She’s the mother of my children. I don’t hate her. The love of my life is my wife, Crystal, who I’ve been with for twelve years. — Noah Te Stroete

Introducing names into this discussion tends to humanize the people we're talking about, and I'd rather think of them as hollow literary constructions we can ridicule. Also, telling me that this crazy ax murderer of yours mothered your children also doesn't help me in keeping her in non-human status.

We are more of an exception to the fallacious “Rule”. — Noah Te Stroete

You meet the rule perfectly. In my case, though, my ex is crazy, but I am lovely beyond compare, so there is at least one instance of the rule not being applicable.

She is also an asshole and I am also crazy (clinically when I’m off my meds). I was reciting nothing. — Noah Te Stroete

You sound like you still love her.

You said I was “reciting” the “universal rule”. I am not reciting it. In our case, it happens to be true, whereas others are usually biased towards their exes when they recite it. — Noah Te Stroete

An interesting distinction worth discussing. It might be that the universality of the rule is based upon reality. You have no counterexample, considering you meet the stereotype.

Well, I AM an asshole, but my ex-wife was in the “emotionally disturbed” classes in high school and was voted most likely to have a hit list. LOL. We still hang out and get along just fine, so you really don’t know what you’re talking about. — Noah Te Stroete

I do know what I'm talking about. I said she was crazy and you were an asshole, and you confirmed both of those things. I didn't say you didn't get along with her.

Out of the three of us, my ex-wife is most likely to end up behind bars. — Noah Te Stroete

You're just reciting the universal rule that all ex-wives are crazy. The other side of that rule is that all ex-husbands are assholes. That's what the wives say, not me.

Everyone knows that men act differently than women. It's obvious. Other than certain outliers, little boys emerge from the womb acting differently than little girls.

Women look different, act different, talk different, and smell different than men. Those differences result in entirely different behaviors, some of which result in disproportionate incarceration rates for men.

As of now an outside observer using fMRI can only see that certain areas of the brain light up, but it is impossible to tell what is going on at the cellular level. Let's suppose that you had access to all this data, could you then predict exactly what they are thinking? — curiousnewbie

So, the mind body problem asks how can a non-physical mind (or soul) interact with the physical body, which doesn't seem to be your question.

Identity theory holds that for every mental state there is an identical physical state. A very strong identity theory seems unsupportable, where you would be saying that the brain processes were actually the experience. A weaker version would identify a particular brain state with a particular phenomenal state, so that you could predictably state that when a brain is in state A, the person is smelling roses (or whatever). The problem is that fMRI results have not shown identical brain states always correlate to specific phenomenal states. It's also problematic that we consider the report of the person to be the gold standard in identifying phenomenal states, not the objective verifiable data. That is, if the fMRI indicates I'm smelling roses, but I tell you I am not, we defer to me, not the fMRI.

I don't see why it's theoretically impossible for a weaker version of identify theory to hold, where there is some ability to decipher another's thoughts based upon various objective data, including brain activity. That would not address the mind/body problem though, as it could still be the case that a brain state was correlating to a non-physical mental event (whatever that means) as well. I do think, though, that if we got to the level where we could accurately predict phenomenal states and even control phenomenal states through brain manipulation, that would through Occam's razor strike a heavy blow against dualism because there would be no need to postulate the non-physical. If dualism is declared dead, then that would resolve the mind/body problem simply because there would be no non-physical minds to interact with.

You sound like my therapist who quit or changed offices, who kept on asking me whether I want to get better? I have a roof over my head, a warm bed I spend most of my time in, food in the fridge, a very loving mother, clean clothes, a decent neighborhood, a nice house, hiking trails if I ever get the urge to go outside (very rare). What more can I ask for. — Wallows

You live the life of my cat, which is a nice life if you're a cat.

If all's hunky dory, why the therapist?

And what's up with your not knowing if your therapist quit or changed offices? Didn't feel like exploring wu happen?

See, this has been a problem that goes back to my childhood. I've never been competitive, subscribed to the self-esteem movement, that everyone is special and should be treated that way, love feminism, hate indoctrination, tolerate tradition and observe it as anyone else. — Wallows

Your attempt to describe yourself as simply shiftless seems trollish, as if it's motivated by some desire to evoke annoyance by those who adhere to traditional views of responsibility and conscientiousness. As we all know, the truth is far more complex than that. You have told us you have been on some pretty heavy psychiatric medications, been diagnosed with some form of schizophrenia, and are completely disabled. For some reason you want us to believe that really you're just lazy and working the system, playing along so that you can hang out and do nothing but be fully taken care of.

You might be wondering if I set myself up for this very early retirement plan with the social security disability pay and possibly growing some pot in the garage to supplant my income? Yes, I think I have. I chose the path of least resistance and it's not going all that bad if you really care for my opinion. — Wallows

My choices are that you are (1) an evil genius or (2) suffering from mental illness? I choose #2, simply because you've told us that you've been so diagnosed.

And, sure Hanover, you've been following my threads or life, and have been an impartial witness throughout the whole venture; but, you may have noticed that I've also quieted down considerably. I don't know if this is a sign of maturity; but, I just want to have an easy and happy life with my mom. — Wallows

It's the ebb and flow of interest. Everyone varies their frequency for whatever reason around here, without maintaining obsessive interest for too long a period.

Like I said, maybe you're a special case, but we all have a certain desire to just sit around the house sometimes because it's easy, but most of us realize that sitting most literally gets you nowhere. I fully expect that if you start sitting today and you really put your mind to it, you'll be in the same place tomorrow as today. Eat, sleep, maybe push the cat off your chest, change the channel, surf the net, repeat. It's not exactly living up to the capacity of your creation, but you're going to do what you're going to do regardless of what anyone says.

It seems at this point you're trying to relieve yourself of the guilt of doing nothing all day, so you tell us the tale of feminism and societal pressure and whatnot. Once you can feel good about living with mom and having her dote on her little Wallows, you can carry on a little better I guess.

It's like the quitter who feels bad about quitting so he convinces himself that quitting isn't all that bad. The problem is that it is.

See, this thread isn't only about me then, don't you agree? — Wallows

We should start a sub-thread and ask whether the thread isn't about you.

I have only expressed my unconditional love for my mother, and her's to me. Insofar then if it's about our happy relationship, and my disability, then fine, it can be about me. — Wallows

It's great your mother loves you and you love her back. You ought go up and ring her neck with a big ole hug and tell her, "Mama, I 'preciate the shit out of ya!"

Wrong again, this topic is about my mother, who loves me unconditionally. Though, yet again you try and tell me it's all about me. How tiring. — Wallows

It's not tiring for you at all. You delight in this conversation about you, which is now paradoxically about you to the extent we can talk about it being not about you.

All that you say is true, but to give you some perspective on this, Wallows, as I understand it, is fully disabled due to emotional issues. That being the case, who knows what is best? If my son were telling me that he just loved hanging out with dear old dad, so he has decided to forego college, finding friends, looking for love, or getting a job so that we could spend time bonding, he'd get ejected pretty quick. On the other hand, if it just made sense at the moment due to finances or whatever and he was doing all he could to achieve, and especially if he had some special needs, I'd probably give him special consideration.

I know Wallows didn't say all of this, but instead tried to justify his living condition as just being an alternative way to live life and not be bound by contemporary norms. Then there was the whole discussion about how his life was really just a unique and pure expression of mother/child love that honored feminism and that ought not be interfered with. For the vast majority of the population, I think what he says is pretty lame and borders on the absurd, but for someone in his shoes, maybe not.

And yes, Wallows, I know you're in the room, yet I talk about you like you're not. Having folks talk about you is your favorite topic though.

Well, I just think of the fact that prison populations are predominantly male, and this gives me the impression that females are less aggressive, domineering, and violent than men are. — Wallows

It could be you've looked at the prisons and seen that most of the bad actors are male, or it could be:

My father frowns on the whole situation. He thinks I have passed the age of leaving the nest and will always stay with my mom.

But, you know what? Fuck him. He abandoned his fiduciary duty when I was 15, when we moved to another country. So, he can go have a fig or something. — Wallows

I'm just saying I looked at the same prisons you have, but my views on fathers are not quite the same as yours....

Nowhere can you find the unconditional love a mother grants a (particularly) a son or daughter. — Wallows

Yeah, well, I'm sort of attached to my kids as well, so I'm not sure it's a feminist thing in actuality, but more of a feminist thing stereotypically.

I'm almost a 30 year old man living with his mother, and I wake up every morning feeling like a kid with his mother. — Wallows

The question isn't whether you should bow to societal norms for the sake of meeting expectations, but it's whether your current situation is confining or leading to greater happiness. I can tell you that my feelings of self-worth and happiness rest heavily upon my accomplishments, which to a large degree are the result of my being autonomous and fully living my own life.

I realize you're not me though. You have shared considerably on this board and have let us know of your emotional struggles, and I can't say if it makes more sense to have a strong emotional anchor like your mother in place or whether you'd fare better having at it on your own. The question you have to ask yourself is whether your current attempt to justify your living arrangement is due to laziness or fear or whether you're honestly working to self-acceptance of it because it is in fact the best course.

Since it is the case that there are some people who actually do best in a fully confined institutionalized setting, it stands to reason there will be others who will do best in arrangements others would not find ideal. Since my personal experience is that autonomy is so interrelated to happiness, my instinct is to suggest that you find as much avenue toward personal expression as possible. Then again, I really don't know if you're so constructed.

The other part of this equation is, of course, your mother, and whether she is entirely a positive force in your life or whether she is simply creating for you an overly comfortable situation that fails to adequately challenge you to greater success. That I don't know, but I do think all of this worth exploring (to the extent you haven't already) because your long term living situation and apparent limited personal goals are atypical.

This doesn't change the fact that psychology being a branch from philosophy, provides value through the structural reasoning that many researchers and professionals like myself use as a model to understand the foundation of the human mind. — Anaxagoras

I think being logical probably helps in all fields.

I hope this was sarcasm and I hope there was a method to this madness. I take offense at someone who pokes fun at someone's mental health whether they are going through some form of mental abnormality or not. — Anaxagoras

I think it was sarcasm. He might in fact be crazy as shit. I'm not a doctor, so can't be sure. It was all in fun though. Many of us have known each other here for a very long time and this was just gentle ribbing. As to calling me out when I am actually offensive, sometimes I care, sometimes not.

Great self-reflection! but it doesn't change the fact that you may not have gotten down to the root cause as to why you were there in the first place, and why you were there is indicative that there exist something that required objective mitigation through therapeutic means. — Anaxagoras

I knew exactly why I was there actually and I didn't want to talk about it. I wanted to talk about how introspective I was. Those Kleenex scared me.

Just that there's no good proof that he did. Can't say he didn't or isn't. — Maggy

The same could be said of you.

Can harming other humans ever be justified. (Other than in self defence) — Andrew4Handel

If harm includes sending someone to jail in order to keep him from committing other crimes, then yes.

Can you justify causing harm to a child by procreating? — Andrew4Handel

These antinatilism posts continue to pollute this forum.

The OP asks, Q: "What will Mueller discover?"

A: Trump did not collude with the Russians.

I've seen psychiatrists and three different therapists. — Bitter Crank

And you're still crazy as shit, so I guess I'll have to concede the point that psychiatrists and psychologists are useless. Well played sir.

I went to a therapist who just sat there and made me talk. I didn't like the awkward silence, so I kept talking. I'm not sure it accomplished anything, but I didn't want to object that it was bullshit because I have this tendency to do that and impose whatever the hell I want on things. I thought it'd be ironic for me to do to her what I do to others, so I fought the urge.

I eventually quit going, saying I had other shit to do.

What I noticed about myself is that I tended toward such introspection that I failed to actually emote. I recognized that as I rambled on and on self-diagnosing, when I noticed the lonely box of Kleenex on the table, realizing that it must be there for a reason, that some people actually cry on that couch where I was sitting. I thought to myself that was an astute observation I just made about myself as I sat there, further self-diagnosing and self-treating. Sort of like I'm doing now.

Nice chat.

Where psychiatrists really earn their status is in dealing with major mental illness, where life and death issues are at hand. Their waiting room full of merely unhappy, dissatisfied, pissed off, worried sick patients will mostly get better on their own, as they always have, but he gets paid to help them, so... — Bitter Crank

Most people are psychologically healthy enough that they can function with or without any form of therapy. Since there's minimally wrong with them, they invest at most a few hours a month going to their therapist, and sort of like getting a massage from time, it feels good, but you're no better or worse off long term from it. Your back is going to hurt sometimes and it's going to stop hurting sometimes regardless of what you do, but a massage might help you through the worst of times.

I've been to a therapist before and it did offer some insight. Whether it was a life changer, not really, but I wasn't in need of a life changer. I also didn't leave embittered, with the feeling the process was bullshit and a money grab. It had its value and I'm not ready to jettison the whole profession as a scam, or worse yet, a destructive, controlling cancer on our society.

This is likewise nonsensical. One can devise an effective treatment for homosexuality, and be as empirical as an empire about it, but the successful treatment of something that is not an illness is bad medicine at best, and a serious violation of human rights if imposed against an individual's will as in the case of Alan Turing. — unenlightened

But what I said was:

If the bottom line is that psychiatry is offering assistance to those seeking assistance, then psychiatry has the right to some degree of pride in doing what it's doing. — Hanover

This would require that those being assisted are those who want to be assisted. I've not suggested that any branch of medicine impose itself on unwilling patients, and I don't know that anyone was suggesting that the fundamental rules requiring informed consent be changed.

But that isn't all psychiatry does. Alone of the branches of medicine, it frequently and systematically imposes treatment on those not seeking assistance against their expressed will. — unenlightened

There are fairly strict laws regulating the imposition of unwanted treatment, requiring judicial intervention. http://brown.edu/Courses/BI_278/Other/Clerkship/Didactics/Readings/INVOLUNTARY%20TREATMENT.pdf

The state often has an interest in seeing that certain people are treated and not left to their own devices, especially when they pose a risk to themselves or others. Even in those instances, there are strict standards and limitations imposed on the treatment.

You're attempting to define the medical profession by the rare instances of extreme examples where a responsible society can't just stand idly by under some over-reaching theory of self autonomy and allow people to self destruct or destroy others.

What you're referencing has less to do with medical ethics and the proper role of medical professionals in treating patients than it does the proper role of police powers vested in the state and the state's right to promote the public welfare. Such is the purview of law enforcement and the judicial system more than doctors, but to the extent you have an over-zealous doctor trying to impose treatment on an unwilling patient, his power will be checked by the law and judges.

The unfortunate reality is that there are more people in need of treatment sleeping in the street than there are people not in need of treatment forced into hospital beds.

This conversation really isn't one that fits within the purview of philosophy as far as I can tell. Because psychology is a scientific discipline, the value of psychiatric treatment is an empirical question, meaning we can look at the data to determine if the various treatments are effective. That is, if we can show statistically that Xanax offers relief from anxiety, then it simply does, regardless of whether that causes you to ponder "what really is normal" and the moral implications of normalizing normal and other naval gazing activity. It's also seems irrelevant whether there are some bad actors in the pharmaceutical industry or whether the medicalization of conduct you'd rather see characterized as accepted idiosyncrasy is offensive. If the bottom line is that psychiatry is offering assistance to those seeking assistance, then psychiatry has the right to some degree of pride in doing what it's doing.

Have you been reading S's posted, you are beginning to sound like him. — Sir2u

He was created in my image.

@Baden

One of these days I'm going to take you up on your offer and it's going to be really awkward when we try to have a real conversation in person. — Michael

It won't be awkward because I'm so charismatic. I'm like a cult leader, just more godlike.

Bloody marvelous old chap. Next weekend it is then. Who else is going to show up? I might be able to stay for the second round. :grin: :up: — Sir2u

I'm not sure who's coming. I've got a lot of maybes. I'm pretty sure @Baden and @Michael will be here because their mothers are already here and they probably want to see them.

By the way, could you lend me a few dollars for the fare? — Sir2u

Just take a cab. I'll pay the fare when he arrives.

Well, 'my reality' vs 'your reality' would be more of a psychological difference than a metaphysical one. — Baden

If you qualify realities into "mine" and "yours," you're inserting value into the term "real," as in the phrase "real reality" would distinguish, at least in that context, not a subjective reality, but an objective reality, making the term real not superfluous per the OP.

I'd also point out that psychological differences can be metaphysical, especially in the context of idealism because they wouldn't reference just my construction or misconstruction of reality, but they would reference reality itself.

And your examples don't really match up with un's. — Baden

The examples were:

Reality is real enough, you don't need absolute reality.
Meaning is not more meaningful when it is true meaning.
If the truth is not true enough, actual truth is no improvement. — unenlightened

The modifying adjectives employed all related to emphasizing the reality of the object, and the argument, as I took it, was that such modifications were superfluous because the assertion that something is absolute, objective, real, true, or whatever adds nothing.

Because he was not referencing other sorts of modifiers, but that they all related to truth, I see the concern of the OP as there really not being a distinction between the real and the perceived at least to the extent that we talk about the two as if they are the same and there is no reason to declare one more real than the other.

You looked at the OP just as a matter of useless grammar, agreeing that people throw in all sorts of unnecessary modifiers that litter a sentence and provide no additional meaning.

And my point is that those modifiers do provide additional meaning. Their significance is that they point to metaphysical distinctions.

Reality is real enough, you don't need absolute reality. — unenlightened

But we do have to account for what we know to be subjective interpretation that doesn't exist in the original. What I impose on the interpretation of the object or the author's meaning can be said not to exist outside of my reality.

If I can speak of what is actually in the original, then I'm speaking of something objective, or absolute. If I can speak of what I have added to the original, I am distinguishing the objective from the subjective. It does matter that what I see isn't actually there, especially if your vision is clearer than mine.

Only problem with that, is that I live in Canada so I am:
1. Too far away
2. Underage in your country
Otherwise I'd be happy to join you:) — OpinionsMatter

I looked at a map and from what I can tell Canada is only a couple of inches from where I live.

In terms of the underage thing, I'd think you could just put a really good buzz on in Canada and that ought to carry you for a few days while you're down here.

Bring a jug or something to blow in and maybe a saw you can bend to make music because @Baden said he'd bring the banjo strings.

Because you're underage, I'll save the jokes about the various family members I'll have on standby to do to them as backwoods people do.

I come here for much the same reasons as @Baden. One day we should all meet at a pub actually. There's one just down the street from me with literally hundreds of beers. Since it's close to my house, I'll buy the first round.

This is in fact happening. All sorts of tropical pet reptiles that got too big have been let go in peoples back yards where, Florida being sub tropical, they have all done quite well. Ford has a quite fascinating collection of snakes now that they didn't used to have. — Bitter Crank

Florida with its invasive snakes, Georgia with its invasive wild boars, and Minnesota with its invasive Scandinavians.

I think it is suggesting that boars and monkeys met like ships in the night, ..a long time ago, and the offspring were hybrids, that later became human. — wax

But doesn't that ignore the fact that the ability for different species to mate usually occurs only because the two already shared a historical genetic bond, as in the case of donkeys and horses?

I started reading, but it was too long, and I couldn't find the answer to the question I was looking for.

My understanding of hybrids is that they are formed when species X breaks off into two groups as the result of geographical isolation and after considerable time they evolve separately. Following the separation, they are reunited, they breed, and they produce a hybrid. So, the idea would be that you have horses, some get isolated and they turn into donkeys, the two find each other one day and they make mules. This assumes a common ancestor. It holds that species X forms subspecies Y that breeds into XY.

This article seems to suggest that a primitive man fucked a pig that created a pig centaur and that pig centaur is us. Do I have this right? If that's what the author is suggesting, that's different than saying there was primitive man where one went left and one went right and the direction right one became more a primate and the direction left one became more a pig, and the two eventually reunited to form the current day us.

Why not say (since this is wildly speculative anyway) that pigs and man had a common ancestor, with some becoming pigs and others becoming @Baden? That's the current model of evolution as it applies to primates, where we claim a common ancestor, as opposed to our saying we bred with monkeys and today we're just monkey hybrids, right?

I don't get the need to interpose hybridization into this mess, when all we really need to say is that there appears to be a common genetic similarity that likely arose from a common ancestor.

Considering just the emotional reaction of Westbrook alone, isn't it possible that the heckler's speech could incite violence if other disgruntled African-Americans were present which could result in innocent people being injured? Aren't pejoratives of these kind are factors of limitating speech and/or designated for punishment? — Anaxagoras

As noted in the Bradenberg test, the speech must be directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action," which does not seem to be satisfied in a situation where there is an obnoxious heckler. That heckler would need to be advocating or producing violent behavior, not simply being offensive. The case of Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S. 105 (1973) seems to make that point. That is to say, there is a significant difference in yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater or in encouraging a riot in a public place and in simply being offensive. The former situations are inciting or encouraging immediate violent or chaotic behavior, while the latter are not.

"Fighting words" are punishable (as noted in Hess), although they would need to be directed against a particular person, and I would think there would be a fairly high First Amendment test as to the reasonableness of whether the words used were inciting. That is, if I chant "Make America Great" at a rally for immigrant rights, that would be protected, because someone can't simply claim particular sensitively to words and then claim I provoked him to action. I would think fighting words would things like telling you that I was going to have sex with your mother or the like, not in just holding offensive beliefs. .

Your line about “fire in a movie theater” does not come from the First Amendment, was never binding, and the case it was quoted in was overturned in 1969. — czahar

The current rule is that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

The movie theater language appeared in Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), stating that "falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic" was not protected speech. Justice Holmes said that expressions which in the circumstances were intended to result in a crime, and posed a "clear and present danger" of succeeding, could be punished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater

I'd say that Bradenburg didn't fully overule Schenk, but that it expanded upon its reasoning.