Culture

Reality Made Illegal: Man Ordered To Treat Daughter As Boy

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As predicted by Yours Truly, another aspect of Reality has been made illegal. Mentally recall your favorite Orwell quote as you read this headline: “Court orders dad to start treating his 11-year-old daughter as a boy“.

Now this is in Canada, and Canada, perhaps because of a perpetual deficit of sunshine, leads the west in the flight from Reality. But, no. That theory won’t do. Because whatever happens first in Canada happens eventually in these once United States, where there is plenteous sunshine.

I’ll let you sort out the why, dear reader. Let’s here concentrate on the what.

Faced with two estranged parents in utter disagreement about their daughter’s wish to be a boy, a British Columbia Supreme Court judge has appointed the child a legal guardian to protect her interests.

The father not only wants his daughter to cease taking hormone blockers but also to cease all contact with transgender activists or transgender-friendly therapists…

In his ruling, Mr. Justice Ronald Skolrood declared that, “This case is really about J.K. and his role in determining his own future. In my view, these issues cannot be properly considered without J.K.’s direct participation.”

Her father, referred to as N.K., has persisted in referring to his daughter by her female name at birth, or P.K., in court documents, despite an earlier court order that he refer to her with male pronouns, name, and initials.

Let’s interrupt. An earlier court order that the father refer to his daughter as a boy. Reality is that the girl is a girl. The father recognizes Reality and wishes to heed to its strictures. The judge (or perhaps another), evidently long lost to the world of sanity, orders the father to eschew Reality.

Thus, as claimed, Reality has been made illegal.

Consequence? Ensconced systematized inescapable madness.

Their daughter’s wish to be a boy. Used to be that when a sane and sober adult heard a child’s or childish wish he’d say, “You can wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which gets filled first.” No longer. Now we are ordered to live in Fairy Land where a wish is legally declared to have been fulfilled by the act of wishing. Now it’s woe betide the man who would say that four is the answer to two plus two.

Hormone blockers. Somewhere from deep in the pit a condemned man cocks his hand to his ear and listens with what pleasure he is allowed to the new tortures we’re inventing for our young. He takes satisfaction because there is nothing the damned enjoy as much hearing of souls blacker than theirs.

Transgender activists or transgender-friendly therapists. Thrown into the clutches of a army of Unrealists who do not have the girl’s best interest at heart. Instead activists care most about themselves and what they desire. The girl becomes a tool to them, which is despicable.

I recall similar case where the deaf parents of a normal child sought to make the child deaf by purposely injuring it under the bizarre belief that their (the parents) affliction was not a disability. The Reality that the parents were not able as others was too much to bear, too painful to acknowledge, and so they too fly what was true to what was wished.

In just the same way, it is a good and safe prediction that homosexual couples who adopt will seek to make the children under their care sexually abnormal, too.

But the far more important issue to be resolved by the courts is [the father] N.K.’s request for a court order to ensure his daughter gets unbiased counselling that will address her gender dysphoria with classic cognitive (talk) therapy aimed at identifying the underlying psychological roots of her condition.

But in the meantime, the judge ordered, P.K. will continue to get the hormone blockers.

Gender dysphoria. Giving a name and classification to the girl’s—we pray temporary, but unlikely since she is being forcibly drugged by the State—insanity makes it realer than if we simply called her insane. Saying a person is insane is judgmental, as too is Reality.

Reality is a harsh pitiless unforgiving judge. It’s no wonder some flee from it. I only wish we wouldn’t be forced to go with them.

(There’s that “wish” word again.)

Categories: Culture

45 replies »

  1. The father just needs to self-identify as a court judge and overrule the order.

  2. This is just another drip in the drip-drip-drip that wears away the will to object to such inanities.

  3. James,
    Correct, although the skill needed to argue this point at the Mad Hatter’s tea party probably is beyond him. I suggest co-council with the Marx brothers and The Stooges. When playing the game, one must know the rules.

  4. A decade ago who would have thought this possible. What will be next. Should we ask Peter Singer or is he too far behind the times?

    We in the southern hemisphere would have been free of this weirdness infection if we hadn’t invited so many smart academic immigrants with no convict ancestry.

  5. As predicted by Yours Truly, another aspect of Reality has been made illegal.

    Congratulations, one of your predictions has come true! So, what aspect of Reality has been made illegal by law or regulations? Is a judge’s order the law?

    Do you believe everything on the Internet? How did your find this to confirm your prediction? Or, perhaps, one of your readers sent you the report?

    “All I know is what’s on the Internet,” said Trump.

    What does it mean to treat a daughter like a boy? I wonder why this case went to litigation to start with! Divorced parents!?

    IF the story is true and if I were the daughter, based on what I know about girls of that age (though I have always been a prefect daughter according to my parents), my guess is that I’d probably have refused to talk to my Dad.

    I know, Mr. Briggs, I am not going with your reality here, and you cannot force me to do so. When the majority of your human experience in life is through the news media, it warps your sense of reality.

  6. “Do you believe everything on the Internet?”

    If anyone has a link to a credible source of any kind confirming this story, please let us have it. I don’t know if it’s truth or fantasy, but I’m not gullible enough to swallow the tales on “lifesitenews.com”. A quick Googling turns up just other gullible people copy/pasting from Brigg’s source.

  7. I only searched on the judge’s name figuring that would reduce the overactive/overimaginative posts.

  8. I feel for the boy locked in the girls body. Except I wonder if it isn’t just the pendulum swinging way back on the “freedom to be whatever we want” side of things. I close my eyes, shake my head and walk the other way. There is no way to make the parties in the group understand. Logic is a wonderful thing, but only so long as the starting points are somewhat rational. We have to have the ability to ponder the starting points and say “Is that really rational?”

    The irrational can come to our aid. Well the imaginary can. -1^0.5 is imaginary, but it is also useful. It helps us deal with interim states of physical phenomena. We can’t completely explain everything in the real world so we send it orthogonally into the imaginary world and let it hang out there until it comes back to the real world.

    It works. We try to find out why it works. First and foremost it works. Statistics also works. If we make the odds of winning the lottery 1 in 290M, people seem to buy more tickets. People seem to keep buying tickets. The statistics also seem to work in reverse. I never win. Of course I almost never buy a ticket. When I do (I am a little irrational and it helps to appear a little irrational to the world), I always lose. The lottery planners make it easier for me to not buy tickets because I decide to buy tickets only when the Expected value > 2. Even then, I manage to avoid buying tickets because I would have to spend time going to a counter to get it.

    What does any of this have to do with a girl wanting to be a boy?

    Controlling feedback loops is really hard. Imaginary numbers help us manage and comprehend both the Power Factor of a Electrical Generator, and the potential energy stored in the magnetic field. I don’t use imaginary numbers to help me start my car. It helps me understand feedbacks in the electrical grid. Expected values let me curb my appetite for “quick” money and keep me from running after and dreaming after such riches. We live a world that promotes magic all the time and these help keep me grounded. People with confused genders have been fed the magic without any of the pieces that keep us grounded. The pieces that keep me grounded cannot be forced into people.

  9. Well, what will happen when it isn’t a case of hormone blocking drugs but chromosome modification techniques that will truly alter sex (not gender)?
    Will there be objections then to changing one’s “natural” sex? Again Science-fiction leads the way… See Gregory Benford’s “Across the Sea of Suns” in which sex changes are made for playful amusement, back and forth. (I think that’s the correct novel in the Galactic Center series…but I may be wrong.)

  10. Notice how all of this is predicated on a Cartesian/Neoplatonic concept of the soul being pushed in many cases by those who deny souls exist. Plotinus thought that “he” was trapped in a material body, simpliciter. Now we have people who are convinced that they are ‘really’ boys trapped in icky girls’ bodies [and vice versa]. Each of these requires belief that a ‘real self’ somehow co-exists spatially with a mere material shell and if the two are not congruent, the material shell can and should be manipulated to bring it into line. iow, the ‘mind-body problem’ is not a problem in politically-favored instances.

    But it all rests on how a little girl knows she ‘feels like’ a boy [or vice versa]: http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf
    or in a slightly different context:
    http://curmudgeonjoy.blogspot.com/2008/07/hard-problem-of-feeling-or-what-is-it.html

  11. Well, it sounds to me like this is a family matter with a rather turbulent couple tussling over a confused kid. We’d have to know a lot more about this kid and these parents to have a reasonable opinion.

    JMJ

  12. Just another case of political correctness. Years ago I read a book on the psychological origins of PC and the author pointed out that when you become PC you have to deny reality. Reality becomes just a matter of opinion.

  13. All,

    Canadian Supreme Court of British Columbia: http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/sc/16/07/2016BCSC0744.htm

    “…the child was assigned the female gender at birth” which should read “the child is female.”

    “…in September 2015…J.K. was beginning to develop breasts…Dr. Metzger who recommended that J.K. start receiving Lupron, which is administered by injection on a monthly basis.”

    Judge decides in favor of insanity.

  14. Impressive, Mr. Briggs, you’ve found reasons for the judgement from the court!

    Conclusion

    [53] In summary, a litigation guardian will be appointed for J.K. and, upon that appointment, J.K. may be added as a party to this proceeding through the guardian.

    [54] A.H. also seeks, as an interim order, a variation of the January 2015 order to grant her sole decision-making authority in respect of medical, social, gender, education and legal matters affecting J.K.

    [55] I am not prepared to make that order at this time. Given that the focus of the hearing before me was on the issue of representation for J.K., the facts relevant to the issue of guardianship were not fully canvassed and N.K. did not address the issue. In any event, under the status quo, J.K. is receiving treatment and that status quo will continue pending determination of N.K.’s application.

    [56] Costs of these applications will be in the cause.”

    The above conclusion read a bit different from what’s claimed in this post.

    Anyway, I used to like to say “I was right!” because I realized that behind one I-was-right, there were quite a few I-was-wrong’s. Still though, “you were right” is music to my ears only because it implies someone is admitting his/her mistakes.

  15. Surely, if alteration needs medical interference then it’s not a natural state.
    YOS – Thanks for showing how it resounds with body & soul dichotomy.

  16. JH,
    Just because the judge concluded that “N.K. did not address the issue” does not mean that N.K. did not address the issue. I believe that the judge and N.K. do not see eye-to-eye on what, specifically, the issue is. In fact, the judge allowing “puberty blocking drug” treatments for a person entering puberty would seem to run counter to the point of N.K.’s concerns. That aside, I don’t see where Briggs has been untrue to the judge’s summary. So your request for an “I told you so” seems misplaced.

  17. Steve E,

    As predicted by Yours Truly, another aspect of Reality has been made illegal.

    So what’s made illegal? I didn’t see any evidence that the judge ordered the man to treat his daughter as a boy. The judge addressed the focus of the hearing, and a litigation guardian will be appointed for JK. It seems though this case, i.e., this family’s trouble, is not over yet.

    Did I request for an “I told you so”? Is it my Chingish? What have I told Briggs?

    I seriously was just telling how my attitude towards many things, and it has nothing to do with what Briggs likes to do. I have learned that to tell people that “I was right’ does nothing to improve anything, but to give myslef a false sense of self importance, when, in fact, I had also speculated many things incorrectly.

  18. Funny that they mention “The American College of Pediatricians” a very small association that try to pass itself has the real association “American Academy of Pediatrics”

    https://www.aap.org

    The first one has a membership of a few dozen Pediatricians while the latter has a membership of thousands of Pediatricians.

    And the father is not ordered to do anything.

  19. Bob Kurland,
    “chromosome modification techniques that will truly alter sex”

    The sex we know so familiarly, male and female, is prior to the scientific knowledge about chromosomes. The familiar sex is correlated with chromosomes and that’s why it is possible to committ the error you made, when you DEFINE sex by chromosomes.

    All that would happen with chromosomal therapy is that sex would no longer be correlated with chromosomes. For instance, how would a chromosomal change in adulthood from XY to XX give rise to female sex parts? ovaries are developed in uterus and not in adulthood.

  20. I didn’t see any evidence that the judge ordered the man to treat his daughter as a boy

    [38] Much of what N.K. had to say in his submissions goes more to the merits of his application. For example, he expressed significant concern about the use of Lupron, which he describes as a very dangerous drug. I note as well that despite Mr. Justice Masuhara’s order referred to above, N.K. consistently referred to J.K. as P.K. and used the female pronoun.

    Are you blind?!

  21. [24] Mr. Justice Masuhara also made a number of orders governing the parties’ conduct pending a final resolution, as follows:

    2. N.K. shall refer to J.K. by the name J.K. and use male or gender-neutral pronouns when referring to J.K.;

  22. B’Rat,

    No, I am not blind… whatever you intend to mean. So, calling the kid JK and using male and gender neutral pronouns are seen as treating the daughter as a boy? My name is gender neutral, and pronouns are gender neutral in Chinese. Does that mean my families or my teachers or my friends treat me as a boy?

    A basic acknowledgement of a kid’s feeling oftentimes is a good way to open up communication. It works for me, at least.

  23. My name is gender neutral, and pronouns are gender neutral in Chinese.

    The parties involved are not Chinese, nor is the litigation framed in that language. It is often the case that something contentious in one language makes no noise in another. The judge clearly ordered N.K. to refer to his daughter as if she were a boy. Evidently, the effort to force material reality to conform with one’s feelings will proceed. Let’s hope that poor P.K. [or J.K.] does not suffer the fate of Nancy Verhelst and join the 40% of transgenders who attempt suicide. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2015/08/bruce-jenner-rene-descartes-and-stolen.html

  24. YOS,
    Yes, body and mind are not separate, they are only treated separately by those who assume they are separate. However consciousness ‘works’, or ‘is’, it is a result of the body and yet the mind can also affect the body.

    Soul is no more only intellect and will than mind is.
    That’s my guess.

  25. I’m inclined to agree that divorcing parents are the major problem at this point. The case appears to be giving the child legal representation. The child is reportedly being drugged at this point, which the father wants stopped and the mother does not. It may be the child is just a punching bag in the divorce. Once the media got hold of this, the child is a punching bag for the pro-transgender groups. To a large degree, I agree with JMJ.

    As to JH’s contention that the judge did not endorse “reality being made illegal”, if the child is being drugged to stop puberty, reality is indeed being denied. The child is female, not male, or She would not be developing breasts.

    All of this type of emoting used to be called “psychotic”. It is still detached from reality, but it has been proven that people who don’t know what reality is will buy anything. Having a population in an irrational, reality denying state how you sell lies and deception as the truth and it’s very effective. Politicians and those in power love it.

    Gender identity clearly indicates mind and body are separate.

    As for assigning gender, one can skip chromosomes if one defines gender as having male genitalia being male and a vagina and uterus as female (removal of the uterus due to cancer not included here). Any “trans-sexual” that retains the parts of their original sex shall be referred to as their original sex. Failure to remove all vestiges of one’s prior sex is proof one did not “trans” at all.

    Brad T: Well said.

    Bob K: An interesting consequence of abortion and genetics is the reality that IF homosexuality is genetic, a parent can abort a gay lump of tissue before it becomes a problem. There have been outcries from the LGBT groups over this, but they are the ones who insisted that genetics are what cause the sexual orientation. It came back to bite them on their backsides. Too much reliance on genetics and chromosomes can have bad outcomes for the one’s pushing the agenda.

  26. YOS,

    Nancy’s story seems to have very little to do with transgenderism and a lot to do with an horrible mother. Nancy seem to have tried the impossible in trying to please her mother who wouldn’t ever be pleased.

    Transgender people commit suicide at a higher because people like you deny them their sense of identity.

    You deny them their sense of identity because of your idiotic belief that material body is everything. If it would be the case then there would be no free will since everything would be determine by the DNA.

    This is not considering the idiotic transformation of the Holly Trinity made by the Catholic Church hundreds of years ago.

    A person is made of 3 substances (Body (material-mortal)-Soul (immaterial and immortal) and Spirit (immaterial-immortal).

    If material was everything their would be no male with XX chromosomes and no female with XY chromosomes.

    http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=25059
    http://www.isna.org/faq/y_chromosome

    We don’t know what causes sexual attraction and why some person are attracted to people of the same sex, just like we don’t know why some people are right handed or left handed. But obviously the identity of a person is far more than just its material content.

    Why life begins at birth and not at conception is found in the bible:

    Genesis 2-7

    “Then the Lord God formed a man[c] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

    What gives lifes is the first breath.

    John 6

    “63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.”

    Mankind is a lot more than a body.

  27. But obviously the identity of a person is far more than just its material content.

    Sure, but their ‘sex’ is clearly material to a significant extent. And where does YOS actually say that a person is no more than its physical characteristics? No where.

  28. dover,

    YOS said above:

    “Now we have people who are convinced that they are ‘really’ boys trapped in icky girls’ bodies [and vice versa]. Each of these requires belief that a ‘real self’ somehow co-exists spatially with a mere material shell and if the two are not congruent, the material shell can and should be manipulated to bring it into line.”

    How do you explain male with to XX’s chromosomes and girls with XY’s chromosomes?

  29. However consciousness ‘works’, or ‘is’, it is a result of the body and yet the mind can also affect the body.

    In Thomist psychology, consciousness is seated in the brain and is primarily a result of the common sense, which integrates separate signals of touch, smell, taste, sound, and sight into a single ‘phantasm’ or ‘ymago.’ This sense serves to distinguish between the sensing subject and the sensed object, thus producing a consciousness of self. Nearly all animals would seem to possess this power.
    +++
    Transgender people commit suicide at a higher because people like you deny them their sense of identity.

    Four times higher than gay and lesbian people. A contributing factor is certainly an inability of surgery and chemicals to deliver on the fantasy involved.

    You deny them their sense of identity because of your idiotic belief that material body is everything.

    Where have I asserted this?

    If it would be the case then there would be no free will since everything would be determine by the DNA.

    The only thing determined by DNA is the production of proteins. What these entail is often subject to epigenetic factors, so not even all biological characteristics are ‘determined’ by DNA, let alone behavioral ones.

    This is not considering the idiotic transformation of the Holly Trinity made by the Catholic Church hundreds of years ago.

    We get it that you don’t like the Church, but what has the Trinity to due with transgenderism? Focus, my friend. Focus.

    A person is made of 3 substances (Body (material-mortal)-Soul (immaterial and immortal) and Spirit (immaterial-immortal).

    Perhaps you are not clear on the meaning of ousia [substantia]. A basketball is not two substances — rubber and sphere — but is a single substance compounded of matter and form. You are confused by a pseudo-Cartesian ghost-in-the-machine viewpoint that has been the Western default since the 17th century.

    We don’t know what causes sexual attraction and why some person are attracted to people of the same sex

    Transgender people are not necessarily homosexuals.

    obviously the identity of a person is far more than just its material content

    We are not talking about ‘person’ but about sex and coming to terms with it — as opposed to the Cartesian impulse to dominate and control Nature.

  30. How do you explain male with to XX’s chromosomes and girls with XY’s chromosomes?

    Simple: chromosomes are not fully dispositive of sex.

  31. “Four times higher than gay and lesbian people. A contributing factor is certainly an inability of surgery and chemicals to deliver on the fantasy involved.”

    Of course, laws like the one in NC don’t have any negative impact. These people kill themselves at a higher rate because some people go out of their way to make them miserable.

    NC law specify that people most go to the bathroom according to the sex from their DNA meaning that this guy has to go in the women bathroom:

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/transgender-man-vying-chance-men-health-cover-article-1.2186308

    The best thing that can happen to a transgender is that he get caught ate the earliest, before puberty changes into the sex that he doesn’t recognize himself.

    NC Law also claim to protec people while it doesn’t. Male to Female trangender get raped, beaten and assaulted when they use male bathroom.

    “Where have I asserted this?”

    You did in responding to joy and see above quote.

    “Transgender people are not necessarily homosexuals.”

    They rarely are but if we don’t know what make a person prefer a hand of the other, we certainly don’t know what make us prefer a sexual identity.

  32. Of course, laws like the one in NC don’t have any negative impact. These people kill themselves at a higher rate because some people go out of their way to make them miserable.

    NC law specify that people most go to the bathroom according to the sex

    The law in NC allows a post-operative transgender to enter the bathroom that matches their birth certificate, and they are allowed to alter their birth certificate following surgery. What the law in NC overturned was an ordinance in Charlotte that banned single-sex toilets.

    Where have I asserted this?”

    You did in responding to joy and see above quote.

    No he didn’t, and the above quote showed nothing of the sort.

  33. YOS,
    Animals are a distraction on the matter of human value.
    If classification is to be based on physical description as it is, there can be no argument that humans are mammals.

    If another classification is superimposed which leaves humans in their own group then that argument also stands if the distinction is clear, of course..
    Furthermore if our classification as mammals is simply an observation of accidental characteristics which captures humans as well then it doesn’t alter the fact that the observation is true. The truth with respect to the value of humans is separate; either a matter of faith and fact for those who believe in God, of the Bible, or “false belief” in the case of the atheist.

    This is quite separate from an argument of the intelligence or not of a given animal or group of animals. Simply asserting dumbness gets nowhere in the face of contrary evidence.
    I don’t know what level of intellect some attribute to animals but some induction from learning about the world seems likely to me. That is far from telling an ape it’s going to die, (April fool) and it would be facetious to argue that the one naturally leads to the other, reactionary, even.

  34. This is quite separate from an argument of the intelligence or not of a given animal or group of animals.

    ‘Intelligence’ originally meant ‘to read between’ [inter legere] but has been dumbed down in recent decades to mean mere cleverness or problem-solving.

    Simply asserting dumbness gets nowhere in the face of contrary evidence.

    The inability to speak [‘dumbness’] is actually a pretty good marker, so long as one realizes that language is not simply making signs [vocal or otherwise] but symbols. It requires grammar, not mere vocabulary. It requires words for ‘should,’ ‘if,’ ‘equals,’ and other modal terms.

    I don’t know what level of intellect some attribute to animals but some induction from learning about the world seems likely to me.

    It seemed likely to the ancients and medievals, too. It was only the moderns of the scientific revolution who reduced ‘instinct’ to mechanism and animals to ‘meat puppets,’ a belief that has unraveled in recent years. But intellect is the capacity to abstract universal concepts from concrete particulars, such as the concept of ‘three’ as such over and above specific embodiments of threeness in concrete objects. There are no ‘levels’. An animal can either do it, even a little bit, or it can’t.

  35. YOS,
    ‘Dumbness” as you probably knew should be substituted for’ stupidity.” It is no use asserting that animals are stupid when the evidence is contrary.
    Nobody, I would think, would believe that animals can understand syntax, grammar, or parts of speech. The cleverest do understand some speech though, probably nouns only and adjectives which to them have meaning as objects not as parts of speech. I am surprised that you would think this needs to be said.
    Induction? Ball and play both are just objects with meaning, one word direct to the thing. One word labels. It is in the behaviour where the intelligence is observed. I don’t count training to fly the plane because that’s just training. No initiative required.

    Having looked, although not that hard, for the five types of induction I found simple lists of the same examples. The ‘simplest type’ is I assume that which was endlessly listed on the several places I looked. (do I induce that there is only one kind of induction? I should but I have just been informed that there are types of induction about which I know nothing, because I can read.)

    So far all X’s have a certain property so all X’s must have this property. This is an X therefore it has the property stated.
    Dogs can do this. They show that they make the assumption, I don’t think they talk to themselves in their heads! Why would anyone imply that? Other than to dismiss the thought as silly?

    There is no disagreement, although we disagree. I trust what you say about induction, however, I also trust my observations too.

    Even if It’s only a few dogs out of the dog group that display this characteristic, it follows that dogs can perform simple induction.
    Similarly if there’s only a few humans who ‘understand’ QM it means that “M can be understood by humans.

  36. The ability to do induction in the sense you mean is not the same thing as intellect. The instinctive ability of the sheep not only to recognize a wolf never before seen but to esteem that wolf as an enemy to be shunned was well known to Aristotelians. Animal prudence, so-called, can even be regarded as a precursor to the speculative intellect. As Aristotle put it: an animal knows flesh, but a man knows what flesh it.

    The confusion comes about because humans are animals and can act ‘like an organism in an environment.’ When a hunter calls out “Bison here!” and the others move in his direction, he is doing what a baboon does when he makes the cry associated with leopards.

    What Ockham cautions us against is assuming that the baboon is employing intellect as well as imagination. That is, nothing more is required by evolution than the baboon’s instinctive cry on spotting [or otherwise sensing] the leopard and the instinctive reaction of the other baboons upon hearing the cry. We cannot suppose without additional evidence that the first baboon thought in any manner, “Gosh! I better warn the others!” Imagination+instinct can accomplish marvels of self-training.

    But since among humans, not only are acts of the intellect always accompanied by acts of the imagination, but acts of the imagination are almost always* modulated by the intellect. Hence, we tend to anthropomorphize animal behavior, a la Disney. No baboon is going to say, ‘hey, Bob, remember that white leopard over by the gorge that ate Phil last week?’ He may avoid the gorge in the future, but will not discuss it.

    (*) almost always. If you are hiking in the woods and encounter an unexpected snake, you do not intellectualize the snake; you simply recoil, like any good animal. But an instant later>, you do think ‘oh! a snake! But not a rattler. A king snake maybe. I didn’t know there were any still around here.’ The flesh-and-blood snake has been transformed into a snake made of discourse.

  37. YOS,
    Yes we agree on most points, and there are many other predator examples.
    I never attribute “intellect” to animals.

    Perhaps to some and in some instances these words are interchangeable but to me intellect is entirely a human thing. Intellect, of course at it’s lower end would require spoken language I think the lang part probably originates from ‘ling’.

    ‘language’ though has come to mean and include many types of media of communication. That is not so controversial.

    Intelligence, however, is underestimated by many very clever people. It is also over estimated by the writers of children’s stories. I see no harm in this. Generations have been brought up on such tales, muse about what their pets are thinking and do nobody any harm. The strange character in the video, who I still think isn’t for real is nevertheless chilling to watch. Forget the poor ape who has to endure. Chilling for me, hilarious for some, dependant upon taste.

    A cat years ago who we’d had from a kitten. used to love to watch water go down the plug and would wait each day on the sink to watch, I think, the water disappear. Once the deadly material had disappeared through the plug hole she would pounce on the plug hole. Years later and on more than one occasion the cat was caught short. She was seen in the cloakroom peeing straight down the plug hole! She didn’t miss. On a separate occasion and you have to believe this she squatted over the toilet! There had been no training teaching, no punishment for accidents as a kitten (as these don’t work). So, I say that she knew that pee was water, that if she only could get it into that thing that makes water disappear problem would be solved. This was a different sink in a different house. There is a universal taken from a particular, the latter being a sink. New example of the same will operate the same. water and pee both recognised as sharing the property of liquid, probably are the same to a cat. Nobody knows how that wisdom is constructed in the mind of the cat but there is clear evidence that reasoning is going on. Not just instinct or training.
    It was the human soul binary distillation which I disagreed about and for me this is not the venue, nor do I wish to discuss that topic in the written media because it’s too easy to be misunderstood.
    I found another video of John Lennox which touched upon this conflict between intellectual and the clinician. If I can find it again I won’t post the ink but the title.

  38. If this man converted to Islam, the court ruling would be immediately reversed in his favor. The Crown has utmost respect for religions that behead their enemies and upload the videos.

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