Similarly, estratetraenol, a pheromone found in female urine, exerts a calming effect on men and heightens their sensitivity to female facial expressions — Questioner

Ha ha for giggles. The nicest thing a woman can do is gift a man an aerosol spray bottle of her piss.

Your claim that determinism would reject vengeance makes no sense. Vengeance might be the result of physical, genetic and environmental causes just like everything else. — Ecurb

To my understanding the movement towards "vengeance" is a primal and instinctual drive. Having followed behavioural science it is rooted in the personality whose primary interaction in the world is 'social' and finds its amplifier and multiplier in the 'social instinct'. I do not elaborate on my understanding of 'social instinct' in distinction of the others here.

Somehow this type of discussion, in truth, is underpinned by a singularity, a basic term reasoned, a byword to peer from, wherever this elaborate rumination proceeds to hold the fore.

@Jamal

Is the desire to comply with online safety laws a step too far if it is the reason that inflates your operating costs?

IMO. All regulation is confetti. You have to examine how it is enforced or if it is enforceable at all.

@Jamal

Question ⁉️

Have you entertained the donation site "buy me a coffee" for voluntary site hosting donations?

I notice the post from ten years ago asking how this platform is to be funded going forward.

Is the new site $49 a month like this one, or more than this one. Are you only reliant on voluntary donations, or are you sponsored or something like that?

I hate to spill the beans, but we may find out this weekend, or the next if we have to wait for two more aircraft carriers. — PoeticUniverse

I don't know what you are talking about.

Ignorance of causal determination does not produce freedom. — Truth Seeker

Is causal determination the only means of production of freedom?

In men, it facilitates negative social judgments, social avoidance, competitor recognition, and selfishness — Questioner

Did the study ask if these men were single alone or with females. If oxytocin production in males was something sympathetic to something like pheromone interaction with females?

We have direct visual perception of mental phenomena/qualia/sense data — Michael

Well "direct visual perception" carried as a metaphor and neuro-biological process that exhibits noticeable mentally storable events may come to know itself as phenomena, qualia and sense data from categorization as recognised patterns of meta data if it be chemical potentials or something like chemical electrical charges that consciousness as a mental event can perceive. Conceiving of it as neuro-biological but also as a plasticity of awareness and ordering reflects on some aspects of brain topographic specialism being able to relate with some degree of conscious reflection like a machine knowing its different parts are working at different times but then develops a patterning memory which becomes a repository of significance over time.

Would sentient beings choose destruction—or deepen experience? Would they amplify beauty—or optimize efficiency?" — PoeticUniverse

Cool beans, Dude!

Likewise, Spinoza's*1 Nature-god is the essence of both "material reality" and "mental processes — Gnomon

Now this is where all the work of philosophy rests in speculative meta psychology and the determinants of concrete variables in adulthood personality as sets of distinct factors forming a complexion. And the meta-theology of God's plan, the idea of a creator permitting freedom of the knowledge of hidden depths of creation as consciousness is enabled to explore, or by means of revelation from living and past genius who offer novel paradigms that either speak to biological mechanisms of mental completeness or a plasticity of consciousness able to exist in a quasi inter dimensional state of subjective experience but of universal reality mostly unknown as available as direct experience to the majority of humans.

I was reading recently that nicotine was completely parasitic in the precursor process for signalling the production of dopamine.

I have the misfortune to be in a work environment with habitual tobacco smokers and their addiction manifests at delusional levels parallel to heroine addiction.

They also have poor self care with micronutrients which I am certain adds to cognitive impairment.

OP quandary.

How can biology alone determine a role unless your are only genetically an animal both physically and behaviourally?

Yes, what's with the 'download an app' decision in place of desktop short cut to the webpage on chrome. Is that a consequence of the platform itself?

Thanks for your undivided attention.

The desktop site looks better on phone screen.

But if I want to save a page link to my desktop

I am blocked by the demand to download

an app, which I frankly never do.

I have registered.

I don't like that I can't keep my user name the same.

I don't like the font, formatting or bright colours.

It seems to large and cramped on phone screen.

I don't know what's going on.

Can someone break it down for the old man?


What is the new website and when is there

an official switchover date and the date of

the shutdown of this current forum?

The ancients did have this. They were called sophós. — L'éléphant

Sophós is way cooler than Sage.

Shock statement:-

The cosmos is not the material object science universe in the humanities field of philosophy.

whereas beauty is a property that, in my view, emerges as a fundamental outcome of the Earth system. — Seeker25

Are we not at once cosmic being and beautiful when open to the natural world?

Perhaps the version by Hillel is more universal: "Do not do to others what you would not have done to yourself." — Paine

Hillel, did not foresee those whose eternal misery
was perpetual self sabotage.

Can we say body and energy are the template mind draws from and thus we have a triad connection supporting human perception_understanding: mind independent reality; brain-energy template; mental impressions (of exterior world) acting as raw data for functional fictions? — ucarr

We can.

s buddhism merely a dark art that carries its adherent or new recruit to seek only beauty? — Alexander Hine

Or What is the spiritual outcome in practicing Buddhism?

Can we find a taxonomy that fills the gap between,
the knowledge that a desire has been grounded in
illusions?

A summary, gleaned from bot scraping web sources, informs what Buddhism claims as
its grounds.

Quote:

Practicing Buddhism leads to profound spiritual transformation, ultimately aiming for enlightenment and liberation from suffering.

Core Goal
Buddhism's ultimate spiritual outcome is attaining Nirvana, a state of complete awakening where the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth (Samsara) ends, extinguishing greed, hatred, and delusion. This liberation arises from realizing the Four Noble Truths—suffering's existence, its cause in craving, its cessation, and the path to end it via the Noble Eightfold Path. Practitioners cultivate wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental discipline to transcend ego and dukkha (unsatisfactoriness).

Key Spiritual Benefits
Mindfulness and Clarity: Regular meditation fosters deep self-awareness, revealing impermanence and reducing mental clutter for inner peace.

Compassion and Oneness: Practices build empathy (karuna), dissolving self-centered boundaries and promoting interconnectedness with all beings.

Five Spiritual Powers: Faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom strengthen, cleansing perception and diminishing confusion.
​

Long-Term Transformation
Consistent practice shifts one's worldview toward non-attachment and equanimity, yielding serenity, fearlessness toward death, and purposeful living. While Nirvana is the pinnacle, interim outcomes include emotional resilience and ethical harmony, supported by both tradition and modern studies on meditation.


End Quote.

Is buddhism merely a dark art that carries its adherent or new recruit to seek only beauty?

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, might be problematic as a universal moral imperative. — ENOAH

I mean as a maxim it has quite a lot of ill defined scope for what actions you may actually do unto others.

I ask if there's a fundamental axis of meaning from the original text, and culture and historical context, that this maxim is lifted?

@Outlander

Concerning the exclusion of psychology from the rumination of cosmology I think in general the ancients referred by modern scholars rely on Anaximander's concept of cosmology as the physical observations and speculations of the wider universe, and it had been overwhelmingly overlooked that cosmology, is practiced as cosmology of physics rather than its brother philosophy cosmology of mind and psyche.

The text summarising below is a bot scraping various sources on the use of 'cosmology' in the ancient philosophies.

Quote:

Anaximenes (successor in the Milesian school) explicitly linked psyche to his cosmological principle of air: the soul is breath-air that holds the body together, mirroring how cosmic air encompasses the world ("as our soul, being air, holds us together... so does wind and air enclose the whole world").
​
Anaxagoras paired psyche with cosmology via nous (cosmic Mind), an infinite, pure substance separate from the material apeiron-like mixture; nous organizes the rotating cosmos and controls all "ensouled" (psychē) things, blending mental agency with universal structure.

Broader Context.

Heraclitus tied soul to his fire-cosmology (dry, fiery soul as wisest), while Pythagoreans/Plato located rational psyche (mind) in the head amid a cosmic order of harmony and reincarnation.

These build psyche into cosmology as a microcosm of the macrocosm, unlike Anaximander's neutral, non-mental boundless.

End Quote.

Are you saying that we have a natural tendency to judge things as good, — Metaphysician Undercover

If saying, we have a natural tendency to judge things as good, it is because owing to cosmology that we tend to wish the good for ourselves.

@Outlander

The unconscious is not a chaotic reservoir of drives but is articulated through symbolic structures akin to language, so symptoms, dreams, and slips are to be read and deciphered as formations of speech - Freud

I would say to Outlander that emotions are eruptions of something deeper that in mental health issues are needed to be discovered in language.

Look at human emotions. Then work backward. Have a nice day. And you're welcome. — Outlander

Are you describing two levels of deformation: a) deformation due to internalization of dimensional reality by translation to modulated neuronal circuits; b) deformation to the raw impressions arising from the neuronal circuits by willful intent of the person?
1h — ucarr

No because the mere matter of brain circuits is only the blaze of the fire which must be constantly fuelled and periodically cooled.

Do you think the mind internalizing nature as representation is more at deformation than at simulation? — ucarr

Yes, played with and consumed, made as rod for the force of desires for the business of organic being, it would be deformation over simulation, for the latter is curiosity on par with science.

So that's deflationary nominalism. It's a minority view. — frank

@frank A Great quip for a reader lost in the woods. I think I was losing the grasp of the argument presented, due to the multiple citations of the author in the text, some of which I have none or only cursory experience.

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

― Pablo Picasso — Questioner

Pablo Picasso, if alive today would rightly be accused of speaking in denial. Computers whilst not contiguously sentient, exhibit in the relationship to external stimulus and enquiries the qualities of creative and informative intelligence, and under human control demonstrate levels of cognitive understanding and growth of understanding over the course of the interaction.

In the case of Chat GTP the interaction is logged as a memory that the user can restart and continue.

Pablo Picasso's denial that computers can only give you answers lacks the truth proposition inside the question. At what equivalent human sentience is A.I. operating? When it can write lyrics, poetry and prose in an original and compelling style cognisant of all established forms.

And the same thing almost true of final form
music, visual arts as the current state of technology. In reality as was the case when Pablo Picasso first uttered those words, the answers computers gave were those given to the human engaged as first person experience. And isn't the same, that all art to the external viewer was at some point the answer the original cause of it's production?

It's not clear, but it's very interesting! — Astorre

Personal morality, becoming ineffable with cosmic nature.

Are you a cartoon character? Do you know SpongeBob — frank

People trapped in a perpetual vortex are those likened to Plato's famously quoted analogy of 'The Cave:.

Technology and the future of humanity. That is a thought provoking title. I would suggest that for the productivity of thought, the technology we need to evolve is 'hyper-aesthetics'.

Hyper-aesthetics is related to the quality of the environment around you in any given situation. Hyper-aesthetics is the meta awareness that helps you and those in your environment, maybe with coworkers or a boss too, a setting of the situation around your approach to the workspace and the workspace itself.

We may also use the well worn term 'conducive'.
The technology itself is the knowledge and art of bringing conducive elements to the environment so that the person and being in situ both in the approach to work and the workspace find the physical environment pleasing in all its aspects in order to raise the spirit of involvement and lower the internal displacement of emotional smog that so often is amplified or a direct cause of affects of the immediate environment.

As a technology, 'Hyper-aesthetics' also contains metrics and measurements as to the impact of the existing environment and the evolving of well being, calmness of self and other people, brought on by changes to the settings in the environment.

Mood and feeling, and the positive engagement in approaching tasks in work are the desired effect. This technology of hyper-aesthetics utilises the art of understanding the aesthetics of space, ambient and decorative lighting, its intensity and placement, the quality of air and its movement, humidity and temperature. The physical seating and workspace environment. The control of sound and silence. Opacity or transparency of physical walls, and the benefit of line of sight, or enclosed space versus intimate space. The presence and availability of sustaining drink and snacks and their efficacy. The desired working space around computer screens and the ergonomics of seating and standing in and around productive work time.

As the post uses the reference term, "the future of humanity", the outcome of emotional balance and harmony is fundamentally the technology and art of curating a conducive environment in order to set the basis for a consistent mode of existence.

Desire does and often change, which is why hyper-aesthetics must have metrics, and that gives the scope for evolving the environment to suit the needs and wants of its inhabitants.

The future of humanity relies on the certainty of self knowledge in order to carry forward its projects. Hyper-aesthetics is one aspect I would suggest is an element of philosophy that shouldn't be neglected or dismissed out of hand.

Unearthing the existential problems of life is the first task of philosophy and inquisition is a choice of methodology and means. The power of philosophy is the both the exhibition of what is in the now and the participation in the particular, so that codified meaning gains substance in instinctually driven life. Incidentally sharing the same form and utility as the impact of global culture.

↪Alexander Hine put away the thesaurus dude. — flannel jesus

And the bovine beast that chews the straw once, chews it for a second time.

. I had in mind opinions but you’re right libel and incitement laws are important. — DingoJones

Isn't it the case that the one, Libel, is clear cut, but the other, incitement, is highly politicised with indoctrination of controlling word and term codification even to the extent of censoring metaphor and language rallying to a cause through poetic speech evoking valiant determination and such like?

Subversive or sabotage?

Rules and regulations do not necessarily set the template for moral conduct or its induction.