Here’s another study on IQ & weight/height ratio but this time the data is from 2007 instead of 1974 and the sample size is 6,798 people (in the UK) instead of just a few hundred Americans. In this study, for those with IQs around +1.66 SD, obesity puts you at the +1.07 SD of the normalized BMI distribution of your IQ group, but for those with IQs around -1.66 SD, obesity puts you around +0.8 SD. In other words, a 3.33 SD change in IQ (50 points) is associated with a 0.27 SD change in weight/height ratio. This suggests a standardized regression slope (and thus correlation) of 0.27/3.33 = -0.08.
It makes sense that the negative correlation is low given that there are so many incredibly overweight people who don’t seem the slightest bit stupid.
It would be nice to see a study that got beyond simple BMI and compared IQ with fat-free mass index and muscle-free mass index so we could see what type of weight is driving the negative correlation or if they both contribute equally. One theoretical possibility is that people with bad genes have both low IQ and high BMI, but with hard work in the gym and a little help from steroids, you can turn that high BMI into rock solid muscle.
Pumpkin Person 
https://www.unz.com/announcement/all-my-books-now-available-on-amazon/
Have to hand it to Unz. I think he was very brave to come out for the minimum wage in the 90s when neoliberalism was at its strongest.
If you have open borders, the 2nd best solution is having a high minimum wage.
peepee hasn’t considered that dumb pipo make poor food choices and often can’t afford better food. carbs are cheap.
“It makes sense that the negative correlation is low given that there are so many incredibly overweight people who don’t seem the slightest bit stupid.”
PP, please come to the southern US for a month.
-0.08 seems unbelievably low to me. I wonder whether the correlation would have been stronger had waist:height ratio (or some combined index of waist:height ratio and waist:hip ratio) been used as a proxy for corpulence in place of BMI.
despite the propaganda that “a calorie is a calorie” the low carb diet works. as long as it doesn’t include EtOH. alcohol can make you fat.
A low carb diet works in virtue of cutting calories. It’s physically impossible to lose weight without a kcal deficit.
i want rr to say he thinks fish oil and monounsaturated fats aren’t any better than lard or cottonseed oil. gary taubes is wrong about that, but he’s right everything else.
dairy fat has the virtue of containing vitamin k-2.
Different foods have different macro and micronutrient content… How profound.
you don’t get it.
even if taubes is wrong and saturated fat IS atherogenic THEN the fact that saturated fat in dairy products contains vitamin K2 is IMPORTANT because K2 is ANTI-atherogenic.
taubes also claims carbs cause atherosclerosis and its risk factors: obesity, diabetes ii, metabolic syndrome, etc…
what has become mainstream is: fish oil and mono-unsaturated fat is ANTI-atherogenic. whereas it used to be “all fat is atherogenic”.
but how can my body burn calories without more physical activity?
answer: HEAT…you’ll wear less and sleep with less on. of course this doesn’t work when the ambient temperature is above your body temperature.
“but how can my body burn calories without more physical activity?”
NEAT.
What are “bad genes”? Are they genes that contribute to a “bad phenotype” like obesity or “low IQ”? I presume you’ll use Mendelian diseases for a “bad genes” example, but what evidence is there that “bad genes” drive the relationship that you posit?
show me a fat person who restricts carbs to the level some epileptics do and i have a bridge to sell you in brooklyn.
Do you think it’s not possible to lose weight eating high carbs? Do you think it’s possible to gain weight eating low carb?
why would i think that? i don’t take steroids.
rr. you need to learn to speak english. you seem unable to grasp what “a calorie is a calorie” means. you’re autistically thinking it means less than it does.
1. it is impossible to eat a diet high in refined carbs and lose weight unless you have a gun to your head or are a professional afalete or gym rat or marathoner or have some horrible disease. yes.
2. it is impossible to eat a diet low in carbs and increase your body fat % unless you have a gun to your head or are a professional afalete. yes.
obesity is hormonal. the calories stuff is trivial in the sense you mean it and no one else does because not autistic. and in the sense it is actually used it is HARMFUL. it KILLS people.
liposuction, dehydration, massive bleeding, amputation, beard removal all reduce weight.
you can lose muscle via rhabdomyalisis with a calorie surplus. but that’s pathological.
what rr was too retarded to say is that non-pathological human physiology can only rid the body of fat by burning it. that is correct.
and combustion/burning is the right word because fat and carbs are turned into CO2 and H2O just as they are by a flame. but this is done by the body is a slow and controlled fashion.
“it is impossible to eat a diet high in refined carbs and lose weigh”
I used to kcal/macro cycle on rest/work days. I ate 300 grand if protein and 400 grams of carbs on work days and I decreased carbs on rest days and ate at a deficit for my body on those days. At the end of the week, I’m at a net negative when it comes to caloric balance. Is that type of cycling in your “impossible to eat a diet high in refined carbs and lose weight”? Because I ate 3 cups of some good (dry) cereal every workout day.
“it is impossible to eat a diet low in carbs and increase your body fat %”
Why are you making such absolute statements? I’ve read many people state that they have gained weight on a LCHF diet.
“obesity is hormonal. the calories stuff is trivial in the sense you mean it and no one else does because not autistic. and in the sense it is actually used it is HARMFUL. it KILLS people.”
Obesity isn’t hormonal. Taubes’ writings have been refuted to hell and back. The ICM is a bunk model, even though the usual suspects continue to push paper after paper out about it. The new one, if you’ve been keeping up, is Dave Feldman’s “lean mass hyper-responder” hypothesis. Taubes says we need to treat obesity as a hormonal disorder and use his CIM to treat it. But his own NuSi-funded studies refuted his thought experiments! He constantly dodges Layne Norton for debate. Wonder why that is.
“You can injure your muscles by working out and literally lose muscle while eating a lot and this somehow means something to the discussion.” – you can lose your leg while eating a surplus and lose weight too. Moot point.
Taubes’ writings have been refuted to hell and back.
that’s how i know they’re true!
you believe floyd was killed by the cops.
…moot point. somehow means something to the discussion… =
mezzogiorno meathead way of saying…
muh dick!
what is the mafia’s explanation for this phenomenon rr?///
rr: dey just need a good personal trainer…if you know what i mean…[cracks knuckles]
But his own NuSi-funded studies refuted his thought experiments! He constantly dodges Layne Norton for debate. Wonder why that is.
1. no they did NOT. you’d have to be an autistic moron like kevin hall to say that.
2. because layne norton has a low IQ.
“a calorie is a calorie” is code for if you go on the potato diet and gain weight you just need to exercise more. and it never works. ever. because no one can stick to it unless he’s quechua.
https://www.drmirkin.com/nutrition/calories-from-foods-vary-with-preparation-method-and-your-gut-bacteria.html
the body loses weight in 4 ways. sweat and breath are the other two. what it excretes is not entirely water and the products of combustion: carbon dioxide, water, urea, etc..
urine too contains more than water and the products of combustion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine#Constituents
“A calorie is a calorie” is a dictum. Why would any (sane) person with the correct nutritional training/advisement go on a potato diet? Exercise helps to mobilize fat cells in a caloric deficit. While it is true that certain foods keep one sated longer, the mechanism is still the same for weight loss.
So are potatoes good or bad? I eat them with dinner sometimes. I guess sweet potatoes are better?
Bad. They make you fat because they have carbs.
rr doesn’t know what “dictum” means. he should’ve said “a calorie is a calorie” is a stupid saying.
1. calories measured in a lab are NOT the calories everyone gets from the food whose calories have been measured.
2. the form of the calories affects the calorie output.
btw, there is a 5th way that animals lose weight, they shed skin cells and epithelial cells in their alimentary canal.
if a doctor, nutritionist, dietician says “just measure your calories and do this much exercise” they’re charlatans.
potatoes aren’t bad per se. it’s just you want to limit your intake of foods like potatoes if you’re trying to lose weight.
What Mug of Pee might be saying is that obesity is a non-natural state triggered by agriculture & the industrial revolution and that no matter how much you eat, you can’t get fat eating the Paleolithic diet our genes spent millions of years adapting to.
AND the most important affect of the type of calorie is on hunger.
high refined carbs or just whole grains and potatoes MAKE you hungry for more.
EtOH is interesting because it greatly increases heat dissapation due to dilation of peripheral blood vessels while at the same time and for the same reason makes one feel warm.
so if someone goes on an all alcohol diet, as some have, they will usually lose weight.
heat dissIpation and rhadomyolysis.
“Bad. They make you fat because they have carbs.”
This statement is outright false.
“calories measured in a lab are NOT the calories everyone gets from the food whose calories have been measured.”
Do you have any idea why the general advice to people is to track their weight daily/weekly for 3 weeks and then to adjust intake?
“the form of the calories affects the calorie output.”
TEF exists. This isn’t new.
“What Mug of Pee might be saying is that obesity is a non-natural state triggered by agriculture & the industrial revolution and that no matter how much you eat, you can’t get fat eating the Paleolithic diet our genes spent millions of years adapting to.”
No evidence to support this conjecture.
Mugabe have you seen Teicholz get shredded on her Masai claims from her book?
Different foods do different things in the body based on a whole host of factors. That doesn’t mean that a calorie is a calorie isn’t true. If I want to lose weight I can do it on any diet I want.
If I want to lose weight I can do it on any diet I want.
again with the 2+2=4 bullshit.
but some diets will make it A YUGE FUCKING LOT harder (for most people).
maybe rr is google’s first android?
bmi is gay. it’s only used because lmi is too expensive to measure on so many pipo, just like edumacational attainment is used instead of score on the same IQ test. excluding steroid freaks like rr would be easy. without steroids and living in the gym rr would only weigh 90 lbs.
arnold has had only one major health problem afaik and it was unrelated to his bodybuilding or steroid use. he’s always been very physically active not just in weight lifting.
Arnold seems to understand the power of the mind, at least when it comes to will. Apparently he hung pictures of his lifting heroes on his ceiling for motivation. A lot of great athletes are very open, and visualize their sport… hence Arnold’s famous “feels like cahhhming” line. Obviously Arnold was able to succeed in a variety of fields too, though it seems like his work ethic/conscientiousness is probably the main factor there. Still, it shows some sort of mastery over mind.
I read that Arnold usually walked for cardio instead of running. Perhaps he understood the heart can only take so much and walking probably allowed him to burn calories more safely (also easier on the joints I guess).
Also he had the peak male physique. He didn’t take HGH which gives the gross gut bloat due to increased organ size… it gives a completely different impression.
Im trying to get my psychiatrist (I have bipolar) to administer me the Weschlers.
I recently graduated from a business school with a degree in finance! My gpa was the bare minimum to graduate but all my life ive been told academics is my forte and they stereotype me as a an excellent student when in reality my conscientiousness and IQ arent enough to compete often times!
Although this is true my genetics are considerably high for doing well in school (achievement wise on standardized tests which I always did well in look at SAT scores lol) completing certain programs and moderate for educational attainment in general!
Health problems
Schwarzenegger was born with a bicuspid aortic valve…
soros is taller than simons.
notice the one n european is the tallest. ken griffin
Ken Griffey Jr is probably the best baseballer of all time and he is black!
Paulson isn’t a jew as far as I know.
The only people giving honest answers to congress here are going to be the jews here ironically enough. Anyways, this was a show trial, hedge funds didn’t cause the 08 crash.
so you can’t read wikipedia?
he’s like 25% norwegian, 25% ecuadorian, 50% jewish.
Mug is the sole proprietor and consumer of Wikipedia it seems. what a shame.
So Mugabe why won’t you answer whether you believe in heaven or hell?
i don’t believe in eternal damnation. i’ve said that a bajillion times.
Will St Paul or whoever it is at the gates of heaven be judging you according to the Bible strictly or what Pope Francis says? So if you got divorced or used contraception would that count against you towards getting in? How about older stuff like being active on the Sabath and believing jews are gods chosen ones? Whats the line on that?
your idea of christianity is a gay strawman.
unironically Mug might be the most well-read person on this blog. by far. even if it is mainly on the internet lol.
Mugabe has wasted hundreds of hours reading Catholic Church doctrine.
Thats like trying to read the Mueller Report backwords and attempting to make sense of it.
I never said the things he read were in any way productive just that he consumes a lot of content!
Usually the material he reads is subjective compared to RR who reads scientific literature!
The Bible and the Mueller Report are quite similar in that they’re both written by ethnic jews.
Although there is a big difference between Levantine jews and ashkenazi ones.
not all of the new testament authors were jews. john and luke weren’t.
This comment section is so fucking stupid sometimes. I propose one of the top books on modern american history and one commenter recommends reading the Bible and another the fucking Mueller Report.
What am I doing here?
pill/peepee, you’re my older brother and i love you, but don’t ever take sides against the family again…EVER!
there’s no getting out alive.
would that there were.
but if religion is total bullshit in the end…it does lengthen your life.
longest lived by occupation = nun.
oldest living person TODAY = french nun.
it’s all about death and the fear of it.
i agree.
charles iii won’t live forever either.
there’s only ONE religion which ADMITS this and SAYS…
FUCK YOU!
AND!
that is the…
TRUTH!
again Mug proves his lack of self awareness. arent you the oldest person on this blog Mug?
arent you a washed up degenerate (and i mean really degenerate) Boomer? cmon man you need to really think these things through before you type them sometimes.
Cecil Kelley, a chemical operator working on plutonium purification, switched on a stirrer on a large mixing tank, which created a vortex in the tank. The plutonium, dissolved in an organic solvent, flowed into the center of the vortex. Due to a procedural error, the mixture contained 3.27 kg of plutonium, which reached criticality for about 200 microseconds. Kelley received 3,900 to 4,900 rad (36.385 to 45.715 Sv) according to later estimates. The other operators reported seeing a bright flash of blue light and found Kelley outside, saying “I’m burning up! I’m burning up!” He died 35 hours later.
the UN-coolest way to die is obviously by bottoming for a horse.
the only reason you dont believe in eternal damnation is because you are a narcissist and know you would burn in Hell with an unmerciful God existing.
you dont care about other people at all Mug. you are one callous individual.
Mugabe do you consider Anglicans to be a cult? Basically the only reason they have it is so the king could get a divorce. Do you believe the Queen and King of the UK when they say all this religious stuff or are they only saying it for the proles?
yes. i believe that protestantism and the via media are inauthentic. i believe that the royalties and aristocracy are more religious than average.
irreligion is a bourgeois, snob, social climber phenomenon.
religion is far more than “the opiate of the masses”.
and hitch would claim north korea is the most religious country.
fine! if you want to include marxism (and nazism) among the religions of the world…like zoroastrianism almost dead…
i agree!
the way to think about religion is as a path to the summit.
the paths are different at every point, but they get closer and closer until they are the same point, the summit.
how many routes up k-2? at least 3.
how many up mount moru? at least 7?
suppose you have some solid mass in a toilet and the rest is water.
then you poor gasoline into the toilet until it “flushes”.
at the end the toilet contains less mass but more energy…more chemical energy.
touche!
an “open system” at constant temperature and pressure, life, can gain in energy and lose in mass at the same time.
tell me i’m wrong rr.
another example for rr especially:
imagine gold’s gym in venice beach has a heavy but precarious wall and franco knocks it over with his butt. the gym has less mass but has more energy than if franco had just done a superset of heavy squats.
pill dawkins: to whom or what are you giving the finger? saying “fuck you”?
mugabe: EXACTLY!
pill dawkins: exactly what?
mugabe: that’s where religion BEGINS…
pill dawkins: what’re you talking about?
mugabe: what are you talking about?
WHAT?
ARE?
YOU?
TALKING?
ABOUT?
.
.
.
WHAT?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Metaphysics%3F
as long as you can’t cry when the fuhrer speaks you’re a bigot.
not a joke.
hitler was a tear (and a tear) in the fabric of reality. the veil.
even though all he ever did was talk.
it’s incredibly sad.
but it’s true.
there are 94 elements up to Pu and all the others are bullshit.
there are 17 elementary particles.
and the mass of the electron is 9.1093837015(28)×10−31 kg.
pill is poised over his math homework…where will his pencil go next…his mom calls him…he doesn’t hear her…he figures it out and finishes the exercise…relaxes…hears his mom calling him to dinner…
this is what it is like to live and die in this world.
pill: if there’s a God have you seen him? heard him?
mugabe: no pill. never. i WAS him for a trice in my hypnopompy. the saints for years.
I never said I don’t believe in God. But definitely not the God of the Bible or whatever the Pope says.
the reason why some intelligent people will somewhat facetiously refer to themselves as “nazis” or “stalinists” is … the reigning neo-liberal ideology is EVIL.
intelligent people see THIS and ask themselves, “so what is the truth?”
and where can they look for an alternative except to the PAST? and they think, “maybe what this ideology is telling me is EVIL isn’t.”
so there’s a well of thought and talk and history they can draw on.
nazism will never be repeated. it really is “physically impossible”. stalinism on the other hand…sad.
https://paulcooijmans.com/intelligence/statements.html
Article about intelligence; worth reading
Ganzir no offense but i bet my parents are smarter than yours.
“Ganzir no offense but i bet my parents are smarter than yours.“
Whateva u say boss
How do we know the “intelligence” is on the decline at the “genetic level”?
“Intelligence is the most important causal factor behind human behavior”
Is human intelligence a behavior or an action?
Cognition is an action and therefore intentional. Behavior is dispositional. Therefore cognition is not responsible for behavior.
No idea why such a simple distinction is ignored. If there are genes “for” intelligence and if it is on the decline at the “genetic level” then there has to be a genetic mechanism. It’s like the claim that this or that study of intelligence is “confounded” (a favorite line of JayMan). But what people like that don’t seem to grasp is that confounding required a mechanism, in that there is a causal relationship between X and Y iff a causal mechanism exists to connect X and Y. So what’s the mechanism?
Its kind of strange how RR and Ganzir can be dumb but in totally different ways.
The intellect is a disposition in itself. The capacity to collect information from our sensory intuitions, store information as memories, and manipulate them in order to solve problems, is influenced by the actual ability to do any of these things. The precise act of using these capacities might be an action, but the intellect as a disposition is unintentional. If whatever lays as the foundation for our choices influences the choices itself, either by making certain options more appealing than others or by being it itself the realm of possibility, then our choices can’t accurately be said as entirely intentional. Someone more intelligent is going to see more options, not necessarily because he ever intended to, than someone less so. Some options are going to be better than others. The ability to even stand with our choices depends on our self-control.
>Is human intelligence a behavior or an action?
Human intelligence is a capacity.
“The intellect is a disposition in itself.”
“Human intelligence is a capacity.”
I take “capacity” to mean “ability”, and so you’re saying here that human intelligence is a mental ability, meaning it is an action and cannot be a disposition. The argument I gave in my article establishes that. Did you read it?
“If whatever lays as the foundation for our choices influences the choices itself, either by making certain options more appealing than others or by being itself the realm of possibility, then our choices can’t accurately be said as entirely intentional.”
So they can be partly intentional and partly not intentional? Am I intending to educate people on the distinction between action and behavior?
For us to see if something is an action or a behavior, then we merely need to know if there is a goal in mind/a plan to reach a goal or if it was due to something that occurred to an organism and it was merely the result of antecedent conditions. Actions are future-aimed and are motivated by what “can be” and so, if you can separate what one deems to be for whatever category, then we can use those axioms to infer whether something is an action or a behavior.
Yes, I read it.
>you’re saying here that human intelligence is a mental ability
I’m saying it’s a disposition, that it is not an intentional action, that it’s a potential that is hypothetically acted on/with.
>So they can be partly intentional and partly not intentional
It’s mostly unintentional and possibly, maybe intentional, is what I’m getting at.
>Am I intending to educate people on the distinction between action and behavior?
You’ll just be repeating yourself.
>For us to see if something is an action or a behavior, then we merely need to know if there is a goal in mind/a plan to reach a goal or if it was due to something that occurred to an organism and it was merely the result of antecedent conditions
I don’t think there’s any significant difference between the two, other than one is a subjective judgement made by an actor about his own, or others, internal condition and the other is mechanistic. Did Cooijmans even intend to use behavior in the way you’re using it?
“human intelligence is a disposition”
In what way are you using “disposition”? What’s your response to my argument that cognition cannot be responsible for behavior since cognition is goal-directed and behavior isn’t?
“It’s mostly unintentional and possibly, maybe intentional”
How does this make any sense? If it’s unintentional then it is not goal-directed, meaning it is not an action. But cognition is an action so…
“You’ll just be repeating yourself.”
The question was asked to see if you know what my intention is. In the example I gave in the article, where the doctor tests the patellar reflex, could that be construed as a goal of the agent it is being acted upon? That is, the doctor HAS the intention of using the test to see if the reaction occurs, but the patient isn’t WILLING the action to occur, it happens due to antecedent conditions (getting hit with the mallet in the right spot to cause the raising of the leg in a normal person).
“one is a subjective judgment…and the other is mechanistic”
The distinction is necessary to distinguish between what happens TO an organism and what an organisms HAS IN MIND AS A GOAL.
“Did Cooijmans even intend to use behavior in the way you’re using it?”
He isn’t explicit, so I need to infer. He said:
“Intelligence is the most important causal factor behind human behaviour, both on the level of individual personality, where it decides one’s potential to contribute positively to society and likelihood to engage in crime, aggression, and violence”
This is hard to parse. If we take intelligence as cognition (as the best most charitable interpretation would be), then it is an action and actions don’t reduce to dispositions, nor do they reduce to the physical. This is an issue I have with behavioral genetics, too. The discussion I’ve laid out is never discussed and they mostly move back and forth between concepts which is a serious problem. Is it behavior genetics or action genetics? As I said to PP earlier, hereditarian ideas about “intelligence” is now reduced to a psycho-neural identity which is a refuted concept.
>In what way are you using “disposition”
You linked to this in your blog post: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dispositions/
A glass has certain dispositions, for example the disposition to shatter when struck. But what is this disposition? It seems on the one hand to be a perfectly real property, a genuine respect of similarity common to glasses, china cups, and anything else fragile. Yet on the other hand, the glass’s disposition seems mysterious, ‘ethereal’ (as Goodman (1954) put it) in a way that, say, its size and shape are not. For its disposition, it seems, has to do only with its possibly shattering in certain conditions. In general, it seems that nothing about the actual behaviour of an object is ever necessary for it to have the dispositions it has. Many objects differ from one another with respect to their dispositions in virtue of their merely possible behaviours, and this is a mysterious way for objects to differ.
I only read this paragraph and a bit more, I didn’t read the whole thing.
>What’s your response to my argument that cognition cannot be responsible for behavior since cognition is goal-directed and behavior isn’t?
That behavior is largely a collection of physical facts of events and habits of an organism. Goal orientation doesn’t matter, the mental states of an organism doesn’t matter.
>How does this make any sense? If it’s unintentional then it is not goal-directed, meaning it is not an action
Goal-directed encompasses so much that it means very little. In your sense of it, then cognition can be goal-directed.
>But cognition is an action so…
I don’t know what the definition of cognition you’re thinking of is. I don’t intend most (if any) of the processes that go on in my mind, they’re just there. I’m not going to reword my thoughts on this.
>The question was asked to see if you know what my intention is
I genuinely do not, other than trying to establish a distinction between unintended behavior and intended behavior. Maybe you find it fun.
>In the example I gave in the article, where the doctor tests the patellar reflex, could that be construed as a goal of the agent it is being acted upon?
The patient? No.
>The distinction is necessary to distinguish between what happens TO an organism and what an organisms HAS IN MIND AS A GOAL
I don’t think there’s a need to differentiate between an organism’s intellect and the reflexes of the body when it comes to behavior as a rough concept.
What aspects of “intelligence” are dispositional?
“Goal orientation doesn’t matter, the mental states of an organism doesn’t matter.”
What an organism intends to do doesn’t matter and only an organism’s reaction to a stimulus matters? Intention (and along with it “aboutness”) and goal-direction are important in distinguishing the difference between action and behavior. Sure we could collapse the two and say “it’s what an organism does” (since goal/future-direction and reaction are in a sense “doing” things). But the distinction I’ve drawn up between the concepts shows, quite obviously, that if X is goal-directed then X is an action and if an organism does X with antecedent Y then it is a behavior.
“Goal-directed encompasses so much that it means very little.”
How so? If one intends to do something and has a goal in mind for what they are attempting, then it is an action. When an organism can do otherwise it is then an action.
“I don’t know what the definition of cognition you’re thinking of is.”
Cognition is thinking and thinking is a mental process that results in having a thought. Thinking is an immaterial, irreducible process. The main aspect of IQ test-taking is thinking. Therefore the main aspect of IQ test-taking is cognition, thinking. Therfore the main aspect of IQ test-taking is immaterial—immeasurable.
“I genuinely do not”
The fact of the matter is, I’m deciding what I am writing to you and I am intending to convey a certain meaning using certain words.
“The patient? No.”
So then it was a behavior of the patient—something happened outside of his control and his body had a reaction to the external stimulus.
“I don’t think there’s a need to differentiate between an organism’s intelligence and the reflexes of the body when it comes to behavior”
There definitely is a need for the distinction. One is goal-oriented and the other isn’t.
>The fact of the matter is, I’m deciding what I am writing to you and I am intending to convey a certain meaning using certain words
You’re right, but I don’t think we’re capable of talking to each other.
>What aspects of “intelligence” are dispositional?
Does, “Everything”, not work?
It’d be easier for me to list off the ways it isn’t. Although I’m exaggerating when I say I can list it off, the only one that I could think of is my ability to recall information, make judgements about information, process information through precise mechanisms I could never possibly consciously understand, that is, whatever is subjectively known as free will is the only aspect of my intellect that I can’t claim is dispositional. Only in the sense that I subjectively perceive myself as being a free actor, not because this facet of my being can’t in itself be a disposition.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality/
This was linked in your blog post, presumably so that the reader can better understand your use of cognition. Intentionality in the sense used above maps to one aspect of what the intellect is, that is, “To say of an individual’s mental states that they have intentionality is to say that they are mental representations or that they have contents.” It has little resemblance to the common usage of the word “intention.”
To make it clear, read the entire beginning paragraph.
Furthermore, to the extent that a speaker utters words from some natural language or draws pictures or symbols from a formal language for the purpose of conveying to others the contents of her mental states, these artifacts used by a speaker too have contents or intentionality.
These artifacts, that is these things used by humans to convey meaning, have content, or rather they have content only to an observer capable of decoding whatever is understandable of what was meant to be conveyed. These things have an “intention”, but not in the sense that a human does. These things are incapable of making any choices, are incapable of viewing (or knowing) any possible worlds, their content is imaginary.
It’s a small distinction, and most likely isn’t what you mean by intent. This is closer to the Kantian sense of phenomena and mental representations than it is to things like autonomy or free will.
I don’t know how to point this out in a polite way, but read more of the entry. I don’t think your usage of cognition maps to the entry’s usage of intentionality.
Let’s ignore this, and ignore my minor and midwit-tier quibble of “lol no free will”, and focus on thinking as an action. Although it is an action, whatever potential a person has in relation to thinking well is not intentional, by and large. Although I suppose you’ll have to axiomatically accept the idea of the brain as being an organ that facilitates thought, or at the bare minimum, that the processes of thinking ceases to retain its ability to manipulate the body once the brain fails, for a reason unspecified.
Or, even ignoring that, that certain minds are qualitatively different from other ones for no discernible reason. Regardless of how I think of it, it makes no sense to me to claim that the ability of a mind was at any point an intention of the person himself.
Does a person consciously create each quale of whatever it is he’s experiencing, or does he consciously remember information he comes across, does he have any capability to improve these things to any arbitrarily refined point? And if he could, is his rate of improvement entirely one he consciously chooses?
Is the act of being at all a conscious action? Do you believe in intuition? Is intuition an action or a disposition?
>What an organism intends to do doesn’t matter and only an organism’s reaction to a stimulus matters?
No, I’m not really making any claims about intention in the way you probably think I am. I mean it doesn’t matter in the sense that it’s not a physical fact. The mind might not be reducible to the material, but either way the mind does (I don’t know if it does in your worldview?) affect the physical via manipulation of the body. Behavior in the sense I’m using it really is just, “it’s what an organism does.” Any distinction related to what sort of processes cause these physical, mechanical actions, are important, but they come after behavior as what an organism does is established. Your distinction is a valid one, but it does not encompass what I mean by the intellect.
>How so? If one intends to do something and has a goal in mind for what they are attempting, then it is an action
It is an action. But it’s dependent on what the definition of “one” is, and whether or not any process, regardless of its mental ability, can have a goal. It’s a subjective statement. Evolution can have a “goal” if we stretch the definition of “one” (but not goal!) enough. Any process that leads to something, or aims at something, could be stated as having a goal.
>Cognition is thinking and thinking is a mental process that results in having a thought
That process is the disposition I’m thinking of. Unless you think you have absolute control over every aspect of your mind, in which case, I don’t know.
>There definitely is a need for the distinction. One is goal-oriented and the other isn’t.
Yes, but don’t exclude the rest of the sentence. I’m not talking about anything subtle.
What gives you the impression that you need to understand the precise mechanisms of how your mind works?
I don’t accept your argument that intelligence is a disposition. Intelligence is posited as a psychological trait. Not a disposition.
“It has little resemblance to the common usage of the word “intention”.”
“that they have contents” ABOUT things. A mark of intentionality is its ABOUTNESS. Of course the symbols used by humans lack minds and intention, the intention of symbols is imputed by a human mind.
The brain is a necessary pre-condition for human mindedness but not a sufficient condition. Brain damage could or could not change the brain in such a way to affect normal functioning. “The ability of a mind” is to see and know the world. Minds ALLOW intentionality, mental life. People don’t create a quale, they remember things and qualia arise from stimulation with sense phenomena.
“Is intuition an action or a disposition?”
I’ve never thought about this but I’ve read a bit about it. If it is the ability to acquire knowledge (or a belief) without conscious reasoning, then it can’t be an action. I’ll admit that I am ignorant on this subject and so I cannot answer your question without further reading. What do you think?
In my worldview the mind can and does have affects on the physical world. E. J. Lowe argues that mental causation is invisible. There is physical causation and intentional causation. It is a truism that humans can cause things to happen in the world in virtue of the way they act and they act the way they do due to reasons.
“Any distinction related to what sort of processes cause”
I would say that “Behavior is how an organism reacts to an external stimulus”, and so we need to define these terms BEFORE looking at what organisms do, how they react to external stimulus and how they choose to do certain things.
“One” is an individual. Evolution (natural selection) isn’t conscious and thusly cannot have a goal.
I don’t think we have absolute control over our minds, of course there are some processes of mind that are out of our control. But the human mind of course can be used for one’s volition.
>What gives you the impression that you need to understand the precise mechanisms of how your mind works?
In order for it to be classified as a conscious action? Because whatever I’m calling on is not being done consciously by me.
>I don’t accept your argument that intelligence is a disposition. Intelligence is posited as a psychological trait. Not a disposition.
It’s not a strong argument (I’d hardly call it one at all, you either agree or you don’t), and it mostly relies on using the Stanford Encyclopedia entry for what disposition is. If I were to be very precise, intelligence is not a disposition, it’s an actualization of whatever process makes it relate to the brain. The brain has a disposition for intelligence, in the same way glass has a disposition for shattering. Thoughts and ideas are not genetically inheritable, at least I’m not aware of any that are, but things related to the structure of the brain and our body are.
>“that they have contents” ABOUT things. A mark of intentionality is its ABOUTNESS. Of course the symbols used by humans lack minds and intention, the intention of symbols is imputed by a human mind.
The intentionality entry uses this analogy to explain that aboutness.
intentionality is that of mental directedness towards (or attending to) objects, as if the mind were construed as a mental bow whose arrows could be properly aimed at different targets
If I were to mix in the common usage of intent with this specific usage of intent, then the intent to look at concepts is intentionality. Intentionality is the concepts, not the intent. All that relates to that concept, either its physical existence or its mental representation, along with anything that applies to it.
>If it is the ability to acquire knowledge (or a belief) without conscious reasoning, then it can’t be an action
>What do you think?
That most ideas I have in relation to even responding to this post are intuitive, that all I have to do is recall information or ask myself how I should respond. Some ideas are spontaneous, most are ones I already figured out. None are really “done” by me in any real sense of the word. Without the already pre-built functionality of my mind, I would not be able to write, think, or do anything, and it’s debatable whether I would even exist.
Although more directly, I agree it’s not a conscious action, it’s more like a function that’s called on. There’s an “action” being done by it but we can’t observe it.
I once experienced something I could only liken to the stripping away of my conscious after experiencing a cold shock response. Visually, things started to simplify into blobs and shapes, I lost visual acuity, and my thoughts were simplified as I lost access to whatever abilities I normally do have. I imagine there wasn’t enough blood being pumped to my brain.
>so we need to define these terms BEFORE looking at what organisms do, how they react to external stimulus and how they choose to do certain things.
We can’t know anything without first looking at what they do. It’d be pure speculation about nothing at all otherwise.
>“One” is an individual. Evolution (natural selection) isn’t conscious and thusly cannot have a goal.
Nnnghhh, but at the minimum, a goal could be inferred by a conscious being. It can have intentionality. I don’t expect this specific reply to be taken seriously, as I don’t either. I just want to point out the way goal could be ambiguous.
One doesn’t need to understand the mechanisms of their mind to understand their actions and why they act. (The mind isn’t mechanistic because physicalism is false and so physical laws don’t apply to the mind because the mind is immaterial.)
“[intelligence] is an actualization of whatever process makes it relate to the brain.”
Can you elaborate on this? Do you mean in a necessary or sufficient way? Thoughts and ideas CAN’T BE genetically heritable because they are actions. That’s one of my main arguments against” measuring “psychological traits, since most psychological traits (mental abilities) are actions and actions are irreducible to dispositions. Seems like you’re going dangerously close to a mereological fallacy.
By the way:
Dispositionality is a physical state. Psychological traits/mental abilities/mental states are immaterial. Therefore, psychological traits/mental abilities/mental states are dispositional.
If we take intentionality to be the aboutness, directedness, or reference of mental states, then only minded beings can intend or have the ability to intend.
“all I have to do is recall information or ask myself how I should respond”
“I would not be able to write, think, or do anything, and it’s debatable whether I would even exist.”
Regarding the first quote, how—in the way you construed it—is that not an action? Regarding the second, you seem to be talking about the brain’s relation to the mind, and minds need to experience things to do things. In the way you construed it, there is conscious action (thinking) involved with it.
Regarding the shock response, I don’t see how that hurts the position I’ve been pushing, since that’s not part of normal bodily functioning.
“We can’t know anything without first looking at what they do.”
We can see how what an organism does (which would of course constitute both action and behavior), and to get fine-grained, we need the two concepts I articulated.
“I just want to point out the way goal could be ambiguous.”
I get it. And even though I reject goal-directedness of evolution, I can see how an argument would be made to argue for that. We are conscious and, after the fact, we could say that there was a goal, but that’s basically where it begins to break down into nonsense because there is no agent involved.
I’ve read more of your blog posts. The logical, undeniable, obvious, and ontologically NECESSITATED conclusion I’ve come to is to give you this Remi:
Cooijman’s Field of eternal integrity is good.
>Cooijman’s
Why?
His contribution to defining associative horizon was helpful to me! i have a very very high associative horizon.
i love rereading his stuff. he writes in simple and straightforward terms too.
I just had an hour long chat with my muslim housemate and he explained why he doesn’t believe in evolution.
Mugabe do you also believe in Adam and Eve as the OGs (original gangsters)? You strike me as someone who would dismiss evolution.
So we have the muslims, jews and christians who believe God gave divine revelation to a bunch of levantine jews. Not the chinese. Not huns. Not mesoamericans. Not blacks. etc
Literally billions of people believe the jews lucked out and talked to God.
One thing the jews have had, even going back to roman times, is great salesmen. It takes a great social IQ to convince so many people that you have the inside track on what God thinks.
you’re flaming.
…God gave divine revelation to…
can be a metaphorical way of saying…
…the jews were the first people on earth to GET that morality and ultimate reality are the same so to say…socrates/plato got it. but he was just one man.
pill: the gods. what an idiot!
mugabe: what do you think he meant by “the gods”?
pill: he meant people who lived on mount olympus.
mugabe: you’re retarded and gay.
Tom Cruise is still a scientologist as far as I know even though its been completely revealed its a scam.
Mugabe is still a Catholic even though it was revealed as a scam 200 years ago.
Clearly Mugabe is dumber than Tom Cruise.
I’ve seen some of the scientology brochures and it actually makes more sense than most world religions. The majority of it is about self improvement basically. They never mention the mythology.
Solutreans were weird. Their skulls were quite round for their time.
I had a comment not long ago that got censored but the essence of it was that I believe aliens would have no associative horizon and would take interest in animals that are either genetically closest to them morphologically closest to them or have a similar hierarchy to them! Combos included!
Oh and theyd expect to have very fascinating takes on human language because theyd focus on the differences in language over physiological differences!
This is due to having language being less variant to them than physiology would be including the hardwiring they have to exist aka DNA! (Which might be a language in itself but wouldnt really change my thesis in any way only bolster it! :)]
steve hsu: in a recent interview he was saying how eugenics will be the new arms race. which country can produce the most superhumans will win.
reminds me: A state which in this age of racial poisoning dedicates itself to the care of its best racial elements must some day become lord of the earth.
btw, i would agree with this if it were actually possible to create superhumans. but it’s NOT.
it’s not even possible to produce a faster horse than secretariat after how many generations of horses (horses can reproduce at age 2) and rich pipo breeding horses? 1973 belmont vs 2022 belmont. sad.
and every society needs garbage men or whatever. that is, national socialism in the general sense IS possible and exists in scandinavia. sweden was the biggest sterilizer of any european country post ww ii.