quote:

Originally posted by elfuente:

quote:

Originally posted by Greenjack:
god is just a word, full stop.
The problem isn't with the word but with the different attributes given to certain "gods", some of which are based on fairytale nonsense.

If I were to choose how to apply the word it would just be an alternative for nature.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

I was always in trouble at school for writing the bare minimum

quote:

Originally posted by elfuente:
As an example, I was saying that before babies learn language (words for everything), there may be some aspects of human nature that are more clear to them, and that this ability may be lost as dependence upon language for thought as well as communication takes over the mind.

well, you keep saying this but i am not entirely sure exactly what you mean by it, or whether indeed there is any advantage to it.

babies experience needs - they cannot symbolise them, they cannot describe them, nothing is clear to them except that they need, they do not even know what they need they just experience an unpleasant feeling and they cry /scream. it is mother who must work out what is wrong and provide the response (food, change, cuddle). this may be a simple state of being, but its hardly one that adults could or should model.

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Do you know the phrase "Gedanken experiment"?

yes. ?

quote:

Originally posted by mizdemeanour:
...babies experience needs - they cannot symbolise them, they cannot describe them, nothing is clear to them except that they need, they do not even know what they need they just experience an unpleasant feeling and they cry /scream.

Exactly.

quote:

....this may be a simple state of being, but its hardly one that adults could or should model.

Not model exactly. I was making an analogy, however clumsy, that experiencing the world directly instead of having to put it into words, spoken or unspoken, can have advantages.

RE: Gedanken experiment. (For those who haven't run across this phrase, it was an old tradition, mostly among German-culture scientists, in which they sat and thought really hard about a given problem, often while wearing lab coats, until they arrived at an answer which was then sometimes published as if it were the result of an empirical experiment.) In my opinion, which may not be definitive but which is not uninformed, this was largely how Freud worked, using little more than his own brain-power to make sense of his patients' or test subjects' problems. Interesting perhaps, but not particularly valuable in light of the more modern practice of experimental science. Of course modern psychological science, or even psychiatry for that matter, so often employs disparate models for therapy (rarely consensus, even at the better universities) that a given patient seeking the treatment appropriate for him/her is effectively shooting in the dark. This has changed somewhat in recent years, particularly in psychiatry as it becomes more and more focused on medication and less on causal circumstances, but I'm not convinced that this is a change for the better, or at least not a satisfactory one. There is often just too much randomness in choosing the correct medication, or determining it by trial and error.

(By "consensus" I do not mean that every therapist should practice in exactly the same way all the time, only that the foundations of extant pathologies be better understood and supported by research. Of course each therapist should have his/her own versatile bag of tricks.)

I have observed PhD psychologists who specialized in guided imagery, and persisted in that direction even when there was a complete lack of response on the part of the client.

Psychology is, by necessity I suppose, both a "natural" science (like physiology) and a social science. I would just like to see more emphasis on making the best of both rather than having individual treating therapists constructing and practicing their own blend exclusively, which may too often exclude the best interests of those who seek therapy at often enormous financial costs to themselves and, at worst, failure to find treatment appropriate for them that might actually be available in another office in the same building.

quote:

Originally posted by elfuente:

quote:

Originally posted by mizdemeanour:
...babies experience needs - they cannot symbolise them, they cannot describe them, nothing is clear to them except that they need, they do not even know what they need they just experience an unpleasant feeling and they cry /scream.

Exactly.

exactly what?? what do they 'understand about human nature' and in what way is this 'clearer' to them than to an adult? what is the 'advantage' to not understanding what your own needs are, and not being able to meet them yourself? anyone can just scream when they are fed up but this doesn't seem to me to confer any advantage to anyone, especially if accompanied by a lack of capacity to understand (analyse) or describe (symbolise) one's own distress thereby enabling the possibility of changing (transforming) it.

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RE: Gedanken experiment.

thanks for the exposition. i don't think freud or psychotherapy ever claimed to do anything other than offer models and theories for understanding the operation of human mind. despite countless lab rats and electrodes, neither psychology or neurology has come much closer to describing a theory of mind, although they can tell you a lot about 'behaviour'.

there are many failings in all disciplines relating to the mind / brain, and i am not here to justify any of them. each offers a map, not the territory, and all are practices that are regulated (or coming into regulation) and have standards of training and the demand for an evidence base for their interventions (which inevitably presents a challenge compared to the simple RCT that can be used to determine the efficacy of a pharmacological intervention).

clearly, you have a cynical view of all such practices, however i am not sure that you really have anything additional or useful to offer in the rather simplistic and one dimensional view you have expressed with regard to the human capacity for symbolism and the state of the infant mind.

As I read your responses to what I have written, I'm really not sure whether we're disagreeing in any fundamental way or not. It's just that we're trying to have a discussion simultaneously in English and Neptunian without a translator. My expositions are simplistic and one-dimensional to you, and yours are to me.

I don't mean this in any confrontational way. Just trying to put my observation of this discussion into words. It is perfectly fine with me if you choose to claim some sort of victory in this exchange.

And so, I will move on to another subject.

quote:

Originally posted by elfuente:
As I read your responses to what I have written, I'm really not sure whether we're disagreeing in any fundamental way or not.

as i see it, you are locating the cause of psychological difficulties primarily in the environment, and i am locating it within the resilience or lack of it of the individual. i guess we both recognise an element of the other, but seem to fundamentally disagree on basic cause.

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It is perfectly fine with me if you choose to claim some sort of victory in this exchange.

that's what a psychotherapist would call a projection. it comes from you, and it is about you not me. i am not interested in victories but in ideas.

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And so, I will move on to another subject.

as you wish. i would prefer it if we could progress the ideas herein, but perhaps it is the wrong thread.

Well, I'm willing. And I'm sorry about the victories comment. You are absolutely right about where that came from.

What about if you ask me a question?

^ okay, no problem

how about these questions...

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Originally posted by mizdemeanour:

quote:

Originally posted by elfuente:

quote:

Originally posted by mizdemeanour:
...babies experience needs - they cannot symbolise them, they cannot describe them, nothing is clear to them except that they need, they do not even know what they need they just experience an unpleasant feeling and they cry /scream.

Exactly.

exactly what?? what do they 'understand about human nature' and in what way is this 'clearer' to them than to an adult? what is the 'advantage' to not understanding what your own needs are, and not being able to meet them yourself? anyone can just scream when they are fed up but this doesn't seem to me to confer any advantage to anyone, especially if accompanied by a lack of capacity to understand (analyse) or describe (symbolise) one's own distress thereby enabling the possibility of changing (transforming) it.

i don't grasp what it is about the early infancy / pre symbolic state that you see as so advantageous to mental health. whilst i understand your point about people being separated from their feelings (a sort of authenticity issue) this seems to be the opposite state, of being at the mercy of feelings that you don't understand and don't have the tools or capacity to change.

I'm not shirking this discussion. I just have a Jupiter-size cold plus I'm ruminating about the issue. Be back soon.

^ is that man flu?

have posted on the similar thread in culture as it seems to be running parallel to this one.

Don't know man flu, but it's one hell of a cold. Goes away, comes back just as bad. This has been over a month now. Lots of people around here have it.

I'm wondering if it's a bioweapon.

evidence for the big bang:

everything in the universe is moving away from everything else - observable in the doppler redshift that increases with distance

cosmic microwave background radiation - the big bang "afterglow"

just those two are pretty convincing when you look at them, but there's more here at Talk Origins

quote:

Originally posted by Ezkerraldean:
evidence for the big bang:

everything in the universe is moving away from everything else - observable in the doppler redshift that increases with distance

When Edwin Hubble discovered the displacement (redshift) of the spectral-lines in the galaxies' radiation, the only known explanation was the Doppler-velocity frequency-shift from sound-observations.

As a tentative hypothesis Hubble calculated the redshift as an effect of the galaxies' recession-velocities.

Based on that idea Hubble multiplied the size of the redshift with the speed of light and misinterpreted this as the distance to the galaxies.

So, there is no need of a big-bang hypothesis.

Ingvar, Sweden
http://www.theuniphysics.info

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S.Ingvar:
When Edwin Hubble discovered the displacement (redshift) of the spectral-lines in the galaxies' radiation, the only known explanation was the Doppler-velocity frequency-shift from sound-observations.......

that still is the only explanation - and what causes a doppler shift? motion of the wave source.
distance to galaxies is not measured from redshift but from "standard candles" like cepheid variables, supernovae etc. it can be verified that redshift increases with distance.

and regardless, if everything is moving away from everything else, surely that still shows a universal expansion?