buses, whether he gets legislation passed or vetoes it, whether he supports or opposes the constitution, whether he commits misdemeanors, of felonies or treason, whether he faces prosecution or evades it.
Whether he wants a war - class, civil or foreign - is immaterial. It's going to happen, because that's the inevitable devolution of events from 1963 to the present.
Trump could never have been able to get the first nomination, had the GOP not reached that level of jingoism, corruption and craven conformity. He could not have stirred up the yahoos at his rallies, had they not already been mustered and enraged by a long line of his predecessors. He could not have squeaked through that election, had the voting procedures not already been fatally compromised by state level tampering.
Everything, at least from the Kennedy assassination, through the Civil Rights movement and opposition to the Viet Nam war has been leading up to a Trump or something like him. If he drops dead tomorrow, or is incarcerated (as any other citizen with his record would have been, years ago) or withdraws from politics, it will make no difference to the march of events. — Vera Mont