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E1, E2, E3,
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Spinozistic
Contributions to Wikipedia
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Biographies:
Columbia—EJ:Spinoza,
EJ:Ezra and Nehemiah, EJ:Jesus,
EB:Jesus,
Durant:Spinoza, EJ:Graetz,
EJ:Wolfson,
EJ:Einstein,
Elwes—Spinoza,
Colerus:Spinoza,
EB:Spinoza
RH—
— 1D6
= ONE
Script—EJ:Hirsch,
Runes:Spinoza,
WST—EJ:Wolf.
Pollock—Spinoza:
His Life and Philosophy.
Columbia:
Hobbes,
Ibn Ezra heresies, Praise
or Blame, Durant Tribute [12], G-D,
idea of G-D, Idea
of God, Hampshire—conatus,
Hampshire—libido
and conatus,
Durant—Herbert
Spencer's words that I can't help, but think they apply to Spinoza:
Whoever hesitates to utter
that
which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance
of the time, may reassure
himself
by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view.
Durant's
Tribute—Spinoza biography, final
causes, Excommunicated,
Leviathan,
Dutch Condemn—Condemning
the TTP, Opera
Posthuma, ,
English Translation
of Dutch—Elwes:
Condemning the TTP, ,
Ezra and Nehemiah:EJ—
Jesus:EJ—Spinoza
serves as bridge between both (Judaism and Christianity) and the coming
(in time)
Universal
Religion.
Jesus:EB—Spinoza
serves as bridge between both (Judaism and
Christianity) and the coming (in time)
Universal
Religion.
Spinoza:EJ—Spinoza,
Graetz:EJ—Jewish
historian and Bible scholar. {Graetz's
Censure of Spinoza.}
Midrashic,
Masoretic
Text, Septuagint,
Tishri,
Wolfson:EJ—Historian
of philosophy.
Einstein:EJ—Discoverer
of the theory of relativity, and Nobel Prize winner.
Hampshire—Spinoza
and Descartes: Cartesianism—construed
not as a set of particular doctrines or propositions,
but
as a whole vocabulary and a method of argument—dominated
philosophical and scientific thought
in
seventeenth-century Europe (though less in England than elsewhere),-as
Aristotelianism, similarly
construed,
had dominated Europe in previous centuries.
Hampshire—EXTENSION
AND ITS MODES. Motion and Rest: Everything
which exists in the Universe is to be
conceived
as a 'modification' or particular differentiation of the unique all-inclusive
substance, whose
nature
is revealed solely under the two infinite attributes, Thought and Extension. But
we can and must
distinguish
the all-pervasive features of the Universe, which
can be immediately deduced from the
nature
of these attributes themselves, from those which cannot be so immediately
deduced.
Hampshire—Affectus—Emotion: ...
The word affectus, although it comes the nearest to
the word
'emotion'
in the familiar sense, represents the whole modification
of the person, mental and physical.
The
'affection' is a passion (in Spinoza's technical sense) in
so far as the cause of the modification or
'affection'
does not lie within myself, and it is an 'action'
or active emotion in so far as the cause does
lie
within myself.
Hampshire—Confused
ideas to the free man's life of active emotion and
adequate ideas must be achieved,
if
at all, by a method in some respects not unlike the methods of modern psychology;
the cure, or method of
salvation,
consists in making the patient more self-conscious, and
in making him perceive the more or less
unconscious
struggle within himself to preserve his own internal
adjustment and balance; he must be
brought
to realize that it is this continuous struggle which expresses itself in
his pleasures and pains, desires
and
aversions.
Hampshire—Good
& Bad; Perfect & Imperfect: Spinoza
can allow never-the-less
that the moral epithets 'good'
and
'bad' are popularly and intelligibly used in this quasi-objective sense;
so far they have the same use
as
words like 'pleasant' or 'admirable'; they indicate
the appetites and repugnances of the user, or what
happen
to be the tastes of most normal men. But it is important
to notice that in this popular use the epithets
must
not be interpreted as referring to the intrinsic properties
of the things or persons called good or bad;
they
refer rather to the constitution and reactions of the persons applying
the epithets.
Hampshire—Abstraction:
..., 'the intelligent individual's first aim must
be to persuade others to be equally
intelligent
in the pursuit of their own security; he has
a direct interest in freeing others from the passive
emotions
and from the blind superstitions which lead to
war and to the suppression of free thought.
But
in fact the enlightened and the free are always a minority, and
men in general are guided by irrational
hopes
and fears, and not by pure reason.
Hampshire—Religious
Faith and Philosophy: The dividing-line between
religious faith and philosophical truth
was,
after metaphysics itself, Spinoza's greatest
interest; it was a problem which not only involved the whole
intellectual
history of the Jewish people; it had also dominated
his personal life and his own adjustment to
the
society into which he was born.
Hampshire—Purpose
of the Theological-Political Treatise: In
the Preface to the Theological-Political
Treatise
Spinoza
declares the main purpose of the book to be the defense of freedom of opinion;
he will show that
public
order is not only compatible with freedom of opinion, but
that it is incompatible with anything else.
The
argument is a now classical liberal argument, and is still invoked today.
'If deeds only could be made
the
grounds of criminal charges, and words were always
allowed to pass free, seditions would be divested
of
every
semblance of justification, and would be separated from mere controversies
by a hard and fast line.'
Hall—Teleological
Argument: There remains solidly the option of not going down this
path of teleologically,
arguing
from the structure of the design to the structure
of the designer or designers or the designer and
the
designer's adversary. You don't have to go that way.
Various
Biographies—
Home Page—
Encyclopedia Britannica
Online, Jewish Encyclopedia
Online, Sacred Texts:
KJV, JPS,
Koran,
Ism
Book, Kemerling,
Google, MSN
Search, The
Virtual Library, 1911
Encyclopedia, Tickle the Fancy,
JBY—Spinoza
defined "sorrow, boredom, joy" with one definition. Answer.
JBY—Spinoza
also defined "hate, indifference, love" with one definition.
Answer.
JBY—Introduction
to "A DEDICATION TO SPINOZA'S INSIGHTS": I stumbled upon Spinoza after
I studied Calculus
in
college. Spinoza's definitions of sorrow, boredom,
joy; hate, indifference, love, seemed to me to lend
themselves
to Calculus expression. The more I studied these equations the more
I realized how important
they
were in understanding roller-coaster emotions and everyday
relationships—you love not out of altruism,
but
out of self-interest. As I kept studying Spinoza, I was really
hooked when what happened to me is what
Elwes
thought happened to Spinoza.
JBY—Purpose
of "A DEDICATION TO SPINOZA'S INSIGHTS":
We all want Joy.
We all want Love.
We all want Peace-of-Mind.
To get them, a profound understanding of them
helps.
Spinoza's insights help provide such understanding.
Your
understanding minimizes your loss
of Peace-of-Mind.
Spinoza's Dictum—I
have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule,
not
to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but
to understand them.
Suggestions—Do not read these Web
Pages (and the electronic texts listed below) linearly as you would a
novel,
but rather follow all the links in
turn. You will then be putting hypertexting to its fullest and best
advantage—the
fuller discussion of a thread. If
you do not stick to one thread at a time,
this Web Site will be
very
convoluted, confusing, and an annoying maze.
JBY WEB PAGES
SPINOZA ELECTRONIC
TEXTS
Durant—Spinoza
is not to be read, he is to be studied;
you must approach him as you would approach Euclid,
recognizing
that in these brief two hundred pages a man has written
down his lifetime's thought with stoic
sculptory
of everything superfluous. Do not think to find its
core by running over it rapidly... Read the book not
all
at once but in small portions at many sittings. And
having finished it, consider that you have but begun to
understand
it.
JBY—I
am an eighty-three year old retired Structural Engineer who has
for some sixty-odd years studied Spinoza.
Humbul Humanities
Hub—"A Dedication
to Spinoza's Insights—Joseph B. Yesselman's Home Page"—is a
resource
that investigates and participates in the philosophy
of the seventeenth-century Dutch thinker
Benedict
de Spinoza (occasionally known as Baruch de Spinoza, or simply Benedict/Baruch
Spinoza).
The
site's author is Joseph B. Yesselman, a retired structural
engineer who has had a lifelong interest
in the
philosopher
in question.
Glossary—holidays,
Spinoza's
Pantheism,
Golden Rule,
or else,
salmon,
Harbinger,
ONE, Universal
Religion,
clearly
and distinctly, confused,
New wine in old bottles,
The Universal Religion,
UN Analogous position,
Sham,
Theology, Constitution,
Cash Value, Perpetuation-Emotion-Faith,
Speculation,
Scientific
Method,
religion,
Idolatry, ibn
Ezra, Organic, James's
ONE, Breast,
Cash Value: pedagogy,
Study Constitution,
Love
God, Knowledge of G-D—Link,
know G-D—Lung,
Highest
good is to know God: WHY?, Garden
of Eden,
Law
of Organisms, Heart and lungs,
Catholic-Breast, adequate
ideas, brother's
keeper, Altruism,
Specie
fish, Nationhood--Symbols, Maimonides,
Indivisible, Nationhood,
anti-Semitism,
anti-Semitism,
Uzgalis
- Hobbes—Spinoza
shares with Hobbes a powerful
negative analysis of popular religion and the
view
that individuals operate in their own self-interest. Posit
and test hypothesis, Right Way
of Living,
Praise
and blame, species
'Man, fish, Synthesize,
Posit, Religious
Belief/Religious Faith, Paradigm
shift,
Indivisible—Letter
on the infinite, Immanent,
Cause, Spinozism,
Morality, Spinozism,
Free-Choice,
better
PcM—Whatever is, is, Passover,
Holocaust and Dresden Firestorm,
Sin, Pity,
Spinozistic Hebrew,
Jewish
Nationalism, Inseparable,
World View, belief—hypothesis,
Functionalism—Consciousness,
Kabbala, Mysticism,
Buber's Mysticism, Altruism
Does Not Exist—Dawkins:546,
Pantheism,
JBY—EMOTION
is a change in one's °PERPETUATION.
Its intensity is proportional to the change:
If
the change is negative, it is SORROW.
If
the change is zero, it is BOREDOM.
If
the change is positive, it is JOY.
JBY—FAITH
is belief that an external object will cause a change in one's °PERPETUATION.
The intensity
is proportional to the change.
If
the change to be caused is negative, it is HATE.
If
the change to be cause is zero, it is INDIFFERENCE.
If
the change to be cause is positive, it is LOVE.
ONE—Hear,
O Israel, G-D our LORD is G-D the Only ONE:
Foundation Rock for Jewish philosophy.
Compare 1D6 - equivalent Foundation Rock
for Spinoza's philosophy.
JBY—Organic:
Scripture and Spinoza declare that G-D is ONE to establish that EVERYTHING
is bound into one grand
ORGANIC interdependence; from this intuition, by deduction, "in working
clothes", logically flows the Golden
Rule "love your neighbor..."
JBY—Religion: Religion
is an ever-evolving hypothesis designed to find
PEACE-OF-MIND. As long as people have
non-understood wants, they will suffer loss of peace-of-mind.
That is why religion, drugs, alcohol, opiates, etc. persists throughout
the world.
JBY—Idolatry:
Idolatry is taking the infinite as finite.
Taking the finite as infinite is pantheism.
Martin Buber—Mysticism:
The unity which the ecstatic experiences when he
has brought all his former multiplicity
into oneness is not a relative unity, bounded by the existence of other
individuals. It is the absolute, unlimited
oneness which includes all others. ....
JBY—Mysticism:
.... 2. Imagine as you drive down a main arterial highway that you are
part of the blood-traffic
—where each vehicle has its assigned task for the
perpetuation of your society. When you stop at a red light,
feel you are a corpuscle of the blood stopping at
a heart valve. FEEL the organic interdependence of the
Parts. ....
Quantum Mechanics—The
fundamental physical theory developed in the 1920s as a replacement for
classical
mechanics. In quantum mechanics waves {mind}
and particles {body}
are two aspects of the same underlying
entity {substance}.
The particle associated with a given wave is its quantum. Also, the states
of bound systems
like atoms or molecules {modes}
occupy only certain distinct energy levels; the energy is said to be
quantized.
JBY—Religion:
Religion is an ever-evolving
hypothesis designed to find PEACE-OF-MIND.
Dimont—Constitution:
The founding fathers and the American people had
a steadfast belief in the {Hebrew Bible}.
The development of constitutional law through the body of
decisions by the Supreme Court has acted, in
a sense, like a Talmud in interpreting and clarifying
the Constitution, and those decisions have come to
function in American political life
much as: the Talmud has in Jewish life.
Jammer—Spinozism:
Rejecting the traditional theistic concept
of God, Spinoza denied the existence of a cosmic
purpose on the grounds that all events in nature
occur according to immutable laws of cause and effect. The
universe is governed by a mechanical or mathematical
order and not according to purposeful or moral
intentions.
JBY—Idolatry:
Idolatry is taking the infinite as finite.
JBY—Evolving
Holidays:
PAGAN JUDAISM CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL RELIGION
Pagan Winter Solstice Festival ------------> Hanukkah ------------------> Christmas-----------------> Nature Renewal Day
Pagan Spring Festival -------------------------> Passover --------------------> Easter----------------------> Man Renewal Day
Pagan Free Time Festival --------------------> Shavuoth--------------------> Pentecost----------------> United Nations Day
Pagan Harvest Festival -------------------------> Sukkoth----------------------> Thanksgiving----------> Thanksgiving
Shirley's—Linguistic
play & Metaphors; This might be called
its linguistic play and manipulation. Spinoza employs
many
of the same terms prevalent in traditional Jewish and Christian discourse,
such as "G-D," "salvation,"
"faith," "miracles," "divine
law," "help of G-D," "election of G-D," etc.,
but he twists them and gives them new,
unorthodox
meanings that are compatible with his own philosophy.
James—Cash
Value: He would seek the meaning of
'true' by examining how the idea functioned in our lives.
A
belief was true, he said, if in the long run it worked for all of
us, and guided us expeditiously through our
semihospitable
world.
James's—Free-will:
Free-will thus has no meaning unless it be a doctrine of relief.
As such, it takes its place with
other
religious doctrines. Between them, they build
up the old wastes and repair the former desolations.
Disclaimer—I believe
speculations and metaphysics, should be pursued;
although at times covertly; at times
overtly. Religious
hypotheses and knowledge constantly evolve to elegant simplicity.
It is just that my major
interest
is studying the implications of Spinoza's thought.
Quibble—Speculation
(conjectural) consideration of a matter. A
contradiction with the speculation (hypothesis) of
a
transcendent G-D: By positing that the universe is not part of G-D,
G-D's attributes are limited; thus His Power
is
limited—a contradiction.
Rabbinic
Judaism—Talmud
and Miracles:
Rabbinic Judaism very rarely, if ever, concerns
itself with speculative
matters.
It concerns itself with the study
of the law and its observance; much as a lawyer does
today. It posits
G-D
as an axiom and goes on from there with no further metaphysical
discussion. A citizen accepts his
constitution
as an axiom and goes on from there.
Chancellor
Schorsch—Spinoza:
For my father, Spinoza represented the fullest
and finest expression of
Judaism's historic quest to
understand the endless diversity of existence in monotheistic
terms. On
many a Shabbat I was treated to
a discourse that eluded the grasp of my inattentive mind. I remember
only the stirring intensity of his fascination.
Spinoza provided a haven in which the rational bent of my father's
mind and the religious hunger of
his heart could both find comfort.
Uzgalis—Hobbes'
Leviathan: Spinoza shares with Hobbes a powerful negative analysis of
popular religion and the view
that individuals operate in their own self-interest. Spinoza,
however, gives this last doctrine a remarkable
twist.
JBY—Sin:
The Hebrew word translated as 'sin' is khate, Strong:2399—a
crime, sin, fault. The root of khate is khaw-taw',
Strong:2398—to miss, to err from the mark (speaking of an archer),
to sin, to stumble. Implied in this
etymology
is that there should be "no praise—no blame" ever; crime
and scarlet fever are in the same category. ....
JBY—Charity,
Pity: The Hebrew
word which is often mis-translated as charity, mercy, pity, etc., is tsed-aw-kaw',
Strong:6666—rightness,
justice, virtue, piety. The root of tsed-aw-kaw' is tsaw-dak',
Strong:6663—upright, just, straight,
innocent, true, sincere; (the same root as for righteousness). Based on
this etymology, it is what one lung
does when the other collapses; it does double-duty, not out of altruism,
but for its very own survival. ....
JBY—Charity,
Pity: The Hebrew word which is often mis-translated
as pity (compassion, love, is better) is rakh'-am, Strong:7355—to
fondle, love, cherish, affection. A related word is
rekh'em, Strong:7358 —the womb (cherishing
the foetus). Based
on this etymology, the compassion, forgiveness, and °LOVE we should
feel for each
other is like that of a mother for the issue of her
womb, perhaps varying in degree but not in kind; it is in
no
way altruistic. .... An
'I-thee' Relation.
Spinozistic Ideas:
Eons,
Din Medinah Din,
Din Medinah Din, Ridley's
Altruism, Religious
language—
Paradigm
Shift, Uriel
da Costa,
synthesis,
evolving,
I-Thou and I-It,
I-Thou Buber,
I-thee Buber, I-Thou
Hillel, Divisible
for study purposes, PcM,
PcM—Lose
an Arm, PcM—Lose
an Arm, PcM,
Peace
of Mind (PcM)
overcome
emotions, nationalism,
Menorah,
Leap of
Faith, Quarantine,
Craig, Theistic
/ Spinozistic-Theistic, Duck
or Rabbit, Slavery,
What is Religion?, Real
Religion, Hierachies, Love
is need, love-loved,
Gene & Meme,
Parasitism &
Symbiosis,
Robinson—Perpetuation
& Survival: Now, what's the ultimate motive?
Ah, well, the ultimate motive is survival. Not the
ancient Greek eudaimonia, not eternal salvation—except
in the sense of eternal salvation is ultimate
survival.
On the earthly plane, it is corporeal survival, freedom from pain and suffering.
What approximates or typically
leads to survival is that which promotes good feelings, and what puts a
distance between life and its survival
is anything that causes pain and injury.
Robinson—Perpetuation
& Emotion:
II:E.
Reality is physical reality, material reality. If we are to have a scientific
understanding of man, then man must
be accepted as a material entity.
II:F.
Society, composed of such entities, is then understood as a complex system
made up of (human) matter in motion.
Wikipedia—Meme: The
term "meme" (rhymes with "theme"), coined by Richard
Dawkins, first came into popular use with
the publication of his book The Selfish Gene in 1976. Dawkins based
the word on a shortening of the Greek "mimeme"
(something imitated), making it sound similar to "gene". Dawkins
used the term to refer to any cultural
entity, for example a song, an idea, {technology},
a religion which an observer might consider a replicator.
Blackmore—Meme:
To summarize, there is a memetic solution to the mystery of human language
origins. Once imitation
evolved, something like two and a half or three million years ago, a second
replicator, the meme, was
born. As people began to copy each other the highest-quality memes did
the best—that is those with high fidelity,
fecundity, and longevity.
Blackmore—Evolution
of Memes: .... Human brains and minds are a combined product
of genes and memes. As Dennett
puts it—'a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure
a human brain in order to make
it a better habitat for memes'. ....
Blackmore—Power
and Beauty of Memes: .... We once thought that design required
foresight and a plan, but we now
know that natural selection can build creatures that look as though they
were built to plan when in fact there
was none. If we take memetics seriously there is no room for anyone or
anything to jump into the evolutionary
process and stop it, direct it, or do anything to it. There is just the
evolutionary process of genes and
memes playing itself endlessly out—and no one watching.
JBY—Our
real religion
is our constitution: The single most
important hypothesis that people make for their peace-of-mind
is their constitution—government. Without it, there is no army, no
police, no fire department, no
schools, no water no
garbage collection, etc., etc., etc. In truth, our real religion
is our government—for it brings
us the major part of our peace-of-mind.
Dennett—Our
real religion
is our constitution: .... Unless
somebody publishes a study that surprises us all, we take
for granted that the common lore we get from our elders and others is correct.
And we are wise to do so; we
need huge amounts of common knowledge to guide our way through life, and
there is no time to sort through
all of it, testing every item for soundness. And so, in a tribal society
{us}
in which "everyone knows"
that
you need to sacrifice a goat {go
to an obstretician} in order to have a healthy
baby, you make sure that you
sacrifice a goat {go
to an obstretician}. Better safe than sorry.
JBY—Hypothesis:
1. a provisional theory set forth to explain
some class of phenomena (say, like gravity), either accepted
as a guide to future investigation (working hypothesis) or assumed for
the sake of argument and testing
for its cash value—example; all things are in G-D, therefore everything
is organically interdependent; you
know then that you cannot harm one part without eventually harming yourself
or your progeny.
Popkin—Spinoza
dispensed with any appeal to the supernatural to account for the
world and how it operates.
His
brilliant system developed a complete picture of the world based
solely on definitions and axioms and
sought
to explain everything in terms of the attributes of a non-supernatural
G-D.
Durant—Individualistic
Rebels: Most men are at heart individualistic rebels against law
or custom: the social
instincts
are later and weaker than the individualistic, and
need reinforcement; man is not "good by nature,"
as
Rousseau was so disastrously to suppose. But through
association, if even merely in the family, sympathy
comes,
a feeling of kind, and at last of kindness. We like
what is like us; "we pity not only a thing we have
loved,
but also one which we judge similar to ourselves"; out
of this comes an "imitation of emotions," and
finally
some degree of conscience.
Durant—Natural
and the moral order: All political philosophy, Spinoza thinks, must
grow out of a distinction
between
the natural and the moral order—that is, between existence before, and
existence after, the
formation
of organized societies. Spinoza supposes that men
once lived in comparative isolation, without
law
or social organization; there were then, he says,
no conceptions of right and wrong, justice or injustice;
might
and right were one.
Hall—Organic
Interdependence: There's another motivational
package in there, I think. This is subtler, but I think
it's
there—I want us to keep our eye on it—that is, in the context of the religious
stories, and I think particularly
of
stories in the Judeo-Christian tradition (they're the ones I'm most familiar
with), but I'll bet they're there in
the
Muslim tradition as well, I just don't know firsthand.
I think of those stories that talk to us again and again
and
again about how we are all God's children,
we are all brothers and sisters, that we are all part of
a family,
and
I underscore "all—{in
G-D}." {'in
G-D' says that ALL things are organically
interdependent.}
JBY Endnotes:
Russell—Good-Bad
Emotions: RUSSELL: You see, I feel that some things are good. and
that other things are bad.
I
love the things that are good, that I think are good,
and I hate the things that I think are bad. I don't say that
these
things are good because they participate in the Divine goodness. COPLESTON:
Yes, but what's your
justification
for distinguishing between good and bad or how do
you view the distinction between them?
Hall—A
More Perfect Hypothesis: Now assume that we have two concepts
identical in all respects save one: one of
them
has a counterpart in reality, the other does not. Given
this, It is claimed that the designatum of the
former
concept is fuller (more complete and substantial) than
that of the latter. The latter may be perfect and
perfectly
real "in intellectu," but the other
one has all of that plus existence "in re."
So, point three, an
arguable
assumption: to be perfect and real in-the-mind-and-in-the-world
is greater than to be (merely) perfect
and
real in-the-mind-alone.
Rosenberg—World
views Synthesized: Now the word 'dialectical' has had many uses
in philosophy, from Plato to
Marx. What
I mean by it is not unrelated to these historical roots. A pair of world
views stand in what I call
dialectical
opposition just in case they are incompatible but nevertheless are both
tempting—there's an
initial
pull toward each of them; both pivotal—they serve
as centers for ordering and regrouping families of
beliefs;
and both reformulable—they are expressible by a variety of
different specific claims or theses.
Consider,
for example, what we might call the theistic
and the non-theistic world views.
Thomas Kuhn—Duck
or Rabbit: The subject of a gestalt demonstration knows that his
perception has shifted because
he can make it shift back and forth repeatedly while he holds the same
book or piece of paper in his hands.
Aware that nothing in his environment has changed, he directs his attention
increasingly not to the figure
(duck or rabbit) {G-D or God} but to the lines
of the paper he is looking at. ....
Stewart—World
View: .... Yet there is still no doubt
that the city in question means something very different to each
of
your friends; that the two saw very different things in their travels.
Now imagine that your friends are named
Leibniz
and Spinoza, and that instead of a particular city they are discussing
the nature of the universe. The question
then is: Do they share the same philosophy? Or, in other words, is philosophy
about what you see {objective},
or the way you see it {subjective;
what brings you Peace-of-Mind}?
Hall—God's
Worship and the Problem of Evil: What
I want to start in on today is an argument to the effect that we
can know that Divine existence does not occur.
We can know that there is nothing in, of, behind, about,
over
the world reality that is deserving of worship.
Galbraith—Economics
and Religion:
In consequence, among the poor, only religion, with its promise
of a later
munificence
for those who endure privation with patience, had
been competitive with economic
circumstance
in shaping social attitudes.
Wolfson—Dictates
of Reason.: Man, however, is not left
unprotected against his own emotions any more than
he
is left unprotected against the physical forces of nature. Reason, and
the knowledge which springs from
reason,
is a means whereby man can not only master the adverse forces of nature
but can also overcome
the
assaults of his own emotions.
Langer—Aesthetics:
More naturalistically inclined critics
often mediate the comparison between the forms of
music
and those of feeling, by assuming that music exhibits
patterns of excitation occurring in the nervous
tissues.
Langer—Aesthetic
Emotion: Aesthetics is the Peace-of-Mind brought
by symbolized beauty.
Langer—Hypothesis:
If and only if these crucial propositions do correspond to facts, a working
hypothesis,
is
ranked as "truth," its premises as "natural laws".
Durant—Herbert
Spencer's Opinion on the Evolution to One World: The
growth of planets out of nebulae; the
formation
of oceans and mountains on the earth; the metabolism
of elements by plants, and of animal
tissues
by men; the development of the heart in the embryo, and the fusion of bones
after birth; the
unification
of sensations and memories into knowledge and thought, and
of knowledge into science and
philosophy;
the development of families into clans and gentes and cities
and states and alliances and the
"federation
of the world":
Caro—The
Constitution, Webster said, is the fundamental
law of a people—of one people—not of states.
"We the People of the United States made this Constitution."
UN is in an Analogous position.
Ridley—Altruism:
If you are nice to people because it makes you feel better, then your compassion
is selfish,
not
selfless.
Durant—One
World: All political philosophy, Spinoza
thinks, must grow out of a distinction between the natural
and
the moral order—that is, between existence before, and
existence after, the formation of organized
societies.
Spinoza supposes that men once lived in comparative isolation, without
law or social organization;
there
were then, he says, no conceptions of right and wrong, justice or injustice;
might and right were one.
Lederman
and Hills—Oil: Many
of the challenges of paramount importance that are facing our civilization
today
{2005} revolve around the subject of energy. The reason for this
is simple: energy is the primary
commodity
that we consume. Thus the causes of many wars
and conflicts {such as Iraq} in which
we find
ourselves
continually immersed have a basis in the need for an abundant and
convenient form of energy.
In
modern times, this has been oil.
Mark Twain
& Spinoza: Hard
Problem, Self-determining, Wegner's
Free Will, Spinoza-Descartes,
Desolate
Doctrine, Inflexible Master, Gospel
of Self-Approval, Misleading Names,
An unfaced
truth,
self-sacrifices,
Outside influence, Exterior
influence, NeoDarwinism,
Meme,
God Gene, no
praise/no blame,
Free
Will, Free Choice, Damasio's
cosmic religious feeling,
Genome, Gene.
Pineal Gland,
Pineal Gland 1,
JBY
Endnotes:
Ridley—Free
Choice: The reason the equation of determinism
with fatalism is a fallacy is as follows. Suppose you are ill,
but you reason that there is no point in calling the doctor because either
you will recover, or you won't: in
either
case, a doctor is superfluous. But this overlooks the possibility that
your recovery or lack thereof could
be
caused by your calling the doctor, or failure to do so. It follows that
determinism implies nothing about what
you
can or cannot do. Determinism looks backwards to the causes of the present
state, not forward to the consequences.
Dawkins—Machines
Created by our Genes: .... The argument of this book is that we,
and all other animals, are
machines
created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters,
our genes have survived, in some cases for
millions
of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles
us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall
argue
that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless
selfishness. ....
Dawkins—Brains
and Computers: Brains may be regarded as analogous in function
to computers.
Statements
like this worry literal-minded critics. They are right,
of course, that brains differ in many respects
from
computers. Their internal methods of working, for
instance, happen to be very different from the
particular
kind of computers that our technology has developed. This
in no way reduces the truth of my
statement
about their being analogous in function. Functionally,
the brain plays precisely the role of on-board
computer—data
processing, pattern recognition, short-term and long-term
data storage, operation
coordination,
and so on.
Dawkins—[4]
Cultural Evolution: Examples of memes are
tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of
making
pots or of building arches. Just
as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body
to
body via sperms or eggs {hardware},
so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from
brain
to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation
{software}.
Dawkins—Genes
and Memes: .... Any island, if
completely isolated, would exhibit some evolutionary change in its language
as time went by, and hence some divergence from the languages of other
islands. Islands that are near
each other obviously have a higher rate of word flow between them, via
canoe, than islands that are far from
each other. Their languages also have a more recent common ancestor than
the languages of islands that
are far apart. These phenomena, which explain the observed pattern of resemblances
between near and distant
islands, are closely analogous to the facts about finches on different
islands of the Galapagos Archipelago
which originally inspired Charles Darwin. Genes island-hop in the bodies
of birds, just as words island-hop
in canoes.
Dawkins—Altuism:
What is so special about humans that we have managed to overcome
our antisocial instincts and build
roads that we all share? Oh, there is so much. No other species comes remotely
close to a welfare state, to
an organisation that takes care of the old, that looks after the sick and
the orphaned, that gives to charity. On
the face of it these things present a challenge to Darwinism , but this
is not the place to go into that. We have
governments, police, taxation, public works to which we all subscribe whether
we like it or not. ....
Dennett—Computer
of Sorts: .... It turns out that the way to imagine this is to think
of the brain as a computer of sorts. The
concepts of computer science provide the crutches of imagination we need
if we are to stumble across the terra
incognita between our phenomenology as we know it by "introspection"
and our brains as science reveals
them to us. By thinking of our brains as information-processing systems
we can gradually dispel the fog and
pick our way across the great divide, discovering how it might be that
our brains produce all the phenomena.
Robinson—Consciousness:
There's a famous brief treatise by James on the question "Does consciousness
exist?" And,
of course, the answer James serves up is "yes and no." It depends
on what you mean by consciousness.
Mind,
however, is not going to be treated as some sort of Cartesian substance
or entity. On James's account, "consciousness"
is not an entity, but a process. This is not to depreciate consciousness.
Rather, it is a process not
only as real as anything else {a verb},
....
Sexton—Computer
of Sorts: Just as a computer disk is essentially a long series of
data split into different files, so a single
DNA molecule may have many functional genes encoded along its length. Unlike
the binary system of computers,
however, in which every 'bit' of data is represented by a 0 or a 1, DNA
uses four different chemical compounds,
called nucleotides. These are usually written A, T, C and G, using the
first letters of their chemical names.
If you 'read' the sequence on a computer disk, you may get '10001001110',
whereas a DNA sequence would
look like 'ATTCGATTCG'.
Ridley—Structure
of DNA: .... they, {Watson and Crick,}
had made possibly the greatest scientific discovery of all time, the
structure of DNA. Not even Archimedes leaping from his bath had been granted
greater reason to boast, as Francis
Crick did in the Eagle pub on 28 February 1953, 'We've discovered the secret
of life.' James Watson was
mortified; he still feared that they might have made a mistake.
Dawkins—Electronic
and Chemical Storage Mediums: ....The
particular polymers used by living cells are called polynucleotides.
There are two main families of polynucleotides in living cells, called
DNA and RNA for short. Both
are chains of small molecules called nucleotides. Both DNA and RNA are
heterogeneous chains, with four different
kinds of nucleotides. This, of course, is where the opportunity for information
storage lies. Instead of just
the two states 1 and 0, the information technology of living cells uses
four states, which we may conventionally
represent as A, T, C and G. There is very little difference, in principle,
between a two-state binary
information technology like ours, and a four-state information technology
like that of the living cell.
LeDoux—Functionalism:
This is a philosophical position which proposes that
mental functions (thinking,
reasoning,
planning, feeling are functional rather than physical states. When
a person and a computer add 2
to
5 and come up with 7, the similar outcome cannot be based on similar physical
makeup, but instead must
be
due to a functional equivalence of the processes involved. As
a result, it is possible to study mental
processes
using computer simulations. Cartoon.
Robinson—Functionalism
and Problem Solving: Human beings just happen to be biological instantiations
of something
that otherwise could be instantiated non-biologically; it can be instantiated
by galenium sulfide crystals,
by popping diodes, printed circuits, all sorts of things made in the Silicon
Valley and sold by Japanese companies.
...
...
Now, one interesting consequence of this is that it's no longer necessary
to reserve the domain of intelligent life
to the domain of brainy life, and so one thing I say that comes out of
Turing's efforts here is what is sometimes
referred to as "machine functionalism within philosophy of mind."
LeDoux—Neurons
and Persons: A neuron (nerve cell) is composed of "dendrite—>cell—>axon".
Neuron electrical charges
flow from dendrite to cell to axon terminal. An axon connects to the dendrite
(or cell) of the next cell down
the line. Billions of axons connect to billions of
dendrites. Other analogies are the way knowledge is propagated
throughout the world; hearing, reading, etc--->person--->talking,
writing, etc. Thus billions of people
connect to billions of people.
LeDoux—Rom
& Ram: In the spirit of viewing the mind in terms of computer-like
operations, some
cognitive
scientists refer to executive functions as supervisory or operating system
functions. A computer operating
system is responsible for controlling the flow of information processing,
moving information from permanent
memory (ROM) to a central processing unit with active memory (RAM), scheduling
tasks to be preformed
using the active memory, and so on. Similarly, executive functions are
involved in the constant updating
of temporary memory, selecting which specialized systems to work with (pay
attention to) at the moment,
and then moving relevant information into the workspace from long-storage
by retrieving specific memories
or activating schemata pertinent to the immediate situation.
Dawkins—ROM
& RAM: [2]
DNA is ROM. It can be read millions of times over,
but only written to once—when it is first
assembled at the birth of the cell in which it resides. The DNA in the
cells of any individual is 'burned in',
and
is never altered during that individual's lifetime, except by very rare
random deterioration. It can be copied,
however. It is duplicated every time a cell divides. The pattern of A,T,C
and G nucleotides is faithfully copied
into the DNA of each of the trillions of new cells that are made as a baby
grows.
LeDoux—Brains
and Other Parallel Computers: The brain is also sometimes described
as a parallel computer,
but
it actually functions differently from an off-the-shelf connection machine.
Dennett—Language
is Software: Looking at ourselves from the computer viewpoint, we
cannot avoid seeing
that
natural language is our most important "programming language."
This means that a vast portion of our knowledge
and activity is, for us, best communicated and understood in our natural
language... One could say that
natural language was our first great original artifact and, since, as we
increasingly realize, languages are machines,
so natural language, with our brains to run it, was our primal invention
of the universal computer.
Wash.
Post—Robot Rat:
Scientists for the first time have managed to remotely direct the movements
of rats by
using
implanted electrodes to control their behavior—in effect transforming living
animal into robots.
Damasio—Robots:
These distinctions are chronically glossed over whenever living organisms
and intelligent
machines,
e.g., robots, are compared.
Robinson—Descartes'
Error:
I. Descartes drew a sharp distinction between himself as a thinking thing—res cogitans—and as an extended thing—res extensa—drawing criticism from the likes of Thomas Hobbes and Pierre Gassendi.
A. Both would surely have agreed with the broad scientific perspective according to which the physical sciences are "complete."
1. That term refers to the view that nothing in the
domain of the "really real" falls outside the realm
of the "really physical," of physics.
2. In other words, reality is not composed of two
radically different kinds of stuff but of one kind only—the
physical.
Damasio—Descartes
Error, Body
and Mind Separation: This is Descartes' error: the abyssal separation
between
body and mind, between the sizable, dimensional, mechanically operated,
infinitely divisible
body
stuff, on the one hand, and the unsizable, undimensioned, un-pushpullable,
nondivisible mind stuff.
Stewart—Dualism
- Descartes' Error: The mind-body problem manifested itself
in other ways that kept seventeenth-century
thinkers awake at night. The strict Cartesian dualism left animals, for
example, impaled on
the horns of dilemma: Do dogs, say, have minds like us or are they machines?
To endow a dog with a mind,
according to Cartesian logic, was tantamount to giving it a place in heaven;
so the Cartesians stuck to the
less theologically risky position that animals are indeed machines.
Robinson—Functionalism:
.... What matters is that a given function is performed in such a manner
as to yield adaptive
success. What matters not at all is the precise physical means by which
the function is performed. If the
task is arithmetic, then, and only arithmetic, then a simple computer and
a grade-school child will achieve success
with apparatus having nothing in common; one has a circuit board within
which algorithms have been programmed;
the other has an evolved brain comprised chiefly of fat, protein, and water.
Ryle—Descartes
Error: One of the chief intellectual origins of what I have yet
to prove to be the Cartesian
category
mistake seems to be this. When Galileo showed
that his methods of scientific discovery were
competent
to provide a mechanical theory which should cover every occupant of space,
Descartes found in
himself
two conflicting motives.
Ryle—No
praise/no Blame: A second
major crux points the same moral. Since, according to the doctrine
minds
belong
to the same category as bodies and since bodies are rigidly governed by
mechanical laws, it seemed
to
many theorists to follow that minds must be similarly governed by rigid
non-mechanical laws.
Cambridge
Dictionary of Philosophy—Category
mistake: the placing of an entity in the wrong category. In
one
of Ryle's examples, to place the activity of exhibiting
team spirit in the same class with the activities of
&nb