What, Why & How do we Know ?
I see the #Breivik psycho-analysis debate brings in religion as cases of bizarre belief. #Breivik is sick (end of) but the real agenda is a widely unrecognised sickness – as in widely prevalent and largely unrecognised.
Go on Norway, you could score a world class gold here.
It’s about what makes “rational” bases of belief “unreasonable”.
A recurring theme that age is part of wisdom (yes I would say that) but here a great example.
Ayn Rand always was atrocious, but it’s often necessary to grow up to appreciate the fact. I was already mid-40’s before coming across her, so I was OK 😉
[Victoria Bekiempis, as a college freshman] was very intimate with her ideas, but that just gave [her] more insight into their outright dysfunctionality, and the strength to say “sayonara!”
What’s scary is that so many Americans have not grown out of that mentally puerile phase. Instead, this contingent — now largely comprised of Tea Party radicals — remains mired in her pop philosophy.
Hat tip to David Morey on FB for the Guardian link.
[Post Note : As if to prove the point. Rand 1, 2, 7 & 8 on this top 100 list!!! Hat tip to Michael Brown on MD.)
Due to work-related installs and reconfigurations of our server, I lost visibility of all my normal WordPress and other static content for a few days. But after a reset it looks like everything is up and back to normal. No damage done.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
To repay our debt to Greece.
Hmm, trial by Powerpoint. Not sure the clinical descriptions (with my limited Norwegian) stack up as conclusive, but Apserger’s Syndrome, as one of three possible diagnoses, is getting close to the mark. Total rationality is autism, as I’ve already suggested several times, and Asperger’s is one form of that.
Ill but not psychotic (Reuters in English). Sounds about right, doesn’t seem psychotic or paranoid schizophrenic – just hyper-rational (autistic / Asperger’s) without normal human emotion. Sick. Half a human – the dangerous half.
Forget the expert, stick to the facts about #Breivik – on his own admission, by his own design – totally rational, selective empathy – not sane – sick.
And, on balance, this is about right too. My initial reaction was they should not invest in special prison quarters for #Breivik, but as I also said earlier, good that the conclusion is that his insanity / sickness is irrelevant to his sentence. Whatever the questionable aspect of the verdict he will be incarcerated – if he wants treatment for his illness he can have it, if not his brain can fester.
[Post Note 12 June – Yes, “not psychotic“, but that’s not the same as being sane. Mental illness is more complex.]
Here a great example – the “Miami Bath-Salts Zombie Cannibal” case.
Spookily, Tom Kreider’s current “This is the Worst” project has an image linked to the case too. Gruesome.
http://www.edge.org/conversation/a-philosophy-of-physics
Science is “narrow minded” if it rejects metaphysical philosophy; in fact it is narrow minded if it fails to recognise that is already operating with dependency on existing engrained metaphysics, taken for granted – without scientific basis, naturally. One reason science is much less certain than some of its very predictable, useful, empirically-supported theories. The uncertainties are in the metaphysical foundations.
A return to science as natural philosophy, rather than the science (since 1930’s physics) of technological application.