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Neurosophist

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Everything posted by Neurosophist

  1. Perhaps there should be a moderator's oligarchy for situations such as this
  2. I assume your basis for acceptance being the default is because you do not see it as in anyway impacting on any non-consenting adults, unless there should be any other reason...
  3. Is the portrayal of this fellow's impertinence in referring by only the first name also as Miss Rand would have thought of it, a common policy among all objectivist devotees, or only a policy in this forum?
  4. California, while recently becoming a bastion of at least democratic electoral power, was not always associated with liberalism. With such a broad area and such a large portion of the population, many different beliefs are represented in it. For instance, the Governator...
  5. I think the statement made was merely facetious
  6. I second the explicating, refining and bolstering of rules of behavior, they should be on the homepage.
  7. 44% of Americans are on medication according to the recent cnn poll.
  8. Ah, looking backward, the work that at once introduced a rudimentary credit card and at the same time said that it would effectively be useless, as there would be so much plenty that no one could dream of using all their capitol.
  9. Perhaps you could actually take it as a threat, but since it is only informing you of some sort of case specific illusory correlation, perhaps you should ask the originator for some more statistically significant data on people who do and do not send on the letter. It is important to be rigorous when attending to probabilities. You could also simply thank the originator for giving you some free scrap paper as well as proving that the postal service is up to snuff.
  10. Neurosophist

    Euthenasia

    It seems noteworthy to point out that non-voluntary is a somewhat rare instance, in that it is difficult to determine whether a person will regain function, 'pull through', or in the long run, some means of retrieving them from their coma will be made available, a la 'awakenings'. Also, it is difficult in cases where you must resort back to the patient's original beliefs, where they are not strictly stated (besides the fact that what one says months or years in advance may not correspond with their thinking in the moments or situation where they become incapable of voicing their choice).
  11. It seems that without at least some form of posting of the 'rules', you can expect many more of the 'wrong sort of people'.
  12. And yet, there are still requirements of the mother in terms of respect of life and consciousness. The mother, were she to neglect the child's needs, such as the need not to be administered excessive amounts of alcohol, would again be found accountable for her actions. Personhood, as you call it, deserves certain rights, but so too do certain aspects of civility on the part of the benefactor.
  13. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition Generative, adjective, Linguistics. Able to generate, generative grammar, A (generative) grammar of a language is a theory or set of statements which tells us in a formal and explicit way which strings of the basic elements of the language are permitted, A generative grammar is based upon certain fundamental kernel sentences, out of which the language builds up its elaborate structure by various techniques of permutation, replacement, addition and deletion You focus on the most meaningless of quibbles and avoid at all the possibility that your theory of animal attributes can be confronted. I'm sure you'll have some impressive database which will aid you in discounting this too, so you need not reply.
  14. Dynamicism= The ability to add new words to language Generativeness= The ability to utilize syntactic structure to create novel sentences Displacement= The ability to abstract utilizing language The latter half of the Determinism is comprehensive argument you conveniently left out was that which said determinism can not spontaneously become undetermined, one can not go from actions which are caused by prior events to actions which are not cause by the past. If you would like to dredge up past arguments, how about the evidence you once proposed as valid, that action precedes neurological activity? Care to expound that for your audience?
  15. Beyond quips, I see that none dare respond to anything I have said regarding animal capability toward language, nor volition's origins.
  16. I'm using it in a very lay way, ie, last night I subjectively decided that I should sleep at 12, my body/the conditions surrounding my sleep decided objectively be more like 1.
  17. Point of order, I told you that you should know that everyone is accountable for the fact that they are not working towards 'curing' death and that it should be at the top of everyone's list, if indeed life is as good as you say it is. My point however, was that determinism is a comprehensive system- if a system is determined at time 0, you can't presume that it will become undetermined at time 1, much as you are positing with life. So either show me how we all 'grow a soul' or otherwise explain this instantaneous creation of material (either within the brain or wherever you are going to posit this volition lies)
  18. Motivation is all well and good and certainly how well you're feeling determines when you subjectively decide you can/will get up, but people definitely have set points for the amount of sleep their body prefers which are not easy to alter. You also get microsleeps during days in which you stay up, which are sort of waking states when your brain waves look as if they are sleeping. Consider that we could just as well be sleeping 1.5 hr intervals 5 times a day, its not feasible mainly because of the diurnal cycle. A tactic many people try is to get an hour or so nap toward the middle of the day when body rhythms have slowed down. When this is done regularly you could reduce the amount of sleep you need at night, in one sitting, which would be required to be awake in any substantive sense of the word.
  19. Explain how animal behavior (completely deterministic supposedly) can EVOLVE into human choice (not at all determined apparently) If language is an example of a conceptual faculty then the dynamic, generativeness and displacement of many animals' use of language would most certainly qualify them for abstraction and thus volition
  20. If gender (note, not sex) is a social construct, meaning that society tells you in what capacity you can act in regards to your sex, then wouldn't one's own concept of how much of a valuer or someone who was being valued also be determined by society? Could not a female become such a valuer and therefore qualify for the attributes you say are necessary to a president?
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