I'm thinking you're an engineer; thus am surprised to see what seems to me a defeatist attitude. — tim wood

Engineers are allowed to have a defeatist attitude, we're just supposed to justify it rationally, which I think I've done.

My original statement was.

Russell's paradox is considered identical to the liar's paradox and some mathematicians think it undermines the basis of all mathematics. I've never understood that. — T Clark

That's all I was trying to say, not that I personally thought it undermined mathematics, just that some mathematicians think, or thought, that way. As I mentioned, I'm skeptical, but I am not qualified to make substantive arguments to support that skepticism.

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. — tim wood

It's not that they've been screwed from day one, it's that they are being screwed right now.

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. — tim wood

Well, it hasn't worked so far and recently the government's ability to implement even existing affirmative action programs has been reduced by legal decisions and changes in law. I don't think there is currently any possibility of expanding it. Besides that, just like reparations, it will just increase white resentment.

I still think the only reasonable conclusion is to implement reparations. — ToothyMaw

I strongly disagree. For the record, I am a 72 year-old, white, liberal American. Am I correct in assuming you are also white?

According to most commonsense ideas of justice put forth in modern society, the assumption would be that reparations should be done in the absence of strong arguments against it — ToothyMaw

Presumptuous - how are you the spokesman for commonsense or justice?

since modern society treats people of color fairly, they don't deserve reparations. — ToothyMaw

Apparently most Americans think black people are treated fairly now, which is ridiculous. That's not a good reason for not paying reparations, but there are good reasons.

That one cannot draw a crisp, unambiguous causal line from the plight of a former slave to that of one of their descendants, a crack-addicted prostitute living in a ghetto for instance, is not evidence of a lack of such a line; — ToothyMaw

Outrageous. If nothing else, this statement shows the lack of seriousness of your argument. I think most black people would be angered by using crack whores as representative of their race in modern America.

Do you think you would have done better than the disproportionate number of people of color living in poverty? — ToothyMaw

No, I definitely do not. I am very fortunate to have been born middle-class and white. I have trouble enough living in the world of advantage where I currently find myself.

The legacy of slavery and the continued oppression of people of color in the United States is a blotch, and if one has any sense of justice one would want to do whatever one could to try to make it right, regardless of any perceived distance afforded by time. — ToothyMaw

It's not the distance in time that matters, it's the fact that white people don't like or trust black people now and that dislike is reflected in our laws, attitudes, customs, and traditions.

That undoubtedly includes some form of reparations. — ToothyMaw

No, it doesn't.

Now, my thoughts on reparations.

There are approximately 47 million black people in the US, including those of mixed race. How much are we going to give each of them? $10,000? That would cost a total of $470 billion dollars. How much difference would $10,000 make? Sure, it would make a big difference for many people and a very big difference for some. Would it change the racial atmosphere for the better? Would it erase the racial disadvantage? No. We'd end up back in the same world we started in with a vast well of white resentment added to what is already there.

And that's the main reason not to pay reparations - the only way to effectively address the problem is to change white people's attitudes. To give white people and black people a common purpose. Reparations will do just the opposite. We've already seen much of America kick-back against what they call "wokeness," the essence of which, as I see it, is that everything wrong is white people's fault and it's ok to treat them with contempt. Maybe that's what you call justice - give them a taste of their own medicine - but it won't work.

It's not about slavery, it's about how black people are treated now. Reparations won't work, they'll make things worse.

Since we are our will, and that is the agency part of us, it doesn't make sense to expect that part also to be determined by us, by itself. We are free to act on our will, not to choose it. — ChatteringMonkey

This is an interesting way of looking at it, but I think many would say if we don't determine our will, we don't have free will. You've defined the problem away, but are we automatic programmed machines or aren't we?

Truly metaphysical free will would be impossible under determinism, but that shouldn't really concern us as that particular concept of free will is incoherent to begin with. — ChatteringMonkey

I don't know what you mean by saying the concept is incoherent. On the other hand, I think the whole free will vs. determinism controversy much ado about nothing.

As meta-physics is by definition not constrained by anything physical/empirical, it usually ends up being shaped by our moral/religious beliefs, which is typically what we are really after. — ChatteringMonkey

This is not true at all, but it's outside the scope of this discussion, so let's leave it at that.

To say that Russell’s paradox undermines the basis of mathematics is overstatement since it is not required to base mathematics on unrestricted comprehension, and I don't know who has made that overstatement. — TonesInDeepFreeze

This is certainly nowhere near my area of expertise, so I'll punt:

From the principle of explosion of classical logic, any proposition can be proved from a contradiction. Therefore, the presence of contradictions like Russell's paradox in an axiomatic set theory is disastrous; since if any formula can be proved true it destroys the conventional meaning of truth and falsity. Further, since set theory was seen as the basis for an axiomatic development of all other branches of mathematics, Russell's paradox threatened the foundations of mathematics as a whole. This motivated a great deal of research around the turn of the 20th century to develop a consistent (contradiction-free) set theory. — Wikipedia - Russell's Paradox

Also, this is from an article that describes a more radical interpretation.

Alan Turing appeared to be interested in the Lair paradox for purely formal reasons. However, he did then state the following:

The real harm will not come in unless there is an application, in which a bridge may fall down or something of that sort [] You cannot be confident about applying your calculus until you know that there are no hidden contradictions in it
On the surface at least, it does seem somewhat bizarre that Turing should have even suspected that the Liar paradox could lead to a bridge falling down. That is, Turing believed — if somewhat tangentially — that a bridge may fall down if some of the mathematics used in its design somehow instantiated a paradox (or a contradiction) of the kind exemplified by the Liar paradox. — When Alan Turing and Ludwig Wittgenstein Discussed the Liar Paradox

Who are some of the mathematicians you have in mind? — TonesInDeepFreeze

If I remember correctly, Russell, Wittgenstein, and others.

I don't know what to tell you then, I've explained this as clearly as I can. — Echogem222

Alas.

I understand how it fits into our system of classification of truth and falsehood just fine since my solution provides that answer. Really think about how words are mirrors from my post, how they're just symbols we decided to represent the meaning that they do... If you have done this, I believe you should understand just fine that the statement, — Echogem222

As I noted, I don't see how the fact that word meanings are matters of convention, symbols, is relevant in this context.

But which direction is right and which is left can only be established by a conscious, embodied being. — SEP on Leibniz

Sure. But this is true of everything - everything expressible as a concept.

Yes, the question is whether or not space has mind-independent directions. That question doesn't appear to be answered by noting that we have hands. I think you're agreeing that space does not have any innate directionality (in the same way there is no unmoving reference point out there). Adding more objects doesn't fix that. — frank

I'm not sure how this fits into this discussion, but there is a physical property - chirality - the technical term for handedness.

I call any geometrical figure, or group of points, 'chiral', and say that it has chirality if its image in a plane mirror, ideally realized, cannot be brought to coincide with itself. — Lord Kelvin

Certain chemicals - primarily organic compounds - form chiral pairs. Generally, but not always, they behave the same chemically. Chirality is also a property of some subatomic particles, e.g. the spin of an electron.

That doesn't change the fact that deciding which direction you call right and which left is a matter of convention, but it's a convention that makes some sense. 90% of people are right-handed. Left-handed people were sometimes considered sinister, which means "left."

we can consider words and statements as mirrors that reflect our attempts to understand them (by themselves). — Echogem222

I don't understand you metaphor of words as mirrors.

words and sentences have inherent truth values. Instead, it suggests that truth is a product of our interpretation of language, rather than an inherent value of language itself.

This view also highlights the subjective nature of truth. Since truth is dependent on our interpretation of language, — Echogem222

The liars statement is a grammatically correct proposition with a very clear meaning. Our difficulties have nothing to do with problem with our interpretation of language. You and I both know what it means, but we can't figure out how it fits into our system of classification of truth and falsehood.

The Russel's paradox, "a set that contains all sets that do not contain themselves" — Echogem222

Russell's paradox is considered identical to the liar's paradox and some mathematicians think it undermines the basis of all mathematics. I've never understood that. It has always seemed to me both are just tricks - playing around with language. This is a quote I've always liked from Tom Robbin's "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." I think it's funny, goofy. It just shows how easy it is to come up with sentences which, while easy to interpret, are meaningless.

This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn't care who knows it. Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is a double Cancer with Pisces rising. This sentence lost its mind searching for the perfect paragraph. This sentence refuses to be diagramed. This sentence ran off with an adverb clause. This sentence is 100 percent organic: it will not retain a facsimile of freshness like those sentences of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe et al., which are loaded with preservatives. This sentence leaks. This sentence doesn't look Jewish . . . This sentence has accepted Jesus Christ as its personal savior. This sentence once spit in a book reviewer's eye. This sentence can do the funky chicken. This sentence has seen too much and forgotten too little. This sentence is called “Speedoo” but its real name is Mr. Earl. This sentence may be pregnant, it missed its period. This sentence suffered a split infinitive—and survived. If this sentence had been a snake you'd have bitten it. This sentence went to jail with Clifford Irving. This sentence went to Woodstock. And this little sentence went wee wee wee all the way home. This sentence is proud to be a part of the team here at Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. This sentence is rather confounded by the whole damn thing. — Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Most discussion in contemporary philosophy focuses upon the extent to which one generates thoughts oneself. It can be argued that even the wish to change is based upon the flow of thoughts. However, this may sidestep the issue of choice of thoughts and pathways of choice in this process. — Jack Cummins

Our thoughts are us, although there's more to us than just that,

I don't think its usefull because free-will doesn't even make sense conceptually. — ChatteringMonkey

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The question of free will usually arises when we talk about determinism - if everything is determined by the motion of particles and energy that can (theoretically) be predicted by the laws of physics, where is there room for us to truly act freely.

We are our will, who would be the "we" apart from our will that wants to change the will. — ChatteringMonkey

I think this is right and important. It's at the heart of the misconception at the heart of this discussion. Our minds and brains change all the time. Do we make those changes by free will? This turns it into a circular argument - begging the question. Is it I changing me?

Free will is a moral/religious concept. — ChatteringMonkey

No. It's metaphysics, although it might have moral implications.

Don't be fooled by language, it not because there is an "I" in "I think" that there is some consious agent behind the thinking. — ChatteringMonkey

My thoughts (and feelings, memories, perceptions, and a bunch of other stuff) are me.

I am curious about how different forms of stoicism approach aesthetics in general given the common disposition being somewhat oppositional to hedonism? — I like sushi

I don't know much about stoicism, but I thought this might be of interest. It's from "The Principles of Art" by R.G. Collingwood.

In order to clear up the ambiguities attaching to the word 'art', we must look to its history. The aesthetic sense of the word, the sense which here concerns us, is very recent in origin. Ars in ancient Latin, like tέxvn [technē] in Greek, means something quite different. It means a craft or specialized form of skill, like carpentry or smithying or surgery. The Greeks and Romans had no conception of what we call art as something different from craft; what we call art they regarded merely as a group of crafts, such as the craft of poetry (πOINTIKη TÉXνn, ars poetica), which they conceived, sometimes no doubt with misgivings, as in principle just like carpentry and the rest, and differing from any one of these only in the sort of way in which any one of them differs from any other.

It is difficult for us to realize this fact, and still more so to realize its implications. If people have no word for a certain kind of thing, it is because they are not aware of it as a distinct kind. Admiring as we do the art of the ancient Greeks, we naturally suppose that they admired it in the same kind of spirit as ourselves. But we admire it as a kind of art, where the word 'art' carries with it all the subtle and elaborate implications of the modern European aesthetic consciousness. We can be perfectly certain that the Greeks did not admire it in any such way. — R.G. Collingwood - The Principles of Art

Like this — I like sushi

Yes, that's all ironic and self-referential and stuff.

Yes, I think that's it. It's happened to me a bunch of times.

What would do — Athena

Despair.

As I noted, if you want to start a new thread, I will participate.

His use of the extended sense of poetry is in line with the way the term was used prior to its modern restrictive sense. Poetry comes from the Greek term poiesis ποίησις. It means to make.They were makers of images, of stories, of what he calls the "paths of the imagination". They were the principle educators of the Greeks. — Fooloso4

This is an odd argument. We're not talking about how "poetry" was used was 2,500 years ago, we're talking about how it is used now. I don't think poetry as it is currently understood is better than prose or any other art, but it's different. It does different things. It's clear Rorty doesn't get that.

Rorty does not claim that we are intellectually and spiritually more advanced. — Fooloso4

I think what he wrote speaks for itself.

In the Phaedo and elsewhere, however, rather than acknowledging our finitude he tells stories of the afterlife, obscuring the possibility of our finitude. This was not because of a limit of Plato's intellectual or spiritual abilities, but a limit of what could in his time be freely acknowledged. — Fooloso4

Many (most?) people today don't "acknowledge our finitude." I'm not even sure what that means. I guess it's a code word for being an atheist. What hubris.

I think we've gone outside the intended scope of this thread. It would be an interesting subject for a new one. I'll put it on my list.

But this is too small a matter and too big a subject for me to venture much further. — Tom Storm

I think you're trying too hard to make Rorty not look like a putz. I'm not a poetry snob at all, but I can see that poetry does something different than other sorts of written works and other artistic works in general.

I've only read a little of Rorty but I don't have anything against him, at least till now.

That's a good line. But does this imply that Rorty has poetry wrong and therefore can't really be valuing it properly? Or are you saying that his way of understanding and valuing poetry is different to yours? — Tom Storm

I think Rorty's explanation of poetry shows he has no real grasp of how it works or what it does. As I noted, he seems like he wants to be open-minded about something he doesn't really think is very important. He says a couple of things in this article that made me laugh:

In that essay, as in previous writings, I used "poetry" in an extended sense. I stretched Harold Bloom's term "strong poet" to cover prose writers who had invented new language games for us to play — people like Plato, Newton, Marx, Darwin, and Freud as well as versifiers like Milton and Blake. These games might involve mathematical equations, or inductive arguments, or dramatic narratives, or (in the case of the versifiers) prosodic innovation...

...I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. — Richard Rorty - The Fire of Life

This is such bullshit. He claims poetry is important and then explains it away as nothing significantly different from other types of intellectual endeavor. And this made me groan:

We are now more able than Plato was to acknowledge our finitude — to admit that we shall never be in touch with something greater than ourselves. We hope instead that human life here on earth will become richer as the centuries go by because the language used by our remote descendants will have more resources than ours did. Our vocabulary will stand to theirs as that of our primitive ancestors stands to ours. — Richard Rorty - The Fire of Life

This is so arrogant and pompous - to claim that we are, that he is, somehow intellectually and spiritually more advanced than Plato and Aristotle (or for me, Lao Tzu).

Not to be unkind to Mr. Rorty - or you - but his explication is very far from my thoughts about, or experience of, poetry.
— T Clark

So? I don't share Rorty's views and, as I have said elsewhere, I have little interest in poetry. But I am interested in what others think, particularly influential philosophers. — Tom Storm

I knew you don't have much interest in poetry, which is why I was surprised by your comment. Rorty's explication of poetry reminds me of an atheist trying to give an open-minded and sympathetic explanation of religion without really having any idea what it's about.

You say "So?" Hey, you brought the whole thing up.

Yes, that thread is something of an anomaly, though I'm happy with where it is. — Jamal

I agree. Many times I've been steered in new philosophical and scientific directions by posts on that thread.

Here is a short and famous piece he wrote on poetry and philosophy.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/68949/the-fire-of-life — Tom Storm

Not to be unkind to Mr. Rorty - or you - but his explication is very far from my thoughts about, or experience of, poetry.

Like that? — Pantagruel

Lorenz describes animals' "cognitive" capabilities, starting from the most basic, e.g. irritability, kinesis, phobic response, topic response. These foundational capacities are the building blocks for more complex mental processes up to our own. The addition of memory is needed to climb above very basic levels and this calls for a nervous system. Obviously, things become a lot more complicated as you move to the more complex organisms. That's the continuity I was talking about.

A few weeks ago, I discussed an article I read by Konrad Lorenz, "Kant's Doctrine of the A Priori in the Light of Contemporary Biology." It was a discussion of how our human nervous system and mind have evolved as a "negotiation" between Kant's things-as-they-are, the noumena, and our animal need to survive. A link to my post:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/915561

I was so impressed by the article I went looking for more information. Lorenz's "Behind the Mirror" is a detailed expansion of the article. It's completely changed the way I think about human and animal behavior and the mind. I was a psychology major in the early 1970s, when this book was written. My first reaction while reading was how could they not have shown this to us, taught this to us. Ethology, the study of animal behavior, gives us a framework, a context, to understand human neurology and psychology. People say that psychology isn't really a science - it has no solid basis in empirical study. Lorenz's and others work provided that basis decades before the techniques of cognitive science were available. This is from the forward.

[Kant] saw clearly that the forms of apprehension available to us are determined by pre-existing structures of the experiencing subject and not by those of the object apprehended, but he did not see that the structure of our perceiving apparatus had anything to do with reality. In... the Critique of Pure Reason he wrote:

If one were to entertain the slightest doubt that space and time did not relate to the Ding an sich but merely to its relationship to sensuous reality, I cannot see how one can possibly affect to know, a priori and in advance of any empirical knowledge of things, i.e. before they are set before us, how we shall have to visualize them as we do in the case of space and time.

Kant was obviously convinced that an answer to this question in terms of natural science was categorically impossible. In the fact that our forms of ideation and categories of thought are not, as Hume and other empiricists had believed, the products of individual experience, he found clear proof that they are logically inevitable a priori, and thus not 'evolved'.

What a biologist familiar with the facts of evolution would regard as the obvious answer to Kant's question was, at that time, beyond the scope of the greatest of thinkers. The simple answer is that the system of sense organs and nerves that enables living things to survive and orientate themselves in the outer world has evolved phylogenetically through confrontation with an adaptation to that form of reality which we experience as phenomenal space. This system thus exists a priori to the extent that it is present before the individual experiences anything, and must be present if experience is to be possible. But its function is also historically evolved and in this respect not a priori. — Lorenz - Behind the Mirror

Lorenz then goes on to describe specific cognitive capabilities in simple organisms and how they evolve into the much more complex capabilities we have today. I think the most compelling idea in the book is there there is a direct continuity between the "cognition" of the earliest animals and the cognition of complex animals such as us.

This is a topic for a thread. — wonderer1

It is a question that has been argued many times here on the forum. I've made my arguments so many times, it's hard to work up any enthusiasm to do it again.

All the more reason to take consideration of free will out of the box of metaphysics. — wonderer1

You and I understand metaphysics differently. It's not that we haven't found proof that free will exists or doesn't exist, it's that it is not a question that can be answered empirically.

In many ways, the poem becomes about how—through retroactive narrative—the poet turns something as irrational as an “impulse” into a triumphant, intentional decision.

Yes. It's all about the stories we tell rather than what happened. I'm 72. Looking back over the things I've done and that have happened to me, there are no stories to tell. Things just happened. That doesn't mean I'm not responsible for the things I've done, but they don't mean anything.

To me the poem suggests recognition of determinism - that many little things make all the difference in the courses of our lives. — wonderer1

I don't think it's about determinism. As I see it, it's just a sly comment on the human need for stories about ourselves.

a woo based belief in free will — wonderer1

Are you saying that free will doesn't exist - that it's somehow a allusion to mysticism or the supernatural? I don't see it that way. Sometimes it makes sense to act as if ours and others' behaviors are the result of outside influences and sometimes it makes sense to act as if we are in control. Free will vs. determinism is a metaphysical issue. Its not about facts - true or false.

I see books on psychology as having a shelf life of about 20 years. — wonderer1

William James, Konrad Lorenz, and even Sigmund Freud still have a lot to tell us, just to name a few. The methods and technology for study have changed, but our minds haven't.

The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck — fdrake

The phrase "the road less travelled" is from a poem by Robert Frost - "The Road Not Taken." It is ironic that the Peck used this quote because Frost meant it ironically. It is not meant as a paean to a life of non-conformity but rather a wry comment on how we look back on our lives and try to show how we are masters of our fate.

Offense is the feeling of hating facts. — Brendan Golledge

No, it's not. "Offense" means "Annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult to or disregard for oneself or one's standards or principles." You should consider she might be offended by your lack of consideration for her things that matter to her more than she is of the holes in your clothes. But I guess that's not philosophy.

I think in lower animals, good = pleasure and bad = pain. — Brendan Golledge

No. As I noted earlier, your understanding of ethology - animal behavior - is lacking. Animal and human emotions come from the same place, although it's true that our more developed higher cognitive functions make human emotion more highly developed.

I could also be missing out just due to my brain not being able to digest them properly or something. — Baden

As I noted, I felt like that for a while. I just haven't been able to care. That seems to be changing now and I'm enjoying it. At least you've got football and Benny Hill to watch.

99.9% of visual entertainment is trash. — Baden

I haven't watched movies or TV much in about 15 years. I've just found them unsatisfying. I find myself quitting in the middle when someone does something that nobody would ever do or the plot goes somewhere ridiculous. I'm old enough to say, and sometimes believe, they made movies better when I was young. And yes, I remember when candy bars were a nickel.

That being said, there are a lot of wonderful movies and television shows out there. We get to watch everything, anything, that has been made in the past 100+ years. I subscribed to the Criterion Channel a few months ago. That's a streaming service that plays artsy fartsy movies. I've been watching more lately and enjoying it.

Original 70s version only. — Baden

Of course. Both Wilder and Depp were creepy, but Wilder was good creepy and Depp was creepy creepy.

Are you sure it wasn't this thread? :cool: — wonderer1

I'm old. You'll have to make allowances.

What I'm trying to get at is that what I'm calling "core beliefs" seem to exist in a pre-linguistic way. That's what I'm getting at with the idea of a "linguistic quantum world". It's admittedly a sloppy metaphor. I think there are layers to belief, and if you continue to strip them back, things do indeed get murky until you uncover something pretty raw in the core of your being. — Noble Dust

In another thread I recently had a similar discussion where I got all hard-ass and philosophical about what a belief really is. Now I've started down that same path with you, but I'm not sure that is the right way to go about it. As I acknowledged in my previous post on this thread, I recognize layers of thought, consciousness, experience, or whatever you want to call it that come before language. That is at the heart of what the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu are about. Becoming aware of how this all fits together is why I am interested in philosophy.

And since I'm already here, I've been thinking about my favorite movies about food.

"Babette's Feast" - The story of a famous Parisian chef who moves to Denmark in the 1800s to be a housekeeper for a bunch of dour Calvinists. Wonderful, moving, mouthwatering.

"Mostly Martha" - German with subtitles. The story of an inflexible chef whose sister dies and leaves her with her nine-year-old niece to take care of. It becomes a romantic comedy when an earthy Italian sous chef comes to work at the restaurant. The kitchen scenes are believable and amusing. The characters are appealing and their friendships are natural and believable.

"Tampopo" - Japanese with subtitles. A widow owns a run-down ramen shop. A group of her customers take it on themselves to teach her how to cook ramen correctly and fix up her shop. Funny with cowboy and gangster movie overtones.

Does "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" count?

"Big Night" - Persnickety chef Stanley Tucci and his brother Tony Shalhoub struggle to run a small, traditional Italian restaurant across the street from a popular spaghetti palace. Tucci can't understand when people complain it takes 45 minutes for them to serve the risotto after it is ordered.

"The Trip" - Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon travelling through northern England eating at fancy restaurants and doing Michael Caine impressions.

I recently watched Paul Thomas Anderson's "Licorice Pizza" and liked it very much. This is my summer of nice movies. It's about the friendship between a 15 year old boy and a 25 year old women in the early 1970s in Los Angeles. They call this a romantic comedy, which I guess makes sense, except it's only the boy who thinks it's a romance. What's important is the relationship between the two main characters. The boy is a child actor with maybe a bit of ADHD and the woman is somewhat aimless - living at home and working at a dead-end job. The growth of their friendship is funny and moving. We see what they each see in the other and it makes them better people.

Thanks.