tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37461554150921564782024-03-13T11:08:33.589-07:00Sentient SynergyA blog about the future, critical inquiry and the search for what is truly realUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-76935405737586574642024-01-13T16:11:00.000-08:002024-01-13T17:24:01.555-08:00<h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Religions Are All Alike</span></span></h1><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></p><h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Religions are all alike -- founded upon fables and mythologies." </span></span></h4><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Thomas Jefferson</i></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> -------------------------------- <br /></span></span></p><h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."</span></span></h4><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>John Adams <br /></i></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">------------------------------- </span></span></p><h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."</b></span></span></h4><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Benjamin Franklin</i></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">------------------------------</span></span></p><h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"I always find it very curious that when one is confronted with what one does not like, approve, or understand, one suddenly has 'sincere religious beliefs.'"</span></span></h4><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Jim Green</i></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><b>----------------------------</b></i></span></span></p><h4 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on."</span></span></h4><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Neil DeGrasse Tyson<br /></i></span></span></div><p style="text-align: center;"></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-69103779394218232202022-05-29T10:46:00.030-07:002023-02-18T13:42:18.586-08:00<h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Centrality of Human Existence</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <br /></span></span></h1><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span><b><span><span>By Steve Rensberry</span></span></b></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span> <span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span>Sometimes I wake up and think to myself, I'm going to work on a plan to save the world today. Only I'm not sure that most of humanity actually wants saving. </span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span>Human civilization is thousands of years old and where are
we? Cave dweller #1 is still hitting cave dweller #2 over the head
because he, or she, has something he wants or doesn't like. We just
have a lot more people and tribes, and more sophisticated caves and
tools.
</span></span></span></p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></span><p> </p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span><span> </span>Don't you think it's time to let go of all those sacred cows and antiquated ideas that have failed to work? I vote for embarking on a Second Great Enlightenment, rather than returning to the Dark Ages of failed traditions, superstition and death. Humans ought to put humans first, recognize the centrality of human existence, and get to work on the problems we face in the hear and now.<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span><span> </span>The picture is a public domain pic of the reading of Voltaire's tragedy of the Orphan of China in the salon of Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin in 1755, by Lemonnier, c. 1812. Voltaire (actual name: François-Marie Arouet), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of Christianity . . . and of slavery, as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment" target="_blank">The Great Enlightenment</a></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhdlE5CxTUDbEwL07opUaDktIMKDD0hLijah_ymeI4u8j5qU0UIstPn-qDqKv9xTy7SuXYNiQRYbYnNMzaWISCwS_p1rQ3gyqiG1sCG69GRlDOgkkvxyVy9aqjKQWZ5WjM_DnbWJvPjA3PqClof150yQE1dtuSoPGaaE8mWbN1vShv4jbuFbXzwgoU6g/s1120/Salon_de_Madame_Geoffrin.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="737" data-original-width="1120" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhdlE5CxTUDbEwL07opUaDktIMKDD0hLijah_ymeI4u8j5qU0UIstPn-qDqKv9xTy7SuXYNiQRYbYnNMzaWISCwS_p1rQ3gyqiG1sCG69GRlDOgkkvxyVy9aqjKQWZ5WjM_DnbWJvPjA3PqClof150yQE1dtuSoPGaaE8mWbN1vShv4jbuFbXzwgoU6g/w640-h422/Salon_de_Madame_Geoffrin.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Voltaire
reads Orphan of China (<a href="https://www.blogger.com/#" target="_blank">pub
domain pic</a>)</span></span></p>
</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><br /></span></span></span></span><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-88857331802825845472021-05-16T13:01:00.008-07:002021-05-16T18:14:26.306-07:00Mind and Body<h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Brainwashed Mind </span></span> </span> <br /></span></h1><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-68-F1vZiN08/YKHCuIcLyjI/AAAAAAAADng/CRwDU-i0oZE8oIBHP6g4vBdmVfmxUG0JwCLcBGAsYHQ/s910/Moon-clouds-c-a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="910" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-68-F1vZiN08/YKHCuIcLyjI/AAAAAAAADng/CRwDU-i0oZE8oIBHP6g4vBdmVfmxUG0JwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Moon-clouds-c-a.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span> </span></span>Question: What if those who are brainwashed do not know they are brainwashed, cannot be convinced via reason, logic, or hard evidence that they are brainwashed, and in fact derive so much pleasure and release from anxiety by being emersed in the brainwashed state that they intentionally condition themselves to stay that way -- intentionally avoiding people and activities that might "open their eyes" or cause them to doubt what they are told, attending weekly meetings to reinforce their brainwashed state, and meditating/focusing on one singularly, absolute, unchanging set of concepts that make them feel happy, blissful and at peace in their comfortable brainwashed state?<br /><br /> <span> </span>Answer: We'd have a situation very much like we have today, with self-conditioning, relative self-isolation, and dogma valued as virtues, because to do otherwise -- say the false teachers of today -- would damn your very soul.<br /></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-27970503169489329472020-08-03T23:01:00.005-07:002020-08-05T23:54:45.300-07:00Culture & Politics<h1 style="text-align: center;">Epistemology, U.S. Politics, </h1><h1 style="text-align: center;">and the Social Construction of Reality</h1><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>By STEVE RENSBERRY</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Commentary</i><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"> <br /></div><b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LnPFG9OnMXQ/XyDCNlACUWI/AAAAAAAAC6A/WXz8_bAPj9MT3R_B1vpwY9jRCWF1sR4VgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1040/BergerLuckmann_underlyingFramework-a.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="757" data-original-width="1040" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LnPFG9OnMXQ/XyDCNlACUWI/AAAAAAAAC6A/WXz8_bAPj9MT3R_B1vpwY9jRCWF1sR4VgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/BergerLuckmann_underlyingFramework-a.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BergerLuckmann / <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6093152" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. - 7/28/2020 -</b> In the late 1980s, I was a fired up, eager-to-learn sociology major at <a href="https://www.greenville.edu/" target="_blank">Greenville University</a>,
eager enough to never miss a class with either of my two main sociology
instructors, professors Rick Stephens and James DeLong. I respected
both as knowledgeable experts in their field, though each later went on
to teach elsewhere while I decided to make a switch and transfer to <a href="https://www.siue.edu/" target="_blank">Southern Illinois University Edwardsville</a> to study journalism. <br />
Sociology is a field of study I admire for a lot of reasons, but one
concept I found particularly intriguing was called “the social
construction of reality.” If you've ever had even an entry-level
sociology class, you may recall the phrase because it's a major
sociological theory, introduced in 1966 through a book written by Thomas
Luckmann and Peter L. Berger, entitled: <i><a href="http://perflensburg.se/Berger%20social-construction-of-reality.pdf" target="_blank">The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge</a>.</i> (Penguin Books, New York, 1966) <br />
Thinking about this theory the other day, it suddenly dawned on me just
how much of a living example today's tumultuous situation is. Are we
witnessing “the social construction of reality” in action, in all its
messy, dirty and chaotic glory? Maybe so. <br /> It's not a simple concept, but in short, “the social construction of reality” refers to the idea that: <br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>
People are shaped by their life experiences, backgrounds and
interactions with others, including their perceptions of reality. </li><li> An inter-personal and social process of repetition and “<a href="https://sociologydictionary.org/habitualization/" target="_blank">habitualization</a>” leads to the creation and institutionalization of various social structures, reciprocal roles, and moral codes. See: <a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sociology/chapter/social-constructions-of-reality/" target="_blank">Introduction to Sociology</a><br /></li><li>
What people understand as “reality” is really the product of a
complicated interpersonal social-interaction and negotiation process
that societies go through in determining what is socially acceptable.
See: <a href="https://www.sparknotes.com/sociology/identity-and-reality/section1" target="_blank">Identity and Reality</a><br /></li></ul> According to the <a href="https://sociologydictionary.org/thomas-theorem/" target="_blank">Thomas Theorem</a>,
“successive definitions of the situation” play a key part in
establishing such norms of social acceptability. Other sociologists have
described the process, on the individual level, as a type of
self-fulfilling prophecy -- such as when a false idea or rumor, if
actually believed to be real by the person who holds it, can end up
having real-world consequences. In other words, the individual's
reality, though false, was essentially “<a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sociology/chapter/social-constructions-of-reality/" target="_blank">constructed by an idea</a>." <br />
Well what I see happening is just that -- one big mammoth struggle to
“define the situation,” to define who we are as a country, as a culture,
and as human beings, to establish meaning and values and our shared
“social reality,” and ultimately to see whose definition will stick. <br />
Add to that the influence of an epistemological divide that has existed
in Western Civilization since its inception, and the current state of
U.S. politics and the cultural divide becomes more understandable yet. <br /> What type of evidence is sufficient on which to pin a belief, especially one that would rise to the level of foundational? <br />
Does subjective, emotional evidence suffice? What about
empirically-based evidence? Or evidence that you can only touch, see and
verify with the senses? What about revelation-based or supernatural
evidence? Does evidence only qualify as valid if based on group
identity? These are straight up epistemological questions about the
validity of knowledge and how to attain it -- and how you answer them is
every bit related to our current state of affairs, I'd say. <br /> Do
you believe that truth, values, and knowledge are easily discernible
through intuitive means, emotive reasoning, common sense or are simply
innate to human nature? Or do you believe they are only really
trustworthy when they correspond with hard facts, experience, science,
and logic? You can see where I'm going with this. <br /> I should also say that I'm not the first to point out the “epistemic crisis” we're experiencing. <br />
“The US is experiencing a deep epistemic breach, a split not just in
what we value or want, but who we trust, how we come to know things, and
what we believe we know -- what we believe exists, is true, has
happened and is happening,” writes <a href="https://www.vox.com/authors/david-roberts" target="_blank">David Roberts</a> in a Nov. 2, 2017 <i>Vox</i> piece entitled, <i><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16588964/america-epistemic-crisis" target="_blank">America is facing an epistemic crisis</a></i>. <br />
Roberts blames “the US conservative movement” for much of the crisis,
through its attacks and rejection of the mainstream media and other
institutions, such as science and academia, which “society has appointed
as referees in matters of factual dispute.” <br /> I would agree that
what we're seeing today has been exacerbated by partisan attacks on key
social institutions -- institutions of the kind you might even expect to
play a roll in the theorized “social construction of reality,” but
Roberts should know that progressive interests have attacked the
credibility of various institutions that conservatives respect as well,
religious organizations being one of them, and from the view of
conservatives have been doing it for a long time. I'm not taking sides,
but I know how they feel. <br /> Roberts does make a good point though, by pointing out some fundamental differences. <br />
“The pretense for the conservative revolution was that mainstream
institutions had failed in their role as neutral arbiters — that they
had been taken over by the left, become agents of the left in referee’s
clothing, as it were,” Roberts writes. “But the right did not want
better neutral arbiters. The institutions it built scarcely made any
pretense of transcending faction; they are of and for the right.” <br /> I don't disagree with him. <br />
My opinion: Today's glaring ideological polarization seems to me to be
just more of the same old “way-of-thinking” drama that has been playing
out on the world's stage for centuries, interspersed with relative
periods of peace before the next crisis in truth, trust and knowledge
flares up, as it has now, like a bad virus. Complete prevention may be
impossible, but not letting it get out of control by selecting leaders
with level heads and the ability to speak truthfully and with love for
all of humanity, rather than put up walls, would seem to me a good idea.
I believe that this goes for all leaders, whether in government,
ecclesiastical institutions, academia, private organizations, or in the
world of business. <br /> One more suggestion: pay attention to your
teachers and professors, because you never know when some of the wisdom
they impart -- while appearing irrelevant at the time -- just might be
of value years down the road! I'm sure glad I did.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>For further reading:</b><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sociology/chapter/social-constructions-of-reality/" target="_blank">Social Constructions of Reality / Lumenlearning</a><br /><a href="https://www.sparknotes.com/sociology/identity-and-reality/section1/" target="_blank">Identity and Reality / Sparknotes</a><br /><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology">Epistemology / Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a><br /><a href="https://iep.utm.edu/epistemo/" target="_blank">Epistemology / Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a><br /><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16588964/america-epistemic-crisis" target="_blank">America is facing an epistemic crisis</a><br /></div><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-1663152417792790492018-01-02T11:48:00.001-08:002020-08-03T23:05:10.013-07:00Search for Truth<div style="text-align: center;"><h1>
<font size="5"><b>Hope In A World of Superstition <br /></b></font></h1><h1><b><font size="5">And Empty Promises</font><br /></b></h1></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>By Steve Rensberry</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Commentary</i></div>
<br />
I embrace the unknown, the uncertain, the non-absolute, the mysterious, and the need for one's fundamental beliefs to be rational, logical, and reflective of the totality of human experience. Tentative conclusions, skepticism, and a worldview derived from empirical reality and science, as opposed to emotion, spiritualism and magical thinking, are what the universe demands. <br />
Making leaps involving absolute “trust,” and believing wholeheartedly in things before all the evidence is in, is simple credulity, or foolishness if you will.<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y2g3HpzEcsQ/WkvsDhLG4eI/AAAAAAAAClU/puCJUcN_ylwJ4EqqXlb-YaIEMs1gpqVyQCLcBGAs/s1600/Human-b%2Binvert-a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="585" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y2g3HpzEcsQ/WkvsDhLG4eI/AAAAAAAAClU/puCJUcN_ylwJ4EqqXlb-YaIEMs1gpqVyQCLcBGAs/s200/Human-b%2Binvert-a.jpg" width="196" /></a> Think about it: committing oneself to an all-encompassing belief system that promises to reveal afterwords what reason and logic dictate should come before any “commitment to believe” -- especially when such commitment involves concepts on the level of an absolute -- is circular reasoning at its best, assuming to be true in the premise that which it seeks to realize in the conclusion. <br />
Morality and ethics are grounded in basic human needs and the necessity of survival. If we don't treat each other kindly, the way we ourselves want to be treated, we don't survive. It takes no leap of blind faith or trust, no assumption of “insider knowledge revealed only to those 'who believe,'” no existential moment of assumed contact with the divine, and no castigation of other human beings as worthless and evil simply for refusing to believe as you do. <br />
One's inherent desire to live an enjoyable life free of pain begs us to limit our own actions lest we all suffer the same fate. It leads us to create laws and social rules that mitigate our competing interests, to protect ourselves -- directly, indirectly, or inadvertently -- from abusing one another. Being moral means living life in the here and now. It means treating other human beings as precious and invaluable. It means opening our eyes to the finite nature of our finite existence, being kind, and seeing all of life, the earth, our neighbors, the animal kingdom, everything, not as intermediate stepping stones to some “higher” reality, but as something beautiful and worthy in their own right. <br />
Being moral means being honest with oneself and admitting that we human beings are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent, and claiming to know someone “on a personal level” who is adds no more weight to the argument than does any other subjective, unfounded assertion.<br />
There is hope for humanity because there are others like myself who believe in truth, knowledge and the goodness of others, who refuse to believe their eyes are lying when death comes knocking, and who will never give up in doing what is right. There is hope because there are people still left in the world who genuinely care for other people, not because they are told to care by some assumed entity or sacred book, not because they fear eternal punishment, not because the people they care for think the same way they do, but because life matters -- in and of itself. Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-86079631193498907192017-05-03T08:00:00.002-07:002020-08-03T23:07:09.275-07:00Reflections<div style="text-align: center;"><h1>
<b><font size="5"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Unreal Time</span></font><br /></b></h1></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>By Ellen Proctor</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Who is it? The phone rings, every hour on the hour. Actually, at about five minutes before the hour. I don't know who it is, so I call it, “It.” Whoever “It” is, its clock must be a little fast.<br />
I wonder if this is by accident or design.<br />
I set my own clocks to an unknown time, rather fast, because I am afraid of the humiliation of walking into someplace late. Not that I have anyplace to go, really. Still, it helps to know that it's always a little earlier than I think it is when I look at my clock. But if I want to know the real time, I have only to look out my bathroom window at the bank clock downtown. The problem with this is, sometimes I look out to see that it's 11:96.<br />
I wonder if this is by accident or design.<br />
I think some prankster has hold of my life. It calls, listens to the wild static on my phone, and hangs up after I answer. Or perhaps it's expecting someone else to answer. Sometimes, when I walk in the door, the apartment has the air of someone having just walked out. I begin to wonder whether someone else lives here when I'm not home, in some furtive and elaborate time-share arrangement.<br />
The local high school thinks someone else lives here. Some kid named Eric. I get a lot of telephone calls for him, sometimes from high school girls, but more often from the school. I tell them over and over that Eric doesn't live here, that this is not Eric's phone number, that I don't even know Eric, but they don't seem to believe me.<br />
The girls keep calling. The school never removes my phone number from his files. Enough people think this is Eric's phone number that I almost believe it myself. I know a little about Eric now. Girls like him. He doesn't seem to like school much. Instead of going to school, maybe he spends his time here instead. If he does, I wish he'd clean up the place a bit. He probably just sits here amid the clutter of unpaid bills and unwashed dishes, reading my books.<br />
Instead of cleaning, I sit, thinking about it. Who is It? My clock says it's 12:34. I'm afraid to look out the window, afraid it'll be 11:96. I'm afraid to look at the phone, afraid it'll ring. I'm afraid to leave, afraid Eric will come in and resume his own domestic life among my belongings.<br />
Of course, I don't really believe any of this.<br />
Or at least, not most of it. Eric's real phone number could differ from mine by one digit. These people could simply be misdialing. The every-hour phone caller could be a very persistent Someone with a wrong number, or perhaps Eric himself. Eric calling hourly to see whether I'm home, whether it's safe for him to come in, whether the coast is clear. The bank clock is simply broken, of course, although perhaps it could somehow feel me looking at it. Giving me a sly wink from its electronic eye. Signals from this prankster.<br />
I know people who rely on their “higher power” to get them through the minute crises of life. I don't think I can rely on mine. I think that this prankster is what passes for my own higher power. I think its name is Eric. It likes to play with time. I almost believe it's what's causing the roaring static on my phone. I wonder whether my phone is actually linked to some alternate dimension, where someone named Eric actually lives at this address, and where 11:96 is an actual time of day.<br />
Of course, I don't really believe any of this.<br />
What I really need to do is to set my clocks to the correct time, stop answering my phone, and go out of the apartment.<br />
Yes, I need to go out of my apartment and hide outside, where I can see both the door and the fire escape. Where I can see without being seen. I need to lie in wait for It … or Eric. I also need to sneak up on that bank clock. The trouble with the clock is that it's not consistent. Sometimes it displays a time such as 3:42, just like any other self-respecting clock. Sometimes my phone rings and it's actually for me. Sometimes there isn't even any static on the line.<br />
I wonder if this is by accident or design.<br />
I'm starting to feel a bit guilty about staying inside. I feel somehow responsible for Eric's not being here. I could be making him homeless. I like to say that I have compassion for the homeless, but perhaps I'm part of the problem instead of part of the solution. I think I should go out so Eric can come in.<br />
Of course, I don't really believe any of this.<br />
What I really think is that Eric is my alter ego, my shadow self, my animus. When the bills aren't paid, blame it on Eric. When the dishes aren't done? It's Eric's fault. Actually, it's not really his fault, because he doesn't really know what time it is. How can anyone be expected to do anything on time, or show up for school, in a world where it can be 11:96 at any given moment? What kind of time is that? 11:96 is not time to go to school. It is not time to run out to buy stamps. 11:96 can be a lot of things, but one thing it is not, is time.<br />
I'm starting to think that maybe I'm missing the divine message in all of this. Like this 96 thing. It could be an apocalyptic message from the Beyond, A key to the cryptic numerological warning in the Book of Revelations? Or, maybe, relating to the year 1996. A 9 is just an upside-down 6. There is a 6 in my phone number. <br />
I wonder if this is by accident or design. <br />
What would Carl Jung say about this combination of things? If this were a dream, his interpretation would say that all the images and elements would be, quite simply, parts of myself. The unreal time is a signal, he might say, of knowing I'm not ready to face these things. This is borne out by my sense that someone has always just left as I walk in the door, someone with whom I'm unable to come face to face. Walking in the door is, of course, a symbolic entrance into the dreaming aspect of my psyche. The telephone is a modern archetype of the voice of the unseen, the Higher Power, perhaps, attempting to communicate its cryptic messages.<br />
Of course I don't really believe any of this.<br />
It's 12:49 by my clock. It could be five minutes until twelve. It could be 11:96. The phone rings. Who is it? I hear static. I say hello. It hangs up.<br />
Suddenly it becomes clear to me. It's the archetypal divine prankster, Trickster. Telling me to look beyond the commonplace events of life. Telling me not to live a humdrum existence. Yes, I see it now. Life is not a series of minute crises. It's a series of little mysteries, to solve or not to solve. That is the real question. Trickster is here, in the telephone and in the clock, giving me clues about the nature of truth.<br />
Of course I don't really believe any of this.<br />
It's all true, and none of it is true. Anything is possible and everything is impossible (or at the very least, improbable).<br />
I wonder if this is by accident or design.<br />
<br />
(Reprinted by permission - 5/3/2017)<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-13202010092743502552016-01-08T20:08:00.006-08:002020-08-03T23:15:03.541-07:00Life's Dilemmas<div style="text-align: center;"><h1><font size="5"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Teleological Illusions <br /></span></font></h1><h1><font size="5"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">and the Creation of Meaning</span></font></h1></div><div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"> <b>By Steve Rensberry</b></div>
<br />
Few phrases are as presumptuous as the phrase, “everything happens for a reason.” It is, nevertheless, nearly the axiom that guides all other axioms for millions of people who believe that life is governed by some type of divine, supernatural architect. Often it is voiced in the aftermath of some particularly painful and hard-to-understand tragedy, or in moments of despair and uncertainty. As an effort to offer comfort and assurance or to ease someone's pain, it is an understanding sentiment. The problem is with the term <i>everything</i>. Why not say that “<i>Some</i> things happen for a reason,” or perhaps, “When <i>some</i> things happen, we can sometimes learn from it?” Because such phrases, I would argue, simply lack the absolute certainty that people seem to crave. Is free will an illusion? Is life devoid of all uncertainty? Logically it would have to be, if everything does indeed have a purpose, would it not?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Philosophically the view is known as a teleology, a position which seeks to describe and explain life's phenomenon by appealing to purposes rather than to their historic and natural causes. The word's origin can be traced to 1740 and German philosopher Baron Christian von Volff, who coined the term teleologia, meaning “entire, perfect, complete.” Exactly what these purposes are, and how they are known, are questions that invariably invoke issues of trust and leaps in logic and reason.<br />
One way to understand the teleological frame of mine is to think of life--right down to the tiniest minutiae--as being pulled rather than pushed, of flipping cause and effect on its head, or of swapping a scientific and realist-based linear view of reality--as a series of space-time transformations from past to present to future--with one that flows in exactly the opposite direction. From a teleological perspective, time and causation exist but in a magical realm, the precise mechanism of what nobody understands. <br />
Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, an opponent of the mind-body dualism of Descartes, writes: "What is termed a 'final cause' is nothing but human appetite . . . . I must not fail to mention here that the advocates of this doctrine, eager to display their talent in assigning purpose to things, have introduced a new style of argument to prove their doctrine, i.e. a reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance, thus revealing the lack of any other argument in its favor. For example, if a stone falls from the roof on somebody's head and kills him, by this method of arguing, they will prove that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for if it had not fallen for this purpose by the will of God, how could so many circumstances (and there are often many coinciding circumstances) have chanced to concur? Perhaps you will reply that the event occurred because the wind was blowing and the man was walking that way. But they will persist in asking why the wind blew...And so they will go on and on asking the causes of causes until you take refuge in the will of God -- that is, the sanctuary of ignorance.” (Wolfson, Harry Austryn, <i>The Philosophy of Spinoza</i>, Meridian Books, Inc., New York, 1960. Appendix, pg. 60). <br />
The concepts of chance, luck, and happenstance simply do not exist in a metaphysical sense, from the teleological perspective, because everything has purpose, and everything has meaning -- by definition. By what mechanism do such meaningful circumstances happen? They happen by way of a thing called reality, but it is a reality which has been personified to the extreme, where human characteristics and impulses have been projected onto a being who is assumed to be multi-dimensional, eternal, and hyper-personal. He, she, or it, is seen as synonymous with life -- omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing, a conscious, personal and infinitely intelligent entity that knows not only the immediate thoughts and desires of each human being, but those they will experience in the future. It is a being who is considered to be love, hate, light, “the word,” everything and nothing, both incomprehensible and intensely personal. Above all, this being is considered to be wholly beyond and unconstrained by distance and time. <br />
Authors Aiyana K. Willad and Ara Norenzayan, of the University of British Columbia, outline in a 2013 manuscript the idea that the teleological mindset, and religious belief in general, rests on a type cognitive bias. They site multiple studies to substantiate their case. “These theories converge on suggesting that belief in supernatural agents such as gods and spirits, and related phenomena, emerge from a set of interrelated cognitive biases, such as perceptions of agency and mentalizing, mind-body dualism, and teleological intuitions. Equipped with these cognitive biases, human minds gravitate toward religious and religious-like beliefs and intuitions,” the authors state. See: <a href="http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/Manuscripts/Willard_Norenzayan_Cognitive_Biases.pdf">Cognative biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in lie's purpose</a>. <br />
Why do people believe in that which they can't prove, on matters as important as the meaning and purpose of life? The short answer is that such “belief statements” are not so much statements of truth or observation as they are simple assertions. The person who makes the statement “wants” it to be true, “feels” that it is true, and by voicing it seeks agreement and reinforcement for their belief.<br />
The long answer is that human beings are complex biological organisms with an abstract-creating, imagination-driven, non-linear operating organ called a brain, an organ marked by host of unusual phenomenon, chief among them being consciousness itself and the capability for self reflection. To think is to engage in the formation of hypothetical scenarios, and to mix, match and link together related images in an almost infinite variety of patterns and scenes, then, if desired, to erase the whole thing in a millisecond only to be followed by another. When we aren't simply thinking, we are striving to manifest what we conceive. We build houses. We form relationships. We play. We create. We paint. We travel. And we invent. Nature, however, always seems to get the better of us in the end. So the art and practice of hoping and believing that there's <i>more</i>, goes on. We want there to be more, because for some of us the idea that there isn't is just intolerable. The idea that “everything has a purpose,” like other ideas which imply a belief in higher realities, exists because we die, because of the inability for we humans to manifest all that we can can imagine.<br />
In the article, “<i>Does Everything Happen for a Reason?</i>, authors Deepak Chopra and Jordan Flesh suggest that it is life's fundamental unpredictability which drives the impulse to devise stories “to explain ourselves to ourselves,” in addition to the “cloud of causes” that exists within each of us. “Inside this cloud are memories, conditioning, habit, reason, emotion, relationship, genes, and many hidden biological factors,” they write. “How this cloud comes to a decision is completely beyond the reach of scientific explanation.”<br />
Chopra and Flesh furthermore point to the feelings of synchronicity which people have, a feeling which provides a counter to the randomness of life. “People’s stories contain a mixture of order and chaos, so it may be that reality is completely orderly and meaningful, the only difference being how much orderliness we choose to bring into our lives. In other words, the reason that synchronicity smooths the way for one person and not for another depends upon them,” they write. “Everything happens for a reason if that’s how you perceive life; you allow the underlying meaning to express itself. You hold back chaos by trusting in orderliness. Trust isn’t sufficient, not by any means. It’s just one ingredient. The larger picture is about setting up a partnership between yourself and larger, invisible forces. They aren’t mystical forces but aspects of your own consciousness. The invisible forces include creativity, insight, intuition, intention, and attaining a state of mind where you are centered enough to know who you really are. The partnership between you and nature lies at the core of the world’s wisdom traditions.” <br />
Quantum physics, which points to a fundamental both/and state of uncertainty or superposition at the sub-atomic level; and tychism, proposed by Charles Sanders Pierce, which holds that a form of absolute chance or indeterminism is a real factor in the way the universe operates, also call into question the assumption that every aspect of life is imbued with purpose and meaning.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
For Further Reading </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.19in;">
<a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0199285306.001.0001/acprof-9780199285303">Aristotle onTeleology</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.19in;">
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/">Charles SandersPeirce</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.19in;">
<a href="http://faculty.cbu.ca/areynold/Article.tychism.pdf">Tychism</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.19in;">
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/">The UncertaintyPrinciple</a>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.19in;">
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza-psychological/">Spenoza'sPsyhological Theory</a> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.19in;">
<a href="http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8324">A TeleologicalWorld</a> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.19in;">
<a href="http://thoughtcatalog.com/heidi-priebe/2015/06/not-everything-happens-for-a-reason/">Not EverythingHappens for a Reason</a> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.19in;">
<a href="http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/05/09/does-everything-happen-for-a-reason/">Does Everything Happen for a Reason</a> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.19in;">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-81674390249851043282015-12-17T07:31:00.001-08:002016-01-13T14:11:07.404-08:00The Same Old Tree<div style="text-align: center;">
"We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it." -- Albert Szent-Györgyi</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-7432424362032540852014-12-03T20:07:00.001-08:002022-05-29T11:44:41.246-07:00Aggregate Thinking and Objectification<div style="text-align: center;"><h1><span style="font-family: verdana;">Aggregation of the Mind</span> </h1></div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;"> <b>By Steve Rensberry</b></div>
<br />
Thinking in the
aggregate is a nearly ubiquitous and irresistible human impulse, an
impulse born perhaps in an increasingly complex, changing world that
requires quick decisions and survival smarts. We plug people into
groups, draw inferences based on averages, then move on as if all is
well. But is it rational, and does it lend itself to the making of
accurate, humane, and meaningful life decisions? This essay will
explore the premise that such thinking is neither rational nor
beneficial, and that ultimately all assessments of human beings that
lean on aggregate statistical analysis, and other forms of abstract
generalization, are in essence subtle and damaging forms of
dehumanization. Philosophically, attempts to establish a conclusive
interpretation for <i>any</i> individual human action by employing
aggregate based calculations and related assumptions is an
ontological nightmare, not unlike the epistemological quagmire we
find ourselves in with <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/">platonism</a>, <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Structuralism.html">structuralism</a> and <a href="http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_moral_absolutism.html">moral absolutism</a>.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
The term <i>aggregate</i>
is used in different ways by different groups, one being the concept
of aggregate demand or aggregate supply in macroeconomics, signifying
some comprehensive or total value. People working in statistics, in
the credit industry, or in the fields of predictive analytics and
actuarial science also make extensive use of aggregate concepts. As
used here, aggregate thinking is defined as the practice, whether
codified into a mathematical formula or through simple every-day
observation, of simply grouping and making assumptions about
individual human beings <i>derived from an analysis of the many</i>,
ostensibly to predict some future outcome, level of risk or value.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
How does such
thinking differ from the formation of the common stereotype, or
prejudicial thinking in general, both of which are almost universally
deplored? I would suggest that they differ only on a very superficial
level. Judgments which seem entirely arbitrary, lacking any kind of
statistical support or detailed argument, certainly <i>appear</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span>more prejudicial. But garnish them with even the slightest
amount of statistical reasoning, however superfluous, and the
acceptance level rises accordingly. Conflating the abstract with the
particular, and the realm of thought with flesh-and-blood existence,
seems particularly easy when the subject of our analysis is of a
conceptual nature, such as <i>people</i>, or <i>society</i>, as
opposed to a living, breathing, <i>individual</i> human.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
What choices do we
have, really, when assessing our fellow human beings? We can consider
individual people as entirely unique, living, breathing, sentient
creatures, each with his or her own 100-percent unique life
experiences, level of intelligence and genetic predisposition; or we
can view them as something lesser, in the abstract, as just one part
of a large group, defining them according to some mathematical
algorithm or set of averages -- or generalization -- which assume
that similar creatures think and reason in 100-percent identical
ways.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Consider a group of
100 people. If 80 people out of this 100 are determined to have X
characteristic, and if all those who have X characteristic engage in
Y, can we take each of these 100 individuals in isolation and say
that each of them has an 80 percent chance of engaging in Y? Not
without committing a number of logical fallacies we can't. We commit
the fallacy of division when we say that something which is true for
the whole is necessarily true for each or some of its parts. We
commit the ecological fallacy when we infer that statistics involving
an individual can be deduced from inference for some group to which
an individual belongs. The fallacy of composition involves falsely
reasoning that what is true for a part is also true for the whole.
The informal fallacy of hasty generalization is made when a
conclusion is reached without consideration of all variables, which
in this case would be those unique to a specific individual.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Put another way, is
it fair to assume that each and every person in a group with
predominantly similar characteristics carries the same degree of risk
that the entire group does, in the aggregate? Most of us would say
no, yet this type of assumption is exactly what happens in all sorts
of enterprises -- in the field of insurance and actuarial science, in
the determination of credit scores, in setting security clearances,
in establishing citizenship, indeed with just about everything and
anything that requires certification or a license. Conformity,
predictability and risk aversion may be the underlying motives, but
at what cost? One could make the point that the fundamental nature of
organized society itself, governed by a universal set of rules and
regulations, is all about <i>the common good,</i> and with it the
implicit expectation that individuals will accept some degree of
sacrifice and individualism to maintain the dominant ideal. B<span style="font-style: normal;">ut
how far is too far, and when does </span>mass conformity and
group-think overwhelm that which makes us truly human?
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Requiring people to
sacrifice their individuality on the altar of the abstract, the
aggregate, and the hypothetical seems to me to be fraught with
dangers, among them <a href="http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/deindividuation.htm">deindividuation</a>, defined in social psychology
circles as the loss of self-awareness in groups and the diminishing
of a person's sense of individuality. The belief that such states are
a factor in antisocial behavior has been explored by a number of
researchers, among them French psychologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Le_Bon">Gustave Le Bon</a> who
described it as a process whereby individuals' minds become dominated
by a “unanimous, emotional, and intellectually weak” collective
mindset, leading to a loss of individual responsibility
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
In a 2002 working
paper series for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, writer Thomas
Garrett points to another danger, this one involving the use of
<span style="font-style: normal;">regression analysis</span> and
consumer sentiment indices, and how the use of data aggregation can
lead to misleading conclusions about individual economic behavior.
The irony of formal regression analysis as it relates to economics is
that it still involves a form of objectification, by treating a
person as a mere variable. As commonly defined, regression analysis
is simply a statistical forecasting method used to estimate the
effect that an independent variable has on a dependent variable.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Garrett states:
"Every field of economics uses aggregated data to test
hypotheses about the behavior of individuals. Examples in
macroeconomics include the use of aggregate consumption and income to
test the permanent income hypothesis (Hall, 1978), and forecasting
national personal consumption expenditures using consumer sentiment
indices (Caroll, et al. 1994: Bram and Ludvigson, 1998). The use of
aggregate data to explain individual behavior makes the assumption
that the hypothesized relationship between the economic variables in
question is homogeneous across all individuals. When the behavior of
economic agents is not the same, a regression analysis using
aggregated data can provide conclusions regarding economic
relationships that are different than if less aggregated data were
used."</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/">Jean JacquesRousseau</a>, in <i>The Social Contract and Discourses</i>, parses the
foundation that we give to a very old ideal – the idea of "the
strong" – seen by some (in particular the strong) as the
implicit arbitrator of morality and an element of that class of
things considered to be truly real.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Rousseau writes:
"The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master,
unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
Hence the right of the strongest, which though to all seemingly meant
ironically, is really laid down as a fundamental principal. But are
we never to have an explanation of this phrase? Force is a physical
power, and I fail to see what moral effect it can have. To yield to
force is an act of necessity, not of will – at the most, an act of
prudence. In what sense can it be a duty? Suppose for a moment that
this so-called 'right' exists. I maintain that the sole result is a
mass of inexplicable nonsense. For, if force creates right, the
effect changes with the cause; every force that is greater than the
first succeeds to its right. As soon as it is possible to disobey
with impunity, disobedience is legitimate; and the strongest being
always in the right, the only thing that matters is to act so as to
become the strongest."</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Where Rousseau
questions the idea of force making right, we may just as well
question the utilitarian idea of the right action always being that
which results in the greatest good for the greatest number. In either
case, we are dealing with non-physical elements of discourse, and the
impossible challenge of determining what is infinitely “right”
and what is infinitely “good” apart from complete omniscience,
and against the great expanse of time.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
The common
denominator that aggregate statistical analysis, regression analysis,
and utilitarian ethics all share is a reliance on non-concrete,
abstract, absolutist thinking, and on the belief that it is possible
to accurately define and relate to human beings as static <i>things,
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">things </span>which can and
should be compared to some abstract infinite quality existing
entirely outside of normal time and space. Philosopher <a href="http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/nussbaum.html">Martha Nussbaum</a> described the process of objectification as something that
occurs when a person is used as a tool, as something that is owned or
interchangeable, or as something that may be destroyed without any
additional permission needed. Similar to the concept of
dehumanization, objectification negates the feelings and humanness of
an individual, either indirectly or directly, through various levels
of oversimplification and denial.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
The debate over the
role and reality of the immaterial is an old one and entails a number
of metaphysical positions which I think are worth summarizing. They
include:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<b><a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/">Platonism</a>:
</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">A</span>bstract objects exist
in a non-physical and non-mental realm outside of normal time and
space. (Historical Platonism adherents: Plato, Numenius, Plotinus,
Augustine, Ploclus. Modern platonism, small "p" adherents:
Bernard Bolzano, Gottlob Frege, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell,
Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödel, W.V. Quine, Hilary Putnam, George Bealer
and Edward Zalta).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/"><b>Nominalism</b></a>
(anti-realism): Universal entities and abstract objects do not
formally exist, as do particular concrete entities and objects.
(Francis Bacon, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and
Nelson Goodman.)
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptualization_%28information_science%29"><b>Conceptualism</b></a>
(mentalism, psychologism): Abstract objects such as numbers do in
fact exist, not as independent entities but as mental constructs.
(Locke, Husserl, Brouwer, Heyting, Noam Chomsky, Fodor).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_realism"><b>Immanent realism</b></a>
(moderate realism): Universals exist, not in some external reality
beyond time and space but within the physical world of particulars.
(Aristotle, D.M. Armstrong).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/"><b>Nihilism</b></a>:
Nothing actually exists. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Stanley Rosen, Martin
Heidegger).</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<b><a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/naturali/">Naturalism</a>:</b> mind and non-material values are a product of
matter. (John Dewey, Sidney Hook, Roy Wood Sellars, Francis Bacon,
Voltaire, Paul Kurtz)</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<b><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Idealism.html">Idealism</a>:</b> Mind or spirit constitutes the fundamental reality.
(Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer).
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_idealism">Objective idealism</a>: </b>Material objects do not exist
independently of human perception. Spiritual realities are
independent from human consciousness. (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
Shelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Plato)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<b><a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Subjective_idealism">Subjectiveidealism</a>: </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Mind and mental
constructs are all that exist. (</span>Dharmakīrti, <span style="font-weight: normal;">George
Burkeley).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Gorgias_.28of_Leontini.29"></a>
<a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/solipsis/"><b>Solipsism</b></a><span style="font-weight: normal;">: Knowledge outside
of one's one mind is uncertain. Only one's mind is sure to exist.
(René Descartes, Gorgias of Leontini, George Berkeley). </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism">Common senserealism</a> (Naïve Realism): </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Material
objects do in fact exist.(J.J. Gibson, William Mace, Claire Michaels,
Edward Reed, Robert Show, Michael Turvey, Carol Fowler).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<b><a href="http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/existentialism.htm">Existentialism</a>:
</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">A</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">ll
thinking must begin with the living, existing, feeling human being,
and not with some abstract essence. (</span>Søren Kierkegaard,
Jean-Paul Satre, Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven, Franz Kafka,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus, Eugène Ionesco).
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<b><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Moral_absolutism.html">Moral Absolutism</a>:</b> The acceptance of or belief in absolute principles
in political, philosophical, ethical or theological matters.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<b><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Structuralism.html">Structuralism</a>:</b> Elements of human culture must be understood in
terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or
structure (wikipedia). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Blackburn">Simon Blackburn</a>: Structuralism is "the
belief that phenomenon of human life are not intelligible except
through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure,
and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are
constant laws of abstract culture."</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Theories concerning
the ultimate nature of reality can be broken down furthermore into
several other basic categories. These include monism, representing
the view that reality is fundamentally one process or being
(Parmenides, Hegel); pluralism, which see ultimate reality as
flexible, incomplete and unknowable; and dualism, which sees reality
as split between the eternal and unchanging realm of ideas or forms
(Plato) and the ever-changing, temporal realm of human experience.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
We may also view
such differences in terms of idealism, realism and pragmatism.
Idealists emphasize the role of mind and the relationship between the
knower and the things known. Realists treat the mind as secondary and
separate the knower from the world he or she inhabits. And
pragmatists reject both views and instead embrace the idea that
thoughts and things are fundamentally inseparable in a world of pure
experience.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Still others have
parsed the differences into those of mysticism, emphasizing the
oneness of reality; materialism, focusing on matter as the stuff
which ultimate reality is made of; and supernaturalism, which
presupposes a higher being or beings who transcends the natural realm
and who created and sustains all that exists.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
It stands to reason
that modern, densely populated societies need some measure of order
and rules in order to function, especially with creatures who are
unpredictable at best and dangerously self-serving, exploitive and
violent at worst. But on what foundation should such rules be
created, and just how far can we go in treating people as numbers
before we cease to treat them as people at all? Should there be some
measure of objectivity and concreteness in the process, or must we
resign ourselves to generalizations and aggregate-based assumptions
for the sake of efficiency and order, for lack of viable options?
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
I think the answer
is most certainly yes, there <i>should </i>be some extraordinary
level of concreteness to that which informs our choices; and no, I do
not believe that we ought to resign ourselves to thinking in the
aggregate merely because it is too time consuming or too difficult to
reason otherwise. Individual human beings deserve to be treated as
individual human beings, in all their complexity, with all their
imperfections, and taking into account all that impacts their choices
in the way of culture, genetics and environment. Thinking in the
aggregate may be a natural and almost irresistible human impulse, but
so might be a deeply-rooted and irrational fear of uncertainty -- a
fear that has effectively been codified into almost every institution
that surround us.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Given the bigger
picture, it behooves us to make peace with uncertainty, make greater
exceptions for environmental anomalies and human individuality, aim
for general compliance rather than total conformity, and pursue
empathy rather than penalty.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
British philosopher
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts">Alan Watts</a>, in his acclaimed 1951 work, <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/06/alan-watts-wisdom-of-insecurity-1/"><i>The Wisdom of Insecurity:A Message for an Age of Anxiety</i></a>, writes: “The 'primary
consciousness,' the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas
about it, does not know the future. It lives completely in the
present, and perceives nothing more than what <i>is</i> at this
moment. The ingenious brain, however, looks at that part of present
experience called memory, and by studying it is able to make
predictions. These predictions are, relatively, so accurate and
reliable (e.g. 'everyone will die') that the future assumes a high
degree of reality -- so high that the present loses its value. But
the future is still not here, and cannot become a part of experienced
reality until it is present. Since what we know of the future is made
up of purely abstract and logical elements -- inferences, guesses,
deductions -- it cannot be eaten, felt, smelled, seen, heard or
otherwise enjoyed. To pursue it is to pursue a constantly retreating
phantom, and the faster you chase it, the faster it runs ahead. This
is why all the affairs of civilization are rushed, why hardly anyone
enjoys what he has, and is forever seeking more and more. Happiness,
then, will consist, not of solid and substantial realities, but of
such abstract and superficial things as promises, hopes, and
assurances.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Treating human
beings as human beings also demands a certain understanding with
respect to choice and free will. Yes, we may <i>feel </i>as though we
have choice, but it is a choice stripped of the power to manifest
much of what the will desires. People don't choose to be born in an
imperfect world. They don't choose to grow old, to have a will and
desires that exceed the capability of the physical universe to
fulfill. Nor do they choose to have bodies that are susceptible to
disease, infection and death. They don't choose the parents who will
rear them, nor do they choose the home and environment they will
spend their days in as children. It may be easy, simple, and quick to
ignore the bigger picture, to see human beings as isolated pockets of
infinite knowledge with infinite responsibility for every action they
take, but it would not be accurate. Much has been made of a study by
German scientists <a href="http://www.npbrjournal.com/article/S0941-9500%2813%2900013-4/abstract">Hans Helmut Kornhuber</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCder_Deecke">Lüder Deecke</a> regarding
a phenomenon known as “readiness potential,” which suggests that
the unconscious mind may actually initiate action prior to one's
conscious awareness of it. Subsequent studies by Benjamin Libet in
the 1980s and by <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/hayneslab/people/john-dylan-haynes">John-Dylan Haynes</a> in 2008 using MRI technology has
led to similar conclusions. While such studies do not conclusively
prove that free will is merely an illusion, they do present a
challenge to our traditional understanding of it. As Canadian
transhumanist and bioethicist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dvorsky">George Dvorsky</a> writes in a Jan. 4, 2013
article for the blog io9: “What would really settle the issue would
be the ability for neuroscientists to predict the actual outcome of
more complex decisions prior to the subject being aware of it
themselves. That would, in a very true sense, prove that free will is
indeed an illusion.” (See: <i><a href="http://io9.com/5975778/scientific-evidence-that-you-probably-dont-have-free-will">Scientific Evidence That You Probably Don't Have Free Will</a></i>).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
The concepts of
risk and probability, as they relate to <span style="font-style: normal;">individual
</span>human action, are two other ideas that are ripe for
reassessment. While the human condition may compel us to quickly
assess the probability of theoretical future events and matters
affecting our safety, the mere desire for certainty ought not lead us
to the dehumanization of our fellow human beings. Yes, we can
determine the relative likelihood of <i>a group of people</i>
behaving in a certain way through aggregate analysis, but what is not
so easy to determine is the degree to which a <i>specific individual</i>
within that group will behave in a certain way. The concept of
<span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Bounded_rationality.html">bounded rationality</a> is one that </span>may
have bearing on our propensity to jump to conclusions and generalize,
with respect to assessments of probability and risk. As listed in the
<i>Cambridge Dictionary</i>: “Bounded rationality is the theory
that people can understand only a limited amount of information
within a limited amount of time, and for this reason they do not
always make the best decisions, especially in complicated
situations.” The concept of of bounded rationality differs from
“rationality as optimization,” in that the process of
optimization is seen as a constraint rather than an enabler.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Platonism, with a
small “p,” asserts that abstract objects are objective, timeless
entities, totally separate from the physical world, even from the
symbols that people use in describing them. Structuralism is a method
of interpretation that focuses on a broader conceptual system that
supposedly underlies individual human cognition and behavior. And
absolutism presupposes the existence of infinitely fixed principles
that are above and behind all individual existential realities. While
such ideas may sound nice and feel good to those seeking assurance,
they exact a heavy toll – stripping humanity of the innate
unpredictability, the non-linear processes that reflect our various
states of consciousness, the mystery embodied in our range of
desires, and the exceedingly complex and symbiotic mind-body
relationship that all but makes us who we are.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>For further reading</b></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div align="CENTER" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_8_1_1_1400316887617_12731"></a></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo4101022.html">Against Prediction Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age </a><br />
<div align="CENTER" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
By Bernard E. Harcourt</div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.actualanalysis.com/curse.htm">The Curse of the Baby Boomers </a><br />
By John FitzGerald<br />
<br />
<a href="http://aggregation%20and%20the%20separateness%20of%20persons/">Aggregation and the Separateness of Persons </a><br />
By Iwao Hirose</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<a href="https://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n1/common.html">The Common Good </a><br />
By Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez <br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/">The History of Utilitarianism </a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
By Julia Driver</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.2in;">
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-68663538450999151502014-02-02T11:31:00.000-08:002016-01-13T13:16:04.408-08:00The Promise of Infinity<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>By Steve Rensberry</b></div>
</div>
<br />
Why does life go on for any, when one, just one, must go away?<br />
When the smile, the touch, the words of another,<br />
are snatched from the world of the living against all will <br />
-- because this fragile, flesh-bound vessel we use, <br />
has the permanence of sand. <br />
<br />
Here but for a spot in time we are, then gone. <br />
Friends, lovers, strangers and families. <br />
Overlapping lives beyond all space and time. <br />
Minds and hearts in infinite juxtaposition. <br />
A baby's smile. A mother's tear. <br />
A sea of dreams in a cosmos that defies understanding. <br />
<br />
Seven billion lives and climbing <br />
Yet not one, left as human, will avoid the inevitable. <br />
Victimized, collectively, by that which gives them life. <br />
One hundred billion perhaps, from all time. <br />
Walking, talking, striving to manifest the impossible <br />
Laughed at by the universe. <br />
<br />
But what is time if not infinite, <br />
and what is matter if not eternal? <br />
Is it possible, given time, that the cycle can be reversed? <br />
That the future might hold the impossible in the palm of its hand? <br />
That the lives we've lost, our own flesh and blood, <br />
will some day live again? <br />
<br />
Imagine a world a million years hence. <br />
Where the past and present can be bridged. <br />
A quantum world. A multiverse of infinite possibility. <br />
Where the human will finds its rightful place. <br />
Where infinity equals immortality. <br />
Where death is but a thought. <br />
<br />
Imagine still<br />
that we are already there.<br />
But for the eyes <br />
with which we see Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-27849995299214982302014-01-17T18:35:00.002-08:002016-01-13T13:17:05.321-08:00Existential Anesthesia<div style="text-align: left;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zXOr-AX3pB8/Utno8NhpDBI/AAAAAAAACVg/XQ7qDbzUwXY/s1600/Moon-A1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zXOr-AX3pB8/Utno8NhpDBI/AAAAAAAACVg/XQ7qDbzUwXY/s1600/Moon-A1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b>By Steve Rensberry</b><br />
<br />
What is life,
</div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
but a game</div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
of competing illusions?</div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
Its true meaning</div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
slips our grasp.</div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
So we make a dream.</div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
Like sand castles in the sun,</div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
we build and define.</div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
To make permanent a lie.</div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left; widows: 4;">
To ease the pain.</div>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-67428688154077408472013-11-03T21:39:00.000-08:002016-01-13T13:18:07.525-08:00Free Will: In Search of a Foundation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GcunRP-6hUA/UnmJDhtvMeI/AAAAAAAACRQ/_P0b0-tgjD4/s1600/lighttunnel01428.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GcunRP-6hUA/UnmJDhtvMeI/AAAAAAAACRQ/_P0b0-tgjD4/s200/lighttunnel01428.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b>By Steve Rensberry</b><br />
<br />
Why do humans do the things they do?<br />
On the surface it would seem an easy enough question to answer. <br />
"Because they choose to do it," people will say. "Because they see some benefit in it for themselves and make a conscious decision to act on it." <br />
But does this not beg the question? What exactly is it, in a causative sense, that drives the choices we make? Are the things we choose not framed by the circumstances that surround us, by our genetic and biological attributes? When we say that a person chooses one thing over another, what exactly--on a cognitive or causative level--is truly transpiring? <br />
Whether we can see beyond the puzzle of our own existence even far enough to formulate a sufficient answer is a question that philosophers from Thales to Dewey have been trying to determine, and one that continues to cry out for clarity. Like many things, the presumed basis upon which this strange and paradoxical thing we call free will, or free choice, proves all the foggier the closer we look. Is it truly what drives our behavior, as a cause produces an effect, or is something deeper at work here? <br />
Plato presented us with his theory of forms, in effect elevating abstract ideas to a position of supremacy in the quest to define true reality consists of. German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote widely of the noumenal realm vs the phenomenal realm, the former of which he considered to be the "real" world of reason and innate ideas compared to the subjectively-experienced phenomenal world. Empiricists such as Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and John Stuart Mill side with the view that sensory experience and physical evidence are fundamentally more trustworthy and real than the "tentative" world of abstract ideas. Naturalists, in embracing the world of natural causes, have stood in long opposition to theists and supernaturalists, who have welcomed the world of the immaterial and innate with arms extended. <br />
If only this persistent concept of free will--as a type of unaffected, infinitely untarnished and personal decision-making device--weren't so often used as a convenient battering ram, to place blame and to castigate. Do we seek to hold people responsible because they are responsible in an absolutist sort of way, because it reflects the type of human being they truly are, or because on some subconscious level we are driven to do so because it is quantitatively easier than acknowledging and dealing with the deep complexities of the human condition? <br />
Let me propose that the list of those factors in our lives which compel us to act and which demand either immediate or future resolution is far longer, far more influential, and holds a far greater share of responsibility for human action than does the list of those things which can rightfully be considered within the realm of free choice. <br />
Consider a fictional gentleman by the name of Mr. Jonathan Jones. <br />
Let us presume that Mr. Jones grew up in an average size town, that he was brought up a Protestant, and that he was well schooled to the point of obtaining a bachelor of science degree in business. He has a job, a wife, two small children, plenty of friends, and an adequate supply of cash thanks to a combined household income and some early savings. When he is not working, Mr. Jones likes to head for the hills to camp, hike, boat or simply to explore the countryside with his family or friends. <br />
But let us ask ourselves, is Mr. Jones free to choose whether to breathe or not? <br />
Is he free to choose whether to sleep, to eat or to hydrate himself? <br />
Can he choose to stop time in its tracks, or to reverse it? <br />
As he relaxes under a tree on one of his many favorite wilderness adventures, he imagines that he can fly above the mountain tops like a bird. Is this a choice that he is free to manifest without consequences? <br />
Can our friend choose to live under water, extend his life by 500 years, grow 10 feet tall or move objects with the power of his mind alone? <br />
He can decide to try, but to call such an exercise of the will a choice would seem rather meaningless. <br />
We can presuppose a dimension to the human intellect and conscious mind that rises well above the purely physical, a place that we may surely presume to be the seat of choice, but here again we come perilously close to pure conjecture. <br />
There is a sense in which the human will, as the locus of imagination and desire, is infinitely disconnected from external reality altogether in that it adheres neither to its limitations nor to the basic laws of cause and effect that govern it. Only within a very thin slice of what we can ultimately envision are the choices we make free to be manifest. French philosopher Rene Descartes makes little distinction between the concepts of will and choice, with choice thus perceived as being effectively unlimited in scope. More common, however, is the view that willings are substantively distinct from the idea of a truly free will, given the vast number of barriers to its full realization (Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). <br />
Authors Xingxu Wang and Guenther Ruhe, in a 1997 article published in the International Journal of Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence, present a fundamental cognitive decision-making process which they describe as "a sequence of Cartesian-based selections," with real-world decisions seen as but "a repetitive application of the fundamental cognitive process." <br />
Wang and Ruhe cite a layered reference model of the brain (LRMB), which they say "has revealed that there are 37 interacting cognitive processes in the brain," part of which parallels the processes which the mind goes through in problem-solving. Other elements include a combination of processes involving such things as qualification, quantification, comprehension, representation, memorization and search. <br />
"Contrary to the traditional 'container' metaphor, the human memory mechanism can be described by a 'relational' metaphor, which perceives that memory and knowledge are represented by the connections between neurons in the brain, rather than the neurons themselves as information containers," Wang and Ruhe write. <br />
In respect to the dissection of free will, let me plead for clarity on a list of several other ontologically relevant concepts, such as intention, determination, belief, desire, wanting, wishing, longing, thought, and meaning itself. Is it a case of the mind owning such concepts or reflecting them? Do they exist apart from the human mind? The supernaturalist will, generally speaking, be inclined to say "yes." Not only are we fundamentally connected on some otherworldly, quantum-like level with at least one particular entity far more powerful than ourselves, the argument goes, but the communication is ongoing, hyper-intimate and in need of no other evidence to justify the reality of it than the mere testimony of those who believe it. Evidence, thus defined, does not come from the outside in but from the inside out -- and our free will is deemed to be truly free because we are, theoretically, connected to the very source of all knowledge itself. Intuitively and innately, writers such as C.S. Lewis have argued, we are made aware of what is moral and what is immoral, what is right and what is wrong, what is the creator's will and what is not the creator's will. By such logic were are thus made 100 percent responsible for 100 percent of the choices that we make, the circumstances that preceded or shaped such choices notwithstanding. <br />
It is quite understandable the comfort that comes from believing in some deeper reality, in the guiding hand of some transcendent being who is always there to give life order, purpose and meaning. But are we being intellectually honest with ourselves? Should not the evidence we choose as justification for such all-encompassing belief rest on more than subjective personal experiences or mere human testimony? Even more so when such testimony suggests that which contravenes all known laws of physics. <br />
Professor and author Douglas Hofstadter made the case, beginning with Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, for the role of analogy in the formation of human consciousness, and for the brain's use of self-referencing or feed-back loops in developing a sense of "I" and in the creation of meaning. In his book, I Am A Strange Loop, Hofstadter posits that this "I" which is created in effect can exist across multiple minds. <br />
"In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference," Hofstadter writes. (I Am A Strange Loop). <br />
Studies by Benjamin Libet in 2002 regarding decision making and brain activity revealed some interesting findings, among them evidence that appears to show that one's actions actually are sometimes set in motion even before the conscious mind wills it. Where does that leave free will? <br />
Consider once again our friend Jonathan Jones. <br />
When he gets up in the morning and decides to make a pot of coffee, what actually is it that causes the coffee to be made? We can say that Mr. Jones' decision, or freely chosen will, is responsible, but does it not take one thing coming into contact with another, or at minimum some kind of force acting upon another, for a cause to produce an effect? How is a motivation or something as abstract as a desire connected to something as material and physical as the human body? <br />
If Mr. Jones decides to do something dastardly, such that we feel compelled morally and ethically to hold him accountable, should we hold him 100 percent responsible or should we view his culpability as but pieces of some metaphysical pie, split among an unpredictable array of genetic, biological, educational, socioeconomic and psychological factors in his life? Surely, our friend has more control over some of these than others. And where does intent fall into the picture, if the consequences by change turn out to be different than expected? Imagine, for instance, that Mr. Jones witnesses what he thinks is an altercation on a neighboring street, decides to intervene, but when he steps between the two suspects one of them suddenly and unexpectedly steps backwards over a curb, then tragically dies after his head smashes against the pavement. The degree to which Mr. Jones is responsible would certainly seem to be less than 100 percent, but where do we draw the line? <br />
The concept of freedom would seem at best to be profoundly ambiguous, and nature of choice equally ripe with speculation, both requiring in effect that we take a conceptual leap from one unknown (the world of ideas) into another unknown (the world of physical cause and effect). No one fully understands what the nature, source and mechanisms are which form the fabric of human consciousness. Likewise, no one fully understands the mechanisms and forces that govern the physical world, whether we're talking about quantum physics or neurology. Yet somehow we feel confident in attaching a very individualistic form of responsibility to human actions -- as though the act of choosing were somehow akin to turning a light switch on or off and every decision came with a crystal clear set of consequences that always produced the same result. <br />
In the classic work, Tertium Organum, Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky writes about our experience of the world as a place existing in time and space and the near impossibly of conceiving of it in any other way, as unsatisfactory as that may be. Ouspensky writes: <br />
"In general, we say that the objective world consists of things and phenomena, i.e., things and changes in states of things. The PHENOMENA exist for us in time; the THINGS, in space . . . But such a division of the subjective and the objective world does not satisfy us. By means of reasoning we can establish the fact that in reality we know only our own sensations, perceptions and conceptions, and we cognize he objective world by projecting outside of ourselves the causes of our sensations, presuming them to contain these causes." <br />
The causes of our sensations have been one of the perennial philosophical questions since the "remotest antiquity," Ouspensky states. <br />
I would concur, but argue as well that we should include within that same conceptual framework the human faculties of motivation and will. Ouspensky implies as much himself in parsing the subjective (conceptual) world and the object-based world, or as he puts it, the world of "things." <br />
Ouspensky cites Kant in casting doubt even further, this time on the possibility of ever knowing exactly how the human mind is swayed by the outside world and declaring that the very concepts of space and time, apart from the human intellect, would not even exist. As stated by Ouspensky: <br />
"Kant established the fact that everything that is known through the senses is known in terms of time and space, and that out of time and space we cannot know anything by way of the senses; that time and space are necessary conditions of sensuous receptivity (i.e., receptivity by means of the five organs of sense). Moreover, what is most important, he established the fact that extension in space and existence in time are not properties appertaining to things, but just the properties of our sensuous receptivity; that in reality, apart from our sensuous knowledge of them, things exist independently of time and space; but we can never perceive them out of time and space, and perceiving things and phenomena thus sensuously, by virtue of it we impose upon them the conditions of time and space, as belonging to our form of perception." <br />
Upon what foundation should we lay this ubiquitous concept of free will? <br />
Let me posit and answer that is both an appeal and a proposition. <br />
As I see it, human motivation and the human decision-making process in general would seem at best to be a complex, little-understood phenomenon that begs us to take into account the overall human condition before jumping to conclusions about the precise reason for any particular human behavior. Not only have we yet to find a definitive answer to the paradoxical relationship between mind and body, but a similar conundrum presents itself in dealing with the abstract vs the concrete, the emotional vs the empirical, the subjective vs the objective, the internal vs the external, the supernatural vs the natural, the absolute vs the relative, the teleological vs the accidental or nihilistic, the predestined vs the existential, and the intuitive vs the scientific. <br />
Holding people responsible for their actions is fine, I would say, if we understand that the term "responsible" is a relative one. How can we truly hold someone responsible for their actions when it is uncertain, in a metaphysical sense, exactly what this thing called free will really is, much less the precise mechanism by which non-spacial, abstract phenomenon cause motion within the human body? Yes, we can hold them responsible, but only as partially free agents in a grossly misunderstood, infinitely complex universe -- agents who often make choices for reasons that neither they nor we fully understand.<br />
<br />
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<b>For further reading:</b></div>
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<a href="http://www.ouspensky.info/">P.D. Ouspensky</a></div>
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<div style="font-style: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/">Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophyentry on free will</a></div>
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</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/yingxu/Publications/PDF-Papers/67-IJCINI-1205-DecisionMaking.pdf">The Cognitive Process of DecisionMaking</a></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_Pure_Reason">Critique of Pure Reason</a></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach">Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid</a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/null"> </a></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.ghandchi.com/406-SpinozaEng.htm">Spinoza's Refutation of Teleology</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-91562046812907665022013-04-03T19:31:00.000-07:002016-01-13T13:18:33.997-08:00Causality, Correlation and Common Sense<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yncvAOKU5mY/UVzkmAcqACI/AAAAAAAACAI/jni7EdGSeLQ/s1600/pillarsm16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="195" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yncvAOKU5mY/UVzkmAcqACI/AAAAAAAACAI/jni7EdGSeLQ/s200/pillarsm16.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yncvAOKU5mY/UVzkmAcqACI/AAAAAAAACAI/jni7EdGSeLQ/s1600/pillarsm16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><br /></a><br />
<b>By Steve Rensberry</b><br />
<br />
How do we know what causes produce what effects? The question seems simple enough on the surface, but dig deeper and the issue becomes much more complex, unequivocally intertwined as it were with matters of definition, belief and time.<br />
Think for a minute whether a ball dropped from a person's hand falls--in an absolute and definitive sense--because, A) the person released his or her grip, or B) because gravity pulls the ball downward. If we answer "A," then it begs the question of what happens in a zero-gravity environment, where releasing one's grip on a ball would, in effect, do little to ensure that the ball falls to the ground. If we answer "B," then what need is there even to release one's grip? Gravity, in this case, may clearly be a factor, but it would take a major leap of blind faith to consider it to be the sole and absolute cause.<br />
Creating further difficulty is the rather dubious nature of things themselves, whether we're talking about physical objects and phenomenon, or about abstract constructs of the mind -- or perhaps some combination of the two. What, at their very deepest essence, is an atom, a molecule, or a chair? To a human, a chair is a place to sit. To a termite, it is food. Atoms and molecules, likewise, are often defined simply as the building blocks of the material world, but what is a "building block" other than some definition we choose to give something, relative to the way we perceive reality? Is it a block or the mere manifestation of something else? It depends how you look at it and what type of purpose we assign to it.<br />
Time adds another twist to the slippery concept of causation, with delayed effects and delayed influence often blurring the lines considerably. Scientists and health officials who studied the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, for instance, have predicted a 2 percent increase in the cancer rate for those exposed to some measure of contamination near the site -- but over a period of 70 years. Can we be absolutely sure the reactor's explosion is what causes a victim's cancer, if they do in fact fall ill? Establishing cause and effect with such delayed timing can be a guessing game at best.<br />
<div>
Author Ben Dupré writes about the cognitive tug-of-war going on between physicalists and dualists with respect to causation and the mind-body problem. <br />
"Physicalist's solutions to the mind-body problem brush aside many of the difficulties of dualism at one stroke. In particular, the mysteries of causation that torment dualists are dispelled by simply bringing consciousness within the scope of scientific explanation," Dupré states. "Predictably, critics of physicalism complain that its proponents have brushed aside too much; that its successes have been achieved at the heaviest cost -- of failing to capture the essence of conscious experience, its subjective nature." (<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2142887.50_Philosophy_Ideas_You_Really_Need_to_Know">50 philosophy ideas you really need to know</a>, Quercus Publishing Plc, London, 2007, pg 31).<br />
What fascinates me greatly are the claims to certainty that so many people and groups adhere to in respect to causation, where circumstance itself is seen not so much as the product of some prior event or force, but as the consequence of some mysterious intent or force from another time and place altogether.<br />
Karma posits a world in which actions in this life cause effects in a future life. Indian philosophy, as represented by <a href="http://www.indianetzone.com/51/satkaryavada.htm">Satkaryavada</a>, supposes that the effect is somehow bound up, or pre-existing, within the cause itself. Buddhist teaching, in particular the concept of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da">Pratityasamutpada</a>, considers an effect to have more than one cause. Then we have theistic and supernaturalist systems of belief, which arguably do away with cause and effect altogether by presupposing that all of reality--right down to the smallest element, mental construct and sociological circumstance--is but the manifestation of some higher being's will and eternal nature. <br />
Again, it begs the question. What exactly do we mean by the terms themselves? What is a "cause?" What is "an effect?" The indeterminacy introduced by quantum physics, and the concept of nonlocality, complicates the issue even further. <br />
Let me suggest that we may, just may, be looking for certainty of the kind that simply does not exist, with the only thing we can rightfully be expected to know with some limited degree of certainty being the <i>proximate</i> cause of <i>relative</i> effects. This may not satiate those who are prone to embrace as absolute truth the mere penumbra of a very wide spectrum of earthly phenomenon, but intellectual honesty beckons.<br />
No clearer divide can be seen on the subject of causality than between the goals and methodology of science--which establishes causative relationships primarily by way of carefully controlled testing and repeatability--and those beliefs which employ some element of magical thinking--and which establish causative relationships primarily through correlation. Do magical, superstitious and supernaturally-oriented systems of believe stand the test of common sense? Because A happens with B present, does that mean that A was caused by B? If it begins raining right after you walk into a building, does that mean that your entrance into the structure caused it to rain? If only there weren't so many people who actually believed that such correlation was sufficient, we wouldn't need to worry.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
For further reading:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality">Causality</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/thesis.html">A Defense of Naturalism</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://centerfornaturalism.blogspot.com/2009/11/causation-and-culpability.html">Causation and Culpability</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/content-causal/index.html">Causal Theories of Mental Content</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/%C2%A0http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/">David Hume</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-33565470628977136722013-03-03T07:57:00.001-08:002013-03-03T09:04:00.992-08:00Wired Health Conference: Synthetic Biology<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="289" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6NUejYvIy0w" width="515"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-75242787498148807172012-12-25T14:02:00.000-08:002016-01-13T13:18:59.092-08:00Epistemology and the Limitations of Knowledge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SNKS6GuVDIE/UNutgouAkLI/AAAAAAAAB3Q/cYeZjItE8Ic/s1600/Lagoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SNKS6GuVDIE/UNutgouAkLI/AAAAAAAAB3Q/cYeZjItE8Ic/s200/Lagoon.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
<b>By Steve Rensberry </b> <br />
<br />
Epistemology is an important branch of philosophy concerned with the parameters and limits of human knowledge, with beliefs that are justifiably true and based on that which is genuinely real. It is concerned with the capability of things in general to be known and understood in their deepest essence.<br />
Are abstract constructs real? What do we make of the thoughts, images and emotions experienced by a conscious human mind? Certainly they can be said to be subjectively meaningful to the person experiencing them, but are they grounded in some deeper type of reality, independent of the subject? Plato attempted to make this exact point in his <i>Theory of Forms</i>, Aristotle argued against it and many others throughout the ages have sought to add their own insight into the definition of what is real, what is imagined and how it is we can know the difference.<br />
This essay will consider the idea that this thing we call knowledge is fundamentally a linguistic tool, albeit one which presumably helps us to understand and control the world around us. Giving a name to phenomenon which we consider most certain also helps us to reduce the physiological stress that can arise from doubt. In similar fashion, the attempt to define reality itself will be considered as making, at best, a series of relative and subjective affirmations. What we say, what we believe, what we think, takes shape only after it is filtered through a maze of human cognitive processes, replete with all of its genetic predispositions, emotional baggage and life experiences.<br />
First, let me address the false dichotomy which is frequently drawn between those who are skeptical about the existence of absolutes on the one hand, and those who are skeptical about skepticism on the other. Typical is the following criticism of absolute skepticism, as stated in <i>Questions That Matter</i> by Ed. L. Miller (McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1984, pg. 191): "Actually, there have been relatively few absolute skeptics. It is not hard to see why. Critics of this position have been quick to charge that it is impractical and impossible. It is impractical because, from the purely practical standpoint of getting along in the world, no one in his or her right mind can actually live on such a premise. Our daily lives are pervaded by what we take to be (whether they actually are or not) assurances, certainties, and in a word, all kinds of knowledge."<br />
Likewise, Miller provides the traditional response to relativism by pointing to its supposedly self-contradictory and self-refuting nature. "For they maintain, with the greatest assurance, that we cannot maintain anything. Otherwise stated: If we cannot know anything, then how do we know that? Stated again: If absolute skepticism is true, then it must be false!"<br />
Such criticism, however, misrepresents the issue. When people hypothesize that absolutes do not exist, all they are saying is that the weight of evidence appears, from their limited perspective as finite human beings, against the existence of absolutes; in the same way, modern empiricists question that substantive knowledge can be derived from sources that are completely independent of the senses.<br />
Why must we assume anything to be infinitely true, to necessarily be absolute in nature in order to live our lives? Perhaps this is just one dimension of many. Perhaps what we see now is not the way things always have been, nor how they will be millions of years in the future. Why must we make a leap into absolutism to be sufficiently certain about the world around us. Is it not enough to interact with things as relative phenomenon that are simply true most of the time, that display a high degree of probability and consistency but that also carry with them the chance of floundering in the face of contrary evidence? To object to absolutism is not to make a metaphysical claim but merely to point to the illogic of the concept and to the dearth of empirical evidence available to substantiate it. As I have mentioned in previous posts, to claim that there are absolutes is implicitly claim that there is no place anywhere in the universe where absolutes do not exist.<br />
Obviously there are many things which present us with a high degree of certainty that we cannot readily see with the naked eye, things such as wind and gravity, but we can test them as to their veracity through empirical, scientific means that act as an extension of human sensory organs. There also are many presumed entities and abstract concepts which, while theorized as real, are little less than figments of the human imagination. Placing our complete trust and in that which we have no solid evidence for, that is presumed in fact to be outside of the realm of scientific analysis altogether, is the issue at stake.<br />
Since the dawn of recorded history, human beings have embraced a large number of false beliefs. For one list of such beliefs, see: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions">List of Common Misconceptions</a>. <br />
Though it doesn't take an illness to believe a falsehood, the false beliefs of those who suffer from schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis are well documented, as are the suspected physiological basis for them.<br />
One report discussed in Time Magazine in a story by journalist Maia Szalavitz links the phenomena of false belief to the presence or absence of a particular fold in the human brain, a fold that is missing in an estimated one-quarter of people and 44 percent of those with schizophrenia. <br />
Hanna Pickard with the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and All Souls College at the University of Oxford has written an interesting piece entitled <i>Schizophrenia and the Epistemology of Self-Knowledge</i>, in which she discusses what is termed "alien thought," leading many people suffering from paranoid delusions and schizophrenia to mistakenly assign alien responsibility for their own thoughts.<br />
"There is evidence that both schizophrenic and paranoid patients show a generalized attributional reasoning bias towards assigning causal responsibility for events to others, rather than to assigning them to themselves," Pickard writes, citing two references. (Baker, C. A., and Morrison, A. P. 1998. Cognitive processes in auditory hallucinations, Psychological Medicine 28(5): 1199-208; Moritz, S., Woodward, T. S., Burlon, M., Braus, D. F. and Anderson, B. 2007. Attributional style in schizophrenia, Cognitive Therapy and Research 31(3): 371-83.)<br />
Pickard also notes the tendency for such subjects to jump to conclusions more so than normal subjects. (Garety and Hemsley, <i>Delusions: Investigations into the psychology of delusional reasoning</i>, Oxford University Press, 1994).<br />
"The proposal suggests that they are prone to alien thought because they may also show exaggerated irrationality in the capacity for conscious reflection to causally influence the maintenance and revision of beliefs and other mental states; that it is something which in principle is open to empirical testing. But importantly, as I have emphasized, it is an abnormality that places them along a continuum together with the rest of us. Indeed, it is natural to envisage a spectrum of related abnormalities, more or less pathological, moving from immoral or selfish or shameful thoughts, to addiction and akrasia, to obsessional thinking and disorders, through to prodromal alien thought and finally full-blown schizophrenia," Pickard states.<br />
If only it were possible to venture into the epistemological jungle without also addressing the multi-faceted issues of belief, truth and evidence (or justification), but it is mighty difficult. One way to depict the relationship is by use of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Classical-Definition-of-Kno.svg">Euler diagram</a>. The diagram places knowledge within a subset represented by two overlapping circles, one representing truth and one representing beliefs. Something can be true but not believed, and visa versa. True knowledge, categorically speaking, must be something that is both true and believed. This is not to deny instances where a person's belief just happens to be true by accident or by luck. (see: <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/gettier/">The Gettier problem</a>). Whether such cases of "luck-based belief" are justified ultimately begs the question: how do we determine (know) what things are real and what things are not? <br />
The great divide in epistemological circles is, generally speaking, between empiricists such as Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke and David Hume; and rationalists such as Plato, René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza, with philosophers such as Immanuel Kant attempting to bridge the gap by arguing that both are necessary to some degree in acquiring knowledge -- with reason being necessary to help make sense of experience, yet impotent in regard to claims about things of which no human can possibly have any experience of.<br />
Either way, the idea of knowledge being acquired by some sort of intuitive sense of truth that we are all born with seems to me an idea which can only survive by assuming an immensely broad definition of what constitutes evidence. Analytical philosopher Alvin Plantinga's reformed epistemology posits the idea of a "properly basic belief," as reason enough for one's beliefs, needing neither inference from established truths nor empirical evidence of any kind. The proposition falters in essentially appealing to subjective experience and to an overly-broad definition of what constitutes sufficient evidence.<br />
Plantinga, as with fellow theist C.S. Lewis, makes the mistake of reaching for absolute certainty without warrant, and by taking aim at empirical, naturalistic approaches to knowledge by building up the traditional straw man in order to be able to knock it down, falsely claiming that they are self-defeating and incoherent. <br />
Let me invite your consideration of two views, one espoused by Hume in his work, the <i>Treatise of Human Nature</i>, and the other by G.W. Hegel in <i>The Phenomenology of Spirit</i>.<br />
Hume writes: "But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations." (ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge; Oxford University Press, London, 1888 pgs. 251-153). See: <a href="http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/pi.htm">Of Personal Identity</a>.<br />
Faced with perceptions of an "inconceivable rapidity," and in a state of "perpetual flux and movement," as Hume puts it, is it any wonder the human animal is so prone to tether itself to something that is of an eternally unchanging nature, permanent and lasting, yet without proper justification?<br />
Hegel, in the <i>Phenomenology of Spirit (Mind)</i>, writes: "The goal to be reached is the mind’s insight into what knowing is. Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary; and again we must halt at every stage, for each is itself a complete individual form, and is fully and finally considered only so far as its determinate character is taken and dealt with as a rounded and concrete whole, or only so far as the whole is looked at in the light of the special and peculiar character which this determination gives it. Because the substance of individual mind, nay, more, because the universal mind at work in the world (Weltgeist), has had the patience to go through these forms in the long stretch of time’s extent, and to take upon itself the prodigious labour of the world’s history, where it bodied forth in each form the entire content of itself, as each is capable of presenting it; and because by nothing less could that all-pervading mind ever manage to become conscious of what itself is — for that reason, the individual mind, in the nature of the case, cannot expect by less toil to grasp what its own substance contains." <br />
Hegel's point: The imperfect human consciousness instinctively establishes its own criteria for knowledge, subsequently modifying its concept of reality (the object) to fit an imperfect knowledge, rather than adjusting its knowledge to conform to the object, a distinction which ultimately is immaterial. As noted in this Wikipedia entry on Hegel: "At the end of the process, when the object has been fully 'spiritualized' by successive cycles of consciousness' experience, consciousness will fully know the object and at the same time fully recognize that the object is none other than itself."<br />
A rather interesting phenomenon often takes place whenever a person who has made an intellectual and emotional commitment to transcendent truths runs out of logical defenses. "It doesn't really matter," they'll say. "I know what I believe is true because I have a personal relationship with (pick your transcendent entity). In other words, they "just know," as if by magic, as if by some invisible force and source of knowledge wholly beyond human comprehension. By any measure, it's a response that relies on such a broadly subjective criteria for knowledge as to be essentially no criteria at all. <br />
<br />
<b>For Further Reading</b><br />
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/">Epistemology</a><br />
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/">David Hume</a><br />
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/">Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel</a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_of_Spirit">The Phenomenology of Spirit</a> <br />
<a href="http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/archives/plato%20and%20the%20theory%20of%20forms.htm">Plato and the Theory of Forms</a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism">Logical Positivism</a><br />
<a href="http://www.mcgrawhill.ca/highereducation/products/9780073386560/questions+that+matter:+an+invitation+to+philosophy/">Questions that Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy</a><br />
<a href="http://philosophy.dept.shef.ac.uk/papers/OntologyofConcepts.pdf">The Ontology of Concepts: Abstract Objects or Mental Representations</a><br />
<a href="http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/15579/SESK.pdf">Schizophrenia and the Epistemology of Self-Knowledge</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-45740884949992923502012-08-14T20:29:00.002-07:002016-01-13T13:19:17.641-08:00Space, Time and the Human Condition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IOWqTXwu1H4/UCsXGwssn7I/AAAAAAAABzU/pe8G4SwUUjk/s1600/Carina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="128" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IOWqTXwu1H4/UCsXGwssn7I/AAAAAAAABzU/pe8G4SwUUjk/s200/Carina.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b> By Steve Rensberry</b><br />
<br />
Researchers at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at the University of California, San Diego have estimated that the awe-inspiring, spiral-shaped Milky Way Galaxy, in which our own earth resides, contains more than 400 billion stars. Other estimates place the number around 300 billion, but either way we are talking about an incredibly large number.<br />
Furthermore, the Milky Way Galaxy contains nearly the same number of planets, scientists say, with microlensing observations suggesting that those in the habitable zone may number as high as 10 billion. The galaxy is composed of a galactic center; a rotating, flattened disk area containing a very large number of stars (along with large amounts of galactic dust and various molecular and atomic gases); and a spherical halo of presumably dark matter, whose presence is inferred by its gravitational effects on the visible portions of the galaxy. (a)<br />
"The halo consists of the oldest stars known, including about 146 globular clusters, believed to have been formed during the early formation of the galaxy with ages of 10-15 billion years from their H-R Diagrams," states one online tutorial written by Professor H.E. "Gene" Smith. (b)<br />
While an enormous amount of dark matter is theorized as being integral to the milky way's existence—and indeed the composition of the entire universe, alternative theories do exist. Astronomers at the University of Bonn, whose findings were published by the Royal Astronomical Society, are among those who have called the existence of dark matter into question. <br />
"In their effort to understand exactly what surrounds our Galaxy, the scientists used a range of sources from twentieth century photographic plates to images from the robotic telescope of the Sloan Deep Sky Survey.<br />
Using all these data they assembled a picture that includes bright ‘classical’ satellite galaxies, more recently detected fainter satellites and the younger globular clusters," the RAS states in a May 2012 update. "The astronomers found that all the different objects are distributed in a plane at right angles to the galactic disk. The newly-discovered structure is huge, extending from as close as 33,000 light years to as far away as one million light years from the centre of the Galaxy." (c)<br />
Lead author Marcel Pawlowski and team member Pavel Kroupa have suggested that what we are really seeing is the remnants of a collision between two galaxies billions of years ago.<br />
Evidence calling into question the existence of dark matter also was presented on June 18 from data collected in an unusual underground experiment at Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory, designed to detect the "weakly interacting massive particles” (WIMPs), which many scientists suspect dark matter to be composed of. Yet after 225 days of data collection, using an instrument far more sensitive than had ever been used before, the elusive dark matter particles remained as elusive as ever. (d.)<br />
To the contrary, this past month astronomers at the University of Michigan claimed to have observed what they call a filament of dark matter between two relatively adjacent galaxy clusters. <br />
As stated by Zeeya Merali in the July 4, 2012 online issue of Nature: "The presence of dark matter is usually inferred by the way its strong gravity bends light traveling from distant galaxies that lie behind it — distorting their apparent shapes as seen by telescopes on earth. But it is difficult to observe this 'gravitational lensing' by dark matter in filaments because they contain relatively little mass. (Jörg) Dietrich and his colleagues got around this problem by studying a particularly massive filament, 18 megaparsecs long, that bridges the galaxy clusters Abell 222 and Abell 223." (e)<br />
The exact nature and possible existence of dark matter, as with dark energy, is very intriguing and likely to be debated for some time. But let me turn the corner and draw your attention to something which I believe is far more fundamental. <br />
What needs to be debated and vigorously challenged is the human propensity to resign itself to a philosophically constricted and scripted view of the human experience; that says everything—everything—must have absolute meaning in order to have value; and which reasons that death is inevitable and merely transitory. <br />
How can humanity transcend the physical limitations of its existence in a real and practical sense—as opposed to the fantasy worlds built by superstition and spiritualism?<br />
This is the question we should be asking.<br />
Will we ever reach the stars?<br />
Not if we fail to think outside the framework of tradition. <br />
Not if we don’t stop ourselves from dying in the process.<br />
The three-star Alpha Centauri system, the closest stars to our own, lies an estimated 4.37 light years away. The red dwarf known as Barnard's Star lies 5.96 light years away; Wolf 359 lies about 7.78 light years away; Lalande 21185, also a red dwarf, lies about 8.29 light years away; Sirius lies about 8.58 light years away; Luyten 726-B about 8.73 light years; Ross 248 (HH Andromedae) about 10.32 light years; and Epsilon Eridani about 10.52 light years.<br />
Astronomers with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) published research this past year which said that there could be as many as 100 planets within 30 light years of earth. Billions more are presumed to exist throughout the broader Milky Way Galaxy. (f)<br />
But herein lies the problem.<br />
As defined, a light year is the distance that light in a vacuum travels in one year. That distance is calculated to be a little under 10 trillion kilometers—6 trillion miles in other words. This calculates to an incredible 186,282,297 miles per second. If we wanted to reach even the closest star system beyond our own, the Alpha Centauri system, and managed to reach speeds approaching 150,000 miles per hour, it would this infinitely flight-worthy ship roughly 18,000 years to arrive at its destination. Think about that for a minute.<br />
We could surely send ourselves on a one-way voyage to some new world millions of light years away, counting on the cycle of reproduction to ensure the continuation of the species, as in Paul W.S. Anderson's 2009 Sci-Fi thriller <i>Pandora</i>, but what would be the point when the people who arrive will be 180 generations removed from those who first began the journey? The odds of maintaining some semblance of sociological, psychological and physical continuity would seem to be slim if not impossible.<br />
I would not go so far as to say that such a quest would be irrelevant, but I will say this: The need to overcome disease and death, to overcome the genetic and physical imperfections of the human organism in the hear and now, in my opinion dwarfs any perceived need for space travel. When we finally get to the point where serious life extension beyond the pathetically-short 100 years or so we can hope for now becomes a reality, when the people who set off on the journey into space are the same people who will land on that new world in some distant part of the galaxy, then we'll have reason to celebrate.<br />
<b>References</b><br />
(a) <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7380/full/nature10684.html">Nature, Vol. 481, pg 167-169</a>.<br />
(b) <a href="http://cass.ucsd.edu/archive/public/tutorial/MW.html">Astronomical Tutorial</a><br />
(c) <a href="http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2118-do-the-milky-ways-companions-spell-trouble-for-dark-matter%20">Do the Milky Way’s Companions Spell Trouble for Dark Matter?</a><br />
(d) <a href="http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/07/new-cern-tests-attack-the-existence-of-dark-matter-.html">New Cern Tests Attack the Existence of Dark Matter</a><br />
(e) <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/dark-matter-s-tendrils-revealed-1.10951">Dark Matter’s Tendrils Revealed</a><br />
(f) <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070424204528.htm">Astronomers Find First Habitable Earth-Like Planet</a><a href="http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/milkyway/components.html"></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-87083870900215528112012-06-21T10:39:00.001-07:002016-01-13T13:19:44.355-08:00Fatalism, Fear and the Future of Humanity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jVCoRNC9yXc/UALiH40JVbI/AAAAAAAAByY/RVxg5bKGCzs/s1600/Galaxy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jVCoRNC9yXc/UALiH40JVbI/AAAAAAAAByY/RVxg5bKGCzs/s200/Galaxy.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b>By Steve Rensberry </b><br />
<br />
In another 1,000 years, what will the people of planet earth think of the world of the early 21st century? That the people of today were barbarians? That they were the last of a fading civilization that still carried with them the superstitious baggage that has been a part of humanity for thousands of years? <br />
Technologically, biologically, mechanically and scientifically we are bound to be at a place we can barely imagine. Psychologically, emotionally and culturally? Perhaps not so much, for as long at 1,000 years may seem, human nature has proven time and again to be nearly intractable. <br />
There will be, I imagine, the continued obsession with feeling that one's own period of time remains the most important period of time there has ever been. "We are at the precipice of human civilization," they will say. "The end of the world is just around the corner." But facts are stubborn things and, like clockwork, such pronouncements have proven repeatedly to be devoid of substance, whether their source is a 4,800-year-old Assyrian clay tablet, the apocalyptic pronouncements of the early Romans, or the hundreds if not thousands of end-time predictions made at practically every turn in human history. <br />
"It should be recalled that early Christians thought the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth would be soon," authors William Ebenstein and Alan O. Ebenstein write. (Great Political Thinkers, Fifth Edition, Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1991, pg 201). <br />
Then there is the intense rationalization that so often accompanies such pronouncements in the interests of maintaining the integrity--real or imagined--of one's core assumptions about reality, a much easier route to take than to exercise one's faculty of critical thinking or to admit that there are some things about life that we just don't know. But what good is faith if the object of one's faith is imaginary? And if it takes faith to make something real (as in the oft-heard appeal to "just have faith, and 'he' will reveal himself to you"), does this not make it obvious the imaginary, mental source of such "reality" or "truth?" Reality stands on its own merits and commands us to believe by a preponderance of overpowering evidence, without an appeal to some hocus pocus trick involving the adoption of an absolutist frame of mind to make us "see," to manifest reality. <br />
Another quote from Ebenstein and Ebenstein, this time speaking about the early church, end-time prophecies and the practice of slavery: "As time went on, however, and the advent of the heavenly kingdom was pushed further and further into the future, those church fathers who took an objective look at institutionalized slavery were hard pressed to rationalize its injustices. Some slaves were very good individuals, and therefore not deserving of the 'punishment' of their enslaved condition, while some masters were hateful tyrants. Regrettably, rather than taking the position that slavery was inherently unjust, the institutional response was that one's reward for Christian behavior could only be expected in the next life, not this one." (ibid 201). <br />
Whatever the source of the fatalism that so many people feel so compelled to embrace, whether it be karma, Biblical prophecy or any variety of superstition, I would suspect that it will be around well into the next millennium. Perhaps this is only to be fatalistic about the endurance of fatalistic thought itself, but is not 1,000 years but a blip on the timeline of human history? <br />
Then, like now, I would suspect that vast portions of humanity will exhibit the same subconscious urge to surmount the fundamentally suppressive and limiting natural environment. They will love and hate, they will exhibit jealousies, arrogance, and the same discriminatory, self-serving behaviors that they often do now. They will deceive one another for personal gain, pretending to be one thing will desiring another, while many others will remain humble and honest. Hopefully we will have found a cure for many of today's ills, such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's Disease and a host of other modern-day plagues such as Parkinson's Disease, AIDS and Multiple Sclerosis. <br />
Consider the revolution going on in at least three areas: biotechnology, information and computer science and physics. <br />
In looking at what has transpired in each of these fields over just the past 15 years it is difficult not to be skeptical of the shape of things to come. We have yet to know exactly where the mapping of the human genome will take us. And what of the tremendous advances in artificial intelligence, neurology, wireless digital communications, quantum science and cosmology? <br />
Who knew where we'd be today, just in the area of biotechnology? In a 2009 Popular Mechanics article, Melinda Wenner writes about "20 Biotech Breakthroughts That Will Change Medicine." Included are: decay-fighting microbes, artificial lymph nodes, an asthma sensor, a biological pacemaker, nerve re generator, speech restorer, a rocket-powered arm and nanosecond adhesives, among others. See: <a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/breakthroughs/4303407">breakthroughs</a>. <br />
Genomic is a related area where great strides are being made. <br />
"Today, genomic, the study of all the genetic material in an organism, is leading to tremendous advances in biotechnology. Genomic is both generating new tools and techniques and producing huge amounts of biological data. The deluge of genomic data has even led to the new science of bio informatics, which enables the data to be stored, accessed, compared, and used," a public statement from the United States Department of Agriculture notes. See: <a href="http://www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/biotech/biotech_all.html">biotech</a>.<br />
The future is bound to place at our fingertips vast amounts of knowledge about ourselves and the natural world that is nothing short of phenomenal. The downside is that human nature is such that many of our base emotions, feelings and desires act to filter what is ultimately perceived. People see what they want to see and no amount of evidence will convince them otherwise, especially when that belief involves some hypothetical, transcendent reality that contravenes all known laws of physics and that is--by definition--beyond one's ability to experience until after death. How can you prove it wrong (or right) when it is by definition outside the only reality we have access to? <br />
The reality is that if current population trends continue, in another 1,000 years earth will be home to an incredible 84.9 billion people. This assumes a current growth rate of 78.8 million people per year. To survive in such a shrinking world, future civilizations must surely learn to temper the brute scramble for limited resources that has become such an essential feature of today's capitalistic enterprise. More necessary still will be the need to temper the human impulse toward radicalism, in both thought and deed. Technology may help, but what is technology but a tool used to extend, amplify, augment or add to the basic attributes human beings already possess--a tool that can be used either for good or bad? <br />
The future of humanity may very well require some very rudimentary changes in the way we human beings have thought for literally thousands of years, in learning to frame our differences in terms of constructive rather than destructive debate, in establishing policies that foster economic fairness and opportunity rather the same measure of personal responsibility for persons with unequal genetic attributes and unequal environments, and in solving problems of crime and public threat in ways that don't exaggerate the threats and cost us more in the long run than the crimes themselves. Individual freedom is important to preserve, but who would argue that it should be totally unrestrained in a limited world of shared resources? Ethnocentrism and bigotry, along with the philosophical ideas that fuel them, will most certainly find themselves up against the wall as times we move in the future--particularly so in the wake of the current exponential growth in information and other forms of knowledge working to shed light on the human condition. <br />
"In this triumphant era of molecular biology and the first draft of the human genome, one might have supposed that we would know the answer to the question, What is life? Yet we do not. We know bits and pieces of molecular machinery, patches of metabolic circuitry, genetic network circuitry, means of membrane biosynthesis, but what makes a free-living cell alive escapes us. The core remains mysterious," writes biochemistry professor Stuart Kauffman in his essay "What is Life." (The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century, Edited by John Brockman, Vintage Books, 2002, Pg. 126). <br />
As long as there are people uncomfortable with uncertainty, an uncertainty that seems to be built into the very fabric of the universe itself, we will have our debates. But nurturing an acceptance of life's unknowns, of the relative nature of things, may be just the key that we need. Yes, we can be very, very certain of some things, things that can be readily demonstrated and observed--like one plus one equal two, or the fact that people must be born before they die--but everything has its limits. Open minds are inquisitive and empathetic minds. They are minds that value the living over the dead and the here-and-now over the hypothetical, and mind which concern themselves first and foremost with the needs and cares of real people in current time and space, rather than in that which is by definition light years beyond the realm of temporal existence.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-59438053909627058412012-05-05T15:40:00.000-07:002016-01-13T13:19:58.741-08:00Foundations of Belief<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>By Steve Rensberry</b><br />
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So utterly </div>
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convinced, some </div>
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people are, that what they </div>
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believe is the unmitigated truth.</div>
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But what, please tell me, is the criteria?</div>
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Feelings? A changed life? Intuition? Circumstance?</div>
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An infinitely subjective spark from deep within the mind?</div>
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Would you not have to have absolute knowledge, or be </div>
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absolute yourself, to know with certainty that </div>
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nothing at all exists to prove otherwise?</div>
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Surely to grapple onto absolute truth, </div>
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or what one thinks is absolute, </div>
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is to embark on a journey </div>
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of one's own making. </div>
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Think of the time. </div>
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The decades. The years.</div>
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Wasted. Chasing rainbows.</div>
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Confusing effect with the wrong cause.</div>
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Believing death is not death, </div>
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but merely a doorway. </div>
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Fabricating reality </div>
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out of emotion.</div>
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Must not<br />
belief, to be valid,</div>
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rest on sufficient evidence,</div>
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rather than on fanciful promises or </div>
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the dogmatic, fear-laden tenets </div>
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of institutionalized </div>
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superstition and </div>
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myth?</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-59773631077633846202012-01-29T10:01:00.000-08:002016-01-13T13:20:17.304-08:00Consciousness, desire and the human imagination<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IBGboz1rLGg/Tzh6l7dYzJI/AAAAAAAABpQ/gqSGKrgak4I/s1600/Planet5.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IBGboz1rLGg/Tzh6l7dYzJI/AAAAAAAABpQ/gqSGKrgak4I/s200/Planet5.gif" width="156" /></a><b>By Steve Rensberry </b> <br />
<br />
The nature of human consciousness, reflected in the mind-body problem, has challenged philosophers and thinkers for centuries, from Plato, to René Descartes to David Hume and James Mill. But why exactly is such a personal, human characteristic as consciousness so difficult to pin down?<br />
This essay will suggest an answer, but first let's review the landscape.<br />
Dualistic interpretations of consciousness make a fundamental distinction between the world of matter and the world of mind, or consciousness as it were. Each are treated as separate, irreducible categories within the realm of existence. Substance dualism considers the substances of mind and body entirely distinct whereas property dualism considers the properties or each—but not necessarily the substance—as distinct. A position known as predicate dualism asserts essentially that the words used to describe mental states or attitudes cannot be reduced to mere physical descriptions.<br />
Platonic dualism as conceived in Plato's theory of "Forms" (ideas) defines the abstract world of ideas as being the most pure and real, transcending the world of sensation and substance. Cartesian dualism, or Descartes dualism, holds the human soul or mind to be an entirely different, though interactive, substance than the body (centered in the pineal gland). See also: Fundamental property dualism, parallelism, emergent property dualism, neutral monist, property dualism, interactionism, occasionalism, non-reductive physicalism and epiphenomenalism.<br />
The position of the monist, on the other hand, is that matter and consciousness are combined into one vast, unified realm of existence, with monistic idealists picturing a realm that all is mind, physicalists positing one that all is matter and neutral monists arguing for an underlying reality or energy that is common to both. Physicalism credits brain activity exclusively with what has been traditional thought of as "the mind." Physicalism is distinguished from mere materialism in the inclusion of complicated non-material forces and particles that make up the physical world. Although Christianity and many other religions are generally dualist in their thinking, pantheism and panentheism are thoroughly monistic. See also: behaviorism, functionalism, empiricism, phenomenalism, non-reductive physicalism, anomalous monism, panpsychism, naturalism, identify theory and eliminativist.<br />
The Motor Theory of Consciousness considers consciousness primarily as an epiphenomenon or byproduct of delayed motor excitation. Author Ken Wilber argues for a multi-level form of consciousness which traverse a spectrum from lower to higher levels. <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-theory-of-consciousness">The Integrated Informational Theory</a> (ITT) of consciousness attributes the phenomenon to interactions among multiple, relevant reactions within the brain. . Quantum theories of consciousness, meanwhile, ascribe consciousness to characteristics associated with quantum physics such as superposition and quantum entanglement. Meme theory considers consciousness primarily as an illusion created in the brain by memes as a mechanism of replication. Electromagnetic theorists believe evidence exists to show that consciousness arises from electromagnetic fields produced in the brain. See: <a href="http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/05/52674?currentPage=all">Consciousness Based On Wireless</a>?<br />
Standford's encyclopedia entry on consciousness cites a number of other specific theories of consciousness and states: "Although there are many general metaphysical/ontological theories of consciousness, the list of specific detailed theories about its nature is even longer and more diverse." Listed are higher-order theories (categorized into higher order thought theories and higher order perception theories) representative theories, cognitive theories, neural theories, quantum theories, and non-physical theories.<br />
"The problem with minds and consciousness is that they remain so mysterious, so unlike anything else that we are familiar with, that it is altogether unclear what might count as relevant background information," author Ben Dupré writes. (<a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/50_Philosophy_Ideas_You_Really_Need_to_K.html?id=imsrAQAAIAAJ"><i>50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need to Know</i></a>, Quercus Publishing Plc., 2007, pg. 47).<br />
Douglas Hofstadter, author of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach"><i>Godel, Escher, Bach</i></a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop"><i>I Am a Strange Loop</i></a> (Basic Books, New York, 2007, pg 19), questions our human sensibilities altogether as to what creatures are even deemed conscious enough to have value, compared to those which are not. In <i>I Am a Strange Loop</i>, Hofstadter lays out what he calls a "consciousness cone," suggesting a hierarchy of things or creatures which humans implicitly attribute various degrees of consciousness to. From the least to the greatest, these are atoms; viruses; microbes; mites; mosquitoes; bees; goldfish, chickens, bunnies, dogs, mentally retarded, brain-damaged and senile humans, and normal adult humans. He admits the list is only suggestive and not meant to be exact.<br />
"By virtue of our might, we are forced to establish some sort of ranking of creatures, whether we do so as a result of long and careful personal reflections or simply go along with the compelling flow of the masses," Hofstadter writes.<br />
Where should one start in seeking an answer to the puzzle?<br />
I would argue that it may not be so much a puzzle as a matter of proximity. We are, as it were, both observer and the observed. We are like tiny cogs inside a massive clockwork trying to determine where precisely the hands on the clock are positioned.<br />
Within us lies the ability to create and build using the faculty of imagination. In the mind are spawned a near infinite variety of constructs and scenarios in a mash up of fleeting images and memories. Do we in actuality fly around the moon the moment we imagine ourselves flying around the moon? Do we live forever because we imagine ourselves living forever? Does the mind exist in a parallel universe of eternal values and permanence unlike anything else on earth? In the minds of a great swath of human throughout the ages, apparently so. But where is the evidence?<br />
Even those theories which have climbed aboard the quantum physics train have yet to venture much beyond the realm of the theoretical and speculative, as rational sounding as they may be.<br />
"I believe that we will not be able to understand the physical basis of consciousness without including the principles of quantum physics and a very new concept of what constitutes the action of observation," author Fred Alan Wolf writes. (<i>The Dreaming Universe</i>, Simon and Schuster Inc., 1994. pg. 74).<br />
Whatever you do, I would suggest resisting the temptation to chisel your viewpoint into a tablet of stone, or treat as sacrosanct the views of anyone else who does. Considering the vast cognitive differences there are among people in general, including the many altered state of consciousness on record, it just doesn't seem wise.<br />
In <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Who_s_afraid_of_Schr%C3%B6dinger_s_cat.html?id=JO1vHQAACAAJ"><i>Who's Afraid of Schrödinger's Cat?</i></a> by Ian Marshal and Danah Zohar (Quill, William Morrow, 1997), the authors give this description of the divide: "Even if various neural theories eventual provide scientific answer to these questions, we are left with a philosophical disquiet. There is too much clash between the objective, scientific paradigm in terms of which we understand the brain—mass, length, electrical activity, and so on—and the more subjective paradigm in terms of which we understand ourselves--self-awareness, phenomenal space and time, intentionality, free will, an such. As currently understood, the two paradigms seem like chalk and cheese." (pg. 234).<br />
But does the nearly indescribable, nebulous nature of the conscious mind justify leaping to fantastic conclusions? Does it trivialize the beauty and value of life? My answer is no, but where answers are uncertain and desires rule, the imagination traditionally takes over.<br />
Could it be that consciousness is simply much less complicated than it seems, that it only appears magical (or spiritual), in the way that electromagnetic waves and magnetism can appear magical? Is consciousness merely the active product of a biological organism whose primary, evolutionary advantage stems from being able to produce hypothetical constructs in the mind, in order to make half-reliable decisions in a complex world?<br />
John R Burr and Milton Goldinger, editors of <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Philosophy_and_contemporary_issues.html?id=fVm10a5UVAEC"><i>Philosophy and Contemporary Issues</i></a> (Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1972), write in the introduction to their chapter on knowledge and science about the propensity of human beings to subjugate facts to feelings. Their argument is primarily about science-based knowledge, but it can equally apply to our discussion of consciousness.<br />
A central point: Excitement, amusement, power, ethnocentricity, wealth, national security and a host of other immediate human desires things are routinely placed on a higher plain than is the honest pursuit of genuine knowledge.<br />
As stated by Burr and Goldinger: "The great majority of men and women tolerate science, admire it, or revere it only to the degree and extent science is a necessary means to various desired nonscientific ends. When science fails to provide the necessary means, people turn to kinds of 'knowledge' other than the scientific. Does scientific psychology look dubiously upon extrasensory perception, does it cast doubt on the claim those messages really came from beloved Uncle Max dead these many years? The, scientific psychology is dogmatic, materialistic, too narrow, at best merely partial knowledge. Astronomy won't tell us if we will be lucky or unlucky today? Then astrology will. Does science seem to make it difficult to believe God exists? Then our hearts inform us he does exist. Does science fail to prove convincingly that we should all love one another and stop hating? Then mystical insight will."<br />
The realm of ideas and inner experiences that make up the conscious human mind may indeed be <i>subjectively</i> real, may be something that people desire to be objectively real, but even after hundreds of years of inquiry there remains a dearth of evidence to substantiate the claim that a person's conscious mind is anything but confined to their own fleeting neurological network. More apparent still is the ease with which the subjective human mind can deceive itself, intentionally corrupting the criteria it uses to differentiate substantive knowledge from mere superstition and magical thinking.<br />
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<b>For further reading</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/%20">Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/consciou/%20">Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind%20">Philosophy of Mind</a></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism%20">Dualism (Philosophy of Mind)</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html">The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness</a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-53895087616285911992011-12-06T14:28:00.001-08:002011-12-10T09:06:18.995-08:00Confucius: Those Who are Absolute True Selves<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>An excerpt from the writings of Confucius</i><i><br /></i></div>
Only those who are their absolute true selves in the world can fulfill their own nature; only those who fulfill their own nature can fulfill the nature of others; only those who fulfill the nature of others can fulfill the nature of things; those who fulfill the nature of things are worthy to help Mother Nature in growing and sustaining life; and those who are worthy to help Mother Nature in growing and sustaining life are the equals of heaven and earth.<br />
The next in order are those who are able to attain to the apprehension of a particular branch of study. By such studies, they are able to apprehend the truth. Realization of the true self compels expression; expression becomes evidence; evidence becomes clarity or luminosity of knowledge; clarity or luminosity of knowledge activates; active knowledge becomes power and power become a pervading influence. Only those whoa re absolutely their true selves in the world can have pervading influence.<br />
It is an attribute of the possession of the absolute true self to be able to foreknow. When a nation or family is about to flourish, there are sure to be lucky omens. When a nation or family is about to perish, there are sure to be signs and prodigies. These things manifest themselves in the instruments of divination and in the agitation of the human body. What happiness of calamity is about to come, it can be known beforehand.<br />
When it is good, it can be known beforehand. When it is evil, it can also be known beforehand. Therefore he who has realized his true self is like a celestial spirit.<br />
Truth means the fulfillment of our self; and moral law means following the law of our being. Truth is the beginning and end (the substance) of material existence Without truth there is no material existence. It is for this reason that the moral man values truth. <br />
Truth is not only the fulfillment of our own being, it is that by which things outside of us haven existence. The fulfillment of our being is more sense. The fulfillment of the nature of our being is moral sense. The fulfillment of the nature of things outside of us is intellect. These, moral sense and intellect, are the powers or faculties of our being. They combine the inner or subjective and outer or objective use of the power of the mind. Therefore, with truth, everything done is right.<br />
Thus absolute truth is indestructible. Being indestructible, it is eternal. Being eternal, it is self-existent. Being self-existent it is infinite. Being infinite, it is vast and deep. Being vast and deep, it is transcendental and intelligent. It is because it is vast and deep that it contains all existence. It is because it is transcendental and intelligent that it embraces all existence. It is because it is infinite and eternal that it fulfills or perfects all existence. In vastness and depth it is like the earth. In transcendental intelligence it is like heaven. Infinite and eternal, it is the infinite itself.<br />
Such being the nature of absolute truth, it manifests itself without being seen; it produces effects without motion; it accomplishes its ends without action. <br />
The principle in the course and operation of nature may be summed up in one word: because it obeys only its own immutable law, the way in which it produces the variety of things is unfathomable.<br />
Nature is vast, deep, high, intelligent, infinite and eternal. The heaven appearing before us is only this bright, shrinking mass; but in its immeasurable extent, the sun, the moon, stars and constellations are suspended in it, and all things are embraced under it. The earth, appearing before us, is but a handful of soil; but in all its breadth and depth, it sustains mighty mountains without feeding their weight; rivers and seas dash against it without cause it to leak. The mountain appearing before us is only a mass of rock; bit in all the vastness of its size, grass and vegetation grow upon it, birds and beasts dwell on it, and treasurers of precious minerals are found in it. The water appearing before us is but a ladle full of liquid; bit in all its unfathomable depths, the largest crustaceans, dragons, fishes, and turtles are produced in them, all useful products abound in them.<br />
In the Book of Songs it is said:<br />
"The ordinance of God, How inscrutable it is and goes on for ever."<br />
That is to say, this is the essence of God. It is again said:<br />
How excellent it is, the moral perfection of King Wen."<br />
That is to say, this is the essence of the noble character of the Emperor Wen. Moral perfection also never dies.<br />
<i> Note: Text selection is copyright expired.</i><br />
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<b>For further reading:</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/china03.htm%20">Emperor Wen, Confucianism and a New Order</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/confuciu/%20">Confucius (551-479 BCE)</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-73929848005548512162011-11-25T21:07:00.001-08:002016-01-13T13:20:37.997-08:00The Illusion of Belief<div style="text-align: left;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8C28I2VR8cA/TtB2B3Aim_I/AAAAAAAABcE/pCZYko5ykIo/s1600/Outside-In.jpg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8C28I2VR8cA/TtB2B3Aim_I/AAAAAAAABcE/pCZYko5ykIo/s200/Outside-In.jpg.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<b>By Steve Rensberry</b><br />
<br />
Does life exist beyond the grave?<br />
Do the eyes lie?<br />
Meaning. Truth. Purpose.<br />
What are they but the mind reaching out?<br />
When you pick up a rock, you know it's a rock.<br />
But you are, alas, a construct-creating entity.<br />
An amalgam of ambiguous forces.<br />
A desire in search of belief. <br />
A framework in need of reinforcement.<br />
So that rock can be anything you want.<br />
A sign. A symbol. A tool. <br />
A deity transformed.<br />
Manifested in all its prophetic glory.<br />
The mind embraces belief like a criminal embraces a scapegoat.<br />
Contingent belief? <br />
Temporary belief? Suspended belief?<br />
Belief in a possibility? A probability?<br />
Not in a million years. <br />
Not in a lifetime.<br />
A mind in need needs belief of eternal proportions.<br />
It needs totality. It needs absolutes.<br />
It needs the physiological release that comes only from total justification.<br />
To sanctify its existence.<br />
To create for itself that which cannot be manifest.<br />
To make the impossible real.<br />
It is not evidence the mind needs but a simple green light. <br />
An all-encompassing reason.<br />
Reality. Facts. Evidence.<br />
What are they really but concepts?<br />
A choice?<br />
Eyed through the lens of subjective interpretation.<br />
Beaten into submission by an infinite ego.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-46164907135401233912011-10-23T20:47:00.001-07:002016-01-13T13:22:25.465-08:00Mind, body and emotion<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Steve Rensberry</b></div>
<br />
The essence and source of human emotions, like that of consciousness itself, is a complex phenomenon that has caused a great deal of bewilderment throughout history. Author and professor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Thagard">Paul Thagard</a> makes an interesting observation in an April 15, 2010 blog for <i>Psychology Today</i>, entitled very simply, "<a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hot-thought/201004/what-are-emotions">What are emotions</a>?" <br />
Thagard first appraises the dualist view as being weak on evidence and heavy on wishful thinking or motivated inference, then points to two main scientific explanations for how emotions arise. One is the cognitive appraisal theory, which suggests that emotions represent a reaction to how well we are achieving any particular goal, the result being happiness when we're getting closer and anger when we encounter obstacles. The second explanation argues that emotions are tied to physiological changes. <br />
"On this view, happiness is a kind of physiological perception, not a judgment, and other emotions such as sadness and anger are mental reactions to different kinds of physiological stages," he writes. <br />
Most intriguing is Thagard's comment that our current understanding of how the brain functions suggests that the two theories can be unified. <br />
"Visual and other kinds of perception are the result of both inputs from the senses and top-down interpretations based on past knowledge. Similarly, the brain can perform emotions by interactively combining both high-level judgments about goal satisfactions and low-level perceptions of bodily changes," he says. <br />
As for the physiological connection, research also points to a number of compounds and molecules in the body that appear to drive various emotional states. These include adrenaline, acetylcholine, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin, testosterone, estrogen, melatonin and oxytocin. <br />
When so many of these substances perform multiple functions in the context of a biologically complex, dynamic living organism, it's no wonder emotions are so difficult to quantify. In artificial intelligence, it remains to be seen if duplication of human emotional reactions will be worthy of broad-based emulation or perhaps something that is a little more on the level of sanity.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-67409575971211089582011-10-05T15:11:00.000-07:002016-01-13T13:22:56.124-08:00Life outside the hive<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Steve Rensberry</b> </div>
<br />
Why do so many people believe in the absolute reality of so many things with such little evidence to validate their truth? Consider ghosts, angels, demons and that most prominent of deities -- God, or Allah if your prefer.<br />
If you find yourself one of the believers, I implore you to entertain this one simple question: Is it even remotely <i>possible</i> that such entities could be mere fabrications of the human mind? <br />
Why exactly do you believe what you do? Is it based on solid, empirical evidence or is it based on subjective, cognitive experience and philosophical speculation? History is replete with examples of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking">magical thinking</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition">superstitious</a> belief. How do you know what you believe is any different? <br />
Don't get swayed by the human impulse to turn wishes into reality by imagining to be true things which are false. As finite, emotional creatures in a complex world, the best and most rational position to take is one that rests on a healthy foundation of skepticism and critical thinking. <br />
Part of your challenge--if you choose to accept it--is to wean yourself away from the comfort zone of all-encompassing belief, in the kind of belief that literally takes over your life. The difficulty is that the simple act of believing in something, even if it is based on a falsehood, can offer a tremendous amount of psychological comfort and positive reinforcement, especially when coupled with a supportive social network. <br />
They say that much of what we believe is simply a matter of inculcation from a very young age, the evidence notwithstanding. But there comes a time when we all need to grow up and become honest with ourselves. Don't give up on reality by thinking you've found the absolute, unquestionable truth, from now until eternity. Trust me, there is life outside the hive.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-60888943761606559102011-09-12T20:52:00.000-07:002016-01-13T13:23:25.309-08:00P.D. Ouspensky and Tertium Organum<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Steve Rensberry </b></div>
<br />
I first came across the work of Russian writer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._D._Ouspensky">P.D. Ouspensky</a> in 1978 after his book, <i>Tertium Organum</i>, caught my eye in the philosophy section of a local Canadian bookstore. The subtitle: "<i>A Key to the Enigmas of the World</i>"<br />
The book, written in 1912, has since become available online. There is a <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/to/index.htm">link</a> to it on this website. Although Ouspensky was associated early on with the work of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff">George Gurdjieff</a> and esotericism, it was neither Gurdjieff nor esotericism that interested me at the time. It was simply Ouspensky's book, <i>The Third Canon of Thought</i>, and the challenges to conventional wisdom that it presented.<br />
It's a complex piece of work and I don't by any means agree with, nor necessarily understand, everything Ouspensky was trying to say, but I still find it amazing that one of his conclusions is to ultimately deny the reality of motion itself. Ouspensky's book questioned some of the most basic assumptions people have about human perception and the world, and did it in a way that was profoundly analytic and rational, unlike the narratives and undefinable leaps of faith so prevalent among white anglo-saxon protestant culture.<br />
The fact that Ouspensky was a journalist, having written for several newspapers while in addition penning such books as <i>The Fourth Dimension</i> and <i>A New Model of the Universe</i>, is something else I can appreciate.<br />
Following is the 1998 film directed by Zivko Nicolic based upon Ouspensky's 1949 book, "<i>In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching</i>." It was, as noted on YouTube, produced by Sidney Fairway Films in association with Anak Productions Belgrade. Part I is embedded.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="423" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DPoj_C7IUuc" width="515"></iframe> <br />
<br />
Part II -- <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDR3eed9rKI&feature=related">In Search of the Miraculous</a><br />
Part III -- <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ0r9uXKiG8&feature=related">In Search of the Miraculous</a><br />
Part IV -- <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilxRXTGpDTw&feature=related">In Search of the Miraculous</a><br />
Part V -- <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRDH9fkDqPk&feature=related">In Search of the Miraculous</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3746155415092156478.post-17955119979792816302011-08-29T21:13:00.000-07:002011-08-29T21:13:08.871-07:00Proteus Syndrome study may aid cancer research<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uAdNLs1p3qM/TlxjNpvaqfI/AAAAAAAABEY/mk6UZ4mQmOo/s1600/DNA+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uAdNLs1p3qM/TlxjNpvaqfI/AAAAAAAABEY/mk6UZ4mQmOo/s200/DNA+image.jpg" width="115" /></a></div> The National Institutes of Health issued a <a href="http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/august2011/08082011defect.htm">report</a> this month announcing that scientists had pinpointed the mutation they believe is responsible for the very unusual Proteus Syndrome, a finding which they suggested may hold promise in understanding and treating cancer. For more information about Proteus Syndrome, see: <a href="http://www.genome.gov/27544873">FAQ</a>.<br />
Details of the study were first published this month in the <i>New England Journal of Medicine</i> here: <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1104017"><i>A Mosaic Activating Mutation in AKT1 Associated with the Proteus Syndrome</i></a>.<br />
Proteus Syndrome is an extremely rare condition involving the uncontrolled, typically asymmetric overgrowth of various body tissues, bones and other parts. Identification involves noting the unequal distribution of affected areas, the appearance of the suspected syndrome among only one member in a family, and continued growth over time of the body areas experiencing accelerated growth. <br />
"Proteus syndrome does not run in families, but faulty genes were believed to be responsible. Some experts proposed that the condition might be a genetic mosaicism. Mosaic disorders arise when a genetic mutation occurs spontaneously during embryonic development," the NIH report states.<br />
A research team at the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) used a technique called whole-exome sequencing to examine the cells of six affected individuals in order to determine if their hypothesis was correct. What they discovered was a gene that had already been implicated in cancer studies and related therapies.<br />
"The analysis reveled a single-letter misspelling in the genome of affected cells," The NIA states. "The mutated gene, called AKT1, is a known ocogene—a gene that can promote the uncontrolled cell growth associated with cancer."<br />
Further confirmation of the role played by a gene defect was found by testing 29 others, for who 26 showed the variation. No variations have been found beyond affected individuals.<br />
Accelerated AKT protein activity had been observed in previous research into the cause of the syndrome.<br />
The focus now is on developing a drug to inhibit the increase in AKT protein activity. <br />
For further reading, see: <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110727171454.htm"><i>Gene Variant in Proteus Syndrome Identified</i></a>. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com