One more for you in all its powerful absurdity. "Love is like a cloud that holds a lot of rain." It's gotta be true. The big haired man said so.

So amazing.

Classic Southern rock. God bless it.

The last word:

So speaketh the cookie.

It also varies from itself. If it is so unique that you cannot speak of it, then it is only because you've yet to find the words for doing so. — creativesoul

It can be done, but it just never has been done? I could start describing my phenomenal state now, looking out the window, hearing the rain, smelling the smells, thinking various thoughts, have various stresses, etc. and after thousands and thousands of pages, I'd still have left something out and you would not experience my experience. You'd just sort of know about it.

Look to others, for despite the fact that our states vary from each other and themselves, we all have the same ones. — creativesoul

How do you know what their beetle looks like?

The more refined one's ability to talk about their own thought and belief, the more refined one's thought and belief become... It's a funny thing about the affect/effects of language on thought and belief. — creativesoul

Perhaps. Sometimes our statements of our beliefs are wrong. But I do agree that the more we think about something, the more we understand it. That's how thought works, but I'm not committed to the idea that all thought must be performed by the tool of language.

It doesn't follow from the fact that we do not speak aloud all our thoughts that we could not. — creativesoul

Such is the theory that given an infinite amount of time we could precisely describe a single thought. Like I said, maybe, but I doubt it.

I've decided to write an essay on this issue. Enjoy.

Gender Specific Relationship Retardation
By: Hanover von Hanoverstein of Hanoverville (aka "Tater")

A vignette: John dates Sally. John likes Sally. Sally likes John. John calls Sally regularly, but not every day. Sally enjoys John's company. John tells Sally he likes her, but he doesn't say it all the time. John makes thoughtful gestures toward Sally, but not always. John likes to get physically close to Sally, but Sally doesn't always want to. Sally wants to talk deeply to John, but John doesn't always want to.

John and Sally go on a date on Saturday. John and Sally start to get physical, but Sally slows things down. John calls Sally on Monday (not Sunday) and asks to see her on Wednesday. Sally says she's not sure about Wednesday. John suggests Thursday. Sally says she still isn't sure. John says okay, and the conversation ends. When they do speak about their problems, John clearly explains why there are no problems, only Sally finds him unpersuasive and evasive.

Emotionally intuitive Sally realizes that John isn't prioritizing her, isn't considering her feelings, is most interesting in being physical, isn't trying to get to know her, and will barely talk to her. Emotionally intuitive Sally even realizes that emotionally retarded John is emotionally retarded so she tries to give him some leeway, but he's so retarded she's starting to think there's no hope. In fact, she's doubly frustrated by his attempt to persuade her that her intuitions are wrong, or worse yet, to dodge the emotional issues altogether.

Rational John determines that Sally isn't interested in him. His data points are: (1) she won't physically get close, (2) she tells him she doesn't want to go out with him on Wednesday or Thursday, and (3) she constantly is calling him down on the carpet with her talks. To the extent he's holding up his end of the bargain, he has the following data points: (1) he does call her often, (2) he expresses his admiration for her from time to time, (3) he does make the appropriate gestures sometimes, and (4) he does talk to her, just not insistently. Rational John realizes that rationally retarded Sally is rationally retarded so he tries to give her some leeway, but she's so rationally retarded, he's starting to think there's no hope. In fact, he's doubly frustrated by her refusal to accept his data points as evidence of the rightfulness of his position when they speak.

And the retardation comes to full blossom. Sally's outreach to bring John closer is interpreted as rejection and pushing away. John's outreach to bring Sally closer is interpreted as rejection and pushing away. John sees Sally as a confusing, emotional creature unable to grasp his arguments, and he likely describes her as crazy. Sally sees John as uncaring and stubborn and likely describes him as childish and not fully human.

John likes Sally. Sally likes John. Too bad they couldn't work that out.

The solution? Sally just needs to listen to the voice of reason. God damn, John's doing everything he can, but nothing is ever good enough. He doesn't need that bullshit. Can't Sally just hold his hand and tell him he's a great guy and stop making this so complicated?

Autobiographical, sure, but it's currently playing in theaters across the country.

The part I enjoyed most during heartbreak was finally being able to truly understand what 90% of the songs on the radio really meant. So, enjoy this time listening to the radio with your super powers of understanding.

https://youtu.be/e9BLw4W5KU8

There's so much here that is muddled, much of the muddle caused by equating different experiences with different phenomenal states, while trying to maintain that phenomenal states are both open for discussion and yet ineffable. — Banno

No muddle, just your failure to analyze the phenomenal state, which is all part of the artificial limitation you place on analysis of the internal state. Your position, as far as I can tell, wishes to deny any relevance to the internal state, and so you hardly wish to embark on discussing it.

Not being so limited, I will tell you what the phenomenal state is. It is the full experience of what I am experiencing. I find incoherent the idea that there is a direct stream of data entering my conscious, unaffected by the mechanisms of my mind, which include anything from visual distortions, personal biases, mood, and perhaps even affected by what I ate for breakfast. That being the case, I have every reason to believe that my internal state varies from yours. I also fully understand that language is a very limited way of expressing oneself and what goes on in one's mind. I know this because I compare the words I speak to what I'm actually thinking and I realize that what I say is a limited sketch of my full thoughts.

If they are ineffable, how could you know this? — Banno

He said word "can," not must. He says nothing of knowing the beetle.

But, what is the evidence that my beetle is different than yours? We've already established that the Vietnam vet's experience of the movie is different from the child's.

I don't think I loved him either. I was more hurt by the confusion he wrought. All I wanted to know was what he wanted (sex, friendship, love, enemies?) and there was a part of me that wanted to give him a shot and another part of me that wanted him to just fuck off. I don't like playing hide and seek, I am very fond of honesty and confidence and it caused me to think I needed to play back, which just made a mess of everything and he never found out the real person that I am because of it. I then realised that this game-playing confirmed we are very different people and it would not have worked out because I want someone mature, someone who does not follow the herd but his heart, who would give up holding onto all that and experience life and he is nothing like that, on the contrary he is almost pathological in his need for approval from others. As friends, though, I still feel like we could have been awesome. You live and learn.

Anyway, nice chat. We should do lunch sometime. — TimeLine

The doctor is back in:

Why is it that you have no difficulty describing his failures to us, but not to him, the only person who actually needed to hear it, and could you have described his failures to him in a caring and supportive way that built him up, not one that justified your annoyance and frustration?

When we meet for lunch, bring me my nickel.

Is it shiny?

A shiny nickel.

Not sure where to go now... — Lone Wolf

Match.com ? A joke...

I can squeeze you in.

You loved him, he cared only for himself, but you interpret yourself as selfish.

Well it does have some standards.

I thought I loved someone and he treated me rather callously, playing so many games that I was nauseous from the dizziness. It still can reduce me to tears — TimeLine

Maybe you did love him, but he didn't love you.

Awww. I feel your pain. Defending him. It's ok you still love him. All part of the miserable process.

Work sucks. Start a union and go on strike, make signs, walk in circles, and yell at your replacements. Always go down in flames.

Yeah, if you didn't love him, you wouldn't be heartbroken.

That lying sociopath son of a bitch.

No one fucks with Lone Wolf and just walks away like lalala nothing happened.

Am I right?

It's not childish at all.

That means you're boring. I know this is a hard way to find out, but now you know. Your wing needs zing.

This place is a damn love in lately.

Tell us your woes. It feels better to talk about it. It really does. I'll pour the wine, the shot, the beer, you name it.

Trivia night at the local bar has been ruined as well. If not for the all you can eat hot wings, why go on?

Yes, but there will be a resurrection. You'll rise again.

A new word I just coined. Googliniscience - the ability to access the all knowing power of the internet through well crafted searches that will enable you to both prove and disprove any point you wish. As in the sentence, "Joe's googliniscience protected him from the most outlandish claims, where he was able to cite dozens of sources showing that the earth was both flat and round and even non-existence at all."

Ummm... the Falklands war is basically a war where both sides stick to the International conventions in war and didn't engage in what are called war crimes. Civilians weren't targeted.

So that's one for the history books. — ssu

Or not.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2109429/A-dirty-war-British-soldiers-shot-dead-enemy-troops-waving-white-flag-Argentinian-prisoners-bayoneted-cold-blood-An-ex-Para-tells-horrors-Falklands.html

Every fact is both provable and disprovable by a well phrased Google search. See, https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/169761

I immediately responded with no, before he stated, "you have no choice but to kill the child. The child could be used by the enemy to obtain information to be given back to them." It was distressing, to say the least, but understandable — TimeLine

That was sort of the plot of the movie Lone Survivor.

Anyway, It'd be hard to kill anyone, but I still hold pretty firm on my view that there's nothing magic that happens between being 17 and 18.

Of course I'm opposed to human rights abuses and don't think a 17 year old or 19 year old prisoner should be slapped around and beaten. I also realize that war is war and maintaining all these standards to the satisfaction of an outside evaluating agency is not realistic and not going to be of primary concern to any military leader, except to the extent political blowback affects his ability to accomplish his task. I'm reminded of waterboarding by the US, and my view regarding its elimination was based more on the arguments that it was ineffective in obtaining intelligence than that it was abusive.

There's just no such thing as a cleanly fought war. Again, I'm not saying that we need to ignore abuses that might occur during the war, but that's just one thing I'd be looking at, with a greater focus on the success of the operation, assuming it was just in the first place. An ugly win can be better than a clean loss between gentlemen.

...but you're views on children are overly defensive and entirely unrealistic in your declaration that they are not dangerous. — Hanover
Are you serious? — TimeLine

So here's what you said and what I responded to:

I don't understand how you would assume that I am not taking a "generous view" toward the Israelis when I am well aware of the continuous security threats and have said it as such - hence the relationship between security threats and children's rights - but children are not dangerous — TimeLine

This statement really isn't limited to Israel, but takes an unrealistic view and overly protective view of children. Some children simply are in fact dangerous. That's a fact. It's not like someone is innocently confused regarding the danger of his behavior until age 18 and then suddenly he's malicious.

This may or may not be true -- I don't know everything about the Left. But to whatever extent it is true, why do you think is it so? I would think all these neo-Marxists would at least be aware that Marx himself was a Jew. Doesn't that count for something with them? — Bitter Crank

Well, you have to first start with the assumption that anti-Israel equates to anti-Semitism. The left in the US has been strongly opposed to American Middle East policy since at least GW's days and the neo-con movement. They were so relieved when Obama came into office that they gave him a Peace Prize only to see him largely adopt GW's strategies, although toward the end he seemed to just let things go. The strongest allies of Israel tend toward the fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews, neither friends of the left, so there's that too.

In terms of thinking Jews always embracing Jews, yeah, not my experience.

This is my take, and I would have thought that my view would have been extreme on this Board in its support of Israel, but then I read your posts and wasn't so sure.

There is tremendous bias against Israel by the Arabs against the Jews in Israel because the Jews are not Muslim and Israel is seen as a satellite state for the US, which represents an entirely different culture and value system. If an Arab nation, with all its perceived backwardness by the Western world, was felt to have encroached on US soil, there would be less than a warm welcome. The U.S.'s interest in Israel is based upon the strong political involvement of Jews in the US as well as it being in an oil rich region.

So, we have an incendiary mix of hatred and this has resulted in violent reactions by the Palestinians, with the rest of the Arab world sympathizing with them, or at least superficially so. The rest of the Western world sees the Arab world destabilized by Israel's presence and they no doubt largely blame the US for that, considering the Israeli political and military power flows directly from Washington.

Does this mean that there is no link at all between the Jewishness of Israel and world reaction? No, but I don't think that if Israel secularized entirely and were populated by a majority Lutheran population you'd see a much different result in either the Arab reaction or the rest of the world.

I also think that the world reaction will rise and fall on pragmatics more than ideology, meaning that regardless of where this problem came from and regardless of who the land rightfully belongs to, the world mostly just wants to see the violence, regardless of who's at fault, end. The real truth is that no one cares for the Jews or the Palestinians as much as they do themselves, meaning they just want the problem resolved. It's a problem that needs to be fixed, but instead it's just something argued about.

I have a case in my office right now where water is running from my client's land onto his neighbor's. Both have all sorts of creative explanations for why the other is at fault, and I'll spend the better part of a year or two litigating and pointing fingers. I'm not sure who is right, but one day a jury will tell me who it is. What they need is to buy a shovel and fix the problem, but they'd rather be right than fix the problem.

Let me ask this: If Israel stopped the settlements of the disputed lands entirely and offered the Palestinians full autonomy within the lands generally recognized to be theirs, that is they offered a two state solution, would the sentiment on this Board be entirely in favor of Israel? That is, is it really the settlement of those lands that has caused the negative reaction to Israel?

I really question that based upon the comments in this thread, with many arguing that the right to Israel to exist at all is in question. We also have to remember as well that Israel has offered a two state solution and it was rejected by the Palestinians. http://arabisraeliconflict.info/arab-israel-facts/fact-3-two-state-solution

And hypothetically, if Israel did provide Palestine it's own land, and should the Palestinians then launch rockets into Israel, would you agree at that point Israel would have the right to respond in full out war against an act of war by a now sovereign nation?

What I would say, is that belief has to have an object just like knowledge always does. Knowledge is always of something. Belief is always in something. That something is not a physical object like a brick, or paint. At the same time, the object of belief is something people share. The situation tempts the philosopher to come up with some alternative to endorsing a non-physical sharable object like a flaming objective idealist. — frank

I wonder about this because I'm not sure whether you're making an epistemological claim about what you can believe in or whether you're just making a claim about English sentence structure and grammar. The sentence structure as it relates to a knowledge based claim (as you've submitted) would be "I know there are bricks" or something similar ("I know bricks exist), but I would think that in order for you to say you know something of bricks existing, you will necessarily have to use the existence verb "to be" or explicitly use the word "exists."

You really wouldn't say "I know bricks" in regular discourse. You'd say you know there are bricks. By the same token, you wouldn't say "I believe bricks," but you'd say "I believe there are bricks," which demands the same reliance on the "to be" verb as when speaking of knowledge.

Keep in mind too that English has largely abandoned the subjunctive mood, but the antiquated "I believe there be bricks" is correct because you change the "to be" verb when you're speaking about something that exists in a subjective capacity like beliefs, wishes, and the like (e.g. "I wish I were there," not "I wish I was there."). Anyway, as noted, this is turning into a grammar lesson as opposed to an epistemological or metaphysical one, but it is a well established notion in Western languages that statements of belief receive different grammatical treatment than indicative statements.

I actually like this post of yours. A huge part of working through these political debates for me as well is in figuring out how reasonable people can hold such seemingly unreasonable views.

What makes her evil? What has she done to deserve what she received? Is it worse than knocking down the homes of Palestines. Bombing the Gaza Strip as Israel does. Or the multiple assassination commited by Mossad on Foreigners. She just kicked a soldier. Poor him. That must have been a life threatening situation. I wonder if he will go to jail if he ever kills a Palestinian. — René Descartes

I didn't call her evil. I said children are not all innocent.

I'm just wondering why the Romani Gypsies never got their own land after the holocaust. Why were the Zionists privileged enough to merit this. — René Descartes

You can read the history of the State of Israel for the specifics on this, but as I've noted before, the right to land is always morally ambiguous. Why did the British get Australia and not the Roma? There are thousands of reasons.

I don't think we are talking about Australia here. If you want to talk about Australia start your own thread. — René Descartes

These quips make your post not worth responding to. As noted very clearly, I wasn't suggesting anything in particular about the Australians, but only what constituted legitimate land possession by any nation.

And neither should the Israel bombardments of the West Bank or the illegal settlements be acceptable in any circumstance. — René Descartes

This has already been responded to as it relates to the dispute over whether the settlements are illegal.

Are you using the "Fake News" argument? — René Descartes

I'm suggesting that the reports are a form of advocacy for one side or the other. I don't think that an inability to present a neutral side amounts to it being fake, but more so being so ideological that lack of bias is impossible.

The truth is that the Israelis are the aggressors. They came in illegally before 1948 and they suddenly ended up with the majority of previously Palestinian owned land. — René Descartes

That's not the truth.

Now I condemn the violence from both sides, but tell me where is the justice in this. How does Israel have a moral high ground? — René Descartes

It was in self-defense.

They don't just throw rocks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel

The rock throwing is symbolic (David against Goliath), but it can be significantly harmful as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_stone-throwing

Nevertheless, I have a principle that I hope is agreeable to most, that those with power over others are responsible for them. I don't think there is a question on which side the balance of power lies. And I don't think the film is mere propaganda; one can argue and question individual incidents, but there is too much, too well supported from Israelis as well as Palestinians, testimony from the Australian journalists, credible video evidence. This is not peace-keeping, this is not a measured response to threat, this is a terror campaign intended to totally subjugate demoralise and eventually evict or eliminate opposition. There is little sign of a will to reach an accommodation. — unenlightened

I disagree with this assessment. The Israeli response is motivated by the real threat posed by the Palestinians to their existence and peaceful functioning. They are not terrorists who awake each morning asking themselves how they can disrupt a peaceful people due to religious and ideological differences. Should the Palestinians stop any aggressive act toward Israel, there will be no aggression by Israel.

This is a dispute over land. That's what this is. If we accept Israel's right to the land it occupies, it stands morally right. If we don't, it doesn't, although I would not allow that the terroristic acts by the Palestinians are acceptable in any circumstance. They lob bombs into Israel for the sole purpose of disruption and civilian casualty, without regard for any military target.

The Palestinians have no way to win a military war against the Israelis, so the war has turned to securing public condemnation against Israel in order to gain an advantage diplomatically. They have largely been successful in that approach except in the U.S. So, is the video you presented propaganda, no more or less than if Israel were to start producing videos showing the atrocities exacted by the Palestinians. What's the purpose of such videos if not to garner support for a political position?

Ain't that the truth. So few students nowadays want to ask questions because the fear being shown up for a dunce in front of the other dunces. And to make it worse, now we have to worry about them laughing at each other on the internet. — Sir2u

I read some book a while ago about a guy who went to an ivy league school who said that there was competition among the students to constantly ask questions and gain recognition. The point was that it put the Asian students at a disadvantage because their culture demanded that the teachers be respected and listened to, and that it was also disrespectful to the other students to force them to listen to you when there was a more learned professor in the room.

I used to see it in corporate meetings as well. The same guy would always drone on about nothing just to show his great interest in everything corporate to the boss, which was really annoying during the meetings and doubly annoying when he became the boss.

Despite all this, I still have faith that the world is built on a solid foundation of truth, justice, and righteousness upon which this house of cards cannot stand, but that might also be wishful thinking, but I've not given up hope.