It’s an easy one.
Solomon’s Wisdom (2 mothers and the baby)
The answer is: yes. Case closed. Lock the thread.
Is this going to be one of those threads where the OP presents a problem, responses come in and the OP rejects each one? And after seven pages, the OP says “Well looks like nobody can solve this problem” and leaves?
I do intend to give the answer in a moth or 2, don’t worry.
It just takes critical thinking and a bit of abstract logic to solve it.
The problem has already been solved. That’s what the story is about. What are you asking for?
I’ve made exorbiant amounts of hints in my recent big thread “The Academy”.
I looked and didn’t find an “exorbiant” amount of anything, aside from bellyaching. Care to repeat your hints and/or expound upon them?
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I can’t wait to find out why I am a pathetic failure.
Just to save posters’ time and wasted effort, I’ll copy my ‘wrong’ answer here:
phyllo
In all fairness I need to say that you indeed understands the basic psychology, but doesn’t know the variables of your knowledge, and doesn’t apply the critical thinking nor abstract logic.
What’s the question? What’s the challenge? Is this like jeopardy?
The question is who is the real mother is not solved. The real mother may have been the jealous one. And the false mother thet compassionate one.
The idea is it’s not the real (self) that matters, but the ideal one,(the ideal mother does not have her baby cut in half). The ideal incorporates the real. There goes the problem with the naturalistic fallacy.
Why would the real mother tell Solomon to cut her own baby in half?
Why would the real mother be jealous? Jealous of what?
I think I see what obe means: unwilling to compromise, more desperate, less able to control her emotions and take in the overview. I don’t know if I agree, I would have to read the passage itself again.
Though it would be fairly unnatural for a mother to let her child get cut in half. Sure, it happens, but the odds are much lower in that direction.
I Kings 3
In other word: the woman who says give the baby to the other woman may have been the woman who stole the chid. She may have stole it, because the real mother may have been not possessing the capacity to appreciate her own baby, may have been without reason. These details are not mentioned in the bible. The thief woman may have been the compassionate one in rescuing the child.
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Yeah, I can’t see anyway to read that except that the one who asked for it to be divided is not the real mother. If she had screamed ‘It’s mine, it’s mine’ OK, possibly. she just might not be reading the situation or even really listening.
I find the story weird. I mean, the fake mother is about as stupid as a stone. All she had to say, after the other one spoke, was something like ‘Oh, thank God she confessed,’ and run to ‘her’ child with passion and scooped it up. I mean seriously who would not realize the problem with dividing the child? Certainly not a mother who just lost her own child. And a cruel person, who doesn’t want the other to have a child if she doesn’t, would have to be, well, as stupid as a stone not to realize how others will here her choice.
Yes, the false mother only needed to mirror the real mother and say “Give the child to her rather than kill it”. Then Solomon would have had a serious problem.
Maybe that happened in another case, but it was not written down because there was no clever solution. We like a who-dun-it where the murderer confesses on the last page rather than a protracted trial and denial of guilt on the gallows.
The real mother is explicitly identified in the story. However, that is not necessary to demonstrate Solomon’s wisdom. He identifies the compassionate woman and therefore the one more suitable for raising the child … that need not be the biological mother.