A monist must accept a critical distinction between the phenomenal states of experience and the objects of the objective world. How does the cup image form in my mind, what is it's composition, and how does it correlate with reality?

That is to say, the monist has to admit to dualism and offers no better explanation as to the interaction problem as the dualist. The God explanation is the "it just does" explanation. Isn't that what you ultimately say?

Then why all the talk about the mind body interaction problem?

Hanover likes sarcasm which is good, because a fair amount is aimed at him. — Bitter Crank

It's rarely so potent. Usually I just get an eye roll, so imagine my joy at an almost philosophical suicide. It is good to know I have such a poisonous arrow in my quiver though.

Staying on point with this thread, I note this is simple metaphor. There are no actual arrows and quivers. Should we be speaking in more complex double entendre metaphor, I would insist upon having my poisonous arrow in someone else's quiver of course. Poetry is all around us.

Yeah, no one holds the mind and body aren't interrelated. The question is how they are related. Even parallelism posits the mind and body correlate, even while denying a causal connection.

So here's how you started off this thread:

On the other hand, it seems like in all of these cases, there was something to gain from performing such actions. If somebody didn't donate to a charity then they would be guilt-ridden by not doing anything. — Alec

Your argument was that since there's always an underlying fulfillment of personal desire by carrying out a seemingly selfless act, all acts must be inherently selfish. I disagreed, arguing that fulfillment of desire (i.e. doing what you want) does not make an act selfish. In order to determine whether something is selfless, you simply look to the specific act and see if it primarily is directed at helping others.

But here you say:

If you want an example of an selfless intentional act that has a reason, then it is very simple to provide one. Compare "I want to save someone from a burning house in order to protect myself from the guilt of not doing so" to "I want to save someone from a burning house because it is the right thing to do". If you still think that the latter is somehow impossible then please tell me what is wrong here. — Alec

This appears to ignore your initial concern, namely that the fulfillment of personal desire negates the selfless quality of the act. The first example and the second example you give above are indistinct in that regard. Your wanting to do the right thing (and therefore doing the right thing) obviously results in some sort of benefit to you else you wouldn't do it. If you didn't do it, what would be the repercussion? You'd wish you had?

Or here's another way of putting it: You're saying that I want to do x because it would satisfy my wanting to do x. That sounds circular. — Alec

My initial objection to your inquiry was that you were searching for a tautology, and here you're just recognizing my objection.

The question is: When is an act not selfish?

My response is not to look at this analytically, but simply to ask in which instances do we call something selfless. Saving kids from fires, rescuing the drowning, etc. are all such instances. It's not significant to me whether the rescuer were a passerby who would have had a strong sense of guilt had he ignored the victim or whether it was a paid emergency worker for hire. In either case, they saved another, and in both cases they had underlying motives, in both cases they were heroes, and in both cases they were not selfish..

Your inquiry has, however, been to try to derive that which is selfless from analyzing terms as opposed to simply looking for instances of term use. I first pointed out that all acts occurred for a reason except for those that were accidental, which meant that you'd be left with the absurd conclusion that the only selfless acts would be those like tripping over a wire to save people. You then wished to correct me by asking when were conscious acts selfless, and by conscious, you meant intentional.

You distinguished between two sentences:

#1: I simply want to save someone from a burning house vs.
#2: I want to save someone from a burning house in order to protect myself from the guilt of not doing so.

The problem is that #1 is an incomplete sentence. There is some reason you want to save someone because, tautologically, every intentional act has a corresponding intent. In order to find an act without an underlying intent, you must look for accidental or random events, not the sort we're at all interested in here.

So, to your question, when does #1 occur, asking very specifically as you have when do you intentionally save someone from a burning house for no reason, I'd say never, but that's based upon a logical problem in trying to explain how one can act intentionally for no reason. That just doesn't make sense. If you acted intentionally, you had a reason, and that reason formed the basis of your intent.

There will always be a reason. I want to save someone from a burning house because it will satisfy some desire in me.

Doing what you want to do is compatible with the latter, but my question is if there are any true cases of such behaviour. — Alec

As I've accused you of a tautology, the disproof would be for you to hypothesize the very example you seek. That is, if you can't imagine a hypothetical case of conscious, non-accidental selflessness, then what you are looking for exists in no possible world and is thus a contradiction. To assert its absence would be a tautology. So you tell me, using your definition of "selfless," when does it occur?

Come on. Are all conscious decisions that we make done out of concern for oneself? — Alec

You're creating a tautology here. If I do what I want to, then I'm selfishly doing what I want, even if what I want is to save your life from a burning house. If I didn't want to save you, I wouldn't have.

My point is that you're misdefining the word.

But my question has to do with whether or not there are actual examples of people doing something solely for the benefit of others and not their own interest. In other words, are all actions done out of concern for oneself? — Alec

Sure, but they're not what we would consider selfless. If I trip over a wire and save you from electrocution, I did something for you and nothing for me.

On a personally level, its a disgusting word to me, and I feel nothing but anger and suspicion the moment someone says it to me. — XanderTheGrey

But of course, as this is thematic with your ongoing agenda to advocate some sort of sociopathic ideology/religion you've come upon. How much longer must we wait before your big reveal where you set out the bases of your brand of Satanism?

Love is an altruistic act where you put others' interests at or above your own.

You don't love me unconditionally?

Doing something for the benefit of others is the definition of selflessness, regardless of whether you happen to benefit yourself. Otherwise, you must define selflessness as those accidentally helpful acts.

Definitions derive not from word analysis, but from usage.

Your post elicited in me that obscure feeling of nebulousness that often accompanies an ensuing epiphany of motive-misunderstanding, albeit in the non-scientific philosophically minded concept. Why is it that the illusory predominates over the concrete and the abstract over the hard reality? People speak in platitudes as if that resonates beyond their simple upbringing, when if fact, they're only referring to their self created idiosyncrasies.

Ok, so this is your response to my PM to you a few days ago that you needed to start capitalizing the word "I." Just change your settings to auto-capitalize.

I'd also note that if you see a red line under a word you typed, that means you misspelled it.

I got the joke I just didn't think it was funny. — Jeremiah

The joke was funny, and it didn't seem like you got it.

Yes, priests and monks work.

What would you have to say to the clinically depressed person who really doesn't want to work or do anything other than ruminating in their bed or try and kill time online or on these forums due to their diagnosis? I'm starting to see myself falling in that category of sorts and no amount of talk therapy or money motivates me.

Is a Cynic weak for not working and spending time with others or just sees things differently? — Posty McPostface

It's like you're fishing for an insult from me or something. If you're clinically depressed and that diagnosis was made by someone with greater expertise than me, and that is considered to keep you from working, then I'm not doubting the finding, and I'd say you are legitimately disabled. I have no doubts about the legitimacy of mental illness, including depression.

A "cynic" isn't a type of depressed person, but is someone with a particular viewpoint. Being cynical is not a legitimate basis for not working I'd say.

So, being eligible for being on disability makes me weak or that staying on disability and preferring to do nothing would make me weak? — Posty McPostface

I'm saying that if you are disabled, you should receive the benefit of the disability insurance, but I'm also saying that any system that incentivizes you to be disabled is a bad one.

If you have the ability to strengthen yourself in any manner, whether that means to receive treatment and get healthier or to receive additional training to place yourself in a position to work despite your disability, you should do that. It's just a basic statement that you should mitigate your disability to the greatest extent possible, and refusing to treat, to train, or do whatever to get yourself not disabled says something significant about your moral worth.

To your specific question, you are as a matter of fact weaker if you can do less than those around you, and it's your own fault if you choose that weakness by your refusal to do anything about it. If there is no avenue for you to eliminate your disability status, then you should take advantage of the system that is in place which was designed for those unfortunate souls like you, who simply cannot enter the work force through no choice of their own.

What's the motivation in making this statement? I've always resented that social Darwinian attitude professed by the right, in the U.S. — Posty McPostface

That weakness shouldn't be a strength is just a way to avoid real life irony. I don't care if you resent it.

Everything you said was good but this:

Be sure that going to college doesn't undermine your claim to disability. Taking a full load or better and getting very good grades would kind of undermine your claim. — Bitter Crank

Remaining weak shouldn't be a strength.

But the problem with racism - in my mind - isn't that it offends the sensibilities of people, but rather that it is immoral. I would have thought at least that the immorality and cruelty of it (supported by its historical manifestations) are the reason for taking an active stand against it, not just that it "offends sensibilities". — Agustino

I agree that there are countless legitimate justifications for our rule prohibiting racist posts.

The feedback thread is not an area where deleted threads get to be reposted with impunity. I suppose had the complaint been posed in the abstract (as in, "I think scientifically supportable hypotheses should be open to debate without regard to how offensive they may be), I'd agree with you, but to resubmit the specific argument is obviously not going to be allowed.

John,

I deleted your post to me as it was a reiteration of your prior deleted thread. It was non- responsive to my post, which is that racist views are off limits here, even if you believe they are scientifically justified.

I couldn't post this anywhere else due to the stigma and lashings I'd receive for being so grand and blunt and being rather shameless. — Posty McPostface

Social Security Disabilty is a federally funded disability program funded by pension payments. It is not welfare. You have to be determined legitimately disabled, which I suspect you have. I'd be no more ashamed to accept those benefits than I would to accept any benefits from any policy of insurance unless my claim were bogus and I had played the system. Assuming that's not the case, those benefits are intended for you, and I wish you well because a life of dependency is not what anyone wants. On the other hand, if your claim was bs, shame on you, but I have no reason to think that.

Not sure, but I live nearby and will check it out.

John,

If it is as I recall, I deleted the thread advancing the view that whites are smarter than blacks. The reason I gave was that it violated our anti-racism rule and I asked for a confirmation that you'd adhere to the rule, even if you disagreed with it.

My role was to enforce the rule, not debate its wisdom, although I do find it wise. It is entirely irrelevant to me whether your argument that one race is superior to another is empirically supportable or the rantings of a lunatic. In either case, it's racism.

While we could also debate the question of whether we'd have been better off had Hitler have won the war, citing statistics and all sorts of other data, we can also decide, as a private website, to prohibit such discussions as being terribly offensive and unproductive.

I suspect there are many wonderful websites where rigorous racist, neo-Nazi, and other progressive ideological debate is encouraged, and I invite you to explore those mind broadening sites if you feel overly limited here.

I'm not sure where the sense of entitlement comes from where you think you have the right to insult entire races of historically oppressed people on a privately owned website and then ironically call others cowards. If you feel so bold, take your views to the public square instead of your courageous position behind your keyboard.

Surely we all understand the difference between an intentional act and an accidental act regardless of whether it can be successfully argued there is no important metaphysical distinction between the two. That is, even if acts we believe arise from intent are no different than those that arise randomly, that would not make it impossible for a jury of scientists to convict a murderer. They would simply have to decipher whether the act was of that type of act that is categorized as intentional. The metaphysical distinction between certain types of acts would not be for the jury's consideration.

I'd also point out the bigger problem is that if you claim the actor is incapable of intentionally murdering, then you are also claiming the jury is incapable of intentional conduct as well. This would mean that their verdict may well be to convict despite their absolute recognition that the murderer acted unintentionally. They would decide that way because they too are not guided by meaningful intentionality and they just decided the way they were forced to, just like our poor murderer.

The problem with the article (as Michael pointed out) was that a pastor was quoted as lamenting the fact that more gays weren't killed in Orlando. He obviously (to me) does not speak for most evangelicals. If the question simply is whether the radically religious of all stripes are disproportionately sociopathic, I'd assume so, but that's a no brainer.

There really are good hearted Christians who walk the walk. Religiosity most often is a product of upbringing and geographic origin, not some organic brain dysfunction that leads to sociopathic tendencies. Arguments otherwise only polarize the left from the right farther (like that's possible) because they appear as blatant attempts to further deligitimize traditionalists who already complain they've lost the podium to the left.

The point is that if you think there's a modicum of truth to the article, you're not at all interested in what the right has to say. You're firmly planted among your kind, and I can see no reason how'd you justify serious debate with the sociopathic right. That is, the debate is over and the opponent has been proved nothing less than a cuckoo bird who predictably sticks his head out the door throughout the day and makes cuckoo sounds.

If the question to you really is whether evangelical Christians are sociopaths (i.e. cuckoo birds), don't expect them to seriously engage you.

Suppose someone actually arrived at the purpose of life and typed it right here for all to see. I'd have a whole new respect for this forum. We'd have actually accomplished something here today.

And yet another non-sequitur.

Correct. There is nothing in common because the Whole is inseparable. Matter is decaying while life moves in the opposite direction of self-organization and creativity. Of course, everything remains as a fabric in the universe

Of course. Thank you for the nonsense response.

Your position that living things share absolutely nothing in common with nonliving things is untenable as is your definition of living things to the extent you say that feeding is a necessary component of a living thing.

In case I wasn't clear, there is literally zero, zilch, negative infinity similarities between that which is living and that which isn't. — Rich

If there are no similarities between dead things and living things, then if I die, how would you know it was me who died? Probably you'd know by noticing I look really similar to when I was alive.

Machines are part of nature.

You claimed there were quite literally zero similarities between minds and computers and here you point out that plants and rocks are distinguishable, as if the two points are related and as if the second point were in dispute. It's all a non sequitur.

There is a huge difference between a computer and the mind that created it. In fact there are quite literally zero similarities. — Rich

They are both composed of matter.

Cat feces is a common source — Bitter Crank

Reminder to self: Use scoop from now on and wash hands afterwards.

If we could exactly model how information is stored and accessed in the human brain, we should be able to accurately predict what random number a person would select at any given moment, based on the brain's configuration immediately preceding the question. — CasKev

Suppose you created a random number generator that was affected by the position of an electron on the quantum level. It's exact position is indeterminate, so we could not know what random number was going to be selected. When speaking of true randomness (as opposed to simply lacking sufficient information), we are saying that State A will not yield State B in all instances, but it will unpredictably vary.

Regardless, the question of determinism versus indeterminism doesn't address the question of free will. In either event, there are things beyond your control that are affecting an occurrence. If I choose to sit down due to predetermined causes or due to a random event, in neither event do I bear responsibility for it.