Old Geezer

Rad cap as you have done twice now you have called my posts "irrational" without posting evidence to support your claim.

certainly a large leap from Brain to Neocortex. Given the infancy of Neuroscience, its a thin claim to imply that the neocortex is the important part of the brain for "reason". I never spoke to its relevancy... The original poster wanted to know a little more about dolphins in the context of a discussion on reason. This is sure to be a point that will be raised of course not... I never said that... I was just trying to give the poster an idea of what is most likely to be brought up in conversation My point was that there is no reason to suspect that their brains are as developed as ours since ours are presumably so developed because we need tools to survive. I would love to know the methodology of an experiment that proved that.

A) Where do you expect this proof to come from??? Why wait for proof of abuse? Just how will we tell when the Political Embarassment is a result of the PATRIOT ACT versus a leak? clearly not enough not if they are rational they wouldnt... but I wouldnt expect much from agencies that..when they were given intel by israel regarding something potentially happening on 9-11 instead they investigated Israel. no... its to show what CAN happen... In fact egypts descent into a corrupt government was largely the result of its decision to remove what checks and balances they had left. A)How do you know? Its not as if you have any tribunal results to go by, or any access by the media, or reporting by the red cross. B)The argument that 1% of people (although that is an arbitrary number I dont know how you derived it since none have had tribunals yet) is not a "large percent of people" reaks of consequantialism.

Radcap A) its not supposed its actual, he links it on ihis site. I commented on his credentials as a psychologist, not his "psychological viewpoint" c) someones lack of knowledge about the theoretical influences in the field which he claims to speak certainly speaks to his credentials as a professional. A)I didn't say books, I said scientific reseearch. (or theory papers for that matter) Just as I do not assume that "state run media" are necessarilly printing false stories, I do not assume that "distance education" is not adequate. However, just as there are reasons to doubt that state run media stories have received the proper scrutiny, so to are there reasonsto suspect that Dr. Hurd's "research"(wherever that is) did not receive the proper scrutiny. (Those reasons include the fact that no Distance Learning center that I have had contact with applies much scrutiny, the lower GPA required for applicants, the minimal test scores required for applicants, and the lack of national licensure) Im not even sure if he has the approval of any group that recognizes psychologists. If the question is about who is more objectivist there is no question , But since this thread is about psychologists it certainly makes sense to refer one to a psychologist who has actually done research about the subject. Im sorry you got that impression.... His "work" in the field of psychology is not good....(If you can call a bunch of op-eds and a few self help books "work in pcyhology")Interesting maybe, witty perhaps, maybe even coherent, but by no means good as science

FYI While the articles Dr. Hurd posted on his site are worth perusing, there are reasons to view his credentials as a psychologist with some skepticism. A)He states that " Freudian view... is still the dominant influence on therapists today" This is absolutely and empircally untrue and has been for many years. The most influential schools of thought in among psychologists is the cognitive behavioral school. Research consistantly supports this. (If you doubt it flip through a Graduate School book some time and peruse what percentage of various schools faculty come from "psycho-analytic, or humanist or existential" schools of thought...or ask a psychologist what the most popular diagnostic tool for diagnosing depression is, its the Beck Depression Scale which is based on assessing whether patients assessments of their reality is accurate...) He has not apparently published any scientific research. (I didnt find any on his list of publications)) C) The saybrook Institute seems to be some sort of distance learning program.(and a rogerian leaning one at that) I suppose in theory they can work, but in my experience, the best Graduate programs are those that allow for the most active exchange between canidates and their supervisors... D)Im not even sure if he is licensed as a full fledged psychologist. E. Most of his ideas seem to stem from Beck and Ellis anyway, and those two have mountains of research to support their theory, so it might be worth just going straight to the source. That being said, his sight is extremely interesting and his articles make sense and are witty.

Well, the table of contents looks like it might be a good start... I guess it depends on what you are reading it for... If you are experiencing emotional pain you might want to consider purchasing a book which directly addresses those issues. If you are interested in it for philisophical reasons it might be best to see if you can hunt down a copy of his more theoretical works.... HOWEVER the beauty of a system like ellis's is that it's coherence/consistancy make it pretty easy to "Boil down" to core principles. What that means is that a great deal of his work is accessible via the web. you might, for instance first check out 12 irrational beliefs or what is REBT

A) a person is at this point in time considered "always a schizophrenic" it is only a question of whether it is presented as currently "in remission" or not. b)That would very much depend on whether or not he fits the definition at the moment, wouldnt it? I cant very well make a general statement about all PS at this moment in time... when the particular manifestation of their disease differs person to person There is not wide enough agreement about operationalizing this "test" on schizophrenics to know with a reasonable degree of certainty at a particular instance. The best we can assume is that they are human so they probably have some moments of lucidity and concept formation. "Your claim, sometimes they belong to the category of rational, sometimes to that of irrational" out of curiosity, can you accept that claim? "When they are irrational, government has no call protecting them from themselves." that was never my claim. My claim is that when most of their actions are erratic/irrational they are in a state where they might to hurt people (perhaps in a moment of rationality perhaps nott) my argument is not that they belong fully to the rational, but rather that any agent in the government is unable to accurately assess their rationality at any given time and thus it must go on the "best knowledge available" a)PS are humans, thus it is a safer assumption that they are rational at times. when Schizophrenia goes ""into long term remission" (which it often does in later life or upon medication) we can assess their rationality "an actual violation or threat of such. " if they are constantly making threats which dont make sense, how can we tell when they are serious or not???

False Choice. Is h20 a liquid, a solid, or a gas???? (you would have to test it a particular moment in time to tell but that test would only remain valid for that instant) Science has not advanced to the point where one can determine at any given instance whether a schizophrenic is volitional or rational. The most that we know is that a substantial amount of the time they are neither. "Snap Judgement" would be hampered in three ways; 1. the nature of the disorder is such that affect does not match thoughts, and words do not match behavior 2. Most law enforcement officers either do not have the time or the training to determine the intent, volition, or rationality of a PS behavior... the only way in which this level of supervision could be done is institutionalization which was much more expensive 3. Unless they were "going with their gut" the judgement would have to stem from what we know about schizophrenia, which is limited.

Is there a way to add Buddhism, hinduism, and Jedi to the poll?

Cust curious about whether objectiviststend to come from religious backgrounds or not

Here is what we know about Dolphins. 1. Their brains are more convuluted then ours (that is their are more neural pathways) When brains are more "wrinkled" or convuluted, the agent is able to complete more cognitive tasks, more complex cognitive tasks, and more abstract cognitive tasks. 2. Their brains are larger than ours. 3. Our brain to body weight ratio is larger than theirs 4. They dont have opposable thumbs and can definitely survive without tools 5. Because of their biological vulnerablity, like humans, they are highly social and have highly developed language skills 6. They have been able to learn our language, we have not been able to learn theirs.

The behavioral sciences not old enough to provide reliable evidence to predict how a schizophrenic might act. and as the story shows, even the "snap judgement" of the people at the subway were unable to predict the erratic behavior of a schizophrenic. The diagnostic criteria for a paranoid schizophrenic include disorganized and unpredictable behavior. Have you ever worked with them??? What do you know about them?? "There is no difference here between a paranoid schizophrenic and any other person. " LOL.

My suspicion is that the incentive lies not in acquiring a larger market share, but rather in acquiring products outside of the monopoly's original scope. this in and of itself wont increase quality/decrease price, but the resulting integration/support of itsproducts will. For instance, Media Domination in the written newspapers spurred a market for internet news. While they werent a monopoly in that area, there was incentive for dominant businesses to diversify their services into a growth area. Now written Newspapers are available free on line, and increased access is offered to transcripts speeches etc.... I guess thats not directly related to monopolies, but the point is that monopolies always have a direction in which they can grow

Ellis does apparently denounce objectivism,(and is not an objectivist) but mostly just what he saw as its "dogmatic" audience. As far as actual psychologists writing books, Ellis is one of the closest practitioners you can get to an objectionist. I guess the importance of Ellis is that he is considered the founder of the "cognitivist" school of psychology, which draws strongly on Objectivist principles, some of which I mentioned. In atlas shrugged Rand mentions psychologists that are critisized because "they dared to suggest that men can think" This is essentially what a cognitivist does. A cognitivist essentially believes that the chronology of things goes like this; A)The environmental stimuli comes first (such as a Girlfriend telling you its over) the Perception/Interpretation comes next (you decide it means nobody wants to date you or you decide it means that its over with her but you will still keep going and your life will be just fine you will find someone else to date) c) the behavioral response comes next. This is very much in line with an objectivist understanding of how people work. If you are capable of writing off what Ellis perceived as dogmatism as a mistake in thinking, you can accept most of the rest of his work as grounded in objectivist principles. If however this does not work for you you might want to look at the work of Aaron Beck.

In terms of Psychology, you might want to check out books by Albert Ellis. He is the founder of a school of therapy known as Ratioanal Emotive Behavior Therapy While not a full fledged objectivist, most of his theories/applications rest on objectivist principles. A) that thoughts are precursors to emotions. People will be happier if they eliminate irrational thoughts from their lives. C) People are capable of free will and are not slaves of their behavioral conditioning as behavioralists say, nor are they slaves of their early childhood experiences as psychodynamic thinkers assert, nor are they slaves of their emotions as humanists tend to believe. D their is an objective reality and people are capable of perceiving it accurately E. Religion is not grounded in reason and causes dysfunction in people's lives. (for instance he thought AA was evil because people suffered under the illusion that they were not in control of their lives, God was... he founded a group called Rational Recovery which tried to rationalize and secularize the 12 steps) F. It is possible for a therapist to be able to think more objectively than a student, but that a student may then learn to think objectively and thus be able to eventually sever his relationship with the therapist. Those are the ones that come to mind.

If you were talking on a level of "what is" you might be correct, but we are talking about the legal world where establishing a set point is constantly necessarry I wasn't speaking of a continuum in terms of the specific rationality of a specific act/thought. Instead I was speaking of a continuum of how often and to what extent people are able to think/act rationally. In any case, I dont see how you have addressed my other concerns (even if rationality isnt on a continnum, in some cases it can still appear in intervals and is not permanent)

Its not that clear cut because A) some mentally ill have the potential to recover (for instance if an infection which affected their thought process clears up) some mentally ill are rational when treated c) presumably unlike tigers, peoples rationality exists on a continuum (objectivists are more reasonable than quasi secular christians are more reasonable than fundamentalist christians are more reasonable than small children are more reasonable than paranoid schizophrenic patients)

False analogy... A)Poor people choose to steal , crazy people dont choose to be crazy. Poor people can be reasoned with... Crazy people by definition lack reason. C) the credible threat of imprisonment can be a deterrent for poor people who can understand what imprisonment is. It cant for the mentallyu ill D) Why not debate the actual line of reasoning instead of "similar" ones?

GC A)If the role of government is to protect individuals from physical force, doesnt protecting individuals from physical force from the mentally ill fall into that category? B)since outpatient care is actually much cheaper than institutionalization, (which would be required for the state to stop the patients from initiating force in the absence of state managed medication management) doesnt health care of the mentally sick REDUCE the taxpayer burden?

radcap does this mean a past initiation of force, (such as what would have led to previous hospitalizations?) Does this include presently ineffective initations of force? (as would be the case if someone was on the brink of a manic episode that may or may not escalate to an unacceptable level?) I am assuming you mean formerly medicated people stopping medication???? In the case of a bipolar not taking lithium, I am inclined to agree, because that blood-level medication usually restores people to equilibrium. But what about the case of a paranoid schizophrenic whose medication regimine stabilizes aggression but is not as effective with paranoid thought processe?. If they believe that the pills are poison from the CIA, and refuse to take the pills, are they "allowing" their impairment, or is it the problems with dopamine transmission or their third ventricle? What about as often happens with anti-psychotic medications, the impairment was the result of necessarry action by the state?

Screw it all, become a antiantitrust lawyer, write, and teach "philosophy of law" courses

I guess I had already assumed aggreement on that... What I was getting at is what responsibilities the state has when peoples irrationality poses a potential threat of initiation of force, etc. For instance, when a schizophrenic begins talking tangentially, demonstrating evidence of paranoid thought processes etc this is a sign that they are no longer on their medication.... and when they are no longer on their medication its sort of a craps shoot as to whether they will initiate force or not. more than half dont, but as the story I posted demonstrates thats a pretty dangerous gamble.

Ash... it was sort of a dance to not mention the easement on the property. Especially since easements carry with them an actual relaxation of key aspects of property rights.

The courts have recently ruled that to protect society, the court can force individuals into mental health treatment. Anyone who has ever seen a schizophrenic on Haldol then off Haldol knows that medications can increase people's ability to think rationally, perceive reality accurately, and to adhere to important social norms (such as not acting aggressively) Often on these boards it has been asserted that a society of rational individuals is in everyone's best interests. Further, we all seem to agree that initiation of force without a good reason is pretty destructive. These would seem to be reasons to encourage the state to protect its citizens by taking "pre emptive action" and forcing treatment. Yet at the same time, it seems that the courts have extended the power of the state to act not only when a "clear danger to selves or others" exists, as was the case under Tarasoff, but now when patients erratic behavior is deemed to be enough to justify forced treatment. This would seem to offer the danger that the state might infring on peoples rights to be act in ways that dont harm others. Yet sometimes this erratic behavior is a precursor to extremely dangerous behavior. What is the rights of the state under such conditions??? What are the Responsibilities of the state?

as a child care professional I'd like to add in some input. 1. The question was asked how does self interest play in..... any society, and thus the members of such society, which fails to protect and nurture its young is generally screwed because A)they generally die, thus leaving few able to care for us when degenerative diseases kick in. those that survive are often unable to exercise sound judgement (many of the Arab League Countries that are causing us so much problems for instance, their literacy rate is disgustingly low) 2. The Doctrine of "implied consent" works here. When people are in an irrational state (from being knocked unconscious during a robbery, from being young and neurologically undeveloped) The state often assumes that a "reasonable and prudent" person would make decisions in their best interest. the idea is that when competency is restored, choice is restored. (i.e. when the kid grows up and can be proven competent, or when the guy regains consciousness) Now nobody wants "uncle sam" deciding their best interests... Which is why the government is generally only permitted to act on a basic level, if somebody is denying a child the right to their basic life(food, water), or not making an effort to develop their ability to reason. (education)