@tim wood

Okay. So tell me the difference b/w psychotherapy and psychology, and you will benefit me by eradicating my ignorance—if you are willing to educate someone you are obviously unsympathetic with.

If your auto mechanic says don't drive your car until you get it fixed, are you gong to pay attention to the warning? — tim wood

The assumption here is that the soul is no more complicated than a machine, and therefore psychotherapy as simple as putting in a new transmission.

Three things (at least, no doubt many more but at least these three) Simone may be taken to be an expert on, herself, her gymnastics, and what it takes to win. — tim wood

So now suddenly she needs no psychologist, because she is the expert on herself! My impression of Ms. Biles, after listening to several excerpts from her pressers, is that she is a rather simple soul of ordinary intellect, not the deep study Freud would want to be lying on his couch.

Her courage was in revealing her mental health issues because those suffering are often condemned in public as being of weak character — Hanover

Not anymore, Mr. Hanover, if you haven’t noticed. You’re talking about the old days, before “mental health awareness”. Proof of this is the fact that Ms. Biles has been universally supported and applauded for dropping out. I doubt she was unaware of the change in public opinion that had occurred. I think she knew that she would find much sympathy and support afterwards.

your position, if it's truly not racist and not dismissive of mental health issues, needs to be restated because you do come off very poorly in this thread — Hanover

Let me restate it then. The soul used to be conceived of as economy of the virtues and passions, the former aided by reason and ruling over the latter, as parsimony over luxury, temperance over insobriety, chastity over lust, etc,...and courage over fear. This economy is no longer believed in, and its elements have either been renamed or done away with altogether: the soul was replaced by the enigmatic “self”; the passions, generally bad qualities that needed restraining, were renamed “emotions”, which are not bad at all. In fact they ought to be “let out” because if you suppress them they will adversely affect not only your mental-, but even your physical-health.

In this new condition of the soul’s understanding it is little wonder that such perversions as this be heard:

She is a darling because she dared to quit; she would be a darling if she continued and she did not quit — god must be atheist

This modern reorientation of the natural order means there are no losers, just as in our schools scores are no longer kept in ballgames—lest some poor child learn he is inferior to his mate. Losing means you could be labeled a “loser” and suffer shame, the greatest bane to mental health—as every psychologist knows. Such a realignment of the cosmos results in sentiments like this:

Today there is an appreciation that one’s mental and physical well-being is more important than winning at any cost. This reduces the focus on competition and redirects it toward a more balanced concept of excellence. — Joshs

In correcting the excess of “winning at any cost”, we devolved into “not losing, at any cost”.

But come. Why do you believe that a very accomplished gymnast, who has won many medals already, should have participated and attempted to win more? — Ciceronianus the White

Do you think Tom Brady is satisfied with his Super Bowl rings? His perpetual dissatisfaction with how many he has is precisely the reason he has so many.

The idea that people should put their lives, physical or mental health or well being on the line in order to engage successfully in athletics is a curious one. — Ciceronianus the White

Why, your namesake I think knew much better, for I am sure that Marcus Tullius Cicero was very familiar with the athletic contests described in both the Iliad and Aeneid.

I would like to have responded to others’ comments contemporaneously, but I must go: it is past my bedtime. Perhaps I will respond to them tomorrow...

...I don’t know how Jack does it...This is is the first thread I’ve started in months!

Ah, no wonder you feel the need to whine extensively about someone not performing tricks for your entertainment. You've little else. — StreetlightX

NOTHING else, to tell you the truth. Thanks for your sympathy and perspicuity.

Although holy shit your entitlement fucking reeks. — StreetlightX

Yes, Mr. Contemporary Avenue Illuminator: I am so entitled: I have no job, no money, am horrendously ugly, no status, no position, no prospect of furtherance in the affairs of man. Hey, I guess that’s why I’m in the Philosophy Forum!

And you chose to write 7 paragraphs about it. — StreetlightX

I felt the need to respond to an outcry from members of this forum that I am racist and insensitive.

It can be very brave to make a choice that goes against plans and expectations. — Tom Storm

In this case however, the other plans and expectations aligned perfectly with a popular movement that supports anyone who cites mental health issues as the reason for not competing.

Imagine writing 7 paragraphs because someome treated like a show pony didn't do some tricks for them. — StreetlightX

She chose to be the show pony. I enjoyed the show... until there was none.

Well yes, Mr. Practicality, I too would expect the press to be sympathetic and supportive. And she WAS a national hero, and will continue to be in the popular consciousness. But are the press and people correct?

I’m simply saying that withdrawing can have undesirable consequences that can be feared. — praxis

And therefore Simone is courageous, because she overcame the fear of the undesirable consequences of withdrawing from competition. Is that what you are saying?

I would guess there’s fear in the consequences of withdrawing from events, like losing sponsors and the risk of generally damaging her career. — praxis

So because she feared withdrawing, she withdrew?

Many different things threaten us in this life we live. How should we measure the threat? Are physical as opposed to psychological threats the primary ones? Is the divorce rate less of a concern than the death rate? What about the effect of divorce on the souls of children?

Assuming that physical threats are primary, which ones take precedence? Are deaths by automobile to be taken slightly? How about death due to gun violence? How about drug overdoses?

But you can’t separate the two, for a spate of gun violence might erupt from an increase in the divorce rate, or from an increase in drug use by parents despairing over the loss of their children...

...society has, however, learned to deal with these problems in a general way: when there is a “mental health crisis”, we never hear of therapists not having enough couches to accommodate all the new patients overflowing their offices, like we hear of hospitals not having enough beds to accommodate all the Covid patients coming in. The measure, therefore, of a health crisis, mental or physical (and it’s never mental), is how much stress it places upon the resources of the hospital to accommodate all the incoming patients in a way that accords with standard proceeded: if you have to triage, put ER patients under a tent without immediate access to a ventilator in the parking-lot, then it is a crisis.

Someone owes me a drink. — Sha'aniah

No one OWES you a drink...but I would offer you a free one were you here, sitting in a rocking chair on my porch and sharing conversation: the trucks have long since stopped their offensive noise and fumes. The cicadas are chirping now, night has fallen...

...don’t become a machine. If you have become one already, fight against it with all your might...

...for the rest of your life.

...and these same trucks are the most raucous things around here, their jake-brakes jug-jug-jug-jug-jugging down the road so loud you have to raise your voice to the level of a fundamentalist preacher to get your porch-side companion to hear it!...

...that’s what I call noise-pollution.

As I understand it, cities in the late 1800's had streets covered in horse manure and didn't smell very good in the summer. It's easy to romanticize the past but it must have been awful. — fishfry

Well, first of all, I’m not romanticizing the past. I’m saying that the horse served an evident purpose to mankind for millennia, and that the chief good that arose from that for us, besides the fact that we were able to transport ourselves more rapidly, was that it gave us an obvious connection to animals that we lack when they are purely wild.

As far as the repugnance of manure goes, I agree with you. I don’t doubt that cities of old hired men to clean the streets. But I also inhale a lot of repulsive fumes from diesel trucks everyday off my road, which was a very rural and bucolic one only half a century ago.

For sake of conversation, would you have made the same argument in the days of the horse and buggy? Do you object to the "Surrey with a fringe on top?" — fishfry

Indeed that is the greatest evil of the automobile, that it replaced the horse, and severed man from his natural relationship with that animal. Only vestiges of it remain, as in the term “horse-power”.

Domesticated animals used to form the bridge between us and the animal kingdom in general: horses gave us transportation, bulls served as our tractors, cows gave us milk and goats were our lawn mowers, etc. These relationships are now, of course, viewed as exploitative, as though a mere animal has the same rights as a human being, and that we were treating them inhumanely... thus the moniker, “The Humane Society”, applied not to the interrelationship b/w human beings, but to our relationship with domesticated animals.

I often wonder about the idea of 'self' and how it stands in relation to philosophy. Today, I was reading David Hume's suggestion that, There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self. The idea of self is central to ideas of authenticity of identity, but what is self exactly?The idea may be seen as underlying questions arising in body and mind, as well as in connection with the question of self and others. But, what is 'self' exactly? Does it exist in it's own right, or as a construct? Even if we only see it as a construct, most of us do feel a sense of self, and how do we make sense of this at all in a way which is useful and meaningful for us in life? — Jack Cummins

This recalled to me a passage from Allan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind”, p. 177:

“Rousseau’s intransigence set the stage for a separation of man from nature. He was perfectly willing to go along with the modern scientific understanding that a brutish being is true man. But nature cannot satisfactorily account for his difference from the other brutes, for his movement from nature to society, for his HISTORY.

“Descartes, playing his part in the dismantling of the soul, had reduced nature to extension, leaving out of it only the ego that observes extension. Man is, in everything but his consciousness, part of extension. Yet how he is a man, a unity, what came to be called a SELF, is utterly mysterious. This experienced whole, a combination of extension and ego, seems inexplicable or groundless. Body, or atoms in motion, passions, and reason are some kind of unity, but one that stands outside the grasp of natural science.

“Locke appears to have invented the self to provide unity in continuity for the ceaseless temporal succession of sense impressions that would disappear into nothingness if there were no place to hold them. We can know everything in nature except that which knows nature. To the extent that man is a piece of nature, he disappears. The self gradually separates itself from nature, and its phenomena must be treated separately.

“Descartes’ ego, in appearance invulnerable and godlike in its calm and isolation, turns out to be the tip of an iceberg floating in a fathomless and turbulent sea called the id, consciousness an epiphenomenon of the unconscious. Man is self, that now seems clear. But what is self?”

This paragraph is excerpted from the chapter entitled “The Self”, which begins, “The domain now supervised by psychiatrists, as well as other specialists in the deeper understanding of man, is the SELF. It is another of the discoveries made in the state of nature, perhaps the most important because it reveals what we really are. We are selves, and everything we do is to satisfy or fulfill our selves. Locke was one of the early thinkers, if not the earliest, to use the word in its modern sense. From the very beginning it has been difficult to define...

“...We are suffering from a three-hundred-year-long identity crisis. We go back and back, ever farther, hunting the self as it retreats into the forest, just a step ahead of us. Although disquieting, this may, from the point of view of its latest interpretation, be the essence of the self: mysterious, ineffable, indefinable, unlimited, creative, known only by its deeds; in short, like God, of whom it is the impious mirror image...”

I hope this contributes to your understanding of the self. It is to be understood in contrast to what it replaced, the ancient soul. To truly understand the self therefore we must first understand what it replaced, and also why that replacement had to take place, which these mere excerpts cannot effect. They can only suggest that a larger understanding lies behind them.

Two words in different languages cannot be expected to overlap perfectly in meaning. — tim wood

And behind the words, which constitute conceptual boundaries, is an unbroken continuum of meaning which is common to all languages.

It’s like color, the various shades of which are laid out on a continuous unbroken spectrum. But the eye must break this continuity up into many different segments in order to comprehend it, for the colors are really infinite in number. We must set artificial boundaries between the various colors, therefore, in order to recognize them. Different ppl however set these boundaries at different places along the spectrum, and what looks red to me therefore often appears orange to someone else.

Likewise, regarding language, words are each language’s effort to impose boundaries of discrete meaning upon a continuous unbroken universal conceptual spectrum...

...for example, consider the English phrase, “a coat of paint”. In translating the same concept literally from another language into English I might write “a skin of paint”, or, “a film of paint”, or, “a layer of paint”, etc, depending on the source language’s idiom. The common area of the conceptual spectrum upon which all these different words intersect is that of a “covering”, but they also branch in different directions to include areas of the spectrum outside that one...

...so “coat” subsumes also “hide”, and “mantle” or “cloak”, as “film” does “motion picture”, and “layer” may generally mean “stratum”...

...but whatever idiom a ppl use to describe in their language what the English call a “coat” of paint, all understand it to be the same thing, have the same ontology, display the same characteristics. Furthermore I would suggest that, were I reading in English what I knew to be a literal translation, and should I encounter a phrase such as “a skin of paint” or “a film of paint”, I would instantly know what was meant, even if the phrase “coat of paint” didn't occur to my mind...

...and if it didn’t, what would that mean? It would indicate to me that I had succeeded in immersing myself in the original language by means of literal translation into my own.

Literal translation may be clunky; it may be confusing; it may even be misleading (footnotes, however, can be employed to clear this up), but the one great advantage it has over looser translations is that the judgement of the translator is largely removed; and, if the reader is willing to as though retranslate his native language into the source one through the translation, he can almost as though read the original through his native tongue.

This is particularly important for the contemporary student of philosophy, who cannot be expected to be familiar with the several languages in which the heritage of philosophy resides, and who is therefore prone to depend upon translations which are largely interpretive. Several key terms down through the tradition, which were faithfully translated throughout it, have been obscured in modern translations...

...one of these is Greek psyche, Roman animus, English soul: a contemporary translator of Greek or Latin might choose “self” to translate these words, but the self is a construct of modern philosophy, which broke from and attempted to supersede ancient philosophy. So what is accomplished by the translator in this instance other than to obscure an ancient concept under the guise of being up-to-date?

Reading literal translations of ancient literature has the salutary effect on the reader of making him want to learn to read the original languages. Reading interpretive modern translations however encourages nothing but adherence to the status quo. Behind such translations is the notion of progress: that we know better now than they did way back then. Why then bother to translate the ancients at all? Why not just forget them and move on?

There are facts about a person; either they have Jewish ancestry/ heritage, or they do not. But this does not amount to an identity. Identity is not a matter of fact, but of judgement. — unenlightened

I disagree. The racial heritage/ancestry of ppl is universally felt as identity by them...or at least was so felt, back when it mattered, before the idea of the classless genderless individual whose racial makeup was of no importance in his role as citizen came to the fore.

Similarly, there is little point in claiming to be Jewish if the relevant authorities refuse to recognise the claim, and let you into whatever club or privilege is associated. — unenlightened

The point is everything, if indeed I am Jewish. Just because I am not allowed to join the Jew clubs or receive Jewish privileges says nothing about what I feel my identity to be. If I am not granted these privileges, but know in my heart I am Jewish, then I will feel slighted, and either accept that I am not accepted and live with it, or fight against it, or both...

...but I will never deny that I am a Jew.

This is exaclty the type of comment one would expect from those that see this issue through the prism of politics and not metaphysics. The metaphysics of this issue needs to be resolved and asking questions about how a man can claim to be a woman, and vice versa, and what that really means, etc. is how we go about that. — Harry Hindu

The question is whether this issue is a metaphysical or political one. There is talk of LGBTQ “rights”, for example; are rights in the realm of metaphysics, or politics? There is an LGBTQ “movement”, but I am unaware of any metaphysical movements.

The fact is that all these social-awareness phenomena are particularly distinguished by their political rhetoric: gay “rights”, the LGBTQ “movement”, the sexual “revolution”, etc, and the language and words used often betrays this...

...consider the term “gay”, which apparently replaced “homosexual” in the vernacular. This replacement occurred precisely because opponents of homosexuality used “homosexual” in a derogatory way—only remember Jesse Helms’ use of it in publicly condemning the practice—and the proponents of it found themselves in need of a new term to promote it. “Homosexual” and its derivatives therefore came to be used only clinically, in science journals and the like, and “gay” generally took its place in a society becoming ever more acceptant of—if not the practice itself, at least its prominence as a social issue with a force that had to be dealt with.

It was probably in a similar manner that “negro” was jettisoned in favor of “black”. “Black power”, “black is beautiful”, “black lives matter”, are all political phrases.

@Bradaction

Do you believe that some ppl are born with the soul of a race different from the one they are identified with, just as some are born with one different from the gender they are identified with?

For example, are certain white ppl born with black souls, so to speak, and certain black ppl with white ones, or Asian ones, etc?

Consider Eminem. He took to the world of rap music, dominated by blacks, and rose to the top...but not without a lot of resistance by the black community. This happened before you were born, but I was 40yo, and I remember it well. I was attracted to his music before I even knew he was white (I’m white), and began listening to black radio stations just to hear “Slim Shady”. The black djs didn’t want to play it, ostensibly simply because he was white, but were forced to, because it was the top hit in their genre.

I bring this up because it seems to me that the problems of gender and racial identity are rather similar, yet are approached very differently by society. In particular, I have seen all sorts of “white” ppl in media, entertainment, politics, etc, get into trouble for trying to identify with an ethnic group different from the one they have been labeled with.

But there is no political movement by any group of a certain racial identity to identify themselves with one of another, as there is with LGBTQ, where certain groups with a particular binary DNA assert their right to be identified differently from it. Why do you think this is? Why is there not a “born white, identify as black!” call to arms? Or, “born with eyes slanted, but see straight!”

If you want to legally change your name, at least in my state, you have to petition the court. — T Clark

In this forum, all I had to do to get my name changed was to petition the mods. It was an extemporaneous act of mine that so persuaded them...but it was in my better interest. For my former user name was also my real one (which might have led to eventual difficulties...like if I decided to run for President), and now I have become at least half of a famous cartoon chicken.

@Bradaction

If I refer to you in the third person, I’m not speaking to you. If I’m speaking to you, I refer to you with the pronoun “you”, which is genderless. How, therefore, is it insulting to you if I call you “he”or “she” when talking to others? Is it because those others might relate that back to you? Wouldn’t those others, your friends, correct me in that moment and say, “they don’t like to be referred to as a he or she, but rather as a they”?

I think the use of “they” to refer to someone in the third person singular arose from two factors: firstly, it seemed rather clunky to say “he or she” when the gender was uncertain; secondly, though the English third person singular pronoun be different for all three genders (he, she, it), the plural of same (they) is totally gender-free...
...but a problem arises when “they” is used to refer to a singular subject of a verb. Consider this example: “they are going to the theater”. If the subject of this verb refers to a single individual person, grammar requires it concord in number with the verb. In that case we should have “they is going to the theater”, and that distinction would work admirably to show that the subject is singular rather than plural...
...except the language will not admit of it. The very language we share in common serves as a barrier to the effacing of gender in contemporary society...along with all the other barriers it faces.

Curious that it is ok nowadays to choose your gender, must not your race...definitely not your race. Both these things are, however ambiguous, the products of nature.

You new? May I give you some hints on how to reply - using the little curly arrow, bottom left, next to where it says 3 hours ago. If you click on that curly arrow - it will notify me of your reply, and you won't have to wait three hours for me to notice! — counterpunch

If you had really cared that much about the substance of the conversation rather than whether someone noticed you or not, then you wouldn’t have had to be given notice that someone replied to you.

This forum has devolved into a never ending treadmill of OPs whose value diminishes to the extent that they are like the head of the hydra: for every one cut off three more are generated.

@Ross Campbell

The reason Hume said that was because, by his day, the Enlightenment had taken over philosophy (Machiavelli, Locke, Hobbes, etc), which taught that man should yield to his passions, not try to overcome them. The ancient teaching was not meant for everyman anyway, only for the few who had the capacity to conquer their passions by means of reason...like a Socrates or Diogenes.

They don't seem to fit the pattern by which a rock can be made a chair not by any change to the rock, but by its being used as a thing to sit on. — Pfhorrest

This reminded me of when I helped my landlord, Archie, one day repair a vacated room in the boarding house. He needed a hammer (we already had a nail), but neither of us had brought one. Spying an empty tequila bottle sitting on the window sill, Archie took it up and, wielding it like a hammer, drove the nail into the jamb. I was amazed that the bottle didn’t break during this process...but it didn’t. Indeed it admirably served as a hammer, without us having to go searching for a “real” one. I got the sense that Archie, being an old-timer, had not used this trick then for the first time...

...numerous examples of this sort of thing can be drawn from the teeth of necessity, the mother of invention. Who has not found a sheet of cardboard in the trunk of their car that could be cut and rounded into a funnel through which to pour transmission fluid or engine oil in lieu of an actual funnel made for that purpose?

The question is, did these extemporaneous things, cardboard and glass, in that moment, become hammers and funnels, or did they merely stand in for them as scrap packaging and containers of alcohol?

To the extent that the use of something for some purpose makes it a thing of some kind, the conflict between intended use and effective use creates conflict in defining the kind of the thing. — Pfhorrest

So let me apply this to the example of someone ingesting food though thinking it poison: by ingesting it for the purpose of harming his body, ie as poison, he makes it a “thing of some kind”, ie poison, defined as “something ingested which is harmful to the body”. Therefore food, what nourishes the body, becomes poison, what harms it, “to the extent that the use of something for some purpose makes it a thing of some kind”.

Furthermore, since

either intent or effect can be used as the criterion to define it — Pfhorrest

it is also still food, since its effect was to nourish the body. So it is both food and poison at the same time. Therefore it both nourishes and poisons the body, and the body is both bettered and made worse at the same time.

But I must make note of this apparent caveat in what you said: “TO THE EXTENT THAT the use of something”, etc....Maybe the use of food as poison doesn’t extend so far, and we can avoid the absurdity that results in attempting to stretch it beyond reason. After all, what reasonable person would call “poison” what, after ingestion, nourished instead of harmed?

Or don’t we both understand that you considered food in that statement to refer to what is good for the body, and poison what is bad?

It's just like how if I use a word to mean something, but that word means a a different thing to you than what I intended it to, there's conflict over what the meaning of the word is. — Pfhorrest

In this case, is the word whose meaning is in conflict “food”, in your statement,

You meant to use it as poison, but you ended up using it as food. So something you meant to be poison was instead food. — Pfhorrest

?

So you retract this then?

You meant to use it as poison, but you ended up using it as food. So something you meant to be poison was instead food — Pfhorrest

.

For there you avowed that the intended poison was indeed actually food.

To your last response let me point out that the “use” of something is not obviously identical with the thing used.

So if I ingest something, thinking it is poison, with the intent of harming my body, but instead nourish it, would you say the thing I ingested is poison or food? — Leghorn

You meant to use it as poison, but you ended up using it as food. So something you meant to be poison was instead food — Pfhorrest

I failed to notice that you were answering my question by avowing that the substance I ingested was indeed food, though I thought it was poison. Likewise, were I to ingest something thinking it to be food, but it ended up poisoning me, wouldn’t you agree that it was really poison? If you do, then doesn’t that contradict what we agreed to earlier, viz:

would you define food as something that is ingested with the intent to nourish the body? — Leghorn

Sure — Pfhorrest

In other words, whether what I ingest is food or poison depends, not on my intent in ingesting it, but rather on its effect on my health. Would you agree with that?

You meant to use it as poison, but you ended up using it as food. So something you meant to be poison was instead food. It was also bad poison (ineffective at doing what poison is for), and at least marginally good food (somewhat effective at doing what food is for). — Pfhorrest

When you use something for some purpose, does the use of it lie in the outcome or the intent? For example, if I thrust a knife at your throat, intending to cut your jugular, but instead inadvertently cut off a cancerous tumor that would have otherwise killed you, have I used that knife to save you or to destroy you?

So would you be willing to accept, for the sake of the argument, that the intent of harming the body by the ingestion of poison commonly belongs to the one ingesting it, and not to someone else? — Leghorn

Commonly, sure. — Pfhorrest

So if I ingest something, thinking it is poison, with the intent of harming my body, but instead nourish it, would you say the thing I ingested is poison or food?

@Pfhorrest

Damn!...I gotta go up. I’ll ask you a further question tomorrow.

@Pfhorrest

So would you be willing to accept, for the sake of the argument, that the intent of harming the body by the ingestion of poison commonly belongs to the one ingesting it, and not to someone else?

I expect usually the people ingesting poison themselves are not intending to harm their bodies and merely don’t know that it will harm their bodies. — Pfhorrest

Do you really believe that people who ingest poison on purpose, in order to commit suicide, are fewer in number than those to whom it is administered in order to commit murder?

would you define food as something that is ingested with the intent to nourish the body? — Leghorn

Sure. — Pfhorrest

And would you define poison as something ingested with the intent of harming the body?

I should have phrased my question rather like this: would you define food as something that is ingested with the intent to nourish the body?