MonDie

This is mostly intended as fun. I've been thinking that sometimes, depending on the action, the referent can be an idea. Unfortunately, this becomes complicated when actions are defined by subjective goals. What is the widely held viewpoint on sense & reference for mental predicates such as "believe in...", "love...", "am intrigued by..."? Suppose there is a red house (sense 1), and it might be a haunted house (sense 2). I kicked the red house. Kicking is a physical act, so it's the actual house. If it's haunted, then I kicked the haunted house. I believe in the red house. I think this referent is an idea. Whether this implies belief in the haunted house depends on what I believe the red house is. The principle of sense and reference operates on my idea instead. (Note: If you treat it as the actual thing, you can argue that I believe in all sorts of things.) Sometimes verbs denote physical actions, but sometimes they denote an intention behind the physical actions. I'm looking for the flashlight. Looking for the flashlight can involve turning my head, opening closets, tearing wallpaper, etc. The defining feature is my goal, which is in my mind, yet the verb denotes a physical act. This complicates the nature of the referent. I could try to disambiguate my goal: I'm looking for something I can believe is the flashlight. I'm looking for the flashlight, whatever it may be. Doesn't the latter version entail the former anyway? I will only believe that I'm working toward my subjective goal if I believe that what I'm to find will be the actual flashlight. This only adds more layers of complexity. I'm looking for her flashlight.

I wasn't trained for this!

I don't see your problem, Matt.

The universe is meaningful wherever we exist and have the technology and will to intervene. It's only meaningless if we give up.

What's the meaning of "meaningless" here? I think your pessimism is unrealistic.

But it's rational. It's rational when you're evaluating a state of affairs. From this perspective, a good state of affairs is one that has more happiness and less suffering. I don't know what perspective you are taking.

I can't experience my future suffering either, but I still use this moment to take measures to avoid it. I do so because I extrapolate from my own present experience.

I see two solutions to Matt's problem. (1) Accept that another's pleasure is as valuable as his own. (2) Accept another metaethical position. Ethical pragmatists hold that ethics can be improved through inquiry. In fact, viewing inquiry as foundational to ethics can supplement rather than supplant. You can hold both positions. I think it's nonsense that Matt separates "pain" from that which "feels bad". They're both experiences, they're the same experience, and neither results from the other.

Indeed. My own experiences are all that I take for granted. All you could say is that you personally never experience pleasure with pain. If Matt claimed that pleasure and pain cannot coexist, it wasn't in the OP. They can choose to behave that way, bu the rational idea is that all pain and pleasure are equal regardless of who will experience them, and as such, rational people will punish the selfish and the vengeful.

Strange, does science tell you how to distinguish red from blue, up from down, color from sound? Some things are and must be taken for granted else one gets an infinite regress, and this includes the mere fact that one has mental experiences. I can't explain why mental experiences are a preferable foundation, but we all know they are. They're remarkably involuntary.

I need to block this forum as soon as I can again. Analogous dilemma: You can choose any number 1-5 for space A, but only odd numbers [1,3,5] for space B. This is small enough to draw a tree diagram, and it comes out to 12 possibilities regardless which space precedes. I suppose you could retain the original order and instead weight it according to the probability of selecting a vowel, but I'm too tired to see whether it would work.

screw it new thread, later

I just read a good paper, so here goes. I don't know of any unambiguously beneficial effects, but decades of research have consistently shown that experimental "mortality salience" manipulations produce "worldview defense", i.e. they trigger people to give more exaggerated appraisals of ingroup and outgroup members, and to cling to their cultural norms or mores. Although the debate mostly centers on whether these effects are specific to death cues, which this post will focus on, there may be other effects such as exaggerated appraisals of visual or auditory imagery. Unconscious Vigilance: Worldview Defense Without Adaptations for Terror, Coalition, or Uncertainty Management (Holbrook, Sousa, & Hahn-Holbrook) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3345305/ Terror management theory (TMT) spurred this research. Most terror management research produces the effects by asking people to write about their own death, although other manipulations can work, such as conducting the experiment near a graveyard. Holbrook et al's intro explains that the exploration of alternative hypotheses has identified other successful manipulations, such as writing about being robbed (coalitional hypothesis) or producing a state of uncertainty (uncertainty management hypothesis). Furthermore, Holbrook et al produced similar effects by priming people with angry faces (study 3) or the word "pain" (study 4). These researchers, in testing their unconconscious vigilance hypothesis, furthermore found that worldview defense is not the only psychological effect. Mortality salience manipulations also produced exaggerated appraisals of pleasing or displeasing sounds (study 1) or photographs (study 2) , measured as the high (favorable) ratings minus the low (unfavorable) ratings. As explained in the latter two sections of the introduction, mortality salience (MS) manipulations do not produce changes in pulse rate, skin conductance, or reported affect**, yet... **Is it possible that death cues can effect mood in either direction, increasing dispersion of the data without changing the average? No, these phenomena are not distinct to Western culture. Age-Related Differences in Responses to Thoughts of One’s Own Death: Mortality Salience and Judgments of Moral Transgressions http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2396593/

Hey, I know lots of colors. There's red, and then there's dark red, gray-red, orangish-red, bluish-red, etc. returning November 21

Adding to Swansont. The laws of chance dictate that flukes will occur. Fluke rate = Frequency of developmental problems multiplied by number of vaccines recieved per day (or 2 days, or every 12 hours, etc.). Roughly

Apologies, I was (supposed to be) on hiatus. For clarity, they reiterate the psychological definition of "aggression". So anger channeled productively would not be aggression. However, we can ask whether aggression is just one aspect of a broader range of effects, and whether there's an equally undesireable opposite to aggressive behavior. You're suggesting that we must stop aggression by responding to it with aggression. However, if your enemy operates on the same principle, then this only creates a vicious cycle. But you could distinguish types of aggressive behavior.

I shouldn't be posting, but I think you're all missing something. The problem is God's omnipotence. Re: Delta, predetermination implies that other factors, e.g. how God made them, underpin their choices. If God had control over those factors, then he's to blame. He's arguably more to blame than they are. IMO punishing someone after they're dead is useless anyway.

^OP So what? God's still punishing me when he's actually the one to blame.

Here it is. EFFECTS OF VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES ON AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR, AGGRESSIVE COGNITION, AGGRESSIVE AFFECT, PHYSIOLOGICAL AROUSAL, AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature (Anderson & Bushman, 2001) http://public.psych.iastate.edu/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/01AB.pdf published in Psychological Science Vol. 12.

Moontanman!!! It's hard for me to plot murder with you making these advances. Returning on Halloween. Apology for the previous, provocative song.

Chivers et al. accounted for that by showing films of strap-ons and/or airing acts that can be performed between any couple.

It's burning me up inside!! Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men. (Rieger, Chivers, Bailey) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16102058 Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men revisited (Rosenthal, Sylva, Safron, Bailey) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21763395 They do exist.

So even atheists do it... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2787468/ PW tries to force a conclusion when in fact the rational response is: I need to gather more information before concluding. e.g. > and blocking SFN... NOW!

The latter. It's (circular) Bayesian reasoning.

I forgot that I wanted to post this. fruitless Splicing Specifies Male Courtship Behavior in Drosophila (Demir and Dickson, 2005) - Cell vol. 121 http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674%2805%2900407-1 "Remarkably, fruM and fruΔtra females court wild-type females [...] they perform the male courtship ritual, and, like normal males, direct their courtship toward females (Demir and Dickson, 2005)." It's hard to imagine how these mutations could persist unless they're advantageous in males, but it shows that it can happen. Furthermore, mutations that cause this should be very rare unless there are many different genes that converge on the same pathway. Given the research I've read, some men may be more bisexual than others. However, research with the penile plethysmograph does suggest that true bisexuality is like true ambidexterity, everybody has a preference one way or the other, regardless what their subjective reports say. Returning the 17th, for the third time, MonDie!!!