Donnadogsoth

But concepts like 'love' and 'justice' have no picture available, in the sense that we can picture a bar of chocolate. "Picturing" is more akin to "imagining" -- not conceptualizing. A concept requires a minimum of TWO objects to establish a relation. When mentally picturing an object like a chocolate bar, you are imagining, not conceptualizing. That is because a bar of chocolate is an object-- it has form. We can only 'picture' something with shape. Love & justice have no shape/boundary/form that can be illustrated or imagined, they can only be conceived of and understood. A bar of chocolate is an object, whether real or imagined-- whether it exists or is only imagined. So, the term concept cannot be defined as 'mental picture'. I have mental pictures of love and justice. They're not transcribable pictures that I can draw out clearly for you, but they're there. Search around in your mind when you hold before you "love" and you'll probably find you have some mental furniture associated with it, that it's not just an invisible blank in place of anything. Indeed, consider what it means when your "mind goes blank". No concepts left, no?

Concept = mental picture. If you can mentally picture a bar of chocolate, you have conceptualised it.

You're being intentionally obtuse. I'm done with you.

Try rereading post #7. This idea shouldn't be that difficult to fathom for normal, intelligent people. Once you've understood it, rephrase it however you desire if you think how I have phrased it is confusing. (It's not, but you're making it out as if it were.)

I'm guessing you support the feminist narrative about sexual conditioning (Type)? Baron-Cohen talks about the existence of sexual Type and its suppression, leading possibly to psychic pain? Or better, such suppression plausibly leads to what Bruce K. Alexander terms "psychosocial dislocation" akin to what happens when a group is bereft of cultural, linguistic, and religious continuity which increases its vulnerability to expressions of "poverty of the spirit" such as addictive behaviours.

Given that gullibility on a national or species-wide level is also genetically disadvantageous, do you hold out any hope for the human brain having evolved a large-scale gullibility defense?

You're not helping dsayers. If you want to help, understand, then advise.

Try understanding first, finding logical flaws in the presentation later. It's really very simple. Traditional understanding is that men and women are intrinsically psychologically different, hence the different sex-roles or sets of sex-roles men and women have filled throughout recorded history. Feminist understanding is that there are no intrinsic psychological differences between men and women and therefore all sex differences are inculcated and therefore capable and worthy of dismantlement, creating an androgynous society. My question is, if sex-differences were intrinsic, how would we know? And my answer is, we would know if the dismantlement of the sex-differences through government and media propaganda and the concordant popular shift in consciousness it tweedles, leads to an overall malaise in the populace.

Yes, Marxism is a byproduct of Christendom too, as is Capitalism. I would like to know if there is an Indian counterpart to Stefan, and if so, where did he get his ideas.

"Biological imperative" would be the biological need for food. "Instinct" would be the psychological drive to seek out food. One expresses an instinct through physical or mental activity. Examples of direct instinctual expressions are supping and cogitating. Examples of indirect instinctual expressions for: (a) the food-instinct might be anger, collecting images of food, talking about food. (b) the cogitation-instinct might be confusion, contempt for logic, and vulnerability to illogical ideals.

Where is the Indian or Chinese anarcho-capitalist movement then? It might exist, but dollars for doughnuts it was an import...from the Christian West.

"Type" as in sexual orientation + gender identity + sex-roles. The things that feminism is trying to destroy by asserting these things are all "fluid" and conditioned. Suppress your instinct to eat and see how much pain you experience. Suppress your instinct to drink, to breathe, to interact with other human beings, to walk around, to do something meaningful in life. Sublimation is possible in some times and cases, but overall it is healthier to express instincts as basically as possible, where possible.

I had a brainwave: the existence of Type is determinable through measurements of pain. That is, if male "Types" and female "Types" exist as instinctual realities, rather than conditioned reflexes, then the suppression of Type should cause pain. Not just a minor amount of pain, but a large amount of pain--psychic, spiritual pain. If Type was purely indoctrination, then the pain experienced by generations increasingly raised with anti-Type conditioning should be increasingly minimal. Children in Scandinavian countries for example should be blissfully adapted to their nearly-complete, ruling, androgynous order. But is this what we find when we examine happiness indices? I found a few articles on this; has anyone found anything more? Liberated and Unhappy http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html?_r=0 Women & Happiness: Is It Still Declining? https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pressure-proof/201303/women-happiness-is-it-still-declining Not a direct study of men's happiness but related: The path to happiness for millennial men is ... kids http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/17/health/millennial-fathers-happiness-work-life-balance-study/ And another indirect measure of happiness, though its sex relevance is harder to see: America’s Suicide Epidemic Is a National Security Crisis http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/28/americas-suicide-epidemic-is-a-national-security-crisis/ And: Robert Whitley: Why men commit suicide http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robert-whitley-why-men-commit-suicide

There's no image that the Buddha, the Dalai Lama, or Ghandi can supply that will last as long or have as much of an impact on the human soul as that of the Crucifixion. Gerard's Scapegoat theory adds another fold of meaning to it. Could the NAP have arisen in a non-Christian culture?

If "The brain didn't evolve for truth, it evolved to evade pain," then why would gullibility be painful?

What pain are you avoiding in being an atheist?

Girard implicitly splits the meaning of Christianity in two: the Atonement for the salvation game, and the Scapegoat for the progress game. The former is needed to reconcile man with God; the latter is needed to reconcile man with man. pejoration [pej-uh-rey-shuh n, pee-juh-] noun 2. Historical Linguistics. semantic change in a word to a lower, less approved, or less respectable meaning. Compare melioration (def 1). dictionary.com

Are you saying men friends who insult each other are the equivalent of a friendly bum-pinch of a female?

I think bullying is rooted in a subconscious urge to improve the victim, but which turns toxic becoming something we call sadism. I can't speak for current schools, but in my experience boys don't bully girls, for example, possibly because they know they can't "improve" them by making them more boyish and macho.

What term would you use to replace "objectively Christian"?

What you say is interesting but I'm worried about the implications. Nihilism sounds like a way of getting out of doing things, a reason to "drop out". How do you live your life differently from someone who is not an epistemological nihilist?

Why does action need justification? Because we appear to have time subject to waste, which could be used for other, more certain and enjoyable things, if we haven't sufficiently justified going to the pain and expense of attempting the action in question.

Tundra, what do you think is sufficient proximity to absolute knowledge to justify action?

Not at all. Yes, if we take Stefan subjectively, as a subject, he is not a Christian, but if we take Stefan objectively, as an object, he is a part of Christendom. By "Christendom" I mean the demesne of Christian principle that has informed the West, and globally-extended European civilisation (GEEC) generally. Deduct the Christian "substrata" and the West collapses, GEEC collapses, and so would Stefan collapse.

I've supplied my attempt at an understanding of what you are talking about and you've ignored it. From dictionary.com: adj. not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: an objective opinion. Here, the adjective "objective" basically means "true" or "factual". An objective understanding is a true or factual understanding. A subjective one, by comparison, must be prey to falsehood, whether due to cathexised beliefs or other emotional influences. The best I can work out is that, according to you, Stef, as I have said, is participating in a high form of cultural Christianity, unwittingly, as that relates to the anthropology you've been expounding on. We say he is an "'objective' Christian" because he is participating in the facts of the historical drama, and not the belief associated with Christianity. No?