>>184050

You're right, they'd rather refer to humans as skinbags, and thoughts and emotions as brain secretions.

>>184074
No they wouldn't. You lack understanding of zen and that's okay because I'm zen.

>>184075

"If we practice in this way we cannot help but realize that our thoughts are really nothing but
secretions of the brain. Just as our salivary glands secrete saliva, or as our stomachs secrete gastric juices,
so our thoughts are nothing but secretions of the brain."

Uchiyama Kosho

Nyogen Roshi referring to skinbags:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eDe2wifbFo

>>184076
You're a funny guy.
>>184075
I get the feeling that he has a deeper understanding of zen than you do. ;)

>>184076
The guy in the video's a fucking moron.

I have another question:
What does one call the tendency of trusting one's hypotheses without even empirically testing them, just because one believes to have proven them logically? Is it "a priori rationalism" - the belief that one can prove things via one's logic, without even having to empirically test one's deductions?

Also, what does one call the tendency of excessive preoccupation with rendering hypotheses more and more complex, adding more and more (often useless) details, while rarely testing one's proposed hypotheses?

>>184056
Logical fallacy is the name of that.

But are you really implying, that you have greater knowledge than mainstream psychology?

>>184071

>But are you really implying, that you have greater knowledge than mainstream psychology?

Are you really implying that your car is Kim Jong-Un's laptop?

Your question was about as coherent and relevant as mine. Please read my original post before making such responses. I'm criticizing the French approach to High Functioning Autism and Asperger's, which is criticized by virtually the entire international psychiatric community.

>>184072
So, you are? I mean, if you know that it's not part of scientific consensus, why do you need to ask about it in forum of stoners? I bet you can find a lot of real scientific papers about this, it doesn't matter what we think.

>>184071
Mainstream psychology actually agrees with OP and disagrees with French psychologists. So. Yeah.

what does weed have to do with morality?
it's a plant.

>>183984
This is a kind of base naturalism. "It's from da earf, so it can't be bad." So are any number of drugs. If we're interested in it, there's an ethical dimension to it. For example the biosphere itself. It's just as natural as that plant. Would you say there's an ethical dimension to the biosphere? I would. Being good stewards for future generations, we inherited a habitable biosphere, it is only right to pass it along to future generations as habitable and protect or enhance its vitality. With marijuana, of course there's an ethical dimension because people use it as a source of income and as a drug.

Also I like to challenge this notion of "natural" whenever I see it pop up. A pile of trash is natural, but people don't associate it with nature. People are mythologizing nature and I think it's a new kind of religion taking shape today

>>184037
I disagree. "Selling weed" has an ethical/moral dimension, as do "smoking weed" and "taking care of the planet". But these are all human actions. Weed as a plant does not have an ethical/moral dimension. It's not a subject of morality, nor is it an action that can be classified as moral or immoral. It just exists and does its thing, like a rock or a river or a beaver.

Augustus's rethorical question makes this point. Weed has fuck all to do with morality, because it's just a plant, and this has nothing to do with naturalism. Poison ivy and hungry bears also have nothing to do with morality, and nobody is claiming that they're good because they're "natural" (as if anything were unnatural). It's just that they aren't conscious entities capable of moral judgement, as far as we know anyway.

>>184038
Suggesting that a marijuana plant has no ethical dimension by itself divorced from any relation to human beings, say, if human beings didn't exist but marijuana plants did - this is kind of a cosmic "duh" moment. In fact, that point is kind of implied in the post you responded to. "If we're interested in it," yada yada.No objects have intrinsic goodness. Subjects can be good, actions can be good, virtues can be good, or moral law can be good. These of course are all arguable given whatever ethical system you're using, but no ethical system, to my knowledge, places goodness or its opposite as the substance or form of mere objects.

>>184065
I just pointed out the obvious to contrast with your accusations of "base naturalism". It seems much more likely, in the context of tis thread, that Augustus was either parodying the idea that natural=good or that he was alluding to the moral insignificance of a mere plant.

tl;dr either you got trolled or you misread that guy's post, or he really is that retarded - I'm not betting much on the latter though.

Yes, because your beliefs have hemorrhoids and look weird.

>>184061
I figured as much.

>>184042
You wouldn't mind quoting me then, would you?

As far as I know all I did was ask a simple question, unless you're responding to this >>184028, in which case I just have to assume you're not very intelligent.

>>184042

>guy accused me of having hidden motives and I explained that I didn't.

I didn't accuse you, I pointed out that the possibility exists, ie. that the probability that you're doing this for reasons other than those you state is non-zero. Not the same thing as actually accusing you of it.

>ridiculous is being doubtful of a conclusion even when you form a conclusion on a matter.

Not really. Doubt is only detrimental if it prevents you from following through. Many a time I've gone through with something I was doubtful of and my doubts did not affect my ability to carry out my tasks. It is possible to be skeptical of an action's possibility of success and still see the action through. I'd imagine many soldiers have dealt with that, either by carrying out questionable plans from their superiors or choosing a "least horrible" course of action themselves.

You make doubt and skepticism out to be these dominating, all-consuming emotions that make it impossible to come to any conclusion at all. In the general case, that is adamantly not the case.

>you're making the point I was making, eventually you see the diminished returns becoming absolutely no return.

Yes, I am. But I am further making the point that this does not mean that while you should stop applying skepticism after a certain point, that does not mean that you should throw it out entirely.

>>184042

>guy who gets mad at people making assumptions about him... retorts by making assumptions about everyone.

I'm not bound to anything. The only reason I quote Plato (not even Socrates) is because I had the quote handy and it applied perfectly to this situation. Here, because it applies so perfectly, I'll quote it again.

"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.”
-- Plato and me

And, nope, it wasn't that I was dissatisfied with the answer, although if I were actually looking for an answer I would find both of those answers very unsatisfying. I asked a question because it is far more rewarding to ask a question than to receive an answer. I would have been surprised if you provided a satisfying answer, although I didn't rule it out at all. (I think right now is a good time to point out why I said that skepticism is the source of humor and joy. My skepticism was towards your ability to provide me with an answer that would bring me great joy, joy at the fact that you were not just some douchebag, despite the odds. I cared not for the odds. I place my chips where I want; the placing of the chips is far more rewarding than whatever the outcome might be. If you would have turned out to be a different sort, a truly kindred spirit, then I would have probably jumped for joy. But, since you weren't, and since my skepticism remained, because, perhaps you still could have been, and I just approached you wrong, I decided to try a different approach. Despite the possibility of you cutting your wrists because of being called a faggot, my skepticism got the better of me and I called you a faggot in the spirit of humor. You can imagine that I use similar techniques when approaching a problem. My fight for skepticism wasn't an all out, life or death, brawl. I wasn't even saying that its crucial to existence. You just RANDOMLY don't like it, and you like to guffaw when people simply and rightly defend it, with none of the overblown vehemence that you are detecting.) I just had a reserve of skepticism. Not…

Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.

>Thread seems like a possibly bad idea but we tried it.
>Turns out OP is just the same as everyone else here and the whole thread is nothing but disagreements.

Oh god. On a side note, as a skeptic to the core who believes nothing absolutely except for the existence of my subjective experience (Descartes first truth), I can tell you that I think if you're not a skeptic to the very core, then your philosophy is undoubtedly going to be riddled and riddled with errors, because basing theories on things that cannot be proven beyond all doubt is, by it's nature, erroneous. Can we doubt all things except the existence of experience? Yeah, pretty much. But at least now I know I will not fall prey to believing in patterns and ideas that may not even exist as we humans think they do, but I only consider them all as possibilities, which are infinite, yet some, such as basic laws of physics, I will trust in at least until the first time I see it fail me, because we have common sense and logic, so I would like to use those to their fullest.

>>184054
It's OP's shitty "holier than thou" opening.

He didn't do a very good job at appealing to the board.

And regardless of what the OP has to say (which is often very little), that's usually the nail in the coffin for these types of threads.

>>183748

This. Fucking this.

The dude apparently compares sqrt(-1) to a penis at one point.

>>183748
I've only ever been more intrigued by Lacan because of the extremly different reactions he elicits from people aware of him.

http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Slavoj-Zizek-Christopher-Kul-Want/dp/1848312938/

There are some articles here that can serve as a good introduction.
http://www.zizekstudies.org/

As the OP, I want to thank you for these suggestions. Thanks guys!

And also, what's the difference between axioms and postulates?

And also, are axiomatic systems merely a set of rules and restrictions (ex: a=a), or can they also contain the initial premises of our reasoning from which others follow via a set of logical rules?

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I've been taught.

Axioms are deemed impossible to prove or disprove, and must be accepted implicitly for any discussion within a certain system to be possible. For instance, if you don't accept that A=A and that A =/=~A, it's impossible for you to operate within the realm of formal logic. But you can't use formal logic to prove that A=A, because everything in formal logic is based on the assumption that A=A, so such a proof would be circular reasoning.
A mere assumption, on the other hand, can be challenged and proven/disproven.

I'm just gonna leave this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

why the fuck do people believe in causality

why do so many people believe in this bullshit is it a disorder?

>>183308

no, people just don't believe that is chaotic and without order, that is why they believe there is a God. Your feelings on the matter are natural, you are still in a cocoon and not yet fully developed, you are a soul still being cradled in infancy.

people just need something to keep their stupid little fucked up minds busy imo. They feel like their a part of something important; even if it is something that seems totaly impossible by every perspective. When one person has an imaginary friend people call him insane; but when a group of people share the same imaginary friend people call it a religion. If anything religion has done more harm than good, being involved in every major war/ conflict since man was able to actualy creat religion.

Love to kick back and watch this world go to shit because people dont know how to coexist.

"God" is a concept created by humans. One point of religion is to explain the unknown for the point of fostering guidance. It's not about some guy sitting in the sky telling you what to do. It's about the concept that, if you follow the "guidelines" set forth by the religious denomination, you may live a prosperous life.

God very much exists simply because humans allow him to. All "Gods" are real because somebody, somewhere, believed it.

I started attending a small evangelical church four months ago in Northwest Omaha and I love it. Completely killed the stereotype I have of Christians as a whole. There are other sects of Christianity that seem almost absurd to me for whatever reason, be it the church folk or their practice of worship. The pastor reached out to me almost immediately and bought me lunch at PepperJax Grill. We had a conversation that helped me see what most Christians see, or at least talk about.

While I'm sure my belief may be perhaps one of the most unorthodox the folk of this church have heard they still greet me with open arms. I believe in the Lord's word, though a lot of things in the Bible are crazy stories that seem to be far off from the point. You must remember the time at which the books of the bible were written, or any other religious text for that matter. The people may have been smart enough to write, but just /how/ educated were they, compared to todays standards?

Going for the historical aspect is great and is what I'm currently doing.

>>183845

>remember the time at which the books of the bible were written

I'm swinging atheist but even I see this. In fact I'd take it a step further, some of that stuff was REALLY GOOD then but our entire circumstances have changed. In that case maybe one can justify looking to the spirit of their religion not the exact word with no dissonance that comes with ignoring some of the word of god. Look at the old testament stuff on slavery, should you take it to mean slavery is okay? Or perhaps that at the time it was written that was a big step forwards away from slavery.

>>183877

>Or perhaps that at the time it was written that was a big step forwards away from slavery.

Condoning slavery is a step away from it?

>>183877
"Good for its time" is sadly insufficient for a book that is supposed to have been written by a timeless and all-knowing being and meant to be used forever by everyone. The only way to appreciate how advanced some parts of the Bible were in the context of the time is to start from the premise that it was written from within the context of the time, i.e. by the humans that were alive back then. If you start from the premise that God wrote it, God's a dick.

This is really funny to me because in a way it's an argument for why atheists should find the Bible more morally admirable than christians. The former can recognize that it was ahead of its time, whereas to the latter it's timeless.

OP here, this is crazy. I wasn't even wanting or trying to start debating the existence of God, I was just wondering if you had to like sign up or something to join a church lol.
>>183710
this guy is really the closest to understanding my viewpoint here haha

>>183885
;)

>>183895

Oh shit. Do you mean to tell me you know what conditions are necessary for white robed inter dimensional beings to exist and you experimented and found out that these conditions aren't met?
Or are you just saying that the idea is too far removed from the definitions of "realistic" you extrapolated from your habitual models and experiences?

Because if it's the first case, please, tell us more.

>>183910
Nope. What I'm essentially getting at is, assholes don't wonder about anything, and that its OK to wonder about absolutely whatever you want. The reason assholes don't wonder about anything, and also the reason they are assholes, is because they feel like they KNOW something. Plato was considered the wisest man of his time, and he didn't consider himself wise at all. If what you know is not, Love everything, for everything is of the highest value, then you quite literally know nothing. For this is the only thing to know. Many people parrot knowledge without being able to create it themselves. Love is the only knowledge, and imagination is the only way to get there. Wondering, and wondering intensely, is the only thing that can break your current models of reality, and it is the only thing that can break your current understanding of yourself.

>>183912

>assholes don't wonder about anything

Of course they do, they wonder about whatever they find relevant to their own interests, like everybody else. They just have different interests.

>>183912

>the reason they are assholes, is because they feel like they KNOW something
>If what you know is not, Love everything, for everything is of the highest value, then you quite literally know nothing. For this is the only thing to know
>the reason they are assholes, is because they feel like they KNOW something

Well this depends totally on the parents in question. Some people are raised by a mentally ill parent, and without a second parent to balance it out, the child grows into a major fuckup. But some kids will actually end up better off with a single parent, if the other was abusive.

It's not really something we can discuss at length, because even a bunch of near-identical traditional families all churn out different kids. Even within a single household, siblings are different.

I mean we can talk statistics, single-parent kids are more likely to have criminal records etc, this is likely due to being relatively poorer.

>>183890
That's unfortunate, I'm interested in learning both qualitative and quantitative data on the subject.

>But some kids will actually end up better off with a single parent, if the other was abusive.

You have the flower childs, who blossom despite their shit childhood.

I believe that by the nature of the question, you can't expect a homogeneous answer.
I mean, if the kid is raised by one parent, it's obvious that he'll be shaped on a very particular way depending on how the parent behaves. Trying to find things in common between such situations then becomes as difficult as trying to find things in common between all human beings.
If you're more specific about the type of behaviours the parent had, you can search for similar scenarios, and then find some things in common, but otherwise, I see it as a crapshoot.

I would say it's the recognition of worth or value in another person that leads to a change in relative behavior.

I would argue that respect, as applied between humans, exists in two basic forms - consistent and inconsistent.
The consistent form is a baseline of respect. The respect, or rather acknowledgment, that other individuals are individuals. They may look different from ourselves, live differently or think differently, but their 'worth', for lack of a better term, is equivalent. In other words equitable rather than equal. Yes I know in some contexts these terms are synonymous, but equitable has more to do with the treatment of a person or thing than any quality intrinsic to the person or thing. It is this kind of respect that is most often spoken of in matters of law and social interaction. Such as, "I disagree with your opinions, but respect your right to have them".
Inconsistent respect is purely subjective. Derived from a personal set of standards used to evaluate others. I consider it to be like art; nobody can really define it, but we all know it when we see it.

>>183684

> but we all know it when we see it.

No we don't. How it's defined is different from person to person.

>>183824
That was my point. I was using an old joke to reference the subjectivity.
"I don't know what art is, but I know it when I see it". The point being that each individual will have their own concept of what is, or is not deserving of respect above the baseline mentioned in the first part of my post.

>>183858
oh ok, I get it now. mb.