SPINOZISTIC
IDEAS
Dedicated to Spinoza's
Insights
Love and Hate - Self-Interest
Religion - One
World - Conclusion
Spinozistic
Contributions to Wikipedia
Home Page -
Spinozistic Glossary and Index -
Mark Twain and Spinoza
Spinozistic Scriptural Interpretation -
Graetz's Censure of Spinoza - Durant's
Tribute
Browser Notes—Use
800 x 600 resolution and medium
size text for all pages.
For this URL re-formatted for eBook
Reader conversion see here.
For this URL available for various eBook Readers see here.
Preface
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 Dawkins:546
roller-coaster
emotions and everyday relationships—you love not out of
Uzgalis -
Hobbes
altruism
but out of self-interest.
Now
(2006) I have for some sixty-odd Ridley's
Altruism
years studied Spinoza whenever
earning a living, having a family and
friends permitted.
As I kept studying Spinoza, I was really hooked
when what happened to
me is what Elwes thought happened to Spinoza.
From "Elwes's Introduction to his Translations of Spinoza's Works".
[37] The biography of
the philosopher supplies us in some
sort with the genesis of his
system. His youth had been
passed in the study of Hebrew learning,
of metaphysical
speculations on
the nature of the Deity. He was then con-
fronted with the scientific aspect of the world
as revealed {for
me it was
by Descartes.
At first the two visions seemed antagonistic, Spinoza
and Einstein}
but, as he gazed, their outlines blended
and commingled, Synthesized,
Paradigm Shift,
he found himself in the presence
not of two, but of ONE; 1D6
= ONE
the universe unfolded itself to him
as the necessary result Spinoza's
Pantheism—G-d
of the Perfect and Eternal G-D. Schechinah
This "unfolding itself"
was to me an infinite "organic interdependence
of
parts" which
led directly to the "Golden Rule";
not out of altruism but of
Uzgalis
- Hobbes
enlightened
self-interest.
Now, after some sixty-odd years, I am still studying Spinoza
and gaining
ever-new enlightening insights.
For excellent introductions to Spinoza
see "Elwes's 1883 Introduction to
his Translations of Spinoza's
Works" and Dr.
A Wolf's 1910 Introduction to
Translation of Spinoza's "Short Treatise
on G-D, Man and his Well-Being".
I show herein a list of Spinozistic Ideas on Love and
Hate, Self-Interest,
Religion, One World, and Conclusions. These
ideas have been edited
from the Glossary
and Index, Ethics, TTP,
TEI, and
other Works, and
in many instances, have hypertext links thereto.
I strongly recommend study of Graetz's
'Censure of Spinoza', Paragraphs
8, 9,
and 10, for gaining an understanding
of Spinoza's Ideas.
The ideas that I express may not be explicit
in Spinoza's Works, but are
(in my opinion) implicit
in his momentous teachings. The definitions
offered are really working
hypotheses and stand in need of correction Hypothesis
or discarding when a contradiction is found. In
any event, partake of the
ideas and definitions as you would a pomegranate;
relish the flesh and
spit out the pits.
In many contexts the term "idea"
has the meaning of judgment, or
assertion. Accordingly,
"idea" is for Spinoza closer in signification
to the term "proposition" than
to such terms as "concept" or "notion."
Ideas will then be true or false
{subject
to intense scrutiny}.
1.1. The definitions
as given in the dictionaries are the
everyday
language
usage, and are generally synonyms or
properties of the Working
Hypotheses
word—not the nature thereof. Spinoza
attempts to find the cause. JBY
Note 1
1.2. E3:Definition
of the Emotions XX:Explanation:178—
"But
my purpose is
to explain, not the meaning of words,
Parkinson:2601
but
the nature {and
cause}
of things."
1.3. Definitions
which define things by their causes are hypotheses;
they
all need be suspect, for they are only congealed hypotheses.
They
need to be constantly updated as knowledge
evolves.
1.4. An
hypothesis is subject to error. Care
must be taken to follow
the
scientific method—a method of research in which a problem
is
identified, relevant data gathered, a hypothesis
formulated,
and
the hypothesis empirically tested.
1.5. An
hypothesis is an unproved, but as
yet uncontradicted
opinion.
The truth of an hypothesis (or speculation)
is in pro-
portion
to its usefulness in increasing Perpetuation——Cash
Value. Pragmatism
1.6. I:2.5c—
Definitions
which attempt to define things by their causes
are really
hypotheses; they need to be constantly updated
as knowledge evolves; likewise, Spinoza's
Propositions are
hypotheses. To think otherwise
is to fall into idolatry—
making the infinite finite.
1.7. E3:VI:136—Perpetuation and Perfection are equivalent terms.
Everything,
in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist Everything
RATIONAL
in its own being
by perpetuating its genes and
succeeding
has peace-of-mind—and
by failing, loss
of peace-of-mind,
frustration.
1.7a. From Will
and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Civilization: Part VIII",
Chapter XXII - Spinoza. ISBN:
0671012150,1963, Page 644:
As the endeavor for self-preservation (the "struggle for existence") is the active essence of anything, all motives derive from it, and are ultimately self-seeking. "Since reason postulates nothing against Nature, it postulates, therefore, that each man should love {needs} himself, and seek what is useful to him—I mean what is truly useful to him—and desire whatever leads man truly to a greater state of perfection [completion], and finally that each one should endeavor to preserve his being as far as in him lies (121—4P18n)." These desires need not be conscious; they may be unconscious appetites lodged in our flesh {innate}. Taken altogether, they constitute the essence of man (122—3P59).
°PERPETUATION is that endeavor
that causes a salmon analogies
to go upstream, spawn and die—the PERPETUATION of Calculus
of its genes
and thereby, incidentally, the species. Perfection
1.8a. See E3:Endnote 11:0.—Conatus. Robinson3:59
Biology
of Emotions—ANS, 'Emotion'
versus 'Feelings', LeDoux96:34,
William
James, Damasio,
Being.
1.9. °EMOTION
is a change
in one's probability of Perpetuation.
Roller
Coaster Ride
Its
intensity is proportional to the change. 5P17,
Being. Robinson3:15
Russell:238
1.9a. °SORROW
is a decrease
in one's °Perpetuation. Its intensity
Sadness
is proportional
to the decrease.
1.9b. BOREDOM
is no change
in one's °Perpetuation.
It marks the
Damasio
theoretical
transition from JOY to SORROW
and vice versa.
1.9c. °JOY
is an increase
in one's °Perpetuation.
Its intensity is Happiness
proportional
to the increase. Durant2:647
These definitions hold
for a RATIONAL person; not for an irrational
person.
1.9d. The
changes are objective, real, because change needs
Damasio
a force to
cause it and the force exists; the
human terms
(good-bad,
perfect-imperfect, beautiful-ugly, etc.)
given to Examples
these changes
are subjective. The changes are those
occurring
at any one instant and for a rational
person.
1.9d1. An
active emotion is a clear
and distinct, rational emotion.
Example:
You are truly hungry; your body needs fuel.
1.9d2. A
passive emotion
is a confused, irrational
emotion. Hampshire:202
Example:
You are not truly hungry; there is a pyscholog-
ical
problem—bulimia.
1.10. °FAITH
is belief that
an external object will cause a change
in Hampshire:139
one's
°Perpetuation.
The intensity is proportional to the change. Calculus
Expression
1.10a.
°HATE is
belief that an external object will decrease one's See
Sorrow
°Perpetuation.
The intensity is proportional to the decrease
feared.
1.10b.
INDIFFERENCE
is belief that an external object will not
change Examples
C:(b)
one's
°Perpetuation.
1.10c. °LOVE
is belief that an external object (force)
will increase one's
See
Joy
°Perpetuation. The intensity is
proportional to the increase Hampshire:170
hoped
for.
These definitions help explain the following:
(a) At a given instant in time,
you will love most the one you
hate the most.
Why? Because
from someone you hate, you expect a decrease in your
perpetuation (a sorrow);
but when he instead increases your perpetuation,
there is a great
increase (a joy). The
hate therefore turns to intenser love
because of the larger change
from a negative.
A
man hates an enemy who he expects to do him harm;
if on the contrary
the enemy does him a great good; he will,
at that instant, love the enemy
more than he would if
he had never hated him.
(b) At a given instant in time,
you will hate most the one you love most.
Why? Because
from someone you love you expect an increase in your
perpetuation (a joy);
but when he instead decreases your perpetuation,
there is a great
decrease (a sorrow). The
love therefore turns to intense
hate (for
the moment).
Each
day your father has let you drive his car; but
one day he won't.
You hate (at the instant)
your father more than you would an enemy
who would never let
you drive his car.
(c) Substitute the word 'need' for 'love'
and you will understand
An unfaced truth.
'love'
in its full dimensions. There is no 'altruism'. When
you Mark
Twain
say "I love you"
it is a euphemism
for "I need you and—if the Love-loved
love be healthy
and lasting; say then "I will fulfill your needs."
'I-thee'
When
you say "I hate
you" you are saying "I do not need you, Dawkins:546
you
are not fulfilling my needs."
(d) From Mark Twain's "What
is Man?":
Love,
Hate, Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence,
and so on. I mean we
attach misleading MEANINGS to the names.
They are all forms of self-content-
ment, self-gratification,
but the names so disguise them
that they distract our
attention from
the fact {unfaced
glaring truth}.
"I
will fulfill your needs"—means I need
you as an 'I-thee' and Rational
Love
not as an 'I-It'.
This is the Law of Organisms. Hampshire:139
1.10c1. The
Law of Organizations for individuals
(and for nations):
they
grow (rise) when the critical mass of the parts are
organically
interdependent.
They
die (fall) when the critical mass of the parts are not
organically
interdependent.
1.10d1. °BEAUTY
is function. Its
intensity is proportional
to
the increase
in °PERFECTION (PcM)
caused. (Things
that increase the probability of your perpetuation
are to you beautiful.)
1.10d2. Nondescript is a thing causing no change in perpetuation.
1.10d3. °UGLINESS
is dysfunction. Its intensity is proportional
to
the decrease
in °PERFECTION caused. (Things
that decrease the probability of your perpetuation are
to you ugly.)
1.10d4. Aesthetics
is the Peace-of-Mind brought by symbolized
beauty. Truth
(Aesthetics
is tied to 'emotion' and 'love';
from Random House dictionary:
"aesthetic—concerned
with emotion and sensation as opposed to intellectuality.")
Langer:258-260
A
symbolized beauty
is, say, a musical
chord or a natural
flower—all
if they strike you so. In contrast,
an actual beauty
fulfills
an actual need, say, a very warm coat when it is very cold.
A
musical chord symbolizes order, harmony—an
organic totality.
A natural
flower symbolizes rebirth; an artificial
flower, less so.
Order is peace-of-mind;
disorder is chaos, loss of peace-of-mind.
That
is why, in a very long piece, a gifted composer introduces a
discord at times—too
much order, after awhile, becomes boring.
Aesthetics,
Religion, and Love
are alike—they bring peace-of-mind
to
those fortunately tuned (programmed)
to them.
These
three also have their negative—loss of peace-of-mind.
Art, symbolized
ugliness; Religion, religious turmoil; Love, hate.
They don't have
to result in loss of peace-of-mind if the reasons
causing them are understood.
1.10d5.
Beauty
is subjective. To a hungry man, a luscious steak is beau-
tiful.
To the same man with a retching stomach, the same steak
is ugly. The crucial word
is "subjective" in
considering beauty.
hypotheses
The above definitions
help understand human
actions, your own included.
The above definitions apply to a rational
man: for an irrational man change
'increase' to 'decrease' and 'decrease'
to 'increase'. We all have our
irrational moments; smoking, using drugs, drinking
to excess, etc.
1.11. E4:Prf.27:189—Good
and Bad.
"As for the terms
good and bad, they indicate no positive Subjective
Terms
quality in
things regarded in themselves, but are merely Prof.
Hall:79
modes of
thinking, or notions which
we form from the
comparison of things one with
another. Thus one and
the same thing
can be at the same time
good, bad, and Calc:C(a)
indifferent. ...."
good
and bad
Nevertheless,
though this be
so, the terms should still
be retained. For,
inasmuch as we desire to form an idea
of man as a type of
human nature which we may hold in
view {as
a model for Human survival},
it will be useful for us to fishes
retain the terms in question, in
the sense I have indicated.
1.12. E3:IX(5):137—What is a Good?
It is thus plain from what has been said, that in no case
do we
strive for, wish for,
long for, or desire anything, because we
deem it to be good,
but on the other hand we deem a thing
to be good,
because we strive for it, wish for
it, long for it, Dawkins2:Genes
or desire it.
1.13. A
man, when rational
and judging correctly, calls a thing good
if it increases
his °P—bad; otherwise.
1.13a.
A man is rational when he endeavours
to perpetuate himself.
A
man is irrational when he
does not endeavours to perpetu- suicide
ate
himself.
1.14. When
a little fish is eaten by a bigger
fish, does not the little fish
"think"
that's bad and does not
the bigger fish "think"
that's
good
(because each one seeks to preserve itself)?" We
say that is
Nature;
if the food cycle stops, all life stops. However,
we are like
that
little fish—or, like that big fish; abused or abuser.
1.15. When
Adam and Eve started to think in terms of "good
and bad",
i.e.
subjectively; instead of "true and false",
i.e. objectively; they
self-thrust
themselves from the Garden
of Eden, i.e. they were
subject
to loss of °Peace of Mind.
1.16. One
of the main purposes
of Spinoza's Ethics" is to teach Dawkins2:Genes
that
you do not LOVE
altruistically, but out of self-interest.
Love-Need
If
the LOVE be rational it leads
to an increase in °P for both I-thee
the
lover and that loved; if not rational,
a decrease.
1.17. A
sex act is
sexually moral if the parties are able to provide for
the
possible issue; able, both financially and
psychologically Dawkins2:Genes
within
the standards of their society. The motive for the society's
standard
is what best provides for the issue,
thus best
perpetuating
that society—virtue.
1.17a. E4:Def.VIII:191—Virtue.
1.17b. From Shirley's Bk. VII:2719—Virtue (virtus)
1.17c. 5P42:270—Blessedness.
Blessedness is not the reward
of virtue, but virtue itself;
neither do we rejoice therein, because
we control our lusts,
but, contrariwise, because we
rejoice therein, we are able
to control our lusts.
1.18. Games
are atavistic play-acting at an activity
which in real life is
necessary
for PERPETUATION. Examples—sports, boxing, gambling,
war-games,
fishing, hunting, (some gunlovers are sublimating
their
aggressiveness). Sexual
intercourse without the desire for issue is
also
a game.
Proof.–
The more actual the NEED; the more pleasurable,
the success;
the more sorrowful,
the failure—food when you are starving, sex when
you want a
child.
1.19. From 5P10n:252—Right Conduct.
The best we can do, therefore, so long as we do not possess
a
perfect knowledge of our emotions, is to frame a system
of right
conduct, or fixed practical precepts, to commit it
to memory, and
to apply it forthwith to the particular circumstances
which now
and again meet us in life, ....
1.20. In
E2:Prop 48, Spinoza returns
to his main problem, to show
that
the will is not free,
and with this also to deny the freedom Mark Twain
of the
other faculties, such as understanding,
desiring, loving,
etc., all
of which, like will, are only modes of thought.
1.20a.
Man
is a Computerized
Machine; a
robot caused
by G-D. Data
Base
That man is a computerized machine
is an important
hypothesis—it helps understand
human actions. No
praise, no blame.
Example: sin is evidence
of a bad data base in need
of re-programming.
End: Love and Hate.
2.1. Jungle
self-interest— Survival
is proportional to your
power.
A
strong tribe in a jungle is more likely to survive than a weak
tribe. E4:Damasio:170-1
Survival
of the fittest; there
are no laws—power makes right. Robinson3:60
But technological advancement and training bring "Enlightenment": Durant95:190
From The Quotable Einstein,
0691026963; 1996; Page 214:
SLAVERY—Insofar as we may at all claim that slavery
has been abolished Oil
today, we owe its abolition
to the practical consequences of science.
2.2. Societal
(enlightened) self-interest—Survival is proportional
to Durant2:647
playing by
the rules (reason,
keeping the beat in an orchestra).
Dawkins2:Genes
Not true
when living in a part-jungle
society. When a man steals
bread and milk
to feed his children, we do not
condemn him.
When
a man is starving, it is as if
he were living in a jungle; where
there are no rules
but one—survival, perpetuation.
"Enlightenment" removes the taint of "selfishness". Ayn Rand
2.3. To
get and not give is selfishness (extinction—in a body, the body 'I-thee'
and 'I-It'
soon
dies); to get and
to give is enlightenment (perpetuation); Mark
Twain
to
give and not get is altruism
(extinction). Healthy
self-interest is
Uzgalis -
Hobbes
perpetuation
and virtue—you can't have one without
the other. Damasio—biological
2.3a. To get and not give is parasitism; to get and give is symbiosis.
2.4. Rabbi
Hillel (1st Century BCE) taught
"If I am not for myself, who
will be;
if I am only for myself, what am I? {Nothing,
like the lung without the heart.} Analogy
2.5. Analogy: Unless
it is ill, will the heart do
anything to
harm the
lungs? On
the contrary, it will do what it
can to enhance their
performance.
Witness what harm whites have done to blacks—to
the
inevitable harm of whites when the slums
riot against them.
2.6. From Uzgalis—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. He argues that the chief good
of
human life is knowledge
of G-D and that this is open to
everyone.
To best achieve this goal we need to cooperate Mysticism
in
various ways. So Hobbes' egoism is transformed into a
doctrine
of cooperation.
2.7. Altruism
never exists, except it be an act of illness.
When you say WikipediA
"I
love you", it is a euphemism
for "I need you, and the more
or An
unfaced glaring truth.
less
I need you the more or
less will love you." When
you say
"I
hate you" you are saying "I
do not need you, you are not fulfill-
ing
my needs." That
is why there are marriages;
that is why there
are
divorces. If the
love be healthy, both fulfill each
others
legitimate
needs.
2.7.1 Evolution
does not teach altruism; it teaches
how co-operation Dawkins2:Genes
and
enlightenment helps
your very self.
2.7.1a Examples: Division of Labor;
Scratch my back and I will
scratch
your back; Stopping at red
lights. Mysticism
2.7.1b When co-operation helps us, we
act as if altruistically.
2.7.2 I have read "In
all of history, no one ever washed a rented car,"
and I have added,
except when the dirty car reflected on him.
derogatory
2.7.3 I
hasten to add that this not pejorative
but the Law of Organisms.
Uzgalis -
Hobbes
Example:
Even Mother Theresa fulfills
her inner need first and
then
those she aids second. That does not make her work any
less
meritorious; the poor woman
in Mark Twain's story was aided.
2.8. Self-interest—"you
have to give to get; you have
to get to give"
is
the nature of organic interdependence. Altruism
implies that
a person
is not always part of G-D
and has, at that time, no duties
Commandments
or
obligations.
2.9. 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.
In
so doing, it is, if possible, leading the collapsed lung back
to
health
and thereby increasing the lung-capacity
of the body.
It
is the Golden Rule in working
clothes; enlightened self-interest.
2.10.
The Hebrew word which is often mis-translated
as pity (com-
passion,
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 fetus). 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,
Dawkins2:Genes
perhaps
varying in degree but not in kind;
it is in no way
altruistic;
but on the contrary, enlightened self-interest.
2.10.1.
Another related word is raw-khawm',
Strong:7360—a kind of
vulture (supposed
to be tender toward its young). Imagine what
a
psychiatrist could do with this connection;
suffocating love.
2.11. The
Hebrew word for righteousness,
justice is tseh'-dek,
Strong:6664—righteous,
integrity, equity, justice, straightness.
The
root of tseh'-dek is tsaw-dak', Strong:6663—upright,
just,
straight,
innocent, true, sincere; (the same root as for charity).
Based
on this etymology, righteousness is the Golden
Rule in
working
clothes—enlightened self-interest. It is what one lung
does
when the other collapses; it takes over, for its very OWN
survival.
2.12.
I believe society evolves as technological
advancement and Dawkins:192:Genes[4]
trade tips the scale toward enlightened
self-interest and away
from
jungle self-interest.
2.12a. Technological advancement—fire, wheel,
writing, electricity, Memes
steam engine,
combustion engine, radio, television, computer, Evolves
internet,
nuclear power, space travel, .......... —all have Blackmore
tended
(or will tend) to lead people to be more cooperative;
enlightened—the
coming messianic age.
2.12b.
Why is it so difficult to apply Spinoza's
Dictum and also 'to see
G-D
in everyone'. Intellectually
this is very enlightened; but so
very
difficult to apply?
Answer:
Instinct;
because we evolved living in
a brutal jungle of scarcity and danger.
As
millennium pass we
are becoming more and more enlightened because of
the
technological
advancement which diminishes scarcity and danger.
2.12c. From Wikipedia—Meme: {Mark Twain: Genes are Hardware; Memes the Software.}
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. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as replicators. Memes do not always get copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes. These memes may themselves prove more (or less) efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a theory of cultural {social} evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.
2.12d. From Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine 99; 0198503652 p.107—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. A spoken grammatical language resulted
from the success of copyable sounds
that were high in all three. The early speakers of this language not only
copied the best speakers in their society but also
mated with them, creating natural selection
pressures on the genes
to produce brains that were ever better and better
at spreading the new memes. In this way, the memes
and genes coevolved to produce
just one species with the extraordinary properties of a large brain and
language. The only essential step to starting this
process was the beginning of imitation.
The general principles of evolution are enough to account for the rest.
The answers to two difficult questions are now obvious,
and the same. What is the big brain for? What is the function of language?
—To spread memes.
2.12e.
From Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine 1999; 0198503652
p. 206—
Evolution
of Memes:
[1] Many writing systems have taken a starting point
from other systems, or even just borrowed
the idea of writing itself. In 1820, a Cherokee Indian called Sequoyah
observed that Europeans made marks on paper and went
on to devise a system for writing
down the Cherokee language. Although he was illiterate and knew no English,
his observations were enough for him to devise a writing
system so successful
that Cherokees
were soon writing, reading,
and printing their own books and
newspapers.
[2] I have suggested that human consciousness is not the driving force behind the creation of language (or anything else for that matter) and Sequoyah looks like the ideal case to prove me wrong. In fact, I chose him as a perfect opportunity to explain what I mean. Sequoyah was presumably as conscious as any human being. In discussions about creativity people often assume that consciousness is somehow responsible for creativity, but this view meets with serious problems as soon as you try to imagine exactly what it means. You are almost forced into adopting a dualist position, with consciousness as something separate from the brain, that magically leaps in and invents things. A more common view in science is to ignore consciousness and treat creativity as a product of the intelligence and ability of the individual concerned—ultimately taking the process back to brain mechanisms. This escapes from the dualist trap but leaves out the importance of all the ideas already available in the creator's environment {supplied by Einstein's Cosmic Religion}. The memetic view includes all this. What I am proposing is this.
[3] Human brains and minds are a combined product of genes and memes. As Dennett (1991, p. 207) 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'. In Sequoyah's case he must have had an exceptional brain, with exceptional determination and motivation, and he happened to come across a writing system that was already available at a time when his own people were in a position to take up his ideas and use them. Sequoyah's thinking was an essential part of the process, but was itself created out of the interplay between memes and genes. All this is a wonderful example of replicators creating design out of nowhere. As ever, there is really no designer other than the evolutionary process.
2.12f.
From Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine 1999; 0198503652
p. 241—
Power and Beauty of Memes:
[1] 'The "independent" mind struggling to protect itself from alien and dangerous memes is a myth' (Dennett 1995, p. 365). So we must ask who gets to choose? If we take memetics seriously then the 'me' that could do the choosing is itself a memetic construct: a fluid and ever-changing group of memes installed in a complicated meme machine. The choices made will all be a product of my genetic and memetic history in a given environment, not of some separate self that can 'have' a life purpose and overrule the memes that make it up.
[2] This is the power and beauty of memetics: it allows us to see how human lives, language, and creativity all come about through the same kind of replicator power as did design in the biological world. The replicators are different, but the process is the same. We once thought that biological design needed a creator, but we now know that natural selection can do all the designing on its own. Similarly, we once thought that human design required a conscious designer inside us, but we now know that memetic selection can do it on its own. 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.
2.13. From Will Durant's "Story of Philosophy"; Washington Square Press; 18th Printing, 1965; Page 191.
{Continued
from Page 190.}
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" {3P22n};
out of this comes an "imitation of emotions
{3P27n},"
and finally some degree of conscience. Conscience,
however, is not innate, but acquired; and varies with geography {4App27}.
It is the deposit, in the mind of the growing individual,
of the moral traditions of the group;
through it society creates for itself an ally in the
heart of its enemy—the naturally individualistic soul.
End: Self-Interest.
By not
acknowledging the religious hypotheses
of the countries in which they live,
Jews
undermine those hypotheses and hence, the
peace-of-mind of those holding
them.
Mark Twain's
'Little Story', Anti-Semitism.
Durant:636
Spinoza's
hypothesis evolves the Judaeo-Christain-Islamic
God into G-D/Nature.
The evolving
concept of God results in the re-interpretation
of Holidays,
The
secret to understanding
Spinoza is to accept
(as a working
hypothesis) "POSIT
1D6 =
ONE"
— Important. Speculation
The
Foundation Rock. Importance
of 1D6 = ONE
First Posit ONE—1D6 and
then test for cash values.
Simply
Posit
Poor,
desperate people are, on the whole, more religious
than Galbraith
rich,
complacent people—no atheists in foxholes. Russell:13
3.1a. E4:Ap.IV:237—Peace-of-Mind (PcM)
"Thus in life it
is before all things useful to perfect the
understanding or reason,
as far as we
can, and in this {Understanding
alone man's
highest happiness or blessedness consists, brings
PcM}
indeed blessedness is nothing
else but the contentment
of spirit which arises from the
intuitive knowledge of G-D"
{The
knowledge that comes from a mystical
experience;
i.e. knowing your place as a mode
in the Universe}.
3.1b. °PcM
is being °JOYFUL
(when knowing why is not necessary);
or being °SORROWFUL (say,
losing an arm) but
understanding Suffering
why,
or by a leap-of-faith acceptance
saying "the understanding Spinoza's
Religion
resides
in the infinite
intellect of G-D—i.e.
the chain of
natural 1P33—chain
causes
and their natural events
and the knowledge that things Popkin:71
could
not have been different than
they are. (Whatever
is, is
caused, and
by hypothesis, the cause is knowable.) understanding
The
sorrow still remains. It
is the will of G-D; that is Life; or that
is
Nature."— all mean
the same and bring, somewhat, PcM. Metaphors
As
long as people have non-understood
wants, they will have
loss
of peace-of-mind. That is why religion, government,
drugs, 3.26a
alcohol,
opiates, etc. persists throughout the world.
3.1c. The
purpose of Religion (Scriptures)
is to bring Peace-of-Mind— Spinoza's
Religion
not
teach philosophy, nor to make men learned.
The hypothesis, TTP1:Divine
Law
that
religion is, need not make sense—only deliver Peace-of-Mind.
Mark Twain
3.1c1. In
the sense that Religion is an hypothesis,
I disagree Einstein
that
religion and philosophy (science) have nothing to
Psychology
do
with each other—rather, the two
can be synthesized Durant:641
and
be one.
3.1d. A
belief (hypothesis) in its
varying degrees, can be a guess,
a
dogma, a hope, an intuition, a leap-of-faith.
3.1e. At
the limit of knowledge, "Take a leap-of-faith" is equivalent
to
saying "accept the proposition as a working hypothesis".
A
working hypothesis is disproved when you find a contradiction.
You
then have to fix the working hypothesis or totally discard it.
Another way of looking at leap-of-faith, see "Cash Value".
3.1f. Hypothesis, like
hope, always involves doubt and constant
evolution
as it proves and disproves itself.
3.1g. From
The Teaching Company's "God
and Mankind: Comparative Religions" by
Professor
Robert Oden, Ph.D; Lecture 1:2C—Properties
of Religion.
C. "Religion is a communication system that is constituted
by supernatural beings and is related to
specific patterns of behavior" (H.H. Penner's definition). {Penner's
definition gives
the properties of 'Religions'; not a definition
of 'Religion'; Spinozism's definition
of
Religion.}
1. This definition {Penner's}
imparts a definite structure and complexity to religion
that is systemic {RH—of
or pertaining to a system}.
2. A communication system indicates to those within
and outside our religion
who and what we are, as well as what we do and
do not believe in.
3. This definition does not limit religion to verbal
communication; ritual is a
crucial aspect.
4. One or more supernatural beings must be a part
of the system.
5. This definition implies specific patterns of behavior.
As discussed above, all
religions are ritualistic by nature. Even those
that appear to be aritualistic are
ritualistically aritualistic.
{6. 1- 5
are properties of Religions; not religion's
essence—which is seeking peace of mind.}
3.2.
Spinoza's Doctrine: The mind makes
no free-will, arbitrary judgments; Determinism
but
makes free choices (decisions) based on random
causes.
Why
this doctrine is good.
3.2a. Just like a Computer, the
mind says "yes" or "no" based on
its
data base and then acts.
3.2b. The mind's data
base is filled by temperament, parents, Robot
Rat
culture,
religion, prejudices, education, reading, training,
life's
random experiences, etc. etc., etc.
3.2c. Therefore a person is not
to be praised or blamed
for any
action but may
be said to sin. See Spinoza's
Dictum.
3.3. A
dogma is a useful or non-useful hypothesis
assumed true in the face
of contradictions or unsubstantiated proof
of inferences made. It is
true if useful; false and idolatrous
if
otherwise.
3.3a. Jewish
people, no matter their numbers, will
never become extinct; Torah keeps
them
alive and relevant. Torah's message
is to know the "ONE'
and teaches to
keep
from idolatry.
3.3b. No.
3.3a above, is the root cause
of anti-Semitism (Semitism:
Semitic characteristics, esp.
the
ways, ideas, influence, etc., of the Jewish people. Anti-Semitism:discrimination
against or prejudice
or
hostility toward Jews.).
By not acknowledging the religious
hypotheses of the
countries in
which they live, they, the Jews
undermine those hypotheses and
hence, the
peace-of-mind of those holding them. Mark
Twain's 'A little Story'
3.4. Abstraction: G-D, Deus, Being, ONE, J---vah, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, Mary, Hampshire202, Language, Fences, Foundation Rock, Russell:13,
The free man therefore will criticize Christian doctrine or orthodox Judaism or any other religious dogma, first, when it is represented as philosophical truth, secondly, on purely pragmatic grounds, if it in fact leads its votaries to be troublesome in their actual behaviour {terrorism, superstition}; but to judge and condemn religious faiths {Mark Twain} by purely rational standards is to misconceive their function. The various religious myths of the world are essentially the presentation in imaginative and picturesque terms of more or less elementary moral truths {and an attempt to achieve peace-of-mind}. The great majority of mankind, who are capable only of the lowest grade of knowledge, will only understand, and be emotionally impressed by, myths which appeal directly to their imagination; the abstractions of page 203 purely logical argument mean nothing to them. They cannot understand what is meant by the perfection and omnipotence {power, will} of G-D, as a metaphysician understands these ideas; they can understand only in the sense that they may imagine a being like themselves, but very powerful and very good; they need a story in anthropo- morphic terms, and this the popular religions provide. {Mark Twain's "Little Story"}
From Popkin's "Spinoza"; 2004; ISBN 1851683399; Page 2:
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. The attributes that human beings could know were those of thought {mind} and extension {body} and, through these, men can discover how the world operates, what it consists of, and the role of human beings in it. This conception enabled Spinoza to present a way in which people could find their goal {PcM} in non-theological terms. This remarkable break with tradition was one of the most radical innovations in seventeenth-century thought and one that has continued to spawn interesting new understandings and insights in philosophy, ethics, and science.
From The
Teaching Company's Professor
David B. Ruderman Lectures
on Jewish Intellectual
History:16th to 20th Century.
Lecture 17 - CG2:17—Leo Baeck's
Mystery and
Commandment:
Leo Baeck (1873-1956) was a disciple of Cohen, but unlike him, pursued a highly prominent career as a rabbi in Berlin. In his first major work, The Essence of Judaism, written in response to an earlier work on Christianity by Adolf von Harnack, Baeck underscored, like Cohen, the central role of ethical monotheism in the Jewish religion but departed from him in stressing the role of religious consciousness, as well. Baeck understood Jewish faith as dialectical {RH—pertaining to or of the nature of logical argumentation.}, created by the two poles of divine commandment and religious consciousness, or mystery, as he called it. God makes ethical demands of the believer, but he is also experienced personally; he is transcendent but also personal.
3.4. Idolatry
is taking the infinite as finite.
Taking the finite as infinite is pantheism.
Idolatry
is taking an inseparable
part of an infinite organism (G-D)
as Interdependent
finite—and
having it (the part, a mode)
stand alone finite and supreme Calculus:3.1c
without
interaction with the other
parts.
Idolatry
is not an 'I-thee' relation with
a thing, but an 'I-It'
relation. Pantheism—G-d
Idolatry
and superstition are faulty
hypotheses designed to
Religion
find peace
of mind. The fault
is in taking the infinite as finite. Schechinah
Three persons have written
me to say that they think it should be taking
the finite as infinite; not the infinite
as finite. I have answered
thus:
I think it depends on how you define (hypothesize) 'infinite'
and 'finite';
my hypotheses are:
Infinity is the totality of all existence considered as
one organism,
all interdependent. Except for analysis,
it cannot be divided. Indivisible
No part can stand alone. The
error of Body and Mind Separation
Finite is thinking that a part stands
alone with no interconnection
Robinson3:189
with anything else or eventually the universe
(say, money). This,
I think, is subjective and is an error.
A particular person or part of a person, (I add, every
person, every {This
is Spinoza's
thing)
is infinite, philosophically. To think it finite and standing alone Pantheism—G-d.
with no connection
to everything else is an error and leads to chaos Schechinah.}
(which is Idolatry).
This, I think, is what is behind Buber's
'I-thee' dictum. 'I -Thou' is
treating LT:L3421:336
the person or
thing as part of an infinite whole—G-D;
while 'I-it' is treating
the person or thing as something finite which has no interconnection with
the 'whole' and that it stands alone and can be taken advantage
of. That
would be like the heart taking advantage of the lungs.
To love someone, R.
Hillel
is as G-D
Intended—the Law
of Organisms.
This has great Cash Value;
I must look at everything as G-Dly Pantheism—G-d
(infinite, interconnected) and not cause wars,
genocide, corruption, Schechinah
power struggles, slums, pollution,
etc. etc. etc, Idolizing
a part,
ignoring the whole; idolizing money, a golden calf
(Exo. 32:4), Millennia
farmers who pollute, substance abuse, creating slums,
any fixation
to the exclusion of other things leads to chaos.
3.4a. Pantheism
is false, bad, if each thing is looked upon as a
whole—a
god, an idol.
3.4b. Pantheism
is true, good, if each
thing is looked upon as a
part
of the whole—G-D; holistically,
with none of the faults
of
idolatry. Holism
is the theory that whole entities, as fun-
damental
components of reality, have an existence other Spinoza's
Pantheism—G-d
than
as the mere sum of their parts. Pantheism
is having Schechinah
an
"I-thee" relationship
with every single thing.
3.5. The
misuse (false productivity) of any part
to the detriment
of the whole is idolatry
and leads to chaos.
3.5a.
The misuse of the automobile, causing gridlock and
smog,
is idolatry.
3.5b. The
misuse of fertilizers, causing pollution of rivers
and
groundwater, is idolatry, which then causes
ecological
disasters.
3.5c.
The misuse of wealth,
causing slums, prejudice, and
uneducated
masses, is idolatry, which then causes
crime,
substance-abuse, disease, and terrorism.
3.5d. Nationalism which impedes One-world is Idolatry. Hampshire:203
3.5e. All the above indicate people who think
only of their
own
money and convenience. They do not consider
the
cancer (figurative and literal) they cause. That
lack
of consideration is idolatry and is
a sin. The
Sins
of the Parents will be visited on their children.
3.5f. Economists
who neglect the horrible effects (to the No
praise, no blame.
environment
or human values) of rampant capitalism
are
idolaters.
3.5g.
Idolatry is taking something that cannot stand
alone
and
making it stand alone to the detriment of other Buber's 'I-It'
things
(which includes even God).
3.6. The
Hebrew word for Holy is ko'desh,
Strong:6944—a sacred
place
or thing, hallowed, holiness. The root
of ko'desh is
kaw-dash' , Strong:
6942—to be pure, clean, i.e. right, straight,
true,
just. Based on this etymology, what is pure, clean,
right,
straight,
true, just, etc., is Holy;
the test is—that which
PERPETUATES
is Holy. If it does not
PERPETUATE, it is
unholy—profane.
3.7. 1:Def.
VI:45—Durant:636
"By G-D,
I mean a Being
absolutely infinite—that is, Deus
a
substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which
each
expresses eternal and infinite essentiality"
{and
each attribute has an infinite number of finite Added by
JBY
modes. These
modes are you, me, and every other
particular
thing.}
G-D
is infinite and infinity cannot
be divided. The
tendency to treat
parts as separate entities leads
to
idolatry—making the infinite finite.
Mysticism
is that interacting TOTALITY that is
greater An
organism
than
the sum of its parts.
3.7a. From Shirley's Bk.VII:249—Thing.
"This is the regular
translation of 'res,' but the reader
should be warned
that Spinoza gives it a much
more
extensive meaning
than is normal in English. He
uses it
to cover not
only inanimate objects, but man, G-D,
and
sometimes occurrences."
3.7b. G:Shirley:42—Religious Language re-interpreted.
The quasi-rationalistic definitions
Spinoza sets out in the
TTP
are related to the final aspect of its character
to be
mentioned here. This might be called its linguistic
play and
manipulation. Spinoza employs many
of the same terms Wolf:Endnote
4-3a
prevalent in traditional Jewish
and Christian discourse,
such as "God,"
"salvation," "faith," "miracles," "divine
law," Yirmiyahu
Yovel
"help
of G-D," "election of G-D,"
etc., but he twists them
and gives them new,
unorthodox meanings that are com- Spinoza's
Religion
patible with his own philosophy. This is part
of his persua- Paradigm
Shift
sive programme,
attempting to bring others around to his
own point
of view through the use of familiar terms. Using
the phrase of the late philosopher J.
L. Austin, one could
say that here Spinoza is busy "doing
things with words": evolving
not only
using them to try and persuade his audience, but
also transforming accepted linguistic
conventions.
3.7c.
I conjecture the
reasons Spinoza continued to use the "language
Spinozism
of religion"—G-D
instead of Nature—are the following:
Religious
language
3.7c1. The
term 'G-D' is
retained because it is fulfilling the same
function as
the traditional God (an
evolving religion)—which is,
Mark
Twain
to bring Peace-of-Mind. It
is the same as when Judaism and
The
God Gene
Christianity evolved from
Paganism and replaced the term 'god(s)'
Holidays
with 'God'.
Now 'G-D'
evolves from
'God'; but go slow for It is cruel
Dawkins129:Genes
to undermine a faith without effectively
replacing it with another. Paradigm
Shift
3.7c2. 'G-D'
adds importantly the ingredient of 'Peace-of-Mind' Abstraction
which 'Nature' does not.
3.7c3.
There
is great "vested
interest" in
the word "G-D";
it is Isaac
associated, by
many, with Peace-of-Mind. Bashevis
Singer
3.8. From
G:Shirley:235—G-D
(Deus)
Although Spinoza gives
repeated warnings that his "Deus"
is far from the
anthropomorphic conception of God preva-
lent in the theology of his time,
the reader will find it diffi-
cult to bear this constantly in mind.
It is not until E1:XIV:54,
that G-D, by definition
{ hypothesis },
is shown to be identical
with the infinite, all-inclusive, unique
substance, and there-
after it is all too easy to lose sight of this,
as the religious
overtones of the
word "God" keep asserting
themselves.
So Spinoza's frequent use of the phrase
"Deus sive Natura"
—G-D, or Nature—is intended as
a salutary corrective.
For Spinoza G-D
is all Being,
all Reality, in all its aspects
and in all its infinite
richness.
3.9. Spinoza goes to great lengths
to posit G–D—the quintessential
pragmatic
truth (an all inclusive organic interdependence) so
as Analogy
to
establish the foundation for all his thought.
Establishing the
hypothesis
of G-D is the entire burden of TEI
and Ethics-Part 1.
3.9a. Posit Spinoza's G-D as a working hypothesis.
In order to avoid useless speculation,
simply posit Spinoza's
G-D as a working hypothesis
and then work to find its cash value.
Col:Hampshire
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..
2. a tentative assumption made in order to draw out
and test its logical or empirical consequences.
This hypothesis helps to
understand our universe, society, and ourselves and thus brings peace-of-mind—the
goal of all Religions and righteous
governments. The
God Gene
3.10. Spinoza
and Scripture 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..." and enlightened self-interest.
3.10a. By analogy,
as my heart loves my entire "me", so I love
G-D.
It
is the nature of an organism: "give to get" and "get to
give". Law
of Organisms
My
getting is my self-interest;
I need it to survive eternally.
3.10b. If the organs of your
body did not observe the Golden Rule, you
could
not efficiently exist. Likewise the world with its parts.
3.11. If declaring
"G-D is ONE", does
not trigger the concept of the
"Organic Interdependence
of all Parts" then "G-D is
ONE"
is just Spinoza's
Religion
words
without
meaning.
3.11a. All that is, is ONE
evolving organism. The most perfect
morality
is a conscientious loyalty to this whole. intellectual
love of G-D
3.12. G:James's ONE:63—Pragmatism William James—Robinson4:172
"The only way to get forward
with our notion is to treat it
pragmatically. Granting
the oneness to exist, what facts
will be different in consequence? What will
the unity be
known as? The world is One—yes, but how one.
What
is the practical {cash}
value of the oneness for us."
3.12a. G:James:xiv—Cash Value
James went on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemological
problem of truth. 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 was anxious to uncover
what true beliefs amounted to in human life,
what their "Cash Value" Pragmatism
was, what consequences they led
to. A belief was not a mental
entity which somehow mysteriously
corresponded to an external
reality if the belief were true. Beliefs
were ways of acting with refer-
ence to a precarious environment,
and to say they were true was
to say they guided us satisfactorily
in this environment. In this
sense the pragmatic theory of truth applied Darwinian
ideas in philos-
ophy; it made survival { °P }
the test of intellectual
{ LOVE }
as well as
biological fitness. If what was
true was what worked, then scientific
truths were just those beliefs found
to be workable. And we could
investigate religion's
claim to truth in the same manner.
The enduring
quality of religious beliefs throughout
recorded history and in all
cultures gave indirect support
for the view that such beliefs worked.
James also argued directly that
such beliefs were satisfying—they
enabled us to lead fuller, richer lives and were more
viable than their
alternatives. Religious beliefs
were expedient in human existence,
just as scientific beliefs were. {Scroll
down for more.}
3.12b.
From
The Teaching
Company's Tapes; The
Great Ideas of Philosophy,
2nd Edition; 2004; Professor
Daniel N. Robinson's
Lecture 47; Part 4 Transcript, p. 172; William
James' Pragmatism—Cash
Value.
The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable {God, free-will, etc.}. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle {until such time there is some new evidence}. {Scroll down for p. 173.}
Lecture 47; Part 4 Transcript, p. 173; William James' Pragmatism—Self-Interests.
Pragmatism on James's account matches up with James on
the notion of our interests.
The will expresses itself on behalf of what we take to be our "highest
interests" {peace
of mind}. What
we do, we do on behalf of our highest interests. We are
not simple reflex machines. There is an incessant
stream of consciousness, a stream of
thought that relates us to the world around us, that exposes certain possibilities
for action, and we have to choose
from among those possibilities. The grounds of choice
sooner or lafer—and sooner is better—must match up
with just what the highest interests
of a creature of a certain kind are. For the puppy in front of us, the
stick in the air may qualify;
given our own nature, it could be the book in our laps, but for the
creature whose interests are not served by his {rational}
actions, survival is in doubt,
and the world becomes a perilous place {jungle}.
3.13. D:Endnote 1.27d—Golden Rule
"....but thou shalt love thy
neighbour's
well-being as t'were thine own: I am G-D."
3.13a. Many
blacks hate whites, many whites hate blacks; many
Jews
hate Germans, many Germans hate Jews. You are
not
commanded to love each other ( it
being extremely
difficult)
but you are commanded to be concerned for each
other's
well-being. The love
may come later.
3.14. Following
the Golden Rule is in your own self-interest;
it is not Altruism.
The
rule becomes more and more complied with as a society becomes
more
and more affluent and integrated (wired).
3.15. TTP3:XII(61):172—Corner-stone of Religion
"For from the Bible
itself we learn, without the smallest
difficulty or
ambiguity, that its cardinal
precept is: To
love
G-D above all things, and one's neighbour
as one's
self. This
cannot be a spurious passage, or
due to a hasty
and mistaken scribe, ..."
3.16. The
Sacred
parts of Scripture are the
ethical and moral parts
which demand obedience to commandments—laws. Other
parts
may be rejected or interpreted allegorically. This
demand
of
obedience is the same as required by
any governmental Constitution
or
military law. No explanation of the law or command is
given;
nor
any philosophy expounded; just do it—or else.
G-D is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.
3.18. G:Shirley:2512 - Cause
(causa).
"The reader will find that
Spinoza's "cause" is not quite
what he is used to. It
need not imply temporal succession:
indeed, for Spinoza a cause
is more logical
ground from
which a consequent follows, . . . "For
example, it "follows"
from the nature of a
triangle that its three angles are
equal to two right angles. Hence, Spinoza occasionally
couples the word "cause"
with the term "reason" ("ratio").
By the phrase "efficient
cause" Spinoza means primarily
the cause that produces
the effect in question and is
quite close to the notion
of a sufficient condition. His
theory of causality excludes
the Aristotelian final cause,
the goal or purpose of a
thing or event. In his
Appendix
to Part I Spinoza explicitly claims that
final causes are
human fictions.
The phrases "immanent
cause" (causa immanens)
and "transitive cause" (causa
transiens) appear in E1:XVIII.
A transitive cause is one in which causation
"passes over"
from the cause to the effect, while cause and effect
remain
really distinct. Mechanical causation would
be an example
of transitive causation; e.g. one billiard ball
hitting another
into the pocket. An immanent cause,
however, is an "in-
dwelling cause," one that is inseparable from its effect. For
example, the numbers 1 and 2 are immanent causes of
the
number 4 insofar as they are factors of it.
Although 1 and
2 can be separated out of
4 by analysis, they are never-
theless always "in" it. It is
Spinoza's thesis that G-D is the
immanent, not the transitive cause of all things.
This is the
denial of the traditional idea of God as the creative,
tran-
scendent cause of the world. Insofar as
G-D is the unique
substance of which everything else
is a mode, all modes
will be in G-D
and G-D will be their indwelling cause." Logos
- 1 John 1:1
3.19. Letter
21(73):298—Pantheism—G-d—Schechinah.
The supposition of some, that I endeavour to prove in
the
Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus the unity ]identification[
of
G-D and Nature (meaning by the
latter a certain mass
or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous.
3.19a. {When
I say "I will make the trip next week, please G-D,"
the "Please
G-D" means: may my health permit; may my car
get to the airport OK; may the roads
be O.K.; the plane O.K.;
etc., etc., etc. All are parts
of the indivisible infinity. That
is
Spinoza's pantheism—G-d.}
.....indeed blessedness
is nothing else but the contentment
of spirit which arises from the intuitive knowledge
of G-D: .... The
God Gene
3.21. The
Hebrew word for commandment is mits-vaw',
Strong:4687
—a
command, an ordinance, a
precept, good deed. The root
of
mits-vaw' is tsaw-vaw', Strong:6680—to enjoin, bid,
send a
messenger,
put in order, to charge with.
A related word is
tsaw-vaw',
Strong:6633—to mass an army, fight, war;
army,
host.
Based on this etymology, a commandment is
an order
to
a part of an organism to do its
duty for the sake of the Law
of Organisms
organism's perpetuation. Enlightened
self-interest is the better
reason
for obeying the command, not fear of
punishment.
3.22. Letter
25(78):306—
"But,"
you urge, "if men sin
from the necessity of their nature, human
action
they
are therefore excusable."
3.22a.
The Hebrew word translated as sin is
khate, Strong:2399—
Bad
data base
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. Based on this etymology, one who
sins is
making
a mistake in judgment; because he, if rational,
does
wants
to perpetuate himself. Therefore
his mistake is due
to
some disability or lack
of knowledge. This does not mean
that
society should not
protect itself from crime (as for scarlet Durant:185
fever)— by
incarceration (or quarantine) and
attempts to cure
by
removing the causes (slums,
etc.) or by
re-training, i.e.
re-programming
the data base.
3.23. TTP3:XIV(17):183—
"Moreover, the Bible
teaches very clearly in a great many
passages what everyone
ought to do in order to obey G-D;
the whole duty
is summed up in love to one's neighbour.
3.24. A
part of an organism, an orchestra, a country,
all have their
duties to perform
for their very own good—it
is not altruism.
3.25. The
word "religion" as we use it does not exist in Biblical Hebrew.
They
looked upon the Bible as we
do our Constitution, and Spinozistic
Idea
took
it as a given—a way of life. The
Old Testament was their
Constitution
and Legislative enactments; Post-biblically, the
Talmud
was, and is, the equivalent of a modern
Law Library. {Din
Medinah Din—
When
modern Hebrew had
to coin a word for "religion" they The
law of a righteous
chose
the word (daht) whose root is "knowledge", Strong:1847 government
is the Law.}
from
3045.
3.25a. From The
Teaching Company's Prof.
Ruderman's Jewish
Intellectual Lectures;
Transcript
Book 1; Page 10—Constitution:
As you will see, losing that corporate status is a function of the modern era. In the pre-modern world, the nature of Jewish religious affiliation is all-embracing. Jews think about their law not only in terms of their personal lives but how it affects their profession and their community. The entire calendar of the Jewish year, the entire moment that Jews give birth to the time they die, is recognized through a corporate structure of Jewish law. Religion, therefore, is not compartmentalized as we know it today, but indeed is {was} an all embracing kind of affiliation. {in a wider sense, since Religion is an hypothesis designed to get peace-of-mind, anything you do, you do because you think it will bring you peace-of-mind. Spinozistically; Religion, therefore, is not really compartmentalized.}
3.26. From
"Jews,
God and History", ISBN 0451628667, Page 368.
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 Din
Medinah Din
Constitution,
and those decisions have come to function
in
American political life much
as: the Talmud has in Jewish life.
"Proclaim
liberty throughout the land, unto all its
inhabitants,"
from Leviticus
(25:10), is inscribed on the Liberty Bell,
which
rang out its message at the
first reading of the Declaration of
Independence.
3.26a. The
single most important hypothesis
that people make for their TTP4:17(50):219
peace-of-mind
is their constitution—government.
Without it, there
3.1b
is
no army, no police, no fire department, no
schools, no water
no
garbage collection, etc., etc., etc. In
truth, our real
religion is
Runes 9
our
government—for it brings
us the major part of
our peace-of-mind. Hierachies
From Daniel
C. Dennett's Breaking The Spell; Religion as a Natural Phenomenon;
2006; ISBN 067003472X;
pp. 160-1—Our real
religion is our constitution; the
way
we live:
.... 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 obstetrician} in order to have a healthy baby, you make sure that you sacrifice a goat {go to an obstetrician}. Better safe than sorry.
This feature marks a profound difference between folk {real} religion and organized Religion: those who practice a folk {real} religion don't think of themselves as practicing a religion at all. Their "religious" practices are a seamless part of their practical lives, alongside their hunting and gathering or tilling and harvesting. And one way to tell that they really believe in the {anthropomorphic} deities to which they make their sacrifices is that they aren't forever talking about how much they believe in their deities—any more than you and I go around assuring each other that we believe in germs and atoms. Where there is no ambient doubt to speak of, there is no need to speak of faith.
3.26a1. In
all the Jewish dispersals, the righteous
laws of their host
country
was Jewish law; as expressed in the Talmudic Dictum—
Din
Medinah Din (the
righteous law of the government is law).
3.26b. All
organizations (or organisms) have a certain
percentage of
corruption
(disease). All machines
have less
than 100%
efficiency. Millennium
It
is only vital if that percentage is
large enough to make that
organization
extinct or machine useless. Law
of Organisms.
3.26c. All organizations have hierachies and holidays:
United States Catholic
Church Our
Real Religion
I
I
President
Pope
I I
Senate Cardinals
I I
Congressman Bishop
I I
July 4th Christmas Holidays
3.27. The
Hebrew word for worship
is av-o-daw ', Strong:5656—
Prof.
Hall:79
work
of any kind, ministry, labor, service. The root of av-o-daw '
is
aw-vad ' , Strong: 5647—to work, labor,
serve. Based on
this
etymology, everyone doing their duty, practicing
enlight-
ened
self-interest is worshipping G-D. Ritual also has its place
in
adding pomp, poetry, song, sociability,
and pep-talks —
school auditoriums.
3.28. The
Pantheon of deified figures
of modern world religions is
an
evolution
of the Pantheon of Pagan gods.
This is not derogatory Dawkins129:Genes[4]
of
either Pantheon. It is the evolution of the hypothesis
of Religion Evolving
Holidays
to
purer and purer Monotheism—from the fetish
of a caveman to
an
unadulterated Monotheism
to One World. Dawkins129:Culture Durant:367
3.28a. god(s) —
Polytheistic; Pagan,
Idolatry, Myth.
God—Monotheistic;
Judeo-Christian-Islamic
Anthropomorphic, Transcendent
God
G-D
or G-d
— Monotheistic; Spinoza's Immanent,
Indwelling G-D. Spinoza's
G-D
{Spelling
changes not made consistently.} Prof.
Hall:51, Prof. Hall:79, Spinoza's
Religion,
'G-D',
Being, and 'Nature'
are interchangeable. Deus
sive Natura, D2:Spinoza's
Meaning
'G-d',
being, and 'nature' are interchangeable. Mode,
Spinoza's Pantheism—G-d.
I
use the words 'G-D', 'Thou' -
'thee', 'Deus',
and 'Nature' interchangeably.
3.28b. The above stages show
the constant evolution of Religion's
hypotheses.
Paradoxically,
worshipping G-D
is like worshipping an infinite number of
idols—G-d.
3.28c. By Spinoza's
redefining God,
a theistic world view and a non-theistic
world
view
(G-D—chain
of natural events) can be synthesized.
3.28d. From The
Teaching Company's Prof.
Ruderman's Jewish
Intellectual Lectures;
Transcript
Book 1; Page 2—Evolution.
After carefully describing the broad setting of modern Jewish life, the course initially looks backward at several radical changes that affected Jewish life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, establishing the context for Benedict Spinoza and his devastating {In the sense that Copernicus devastated Ptolemy. Study 1D6 = ONE to see the evolvment.} assault on the foundations of both Judaism and Christianity {in millennia}. In some sense, the lectures that follow offer a series of responses to Spinoza's challenge regarding the viability of Judaism in the modern era.
3.29. Religion is
an hypothesis that constantly evolves to purer and purer forms
of
monotheism. As an example, study how Holiday
themes were re-inter- Synthesis
preted
as Paganism evolved into Judaism, Christianity, and, I conjecture,
will
in turn (with other Religions of the world) evolve into G-D—"The
Universal
Religion
and the United States of the World.
PAGAN JUDAISM CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL
RELIGION
CELEBRATION
OF LIGHT. LIGHTING
THE MENORAH CHRISTMAS
LIGHTS LIGHTS
NOT LOSING THE
SUN FOREVER. &
GIFTS &
GIFTS & GIFTS
Pagan Winter Solstice Festival -----> Hanukkah
--------> Christmas------> Nature Renewal Day
RENEWAL AND PLANTING
FREEDOM RESURRECTION FREEDOM
FROM TYRANNY
Pagan Spring Festival ----------------> Passover
----------> Easter-----------> Man Renewal Day
TIME
FOR DESCENT
OF THE LAW DESCENT
OF THE UNITED
STATES OF THE WORLD
PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION ON
MT. SINAI HOLY
SPIRIT
CONSTITUTION DAY
Pagan Free Time? Festival
--------------> Shavuoth----------> Pentecost-------> United
Nations Day
Between Planting and Harvesting
CELEBRATION
HARVESTING BOOTHS FEASTING FEASTING and
FORGIVING
Pagan Harvest Festival --------------> Sukkoth-----------> Thanksgiving------->
Thanksgiving
3.30.
Psalm
92:13, 14, & 15:
13. The righteous
shall flourish like the palm-tree; Spinoza
He
shall grow like a cedar of Lebanon.
14. Planted (posit-rooted)
in the house of the Lord,
They shall flourish
(true
productivity) in the
courts
(work-a-day
world) of our G-D,
15. They shall still bring forth
fruit in old age;
Einstein
They
shall be full of sap and richness.
3.31. I
conjecture that the Judaic-Christian God
will, in millennium, be overcome
by
the United
States of the World and Universal
Religion (G-D).
3.32. Scarcity (oil, for example)
causes most dysfunctional practices (war); it
cannot
be avoided
until there will be sufficient technological
advancement and an
effective United
States of the World. In the meantime
however, G-D as a Religion
is more efficacious
(has more cash value) than God,
in that G-D stresses the organic interdependence
of all parts of the Universe.
3.33. From
Will Durant's "Story
of Philosophy"; Washington Square Press;
18th
Printing; 1965; Page 513—William
James on Religious Paradigm
Shifts.
A philosophy {or a Religion} may be unimpeachable in other respects, but either of two defects will be fatal to its universal adoption. First, its ultimate principle must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints our dearest desires {for Peace of Mind} and most cherished hopes.... But a second and worse defect in a philosophy {or a Religion} than contradicting our active propensities {for seeking Peace of Mind} is to give them no object whatever to press against {such as evolving more rapidly to a World State and Universal Religion}. A philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all relevancy in universal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at one blow, will be even more unpopular than pessimism. . . . That is why materialism {or atheism} will always fail of universal adoption. {Intellectual love of G-D}
3.34. Morality, Spinoza's Religion,
Morality is to act so as to enhance G-D, the organism of which you are a part.
RH—enhance 1. to raise to a higher degree; intensify; magnify. 2. to increase the value, attractiveness, or quality of; improve. 3. to provide with more complex or sophisticated features, as a computer program.
3.35. Prof. Hall's Philosophy of Religion Lecture 34 - TB3:123—{Organic Interdependence}
[1] 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}."
[2] There is a line in the New Testament—when I was 14, I could have told you chapter and verse; I can't do that anymore—that says that there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. We are all together and the same. If one seizes a hold of that in the stories, what that can do is change the way we perceive one another, and, if we change the way we perceive one another, our behavior towards one another may be altered, not out of fear of punishment and not out of greed for reward but out of genuine improved insight into the nature of human nature and the common lot which we all share. {This is what Enlightenment is.}
[3] You cannot look at a person of another race or ethnicity or even, for that matter, a person of another religious faith or tradition, you cannot look at them, keeping in mind neither slave nor free, male nor female—keeping that in mind—and see them the way you have always seen them {with fences}. This, I think, is why religious people have, again and again, been driven by a concern for human welfare that is driven by an understanding of our oneness in the human family—to go half-way around the world and work in leper colonies and build hospitals and feed the hungry and to do all of those good things—because we see ourselves as part of a common family. That is part of the motivational package in the religious stories that strikes me as positive and worthwhile—and altogether decent. {Wolfson:2:288}
3.36. Prof. Oden's The Teaching Company's "God and Mankind: Comparative Religions" Lecture One:1A1-CG1:3—What is Religion?
{Religion is an hypothesis designed to achieve Peace of Mind.}
Lecture One:5A-CG1:5. None of these four approaches, or any other one, has been able to explain all the fundamental questions about religion.
{I believe
that the above hypothesis explains the fundamental question about all religions—seeking
Peace of Mind.}
End: Religion
4.1. I
conjecture that the
holidays of the coming
Universal Religion will be
purged
of literal miracles, imagery, and deified figures; all of which
make
fences
(a different language for expressing
the "Oneness" of G-D)
between
neighbors and peoples of the world.
These fences are a
violation
of the Second Commandment, Deu.
5:8—"You
shall not make
for
yourself a carved image..."
4.2. It
is the increasingly electronic-age-caused unification that will make
these fences
(incompatible protocols) more and more onerous.
Fences destroy
"I-thee" relationships.
4.2a. An "I-Thou"
relationship implicates the whole world (Martin
Buber)
Analogy—a
single hair implicates the whole body.
4.3. The
United Nations is today in the analogous position
of The United Durant:367
States of
America at the time of its founding and the Civil War. The USA Daniel
Webster
had
to overcome the power of the individual states to achieve the
power
it
has today. The
United Nations will likewise overcome
the power
of
the sovereign states in
time, because of the inescapable trend of Oil
of
history; opposers become irrelevant.
4.4. I
believe socialism evolves as technological
advancement and trade Millennia
tips
the scale toward enlightened self-interest
and away from jungle
self-interest.
4.5. Technological
advancement—fire, wheel, writing, electricity, steam
engine,
combustion engine, radio, television, computer,
internet,
nuclear
power, space travel, .......... —all have tended (or will
tend)
to
lead people to be more cooperative; enlightened,
one-worldish.
4.6. The
misuse of wealth, causing slums,
prejudice, and uneducated
masses,
is idolatry. When affluence
reaches a critical mass, a decent
minimum income
will be guaranteed to all; eradicating
slums, prejudice
and
uneducated masses. It is
not altruism, it is evolution due to
evolv-
ing technological
advancement making products cheaper and main- Marginal
Value
taining
aggregate demand.
4.7. I
conjecture that with advancing technology
and affluence, there will
be
a synthesis between Capitalism and Socialism.
As major
corporations
mature, they become more and more controlled by their
Read and reread
management
and not by their stock owners. The self-interest of the "The
Affluent Society"
management
will begin to coincide more
and more with the unions
and the public
interest—Enlightened self-interest.
4.8. Spinoza
is a harbinger of the coming,
however long it may take,
of
a One-World Universal Religion—the
One-World that is
evolving as
it is being
organically bound together by
electronic
mutations. It is for this reason that I think Spinoza
is
the
quintessential Monotheist as is Einstein—they constantly
sought unification;
simplicity, efficiency.
4.8a. From Smith's Bk.XIA:109146— Synthesis. Rosenberg:26, TTP1:Divine Law
But Spinoza does more than prepare the reader for the overcoming of Judaism by Christianity. As I suggested earlier, he prepares the reader for the overcoming {synthesizing} of both Judaism and Christianity by the secular democratic state. After depicting Christ as the teacher of a universal rational morality (a kind of Spinoza avant la lettre) {Bk.XIA:110147}, he shows how Christianity did not possess the true moral teaching. In particular, he shows that Christianity, not Judaism, became the cause of the persecution and intolerance to which the Treatise takes itself to be the answer. In Spinoza's recasting of sacred history, if Christ takes the place that Maimonides had accorded to Moses, Spinoza now assumes the place that had previously been accorded to Christ. He {Spinoza} is the bringer of
a new theologico-political dispensation every bit as far-reaching as the historical religions that he claims to overcome {Bk.XIA:110148}.
4.9. From
Will Durant's "Story
of Philosophy"; Washington Square Press; 18th Printing, 1965;
Page 190.
All political philosophy, Spinoza thinks,
must grow out of a distinction between the natural
{self-interest}
and the moral order
{enlighenment
} — 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.
{See
4P37n2 and TP1:2:8:2.}
We get an inkling of this law of nature, or
this lawlessness of nature, by
observing the behavior of states; "there
is no altruism among nations,"
for there can be law and morality only where there is an accepted organization,
a common and page
191 recognized authority.
The "rights" of states are now what the
"rights" of individuals used to be (and still often are),
that is, they are mights, and the leading states,
by some forgetful honesty of diplomats, are very properly called the "Great
Powers." So it is too among
species: there being no common
organization, there is not among them any morality or law;
each species does to the other what it wishes and
can. {See
4P37n1; and 4App27.}
But among men, as mutual need begets mutual aid, this natural order of powers passes into a moral order of rights. "Since fear of solitude exists in all men, because no one in solitude is strong enough to defend himself and procure the necessaries of life, it follows that men by nature tend towards social organization {TP2:VI}." To guard against danger "the force or strength of one man would hardly suffice if men did not arrange mutual aid and exchange {4App28}." Men are not by nature, however, equipped for the mutual forbearance of social order; but danger begets association, which gradually nourishes and strengthens the social instincts: "men are not born for citizenship, but must be made fit for it {TP2:V}." {Continue} {Technological Advancement}
4.10. From
Lederman and Hills "Symmety and the beautiful universe",
1591022428; 2004: Page
54—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. Energy is the
key to our economy and to our future, as
well as to our political power and authority. The
proper use of energy is, however, fundamental to the fate of our environment.
One might say that the two most urgent issues confronting
the human species are world overpopulation and energy policy,
perhaps in that order, and they are inextricably intertwined.
These are the two most difficult issues from the point
of view of serious public-policy making—there's
no evidence that they can be
ameliorated by any nonviolent political system humans
have yet designed.
End: One World
5. Conclusion
5.1. No matter the World's
evolutionary stage, because of
man's desires,
he
will always have wants
{conatus},
hence problems. There are no {'wants'
drive
ends;
no attainment, only attaining
because no change is boredom.
evolution}
5.1.1.
Analogy: a child, a teenager, an adult, an
old person, all have
problems and
wants peculiar to their stage in life. The problems of
each stage
are, in the main, not solved, but transcended;
the car
transcended the
inconvenience of the horse-and-buggy. Walk
humbly,
for the
car brings it's own problems—smog, accidents,
and grid-lock. LeDoux96:129
5.1.2.
Man's social organization evolves
over millenniums just
as Hampshire:209
homo
sapiens evolved. It
will take millenniums to evolve to the World Daniel
Webster
State
I conjectured. Technological advancement
and natural selection, Hall:3:16
despite
all the eddy currents, dictate it. To
say 'Millenniums' is to say Conclusion
that the
coming of the messianic
age is a matter of Darwinian
natural Dawkins192:Genes
selection.
The power of
Judaism is Certainty the
Messiah will come:
Establishes
the logic to make it happen faster; not randomly.
The power of Christianity
is Certainty the Messiah
has come: Wall
Street
The Second Coming brings it back to
Judaic thought.
5.1.3. If social changes happen
quickly it gives rise to
the totali- Evolution
tarianism of
Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, or
Saddam Hussein.
When people would not accept
their utopian (any visionary system of
political or social perfection)
idea, the people were forced to accept it or
be killed
What then is Man to do?—Follow
Spinoza's Doctrine and:
5.1a. E5:X(5):252—Right Way of Living Durant2:648
The best we can do, therefore, so
long as we do not
possess a perfect
knowledge of our emotions, is to
frame a system of right conduct,
or fixed practical
precepts, to commit it to
memory, and to apply it
forthwith to the particular circumstances
which now
and again meet us in life, ....
TEI:Method,
E4:Appendix.
5.1b. Practice
modesty—be
objective, enlightened; know how
infinitesimal,
but significant, a part of G-D
you are.
5.1c. Practice
the Alcoholics Anonymous
creed:
G-D
give me the courage to change what I can change.
Give
me the faith to accept what I cannot change.
Give
me the wisdom to know the difference.
5.1d. Try
to understand yourself and other
persons. There is no free-will;
therefore there
can be no praise, no
blame.
Spinoza's
Doctrine—No
free-will; Man is a Computerized
Machine. Mark
Twain
therefore
Spinoza's
Dictum—Leads to 'no
praise, no blame' of anyone. John
Dewey
"I
have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, Hampshire—condemn
not
to scorn human actions, but to understand
them."
![]()
{This
is not altruistic, for there is no such thing as altruism
(by hypothesis); Mark
Twain
but
for achieving the peace-of-mind
that comes with understanding. Thus, like
a
Religion, the dictum is an hypothesis designed
to achieve peace-of-mind.
That
does not say that Spinoza always succeeded; but
that, at his better
moments,
he tried. The same can be said of us; at our better moments, we try.}
5.2.
Micah 6:8. It
hath been told thee, O man, what is
good, and what
{rule
of law}
the
LORD doth require of thee, only to do justly,
and to
{equity} {progress,
strive, grow.}
love
mercy, and to walk
modestly with thy G-D. Walk
Humbly
{ ^ equity--the
application of the dictates of conscience or
the
principles of natural justice to the settlement of controversies.}
5.3. From
Will Durant's "Story
of Philosophy"; Washington Square Press;
18th
Printing; 1965; Page 524—John
Dewey's Conclusion.
What Dewey saw and reverenced as the finest of all things, was growth; so much so, that he made this relative but specific notion, and not absolute "good," his ethical criterion.
Not perfection {which would be boring} as a final goal, but the ever-enduring {ever- evolving} process of perfecting, maturing, refining, is the aim in living . . . The bad man is the man who, no matter how good he has been, is beginning to deteriorate, to grow less good. The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better. Such a conception makes one severe in judging himself and humane in judging others.
5.4. Professor James Hall's Philosophy of Religion Lecture 36 - CG3:37—{Millennia}
Given widespread religious persecutions,
inquisitions, wars, and cleansings, how might it be
possible to free various religions
from their obsession with exclusivity and purity and
encourage their common commitment to the universal
"fatherhood of god" and "brotherhood
of man'"?
{It
is not possible for millennia; not
until technological advancement has
overcome scarcity
and until there is a Universal Religion.}
End: Conclusion
Endnote
1.9—From The
Teaching Company's Tapes; The
Great Ideas of Philosophy,
2nd Edition; 2004; Professor
Daniel N. Robinson's
Lecture 28; Part 3 Transcript, p. 59;
Thomas Hobbes and the
Social Machine—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 {sorrow}. 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. You're surely getting the picture here—so all the high-blown moral language bequeathed by the ancients, celebrated by the Scholastics, the stock-in-trade of all deeply religious people finally refers to the basic impulses to survive. That is what morality is finally all about. We are told to approach the good, and shun evil. We're supposed to conduct our lives in a way that's morally sound and fitting. We are to seek to promote virtue within ourselves. What is this all about? It is about seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
Endnote
1.9—From The
Teaching Company's Tapes; The
Great Ideas of Philosophy,
2nd Edition; 2004; Professor
Daniel N. Robinson's
Lecture 25; Part 3 Course Guidebook,
pp. 15 & 16 - Francis
Bacon and the Authority of Experience—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.
1. Motion is either involuntary
and reflexive ("vital") or intentional.
2. Our motives and desires
prompt intentional movements; we move toward what
we want and away from what we fear or dislike.
The root motives are grounded in pleasure {joy}
versus pain {sorrow}.
3. The most
fundamental desire is that of survival
{conatus}.
4. All our moral
and ethical standards inherited from philosophy and religion
are actually grounded in considerations of personal
survival. Good and evil are not devoid
of meaning, but they mean simply "pleasure" and "pain."
Endnote 1.9—From Bertrand Russell and F. C. Copleston, "The Existence of God," reprinted in Hick, Reader; ISBN: 0131369040, pp. 226ff.—Good and Bad, Emotions.
page 238
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?
RUSSELL: I don't have any justification any more than
I have when I distinguish between blue and yellow. What is my justification
for distinguishing between blue and yellow? I can see they are different.
COPLESTON: Well, that is on excellent justification, I agree. You distinguish blue and yellow by seeing them; so you distinguish good and bad by what faculty?
RUSSELL: By my feelings {emotions}.
COPLESTON: By your feelings. Well, that's what I was asking. You think that good and evil have reference simply to feeling?
RUSSELL: Well, why does one type of object look yellow
and another look blue? I can more or less give an answer to that thanks
to the physicists, and as to why I think one sort of thing good
and another evil, probably there is an
answer of the same sort, but it hasn't been gone into in the same way and
I couldn't give it you. {Spinoza
went into it and, for a rational person,
called 'good' that which perpetuated one,
and evil the reverse.}
Endnote 3.28a - From James
Hall's "Knowledge, Belief, and Transcendence";
0395195020;
p. 51—Two World Views: God
and G-D, Synthesized,
Duck or Rabbit.
Now assume that we have two concepts identical in all respects save one: one of them has a counterpart in reality {G-D}, the other does not {God}. 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 {by hypothesis}: to be perfect and real in-the-mind-and-in-the-world {G-D} is greater than to be (merely) perfect and real in-the-mind-alone {God}. {Continue with what follows—"World Views Synthesized".}
From
William Craig; reprinted in Robinson, God;
ISBN: 0872202224;
p. 59:
Consider
the Universe by means of a series of logical alternatives—Two World
Views:
God
and G-D, Evolved
& Synthesized, Paradigm
Shifts
Duck
Rabbit.
I<------ Universe
------>I
I
I
beginning
no
beginning
I I
caused not
caused
I I
personal not
personal
{God {G-d
(small 'd', a mode)
Transcendent Immanent
Theistic} Spinozistic
Theistic
Called Non-theistic below
in Rosenberg}
Endnote
3.28c - From Jay F. Rosenberg's "Practice of Philosophy";
ISBN: 013687178X;
Pages 26, 27—Theistic
and Non-theistic World views
Synthesized, Hall:TB3:20,
TB3:38,
Duck
or Rabbit, Paradigm
Shift,
[1] 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.
[2] Consider, for example, what we might call the theistic and the non-theistic world views. Some people look at the world and see it as the perfect handiwork of a Divine creator {God}, infused with a benevolent personal presence. Others greet this picture with incomprehension or hostility, seeing in the world only complex flows and interactions of mass and energy, the workings of blind and wholly impersonal forces
{or Spinozistic Theism and a chain of natural events}. Perhaps most people have moments of both sorts from time to time, sometimes confronting the world as a deep mystery, with awe and reverence, and sometimes confronting it as a mere object, imperfectly understood, to be sure, but perfectly understandable and able some day to be grasped and mastered.[3] Both pulls are undeniably there. Both pictures have an undeniable attraction for us. But it is clear that, even with the most prodigious efforts at self-deception, one cannot retain both pictures indefinitely at the same time. They are ultimately incompatible with each other {different paradigms}.
[4] Now how is this incompatibility to be expressed? One traditional way, of course, is as a disagreement over the statement "God exists". One philosopher offers an argument for or against the statement; another replies with criticisms of that argument; the first responds to the criticism of the second with a critique of his own; still other voices enter the chorus; and so it goes. But to see this ongoing dialogue as a dispute concerning, only the truth or falsehood of a single statement is to overlook the greater hidden mass of the icebergs. {I highly recommend Prof. Hall's Lectures for a study of these dialogues.}
[5] For, in a sense, everything is touched by the issue. One of these disputants, for example, lives in a universe permeated with meaning. It, and we within it, have a purpose, exist for a reason. For the other, in contrast, if there are to be meanings and purpose at page 27 all, they will need to be {subjective} human meanings and purposes, for we are here not by design but as the result of the {seemingly} random coming together {chain of natural events} of appropriate raw materials and the systematic evolutionary working out of this original fortuitous chance concurrence.
[6] Again, one philosopher sees people as "a little lower than the angels"—as creatures who are imbued with souls and with a Divine spark of life, who are granted the freedom to choose between good and evil, in accordance with or in opposition to God's will. For the other, however, we are perhaps only "a little higher than the apes"— sophisticated deterministic organic data-processors which create whatever values there are in the process of our mutual interactions and our continuing adaptation to a universe of value-free, uncaring stuff. For one, our death is our transition to a higher life; for the other, it is only the ultimate malfunction.
[7] Any of these differences, and many others, may emerge as a focal point from which the dialectical process of meeting argument with argument develops. People have souls—or they do not. There is life after death—or there is not. We have free will—or we are determined. There are ultimate values—or all values are conventional. Sensory perception is our only knowledge-yielding faculty—or mystical experience gives us access to a higher reality. Whatever the specific thesis, the ultimate aim of the enterprise remains the same {to achieve Peace of Mind}—to assemble from pieces rooted in the preferred picture a consistent, coherent, articulate, and systematic whole which can withstand the test of critical challenge, to build a synthesis which hangs together under analysis.
From
Wikipedia: Is it a duck? Is it a
rabbit? {G-D?
or God?}
Thomas
Kuhn, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edn., p. 114)—
The famous duck-rabbit
optical illusion:
"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. Ultimatey he may even learn to see those lines without seeing either of the figures {world view}, and he may then say (what he could not legitimately have said earlier) that it is these lines that he really sees but that he sees them alternately as a duck and as a rabbit. ...As in all similar psychological experiments, the effectiveness of the demonstration depends upon its being analyzable in this way. Unless there were an external standard {with respect to G-D or God, the standard is the Peace-of-Mind it brings} with respect to which a switch of vision could be demonstrated, no conclusion about alternate perceptual possibilities could be drawn."
{The ideal is to understand the G-D view and the God view. The view a person will have is the one that brings him more Peace-of-Mind. The G-D view is appropiate for a person able to abstract Spinoza's G-D; the God view is appropiate for a person who believes in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic God.}
Duck or Rabbit - From Matthew Stewart's The Courier and the Heretic 2006; 0393058980; p. 280—World View:
Imagine a pair of friends returning separately from travels abroad, each describing a favorite city whose unpronounceable name they have forgotten.Your friends are wildly different in character, background, and aesthetic sensibilities; not surprisingly, they seem to have taken an interest in wildly different cities. As your friends are quite competitive, furthermore, they soon take to criticizing each other's choices. Each celebrates the virtues of his city by contrasting them with the alleged failings of the other's. As the discussion progresses, however, you begin to suspect that they are talking about the same city In fact, you hear nothing in what they say that could confirm that they are not talking about the same city.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}?
Endnote 1.11- From Professor
James Hall's Tape 1: L19:TB2:79—God's
Worship and
the
Problem of Evil {See
[3], [4], & 'evil'}:
[1] What I want to start in on today is an argument to the effect that {due to evils} we can know that {ethical monotheistic, anthropomorphic, transcendent} Divine {God} existence does not occur. We can know that there is nothing in, of, behind, about, over the world reality that is deserving of {God} worship {of the obsequious, pleading type; G-D's worship entails: Avodaw, Meditation,}. That argument begins essentially with the observation of what, following convention, I will call the "occurrence of evil" or "the occurrence of evils" in the world—as it is called, the "problem of evil." We're going to see that any number of negative religious thinkers, atheists, if you please, have argued that from the occurrence of evil in the world we can infer inexorably {that it cannot be persuaded, moved, or affected by prayers or entreaties} to the non-existence of the Divine. We're going to trace that out very, very carefully during this lecture and the next lecture. Then, we're going to look at, as I said a moment ago, rebuttals to that—rebuttals, which are called "theodicies {a vindication of God's justice in tolerating the existence of evil}."
[2] A "theodicy" is a counterargument that says essentially that, for one reason or another, the occurrence of evil in the world is compatible with Divine existence, or possibly Divine existence is okay because the apparent occurrence of evil in the world isn't genuine; there really isn't any evil at all. We'll get to the rebuttals, but we can't really make much sense of them until we have seen the texture of the argument from evil itself, the texture of the problem of evil.
[3] Let me begin by observing, and this is an important point, that not everyone has a problem of evil. This is crucially important because it is the fact (I'm alleging it to be a fact; you're going to have to make up your own mind) that there is a problem of evil indigenous to the {transcendent} theist's way of taking the world. It is the way the theist looks at the world that creates the problem of evil for the theist. Let me see if I can make that make a little bit better sense.
[4] Suppose you took an absolutely naturalistic {imminent G-D} view of reality, and by an absolutely naturalistic view of reality I mean to say that you look at the world as simply a natural arena of cause and effect, things happening and things working along, but with{out} there being any intention behind it at all. They are absolutely neutral events—some of them we like {and therefore call them 'good'}; some of them we don't like {and therefore call them 'evil/bad'}. Some of them are conducive to our happiness and well-being; some of them are very, very difficult—when the volcano blows up or when the tidal wave blows in or whatever the particular disaster of the day may be.
page 80
[5] Unless you look at the events that are occurring in the world as the working out of intentions, then it would never occur to you, I suggest, to talk about these things being someone's or something's fault or someone's or something's wrong-doing or someone's or something's malevolence or anything of the sort—they are just things that happen. When a naturalist looks at what a theist might call a "natural evil," like some dread disease or scourge that is loose in the world, the naturalist simply says, "Well, that's the way the world is {, Being}." It's not the exercise or the fruit or the intention of any sort of designer; it just happens to be working out that way and it is grist of the mill. We have tried to find a solution to it. If we don't find a solution to it, well, we'll hang it up and the world will be left to some other species that is better able to cope.[6] You get a problem of evil precisely when you look at the world and say that the world is solely the product of a creator that is limitless in power and wisdom, such that anything that happens in the world has to at least be permitted by, if not actively initiated by, because anything that the world maker and sustainer did not initiate and did not want to permit wouldn't happen. When you pack that intentionality (that's the word I'll be using rather frequently for the next several days) into your way of looking at the world, then things that are adverse and difficult and troublesome and annoying are going to begin to take on the dimensions of meanness and of cruelty—and here's the model,—it's anthropomorphic, one more time—all of the things that we would attribute to things being done by some other individual who we assume has intentions.
[End]
From J.
K. Galbraith "Economics, Peace,
& Laughter, Page 15—Economics
and Religion
Economic circumstance has a dominant influence on social attitudes in the poor society because for those who are poor, nothing is so important as their poverty and nothing is so necessary as its mitigation. 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. And since for nearly all time nearly all people have lived under the threat of economic privation, men of a temperaments and views have stressed the controlling and permanent influence of economic need. "The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social political and spiritual process of life. "Here and there the ardour of the military or the artistic spirit has been for a while predominant; but religious and economic influences ... have nearly always been more important than all others put together.
E4:Endnote 18:17
- From Wolfson's
Bk.XIV:2:231-2—Dictates
of Reason. Fire
of Our 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 {Durant:647} the assaults {waves} of his own emotions. In its capacity as an instrument for self-preservation, reason overcomes the page 232 adverse forces of nature by setting up against them favorable forces which are stronger {4P7}. Similarly, in its capacity as an instrument for self-mastery, it overcomes the emotions which are passive by producing against them stronger emotions which are active. In either case reason is the blind tool of nature, and not an instrument wielded by man as a free agent. Reason (ratio) is that which Spinoza calls the second kind of knowledge. It is a knowledge of the rules of the game of Nature. It is not confused or false knowledge, nor is it even true knowledge of an isolated single fact. It is the knowledge of the common notions and the adequate ideas of the properties of things and of the true deductions from these common notions (Bk. XIV:2:138-140, 149). To act according to reason, however, does not imply freedom of the will. Reason itself is a part of nature, and it follows from the necessity of the attribute of thought. When Spinoza urges man to act according to reason, then, unlike all his predecessors who had similarly used this phraseology in prescribing human conduct, he does not mean thereby an exhortation to man to exercise his free will; with him it is only an exhortation to man to acquire the proper kind of knowledge upon which reason is nurtured, so that it may grow in strength and assert itself in its full power when called into action. At the challenge of the emotions reason springs into action in the same manner as our eyelids close at the sudden approach of danger to our eyes. In this sense indeed knowledge is virtue, and a life according to virtue will be a life according to reason - a kind of reason which follows by necessity from one's true knowledge. How reason works for the well-being of man against the assaults of his own emotions is explained by Spinoza in what he calls the "Dictates of Reason" (4P18n, ff.).
From Susanne
K. Langer's "Philosophy
in a New Key", Page 227-8—Aesthetics,
Artistic
Import
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, which are the physical sources of emotion; but it really all comes to the same thing. The page 228 upshot of all these speculations and researches is, that there are certain aspects of the so-called "inner life"—physical or mental—which have formal properties similar to those of music—patterns of motion and rest, of tension and release, of agreement and disagreement, preparation, fulfillment, excitation, sudden change, etc.
From Susanne
K. Langer's "Philosophy
in a New Key", Page 258—Aesthetic
Emotion, Artistic
Import
Anyone who has worked in more than one medium probably can testify to the sameness of the "aesthetic emotion" accompanying creation in the various arts. But I suspect that this page 259 characteristic excitement, so closely wedded to original conception and inner vision, is not the source, but the effect, of artistic labor, the personal emotive experience of revelation, insight, mental power, which an adventure in "implicit understanding" inspires. It has often been stated that it is the same emotion which overtakes a mathematician as he constructs a convincing and elegant proof; and this is the beatitude which Spinoza, who knew it well, called "the intellectual love of G-D." Something like it is begotten in appreciation of art, too, though not nearly in the same measure as in producing; but the fact that the difference is one of degree makes it plausible that the emotion springs from the one activity which the artist and the beholder share in unequal parts—the comprehension of an unspoken {symbolized} idea. {Continued.}
From Susanne K. Langer's "Philosophy in a New Key", Page 273-4—Hypothesis.
We find sense-evidence a very gratifying conclusion to
the process of thought. Our standards
of rationality are the same as Euclid's or Aristotle's—generality,
consistency, coherence,
systematic inclusion of all possible cases, economy
and elegance in demonstration—but our ideal
of science makes one further demand: the
demand of what has been called "maximal
interpretability {clear
and distinct}."
This means that as many propositions as possible shall
be applicable to observable fact. The
systems of thought that seem to us to represent "knowledge"
are those which were designed as {working}
hypotheses, i.e. designed with reference to experience and intended
to meet certain tests: at definite
points their implications must yield propositions which express
discoverable facts {cash
value}. If and
only if these crucial propositions do correspond to facts,
a hypothesis is ranked as "truth," its premises
as "natural laws."
From Will
Durant's "Story
of Philosophy"; Washington Square Press; 18th Printing, 1965;
Page 367—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": here
is the integration of matter,—the aggregation of separate items into masses
and groups and wholes. Such integration
of course involves a lessening of {independent}
motion in the parts {such
as stopping at red lights or heart
valves},
as the growing power of the state lessens the freedom
of the individual; but at the same time it gives to the parts an {organic}
interdependence, a
protective tissue of relationships, which
constitute "coherence" and promote corporate survival {perpetuation}.
{Daniel
Webster}
From Robert
A. Caro's "Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate",
Pgs. 4-6;
Vintage ISBN: 0394720954;
2002; Vintage Books; A Division of Random
House, Inc; New York—One
World, One State, Spinoza's
Religion.
page 4 —for the fate of the young nation might hang on that reply. In the South, chafing under the domination of the North and East, there was a new word abroad—secession—and the South's leading spokesman, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, had, although he was Vice President of the United States, proposed a step that would go a long way toward shattering the Union: that any state unwilling to abide by a law enacted by the national government page 5 could nullify it within its borders. In an earlier Senate speech that January of 1830, the South, through the South Carolina Senator Robert Y. Hayne, had proposed that the West should join the South in an alliance that could have the most serious implications for the future of the Union. The specific issue Hayne raised was the price of public lands in the West: the West wanted the price kept low to attract settlers from the East and encourage development; the East wanted the price kept high so its people would stay home, and continue to provide cheap labor for northern factories. The East, whose policies had so long ground down the South, was now, Hayne said, trying to do the same thing to the West, and the West should unite with the South against it. And the Senator raised broader issues as well. Why should one section be taxed to construct a public improvement in another? "What interest has South Carolina in a canal in Ohio?" And what if Ohio didn't want it? Why should the national government decide such issues? The sovereignty of the individual states—their rights, their freedom—was being trampled. The reaction of many western senators to Hayne's proposal of an alliance had been ominously favorable; Missouri's Thomas Hart Benton asked the South to "stretch forth" a "protecting arm" against the East. And to Webster's first speech in response, Hayne—slight, slender, and aristocratic in bearing although dressed in a "coarse homespun suit that he had substituted for the hated broadcloth manufactured in the North" had passionately attacked the North's "meddling statesmen" and abolitionists, and had defended slavery, states' rights, and nullification in arguments that were considered so unanswerable that the "white, triumphant face" of a smiling Calhoun, presiding over the Senate as Vice President, and the toasts in Washington taverns to Hayne, to the South, and to nullification reflected the general feeling that the South had won. And then two days later, on the 26th, Senator Webster of Massachusetts, with his dark, craggy face, jet-black hair, and jutting black eyebrows—"Black Dan" Webster, with his deep booming voice that "could shake the world," Webster, Emerson's "great cannon loaded to the lips" rose, in blue coat with bright brass buttons, buff waistcoat, and white cravat, rose to answer, and, as he spoke, the smile faded from Calhoun's face.
He stood erect as he spoke, his left hand resting on his desk, his voice filling the Chamber, and, one by one, he examined and demolished Hayne's arguments. The claim that a state could decide constitutional questions? 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 .... This government came from the people, and is responsible to them." "He asks me, 'What interest has South Carolina in a canal to the Ohio?' The answer to that question expounds the whole diversity of sentiment between that gentleman and me .... According to his doctrine, she has no interest in it. According to his doctrine, Ohio is one country, and South Carolina is another country .... I, sir, take a different view of the whole matter. I look upon Ohio and South Carolina to be parts of one whole—parts {organic interdependence of parts} of the same country—and that country page 6 is my country .... I come here not to consider that I will do this for one distinct part of it, and that for another, but.., to legislate for the whole." And finally Webster turned to a higher idea: the idea—in and of itself—of Union, permanent and enduring. The concept was, as one historian would note, "still something of a novelty in 1830 ...... Liberty was supposed to depend more on the rights of states than on the powers of the general government." But to Webster, the ideas were not two ideas but one.
When my eyes shall be turned for the last time on the meridian sun, I hope I may see him shining brightly upon my united, free and happy Country. I hope I shall not live to see his beams falling upon the dispersed fragments of the structure of this once glorious Union. I hope that I may not see the flag of my Country, with its stars separated or obliterated, torn by commotion, smoking with the blood of civil war. I hope I may not see the standard raised of separate State rights, star against star, and stripe against stripe; but that the flag of the Union may keep its stars and its stripes corded and bound together in indissoluble ties. I hope I shall not see written, as its motto, first Liberty, and then Union. I hope I shall see no such delusion and deluded motto on the flag of that Country. I hope to see spread all over it, blazoned in letters of light, and proudly floating over Land and Sea that other sentiment, dear to my heart, "Union and Liberty, now and for ever, one and inseparable!"
From Matt
Ridley's "The Origins of Virtue", Pgs. 132 & 133;
Penguin Books; ISBN: 0140264450;
1996 — Altruism
page 132 ... In other words, just as biology shook off its woolly collectivism and donned the hair shirt of individualism, economics has begun to go the other way: to try to explain why people do things that are against their selfish interests {salmon}. Hampshire:139b, 180[1a]
[2] The most successful of those attempts is that
by Robert Frank an economist.
His is a theory of why we have emotions {moral
sentiments},
founded in a combination of the new cynical biology
and the less pecuniary economics. It
may seem odd that a man who has written a textbook
on microeconomics should steal in where psychologists
have floundered, and explain
the function of emotion. But that is exactly the point
he makes. Human motives are the
stuff of economics, whether they are rational and material or not.
[3] Robert Trivets,
who brought gene-centered cynicism to much of biology,
once wrote: 'Models that attempt to explain altruistic
behavior in terms of natural selection are
models designed to take the altruism out of altruism.'
This is an old idea for social sciences, as familiar
to the Glasgow philosophers of the eighteenth century as to modern economists
such as Amartya Sen: if you are nice to people because
it makes you feel better, then
your compassion is selfish, not selfless.
Likewise, in the world of biology, an ant
slaves away celibate on behalf of its sisters not out of the goodness of
its little heart (an organ it
does not possess in a form that we would recognize),
but out of the selfishness
of its genes.
A vampire bat feeds its neighbour for sound, ultimately
selfish reasons. Even baboons
that repay social favours are being prudent rather than kind.
What passes for virtue, said Michael Ghiselin, is
a form of expediency. (Christians
should pause before they feel superior: they
teach that you should practice virtue to get to heaven - a pretty big bribe
to appeal to their selfishness.)
[4] The key to
understanding Robert
Frank's theory of the emotions is
to keep in mind this distinction between superficial irrationality and
ultimate good sense. Frank began
his seminal book, Passions
within Reason, page
133 with a description
of a bloody massacre by some Hatfields of some McCoys.
The murderers were being irrational and self-defeating
in their act of quite unnecessary revenge, which in turn led to revenge
on them. Any rational
person would not pursue a feud, any
more than he would let guilt or shame prevent him from stealing a friend's
wallet. {Moral
sentiments} are profoundly irrational forces, Frank argues, that
cannot be explained by material self-interest {?}.
Yet they have evolved, like everything else in human
nature, for a purpose {survival}.
[5] In the same
way, ants that rear their sisters
rather than their daughters seem superficially irrational,
or for that matter mice that rear daughters rather
than looking after themselves are apparently ignoring material self-interest.
Yet probe beneath the surface of the individual to
its genes and all becomes clear. The
ants and the mice are selflessly serving the material
interests of selfish genes. In the same way, Frank
argues that human beings who let {moral
sentiment} rather
than rationality govern their lives may be making immediate sacrifices,
but in the long term are making choices
that benefit their well-being. Notice
that I am not using the word emotion
here to mean 'affect':
hysterical or paranoid people may seem highly irrational,
but they are in the grip of an affect, rather than
a specific emotion. Moral
sentiments, as Frank (and Adam
Smith before him) calls the emotions, are problem-solving devices
designed to make highly social creatures effective
at using social relations to their genes' long-term
advantage. They are a way of
settling the conflict between
short-term expediency and long-term prudence in favour of the latter. {Uzgalis
- Hobbes}
From Will
and Ariel Durant's "The
Story of Civilization: Part II", Chapter XXIX; Pages 647-648—
Happiness:
The real function of philosophy, however, is not to explain the world, since the part can never explain the whole, but to guide us in our quest of {enlightened} happiness {—that which tends to our perpetuation}. "That which we have in view is not a set of systems and vain opinions, but much rather a life exempt from every kind of disquietude {loss of peace-of-mind}." Over the entrance to the garden of Epicurus was the inviting legend: "Guest, thou shalt be happy here, for here happiness is esteemed the highest good.'' Virtue, in this philosophy, is not an end in itself, it is only an indispensable means to a happy life. "It is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently, honorably, and justly; nor to live prudently, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly."' The only certain propositions in philosophy are that pleasure is good, and that pain is bad. Sensual pleasures are in themselves legitimate, and wisdom will find some room for them; since, however, they may have evil effects, they need such discriminating pursuit as only intelligence can give.
When, therefore, we say that pleasure is the chief good we are not speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man, or those that lie in sensual enjoyment ... but we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and of the soul from disturbance. For it is not continued drinkings and revels, or the enjoyment of female society, or feasts of fish or other expensive foods, that make life pleasant, but such sober contemplation as examines the reasons for choice and avoidance, and puts to flight the vain opinions from which arises most of the confusion that troubles the soul."
page 648
In the end, then, understanding
is not only the highest virtue,
it is also the highest happiness, for it avails more
than any other faculty in us to avoid pain and grief.
Wisdom is the only liberator:
it frees us from bondage to the passions, from fear
of the gods, and from dread of death; it
teaches us how to bear misfortune, and how to derive a deep and lasting
pleasure from the simple goods of life and the quiet pleasures of the mind.
Death is not so frightful when we view it intelligently;
the suffering it involves may be briefer and slighter
than that which we have borne time and again during our lives;
it is our foolish fancies of what death may bring
that lend to it so much of its terror. And
consider how little is needed to a wise content—fresh
air, the cheapest foods, a modest
shelter, a bed, a few books, and a friend. "Everything natural is
easily procured, and only the useless is costly."
We should not fret our lives out in realizing every
desire that comes into our heads: "Desires
may be ignored when our failure to accomplish them will not really cause
us pain."' Even love, marriage,
and parentage are unnecessary {sic};
they bring us fitful pleasures, but perennial grief."
To accustom ourselves
to plain living and simple ways is an almost
certain road to health. The wise
man does not burn with ambition or lust for fame; he does not envy the
good fortune of his enemies, nor even of his friends;
he avoids the fevered competition of the city and
the turmoil of political strife; he
seeks the calm of the countryside, and
finds the surest and deepest happiness in tranquillity of body and mind.
Because he controls his appetites, lives
without pretense, and puts aside all fears, the natural "sweetness
of life" (hedone) rewards him with the greatest of all goods,
which is peace.
Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian," Library of Congress: 57-10982, p.13.
The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice / Then there is another very curious form of moral argument, which is this: They say that the existence of God is required in order to bring justice into the world. In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to redress the balance of life here on earth. So they say that there must be a God, and there must be heaven and hell in order that in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say, "After all, I know only this world. l do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also." Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue, "The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance." You would say, "Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment"; and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say, "Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice, and so far as that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a moral argument against deity and not in favor of one." Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to page 14 you about are not what really moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason.
Then I think that the
next most powerful reason is the wish for safety,
a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who
will look after you. That plays
a very profound part in influencing people's desire
for a belief in God {for
the Peace-of-Mind it may achieve; see
Mark Twain's "Little Story."}.
Ernest
Nagel, "The Case for Atheism," reprinted in Klemke "Philosophy";
ISBN: 0312084781;
pp.
274ff.—Religion.
page 282 Atheists cannot build their moral outlook on foundations up on which so many men conduct their lives. In particular, atheism cannot offer the incentives to conduct and the consolations for misfortune which theistic religions ply to their adherents. It can offer no hope of personal immortality, no threats of Divine chastisement, no promise of eventual recompense for injustices suffered, no blueprints to sure salvation {Mark Twain's "Little Story"}. For on its view of the place of man in nature, human excellence and human dignity must be achieved within a finite life-span, or not at all, so that the rewards of moral endeavor must come from the quality of civilized {enlightened} living, and not from some source of disbursement that dwells outside of time {but is imminent, in-dwelling}. Accordingly, atheistic moral relection page 283 at its best does not culminate in a quiescent ideal of human perfection, but is a vigorous call to intelligent activity—activity for the sake of realizing human potentialities and for eliminating whatever {idolatry} stands in the way of such realization. . . .
End.