Rick Horton

and?

And marriage is faith based.

It's not faith that you are married. It's faith that you will be glad you're married, or that your spouse will stay glad, or that you will always be married.

Prove: To establish consistency with that which exists independent of human awareness by presentation of argument or evidence. Yes. I agree with that definition. And it cannot be proven that anything exists except for my experience, which is my only provable reality.

It is also possible dragons will fly out of my ass and I will have no awareness of it. I do not claim time is real (as we measure and name it), but some kinds of ordering of events are real due to cause and effect. That is all I need to complete the proof of objective reality and I will explain why ordering cannot be denied. You and I both seem to accept that when you are "told" about what exists previous to your existence, you are being told about a thing outside your experience - something other than that which you can know or prove first-hand. But this claim you are saying, that your reality is limited to what you experience is similarly unknowable and unprovable. How is it you can know your reality has this limitation of sensory experience alone? I am just a guy here typing, these words are part of your experience, yet to you they do not prove I exist you only admit the possibility I exist. I get that. But how do you prove your main point (reality being limited to experience)? If that point is provable, supply the proof or else you are asking us all to accept such a thing on faith. But if that point is unprovable, then you must admit the possibility that your reality is not constrained by your experience because you think faith is a bad way to go. In other words, you seem to be taking the unprovability of things outside your experience as proof that your reality lacks such things. That seems more like faith, because you are accepting it without proof. By ordering events in your experience, first you have a sensory experience, and then you say "yes, this experience is part of my reality and I know it now". I am not telling you what you experience. You are telling me experience "only goes back as far as my memory". But you have memories of the past and do you have those memories "right now at this moment"? If not, do you deny your memories exist? If your memories do exist "now", then please observe that you are admitting to two distinct classes of events: experiences you remember, and experiences that seem "new". An ordering of events is assumed here, even if it is only a temporary mental distinction you are feeling right now. So you must either discard memory as reliable and say it has nothing to do with your reality (memory is an act of faith so you shouldn't remember why you should trust your senses at all), or else admit that events can sometimes be ordered and faith is not required for such an ordering to exist in your reality. If ordering of events exists in your reality, I believe my argument about the origin of you (hence objective reality) stands because you have a first experience (or memory if you wish) that has an origin which you can't deny is real and proven to be real. LOL. I haven't tried to prove anything beyond my experience of reality. And you're stepping away from what I said. My memory is part of my experience of reality. Of course my memory is real. How does that make a difference? It doesn't do anything to prove something beyond my experience. And accessing my memory happens in the present, not the past or future, so memory is right now too. It's probably a good indication that there is a past and future, and another indication that there is an external reality independent of my skull, but an indication is not law, nor is it fact. There is far too much uncertainty, and I don't study reality based on uncertainty or faith.

It is also possible dragons will fly out of my ass and I will have no awareness of it. I do not claim time is real (as we measure and name it), but some kinds of ordering of events are real due to cause and effect. That is all I need to complete the proof of objective reality and I will explain why ordering cannot be denied. You and I both seem to accept that when you are "told" about what exists previous to your existence, you are being told about a thing outside your experience - something other than that which you can know or prove first-hand. But this claim you are saying, that your reality is limited to what you experience is similarly unknowable and unprovable. How is it you can know your reality has this limitation of sensory experience alone? I am just a guy here typing, these words are part of your experience, yet to you they do not prove I exist you only admit the possibility I exist. I get that. But how do you prove your main point (reality being limited to experience)? If that point is provable, supply the proof or else you are asking us all to accept such a thing on faith. But if that point is unprovable, then you must admit the possibility that your reality is not constrained by your experience because you think faith is a bad way to go. In other words, you seem to be taking the unprovability of things outside your experience as proof that your reality lacks such things. That seems more like faith, because you are accepting it without proof. By ordering events in your experience, first you have a sensory experience, and then you say "yes, this experience is part of my reality and I know it now". I am not telling you what you experience. You are telling me experience "only goes back as far as my memory". But you have memories of the past and do you have those memories "right now at this moment"? If not, do you deny your memories exist? If your memories do exist "now", then please observe that you are admitting to two distinct classes of events: experiences you remember, and experiences that seem "new". An ordering of events is assumed here, even if it is only a temporary mental distinction you are feeling right now. So you must either discard memory as reliable and say it has nothing to do with your reality (memory is an act of faith so you shouldn't remember why you should trust your senses at all), or else admit that events can sometimes be ordered and faith is not required for such an ordering to exist in your reality. If ordering of events exists in your reality, I believe my argument about the origin of you (hence objective reality) stands because you have a first experience (or memory if you wish) that has an origin which you can't deny is real and proven to be real. LOL. I haven't tried to prove anything beyond my experience of reality.

There is nothing wrong, in my opinion, with your concerns. Marriage and relationships are institutions like all others. It seems right to me that you are using your interpretation of what you experience to guide you to your conclusions. Marriage is an agreement between two people. Why did it come about? Hmm.... I don't know, and it can only be guessed that it provides some shelter somehow. But that doesn't mean anything really, if that shelter doesn't seem safe to you. If you keep seeing people run into paper castles to escape tornadoes then why question yourself when you say, OH NO. Not me. I think I'll head toward that brick castle called independence, where at least I have a solid idea of where I'll stand after the storm. You can NEVER completely trust another subject in your reality. You can have a certain amount of trust based on that subjects reputation in your experience, but even that, you can't control. Marriage comes down to faith. Do you want to live your life and seek stability, happiness, and truth, based on faith, or consistency and reason, based on your experience of reality? That is the most honest question. The question will piss people off, and they will say it's heartless, or cowardly, but really it has no different conotation than saying you don't believe in Jesus....

Some people do benefit from these medications.

I have a problem with what you said because you based it on almost no facts yet you still put it forth very strongly as if it was based on facts and we're on a board supposedly dedicated to promoting empiricism and reason as its highest mission - even higher than promoting any particular views on childrearing. I think that's important to point out. If someone did the same thing to support something you disagree with you'd call it out that they had little evidence to back up their opinion. Day after day if people here see someone promoting religion without facts to base it on, they jump all over it as irrational. It's only when the same standard is applied on issues usually agreed upon here that you think it's unwarranted. This isn't a professional website for psychologists, correct. It's a website for philosophical discussion based on empiricism, that was my understanding. So when you put forth an opinion not based on empiricism, I pointed it out. That would be expected and appropriate given the forum and its stated purpose. I agree the best option would have been to suggest the foster parents stop spanking the other kids. And I wonder if the foster parents considered that or if social services made that suggestion and tried to work that out before taking the kid away. That would seem to me an ideal outcome. You want to talk about suggest? What the hell kind of freedom is that, anyways? So they suggest the parents don't spank? What then? If the parent's say, no, it's my family and I'll raise them the way MY morals and reasoning tells me to, then what? Should some "people" who don't agree FORCE the parents to stop spanking, or force a little guy out of the family that doesn't mind it? What the fuck, man? That's really contradictory for the NAP. So the parents spank their kids, and other people get to decide that: 1. Spankings are force, so we get to take your children by force 2. My reasoning is dead solid proof that spankings are terrible for children no matter how "YOU" define it, so I can tell you you are morally and logically less worthy of your freedoms. Being puritans about morals can be really fucked up, especially when it comes to breaking families apart. I "suggest" that anarchists practice what they preach and not start scare movements that infringe on peoples desires. For one thing, morals are a group of concepts that come about as a result of society. Without society people just do what they want to do. Morals are the idea introduced to people to put them in a certain state of mind to align a community so things run smooth, but morals don't exist outside of communities, states, nations, countries, clubs, groups, churches, and the workplace, all which are objects of States, and in which are shaped by the States people, who are shaped by the State itself over many years of conditioning, or sudden mass trauma. So somebody preaching that spankings make for bad parental methods is no different to me than forcing will on me by a disagreeing party whether right or wrong, which matters fuck all not... Confusing since I was offering a suggestion to AVOID breaking a family apart. Instead they DID break the family apart. I was offering an alternative that I hope would have led to a better outcome. Also yes spankings are force, that's a physical fact. The NAP says you should not initiate force. Using force to prevent someone else who is already using force is not initiation so it is allowed under the NAP as I understand it. The NAP doesn't disallow force, it disallows aggression - the initiation of force on someone who is not themselves using force. This is why I sometimes wish FDR would just come out explicitly as having an agenda rather than say it's just philosophy. Most people here oppose spanking. I do too though I'm a little less militant about it than some of the people here. I see this as a rare case where, due to some pretty strange circumstances, there was something non-physically-violent yet possibly even worse than spanking which took place and even spanking would have probably been less damaging. And I agree with you again.

That seems fine only if you an eternal being. If you are not eternal, in your theory you must deny your own existence. Here's why: Your experiences 1000 years ago did not exist, so there was no reality back then under your theory. Once that is accepted, it is clear the reality that generated your conception and birth (which by your own claim are limited to your experience) also did not exist. So how can you be here on Earth now? Are your experiences eternal, or are you admitting there is something to reality that is outside your experience? I don't have a theory. You are telling me what I experience, now? You're trying to say that you know something about my experience? Let alone what it would be 1000 years ago? And to complicate your analysis even further, your analysis gives some form of meaning to the concept of time, inwhich only can be experienced by me in a way that is consistent to my experience itself which only goes back as far as my memory. Beyond my memory I can only be "told" what was previous to my existence and that is told to me, whos experience is the only provable thing there is "to me" since I will never be able to observe anything beyond my experience. Even what you tell me "is" something I'm experiencing. Nothing is clear "except" what I am experiencing "right now at this moment" and even that isn't exactly clear. Time itself is a concept based on faith. Time cannot be proven to exist because I can only experience the moment. The past and future are both equal abstracts. Every fact is an abstract. Based on what seems to consistently work in navigating my actions for the best results I have to refer to my experience, and what seems to be binding in that reality. I'll say it for the final time, and ask others to refer back to this statement so it doesn't get weird. I do STRONGLY believe that I'm not the only person alive, or anything. I do STRONGLY believe that everything else exists, and that if I stopped existing, everybody else would still be here, and they would keep having their own experience of reality. BUT, I cannot ever prove that. You cannot ever prove that. NOBODY can EVER prove that. And because of that, there IS always (ALWAYS) during my observation of experience itself, be an uncertainty that is far greater than if I'm rigorous and observe from first principals. First principal being, and ONLY being that I know I exist because I'm experiencing "this", and I know that there are things in my experience that I seem not to be able to control. Whether or not I can control them does not make them less, or more a part of my experience. It makes me focus on how to communicate with those subjects as a part of my experience. I don't deny that all of what I experience is part of the nexxus of whatever this is I'm experiencing (whether or not it's independent of my observation, which frankly doesn't effect me anyway) To observe with total confidence that there is an independent reality, existence, whatever besides what I am experiencing requires FAITH. I don't think faith is a good place to try and observe reality from. SO, as I said, I communicate with my reality, through my senses, and interpret whatever seems to work or not in this reality I'm experiencing. It doesn't make me eternal. That doesn't make any sense. I can't know. You can't know. If you claim to know something you cant know, you are ingaging in a faith based set of "facts", just like every other faith based religion. I'm pretty confident that when I die, you all go on as you were, but this CANNOT be known or proven, so pretty confident JUST. DOESN'T. CUT IT, when observing reality.

I'll rephrase. When I read your words, then refer to the definitions of the relevant terms, I come to the conclusion that you are a Solipsist. Your denying this fact in no way changes the conclusion. Nothing you've said makes me think otherwise. or, in the vernaclar again, if the shoe fits, wear it. I'm not a Solipsist, although there are strong similarities on the surface. I actually have a strong belief that this isn't just all going on in my mind. But "impirically" I realize that their is no way to substantiate it. You can't. I can't. Science can't. And faith is not a good point to study reality from. We all agree on that.

I have a problem with what you said because you based it on almost no facts yet you still put it forth very strongly as if it was based on facts and we're on a board supposedly dedicated to promoting empiricism and reason as its highest mission - even higher than promoting any particular views on childrearing. I think that's important to point out. If someone did the same thing to support something you disagree with you'd call it out that they had little evidence to back up their opinion. Day after day if people here see someone promoting religion without facts to base it on, they jump all over it as irrational. It's only when the same standard is applied on issues usually agreed upon here that you think it's unwarranted. This isn't a professional website for psychologists, correct. It's a website for philosophical discussion based on empiricism, that was my understanding. So when you put forth an opinion not based on empiricism, I pointed it out. That would be expected and appropriate given the forum and its stated purpose. I agree the best option would have been to suggest the foster parents stop spanking the other kids. And I wonder if the foster parents considered that or if social services made that suggestion and tried to work that out before taking the kid away. That would seem to me an ideal outcome. You want to talk about suggest? What the hell kind of freedom is that, anyways? So they suggest the parents don't spank? What then? If the parent's say, no, it's my family and I'll raise them the way MY morals and reasoning tells me to, then what? Should some "people" who don't agree FORCE the parents to stop spanking, or force a little guy out of the family that doesn't mind it? What the fuck, man? That's really contradictory for the NAP. So the parents spank their kids, and other people get to decide that: 1. Spankings are force, so we get to take your children by force 2. My reasoning is dead solid proof that spankings are terrible for children no matter how "YOU" define it, so I can tell you you are morally and logically less worthy of your freedoms. Being puritans about morals can be really fucked up, especially when it comes to breaking families apart. I "suggest" that anarchists practice what they preach and not start scare movements that infringe on peoples desires. For one thing, morals are a group of concepts that come about as a result of society. Without society people just do what they want to do. Morals are the idea introduced to people to put them in a certain state of mind to align a community so things run smooth, but morals don't exist outside of communities, states, nations, countries, clubs, groups, churches, and the workplace, all which are objects of States, and in which are shaped by the States people, who are shaped by the State itself over many years of conditioning, or sudden mass trauma. So somebody preaching that spankings make for bad parental methods is no different to me than forcing will on me by a disagreeing party whether right or wrong, which matters fuck all not...

A validated child wouldn't observe his siblings being spanked and conclude that a spanking was the thing missing from his life; to give him a sense of belonging, of worth, and of knowing that he mattered. I suspect that he desired a spanking because he thought that he was missing out on the attention that his siblings were getting. I concur. What a lot of people don't realize is that children who behave badly are more often than not doing so in order to get attention, because when they aren't acting out, they're ignored. In this case, the child is looking for attention in the only way he sees any being given. This behavior isn't unique to humans, either. My son and daughter in law were recently given a dog because her sister decided she no longer wanted it. It's about six months old and has been kept in a kennel at night and while the familty is gone (which I vehemently oppose). When the dog was allowed out, the only family member who payed any attention to her was the son and then only to play aggressively with her. Now that she's with us, she stays on the bed with our other two dogs and when someone approaches the bed, she becomes aggressive and will even bite lightly in order to be paid attention. I should say, would become aggressive because we have been stopping her aggression firmly and instead holding and petting her along with the other two and walla.... she's less and less agressive each day. Like the child in this story, she needs attention and until now, she only knew of one way to get it. I can validate this. I've had similar experiences with people and pets, too.

I don't have a specific claim of what happened. I try to remain as unbiased as I can until I have enough information to make a judgment and this story didn't offer that. That's something I wish happened more on this board. I wish people looked to Socrates more often and said "I don't know" a little more often. I didn't say there was no underlying motivation though. I said my best guess would be that the motivation was that his need to belong was far stronger than his need to avoid some possibly minor physical pain. This is understandable having been an orphan until that point. And as for him honing in on the spanking as the symbol of belonging, you seem to assume that the parents pushed this idea somehow. It could well be that he just saw that as the only difference and so it became a focus. If something else was the only difference, perhaps that would have become a focus. The content didn't seem to matter, it was what it represented. What I find odd is that when I read the story I thought he must have had a lot of trauma from being orphaned. The foster family sounded like a great improvement for him. So much so that being taken away from them probably damaged him even more than any spanking would have, especially under those kinds of circumstances. To me it seemed an example of how sometimes a spanking isn't the worst thing in the world. Depending on someone's particular vulnerabilities, something else could be much more damaging to them than a spanking. But right away two people start zeroing in on the foster family as if they did something wrong. But I didn't see anything in the story about them doing anything wrong with him. If I was going to look anywhere for the source of his pains, I'd look back to how he was orphaned and how that affected him. You say "You posted a link to a story on a discussion forum that is very well known for the study and discussion of childrearing practices." I'll say this yet again. This board promotes itself, above all, as a philosophy discussion, a search for truth. If this is the case, empiricism and remaining unbiased should be far more important than any particular view on any topic. If a particular viewpoint on childrearing takes precedence over an unbiased empirical search for truth, then it is false advertising. If so, FDR should be promoted as an organization that above all has a particular agenda and not under the guise of a philosophical search for truth. Which is it? Which takes precedence? The interesting paradox here, is if he wanted to be spanked, but wasn't, were his foster parents neglecting him? It's easy to claim some moral high ground on what is healthy behavior or not, but I mean the kid wanted spankings. Does that make him crazy or mentally ill? I'd say that it's not really anybody's business but his, and for him to be removed from his foster parents was "weird". Should they have spanked him? Probably not, because if he wanted to get spanked it wouldn't really be a punishment, but still that doesn't give anybody the moral superiority to say that somebody who asks for a beating is somehow less moral. After all, did he hit anybody else? Is it somebody's moral authority to claim who is sane and who is insane? Who is immoral, who is moral? Who is better, who is worse? I don't think so. I think every man has the personal authority to rule his reality the best way he sees fit, and either succeed or fail based on his own actions. Sanity is irrelevent.

I don't have a specific claim of what happened. I try to remain as unbiased as I can until I have enough information to make a judgment and this story didn't offer that. That's something I wish happened more on this board. I wish people looked to Socrates more often and said "I don't know" a little more often. I didn't say there was no underlying motivation though. I said my best guess would be that the motivation was that his need to belong was far stronger than his need to avoid some possibly minor physical pain. This is understandable having been an orphan until that point. And as for him honing in on the spanking as the symbol of belonging, you seem to assume that the parents pushed this idea somehow. It could well be that he just saw that as the only difference and so it became a focus. If something else was the only difference, perhaps that would have become a focus. The content didn't seem to matter, it was what it represented. What I find odd is that when I read the story I thought he must have had a lot of trauma from being orphaned. The foster family sounded like a great improvement for him. So much so that being taken away from them probably damaged him even more than any spanking would have, especially under those kinds of circumstances. To me it seemed an example of how sometimes a spanking isn't the worst thing in the world. Depending on someone's particular vulnerabilities, something else could be much more damaging to them than a spanking. But right away two people start zeroing in on the foster family as if they did something wrong. But I didn't see anything in the story about them doing anything wrong with him. If I was going to look anywhere for the source of his pains, I'd look back to how he was orphaned and how that affected him. You say "You posted a link to a story on a discussion forum that is very well known for the study and discussion of childrearing practices." I'll say this yet again. This board promotes itself, above all, as a philosophy discussion, a search for truth. If this is the case, empiricism and remaining unbiased should be far more important than any particular view on any topic. If a particular viewpoint on childrearing takes precedence over an unbiased empirical search for truth, then it is false advertising. If so, FDR should be promoted as an organization that above all has a particular agenda and not under the guise of a philosophical search for truth. Which is it? Which takes precedence? Again. I agree.

Let me ask again, just this last time and I wont press for an answer if nobody wants. Do you believe that trying to discern reality based on faith is useful?

Well, in the vernacular, he's saying "If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, odds are, it is a duck. Saying 'no, I'm a rabbit' ain't going to fool no one." That didn't help me understand what he's trying to communicate to me. I don't even know what you mean. You made it more complicated, actually.

I'm having a difficult time figuring out where you're coming from. Do you agree that faith is a bad place to observe reality from, or not?

Also, this is a pretty good video by a guy talking about Solipsism, and although, I'm not one, there are good points in it.

By the way I'm not a Solipsist at all. I "believe" things actually do exist outside of my imagination. But that is still a belief, unprovable, so to look at life and truth from first principals is less meaningful when you base every observation on faith. Looking at life starting from what is provable will ALWAYS give you better results.

It's natural for me to understand that nothing outside of my experience can be proven. I'm pretty sure everybody has their own reality and that they effect each others, but it doesn't matter because reality isn't going to exist without me at all. Not in a way that matters.

That is not reality. Isn't that experience? Reality and experience are distinct, which can be proven by the origin of consciousness. If you equate reality with the senses and experience, then there is no mechanism for becoming conscious. Once unconscious (or yet to become born), a person can never wake up because they lack the awareness to create the experience of waking up. It is chicken and egg. Physical reality must do the job of generating awareness, because there are times we do not have these senses you speak of. Reality "as a purely mental process" is not sufficient, it is a mindfuck taught to us by colleges and new age jewelry stores. I don't understand you. I equate reality with what I experience. Of course. If I don't experience it in any way at all then it isn't reality.

What's your point?

It's flabbergasting that in all your speculation, based on no evidence (and not even bothering to read the story) the only possibility you leave out is that he simply felt left out in that one area and wanted to fit in. I think that shows quite a bit of bias. You admit you don't have empirical evidence and, in fact, argue that it could not be obtained in any way. And yet you then go on to draw conclusions. Perhaps in other places I wouldn't harp on this but this is a website dedicated explicitly to empiricism so it's sort of frustrating seeing this kind of biased premature conclusion-drawing here of all places. But it just once again shows the point that when it comes to one of a couple of the hot button issues on this site, empiricism goes out the window and it's just ideology for some. I agree

If I'm not attracted to a woman the only way it would be possible to have sex with her is to fantasize about an attractive sexual partner.