On Holidays, Holy Days, Days, and Time
---
We find purpose in The Holidays because they seem to represent in an extraordinary way the value of the normal days. They serve them this way, remind us of what we are even then, and now, and of what is good always...
Be not mistaken: the holidays did not begin recently, and they never end.
Every day serves the good. Everyday should remind us of what we are. Everyday is a day to value living, being, and the great opportunity of our limits, and changing.
Be not deceived.
Everyday is hopeful for valuing the finite, good time that we yet have... through and despite all of our limited and glorious capacities.
A Happy new year to all! And a happy today -- always, and now.
-Xavier Veliz
31 Dec 2013
Tuesday, 31 December 2013
Friday, 29 November 2013
Discussion Twelve: thoughts on Univerals & Particulars
Objectives:
- Share what you think.
- Describe how Plato & Socrates are right or wrong to claim that universals are real.
- State if Hume is right to say that there is no such thing as red, but only things colored red.
Well,
my reading is lagging behind this week, but I definitely want to get
in on the conversation before the last minute, even if my thoughts
and understandings this time around are less informed than usual.
Both/And
seems to be something lacking in a lot of these perspectives we've
been studying, and thus far, it seems so here as well. Socrates seems
rather fixed on the concept of a universal being in a seeming many
forms, among many possible forms, leaving out the subjective for a
grand unitive objective being of sorts. I've not gathered from our
commentary and notes, lectures and readings so far that Hume is as
narrow-focused. That particulars exist, I am wont to agree: if not
for particulars, or such seeming limited forms of Socrates universal
existence, by what avenue might we manifest growth, and come to
awareness of being - of reality, by which we can discover his
universal? I'm still catching up, but cannot think now how that'd be
possible.
My
take, for what little it may be worth in light of such greatness, is
that of both particulars and categories being real, or of a real
universal existence that cannot and does not diminish the real,
finite particular. I extend this perspective into my religious belief,
concerning the vastness of God, and the irreducible uniqueness of
man. There need be no conflict - both can exist and be true.
As
to the issue of the color red, without contriving our fish-scale
lipstick and beetle-carapace pigments, a rainbow would certainly be
odd without red. In the spectrum of light, a quality exists
independent of our naming conventions of it that we relate to
similarity quality in other objects as red, that in this form is not
dependent on the object which seems to bear such a quality. Light
exists, so red exists. As for which naming convention best represents
that reality, that may vary without changing the thing at all.
In
other areas, we might ask if lumens exist, or only individual lights,
if notes on a scale exist, or degrees of heat, or even if the
measures we recognize for time reckoning exist. As concisely as possible, my take is that, if they did not exist on at least some
relateable level as object of thought, we could not even know them to
speak of them.
Where
we recognize connectedness in being, we cannot do so without seeing
uniqueness first, or there'd be no distinctions to relate. Where we
may accept particularity amongst unique beings, there must first and
always exist in them that common element of -being- on whatever
level, that by this they can be united and relate.
Back
to learning. Always.
Thursday, 28 November 2013
Thanksgiving 2013
Today America is HAPPY & THANKFUL for its many blessings.
We ABANDON all of our contrived and compulsively accustomed ideals, to accept what really matters in life.
If any are yet unsure what exactly that means:
what really matters is lives, the people around you.
Turkey does not matter.
Presentation does not matter.
Ceremony is of no consequence at all.
PEOPLE are what matter, first and last! Be thankful for them; for those who may yet give, for those who may yet receive.
Be Aware, Be Thankful. Be Well, my friends.
Happy Thanksgiving.
We ABANDON all of our contrived and compulsively accustomed ideals, to accept what really matters in life.
If any are yet unsure what exactly that means:
what really matters is lives, the people around you.
Turkey does not matter.
Presentation does not matter.
Ceremony is of no consequence at all.
PEOPLE are what matter, first and last! Be thankful for them; for those who may yet give, for those who may yet receive.
Be Aware, Be Thankful. Be Well, my friends.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
-Our Broken Clocks-
26 Nov 2013
---
Our broken clocks today, are
Digital Blank Screens,
Satisfied to never be wrong,
rather than possibly being right
Only Twice a Day.
...
...
Risk Love.
---
Our broken clocks today, are
Digital Blank Screens,
Satisfied to never be wrong,
rather than possibly being right
Only Twice a Day.
...
...
Risk Love.
Thursday, 21 November 2013
Theories of Truth - Discussion Eleven
Discussion # 11: Theories of Truth
Q1: What do you think of the different theories of truth?
Q1a: Thoughts on Correspondence Theory-
A1a: Correspondence Truth Theory is bare-bones objective. I say that, because it is severely limited to recognize truth only in those opinions whose objects and relations can be verified to actually exist. For those that can, it hits, but I can't see any healthy person living by it, only having beliefs or judgments that are knowably certain, where most beliefs are not usually scrutinized in this way.Q1b: Thoughts on Coherence Theory-
A1b: My preferred theory, Correspondence does relate to where we each are in life and, when applied honestly and not as a debatorial dismissal of responsibility, it holds us all personally accountable to discover greater truth in our experiences, and to dismiss and reject those that we find not to be consistent with the world at large. The uniquely important issue would be then to recognize this is not for debate or arbitrary judgment, but for awareness and personal reflection and developing.Q1c: Thoughts on Pragmatic Theory-
A1c: That truth may be knowable, as a progressive accordance of ideas with their factuality -and- utility in the world and in our lived, seems to be the premise of the Pragmatic Theory. As our goals shift with our circumstances, the only thing redeeming this view for me is the comfort of not having to know or scrutinize every detail of an idea to accept it as true, for so long as circumstances and attention last.Q2: Is Russell right - is there really one set version of "The Truth" (Objective)?
A2: Russell declares there is one set version of fact, of objects, and that the truth of beliefs & judgments is determined by how well they match that one, knowable reality, inasmuch as it can be known. It is useful to a point, but can become burdensome when things cannot be tested, or if they are tested wrongly, because of a faulty judgment about a beliefs objects or facts.Q3: Should we side with Bradley or James and adopt a more "flexible" understanding of "the truth" (Subjective)?
A3: Any port in a storm! I've met more people than I care to that believe themselves to be Providence itself -- a twisted form of pragmatism, maybe, without the consciousness due to it.My Preference:
I most appreciate the Coherence Theory, where we each develop inter-related thoughts, judgments, and opinions on things based on our own awareness of life, and strive to refine it all as best we can, allowing for gradients of truth to be known and to live in us as we change with the hour and seasons.Saturday, 16 November 2013
Reaction Paper #2 – John Stuart Mill
Reaction Paper #2 – John Stuart Mill
(“On Liberty” 1859, “System of Logic” (excerpt) 1843)
Objectives:
Describe why you most liked the philosophy of John Mill
Evaluate Mill
Be creative, skilled, and fresh
2-3 pages
Surprise
From our lecture and online readings, it seemed that Mill had four points on why and how freedom of speech for all men is the most important of rights we may have. This first I do recall now and agree with, and it helps me remember why he was my favorite and most memorable author among our options. He spoke of the dignity of the human being, of the person voicing his views and being heard as a great and necessary thing, such that, if we do not voice our views, or are denied our voice, a greater injustice is done – essentially diminishing the value of a man and denying his ability to think-in and benefit his society, while-he-yet-lives, as if he did not!
That having been before committing to my choice of Mill, I can admit two things. Firstly, I am not at all used to learning so many names and terms as quickly as I have in this course, and I am, and most always have been rather bad with names. That to this: I mentally combined Mill with Hick when I chose to write on who-I-thought-was Mill. Secondly, I had read only in a cursory fashion Mill's 'On Liberty' essay in our text a few weeks back, relying mainly on our online lecture and summary materials for the assignments. While I apprehended nothing I'd disagree with, and generally understood the ideas he presented, I was wrong to say Mill's was at all a quiet voice amongst the political philosophers we read that week. A CLEAR voice may have been more accurate. Having now carefully and patiently waded through his essay, his voice resonates clear and direct – if exceedingly profound – as compared to more contemporary material. I can say now that the man here speaks with a voice both powerful and convicted. John Mill's “On Liberty” is at once both shaming for how far we have let our democratic ideas and efforts slip away from us, and a call to conscience, to redemption, of our dignity and society, from an apathy and corruption we have allowed ourselves to degenerate into.
Reaction Paper #2 – John Stuart Mill, cont'd
John Mill brings a prophetic vision to politics that, though I have never honestly looked for, I was truly shocked to find even existed. His work presents a razor-sharp awareness of how we as a society have developed since the ages of “Spartans and Helots, planters and Negroes, princes and subjects, nobles and roturiers”, of what these class divides meant in his day, of our collective sensibilities as human beings to fall toward an outsourcing of private contemplation of the worth of things, and of our old habits of avoiding the considering and remembering (re-membering) of what ideas mean, and of forgetting the values of all we pretend we still know.
Mill demonstrates an awareness of how we – both in his day, in ages past, and even today – tend to degenerate into old habits of thoughtlessness, ignorance, and neglect. Given this, Mill traces our political development from early-on. He describes the rise and problems of the iron-ruling Monarchical form of government popular in Europe at the time. He follows with the gradual and necessarily-sought solutions to tyrrany attempted by representative leadership, bodies, constitutional contracts, and eventually term-limits to safeguard the rights of the governed. The cycle of neglect continues, as we again outsource the proper defense of our rights to others with more power and, ultimately, less of an interest in protecting against combative authoritarian rule by a hostile few, or a one.
As the ruled group emerges with ever more power, Mill cautions us against what he calls the “tyranny of the majority”, where the self governance of the many and of individuals can just as easily turn into a tyranny by the will of the many, or only the most vocal party's opinions, against the will of the one. He recommends that all men be left to their own volition with matters pertaining to their person alone, that none should be imposed upon for any reason save to protect others against harm.
Our own sloth, mindlessly culturally promulgated today by the mantra of the modern age: “Don't Make Me Think!” and the handed-on and celebrated aesthetic of just working hard and “minding one's own business, and not harming anybody or calling any attention to myself” has permitted and encouraged us to compromise on what it means to be men (and women, inclusively): to protect what good there is in the world, and to cultivate these goods and virtues, for the betterment and realizing of ourselves and of all. If we include not other's opinions, what right have we – so uninformed and culturally diminished – not to? to go our own road alone? We do not know the value of the things we say or do because we do not question them often enough to even remember them now! All opinions must be welcome, as Mill says.
Reaction Paper #2 – John Stuart Mill, cont'd
In “On Liberty”, Mill presents what to me is a very heartening incidence of, what seemed to him, the only field upon which the battle of the matter of men successfully opposing government has been decided – religion. Here, he shares, few have stood successfully to defend the right of all men to believe as they would, with no need to justify their beliefs to others or the state. I can but wonder if he would hold that same view now a century and a half later, when the formed ideologies of mandate religious pluralism and political correctness/censorship so often verge on imposing against the individual's right to conscionably deny mandate provisions of the state with regard to life, fertility, abortion, immigration, charity, and the state of human dignity.
For the free will of men, or the possibility of, he presents what is alternately close to elements of indeterministic compatiblism of free will, and to soft determinism, where most possibilities beyond the individual are imposed him, but where his personal decision as to what he will be and think are free for him to decide upon. His writing here on the matter of our fate or freedom is again clear, if far less profound and complex than his famous essay from before, so much so that for a moment one could easily forget (as I did!) that the two were penned by the same hand and mind! My taste on the subject, and on most of such quality tends to less decided-upon resolutions than Mill presents us with, which leads me to greatly favor Richard Taylor's take on the subject instead. While Mill remains very clear about his take on free will, and is consistently resolute that man may determine his way, if not his environment, he is yet too closed-in and inclusive on the subject, and does not seem receptive to the mystery and undecidedness of imperfect life and development – something I am very sensitive about, and which Taylor acknowledges in not over-reaching his arguments to be as all-inclusive as Mill about.
Generally, Mill's view is one where the least governance of men is best. I tend to agree. We cannot economically or morally afford to have a cop on every corner, but a man or woman striving to know, love, and share the rightness in every home with the least amount of societal imposition into their lives is much preferable.
The distinction Mill presents between the concept of man and his society being at one time "self-governing", and at a later becoming governed "each by all the rest", and not just a ruler" impressed me. The rhetoric of our American Democratic ideals - personal freedom, rule of the governed, etc - gets regurgitated so often back to us with no real revelation or explanation, that such a thing as he commented on 150 years ago almost seems as a foreknowledge of what would become of democracy today.
(“On Liberty” 1859, “System of Logic” (excerpt) 1843)
Objectives:
Describe why you most liked the philosophy of John Mill
Evaluate Mill
Be creative, skilled, and fresh
2-3 pages
Surprise
From our lecture and online readings, it seemed that Mill had four points on why and how freedom of speech for all men is the most important of rights we may have. This first I do recall now and agree with, and it helps me remember why he was my favorite and most memorable author among our options. He spoke of the dignity of the human being, of the person voicing his views and being heard as a great and necessary thing, such that, if we do not voice our views, or are denied our voice, a greater injustice is done – essentially diminishing the value of a man and denying his ability to think-in and benefit his society, while-he-yet-lives, as if he did not!
That having been before committing to my choice of Mill, I can admit two things. Firstly, I am not at all used to learning so many names and terms as quickly as I have in this course, and I am, and most always have been rather bad with names. That to this: I mentally combined Mill with Hick when I chose to write on who-I-thought-was Mill. Secondly, I had read only in a cursory fashion Mill's 'On Liberty' essay in our text a few weeks back, relying mainly on our online lecture and summary materials for the assignments. While I apprehended nothing I'd disagree with, and generally understood the ideas he presented, I was wrong to say Mill's was at all a quiet voice amongst the political philosophers we read that week. A CLEAR voice may have been more accurate. Having now carefully and patiently waded through his essay, his voice resonates clear and direct – if exceedingly profound – as compared to more contemporary material. I can say now that the man here speaks with a voice both powerful and convicted. John Mill's “On Liberty” is at once both shaming for how far we have let our democratic ideas and efforts slip away from us, and a call to conscience, to redemption, of our dignity and society, from an apathy and corruption we have allowed ourselves to degenerate into.
Reaction Paper #2 – John Stuart Mill, cont'd
John Mill brings a prophetic vision to politics that, though I have never honestly looked for, I was truly shocked to find even existed. His work presents a razor-sharp awareness of how we as a society have developed since the ages of “Spartans and Helots, planters and Negroes, princes and subjects, nobles and roturiers”, of what these class divides meant in his day, of our collective sensibilities as human beings to fall toward an outsourcing of private contemplation of the worth of things, and of our old habits of avoiding the considering and remembering (re-membering) of what ideas mean, and of forgetting the values of all we pretend we still know.
Mill demonstrates an awareness of how we – both in his day, in ages past, and even today – tend to degenerate into old habits of thoughtlessness, ignorance, and neglect. Given this, Mill traces our political development from early-on. He describes the rise and problems of the iron-ruling Monarchical form of government popular in Europe at the time. He follows with the gradual and necessarily-sought solutions to tyrrany attempted by representative leadership, bodies, constitutional contracts, and eventually term-limits to safeguard the rights of the governed. The cycle of neglect continues, as we again outsource the proper defense of our rights to others with more power and, ultimately, less of an interest in protecting against combative authoritarian rule by a hostile few, or a one.
As the ruled group emerges with ever more power, Mill cautions us against what he calls the “tyranny of the majority”, where the self governance of the many and of individuals can just as easily turn into a tyranny by the will of the many, or only the most vocal party's opinions, against the will of the one. He recommends that all men be left to their own volition with matters pertaining to their person alone, that none should be imposed upon for any reason save to protect others against harm.
Our own sloth, mindlessly culturally promulgated today by the mantra of the modern age: “Don't Make Me Think!” and the handed-on and celebrated aesthetic of just working hard and “minding one's own business, and not harming anybody or calling any attention to myself” has permitted and encouraged us to compromise on what it means to be men (and women, inclusively): to protect what good there is in the world, and to cultivate these goods and virtues, for the betterment and realizing of ourselves and of all. If we include not other's opinions, what right have we – so uninformed and culturally diminished – not to? to go our own road alone? We do not know the value of the things we say or do because we do not question them often enough to even remember them now! All opinions must be welcome, as Mill says.
Reaction Paper #2 – John Stuart Mill, cont'd
In “On Liberty”, Mill presents what to me is a very heartening incidence of, what seemed to him, the only field upon which the battle of the matter of men successfully opposing government has been decided – religion. Here, he shares, few have stood successfully to defend the right of all men to believe as they would, with no need to justify their beliefs to others or the state. I can but wonder if he would hold that same view now a century and a half later, when the formed ideologies of mandate religious pluralism and political correctness/censorship so often verge on imposing against the individual's right to conscionably deny mandate provisions of the state with regard to life, fertility, abortion, immigration, charity, and the state of human dignity.
For the free will of men, or the possibility of, he presents what is alternately close to elements of indeterministic compatiblism of free will, and to soft determinism, where most possibilities beyond the individual are imposed him, but where his personal decision as to what he will be and think are free for him to decide upon. His writing here on the matter of our fate or freedom is again clear, if far less profound and complex than his famous essay from before, so much so that for a moment one could easily forget (as I did!) that the two were penned by the same hand and mind! My taste on the subject, and on most of such quality tends to less decided-upon resolutions than Mill presents us with, which leads me to greatly favor Richard Taylor's take on the subject instead. While Mill remains very clear about his take on free will, and is consistently resolute that man may determine his way, if not his environment, he is yet too closed-in and inclusive on the subject, and does not seem receptive to the mystery and undecidedness of imperfect life and development – something I am very sensitive about, and which Taylor acknowledges in not over-reaching his arguments to be as all-inclusive as Mill about.
Generally, Mill's view is one where the least governance of men is best. I tend to agree. We cannot economically or morally afford to have a cop on every corner, but a man or woman striving to know, love, and share the rightness in every home with the least amount of societal imposition into their lives is much preferable.
The distinction Mill presents between the concept of man and his society being at one time "self-governing", and at a later becoming governed "each by all the rest", and not just a ruler" impressed me. The rhetoric of our American Democratic ideals - personal freedom, rule of the governed, etc - gets regurgitated so often back to us with no real revelation or explanation, that such a thing as he commented on 150 years ago almost seems as a foreknowledge of what would become of democracy today.
prioritizing study, of truth & error
Discussion Eleven: Theories of Truth
16 November 2013
"prioritizing study, of truth & error"
I learned with Descartes, maybe through Kant and Locke, that the study of error threatens our time be wasted, our distraction or confusion, and some possible entertainment, depending on tastes. It is not very useful. Error abounds in the world; it is the height of vanity to pretend we can exhaust in study the bloating abyss of it.
This, I know is true.
Now, where I have always loved and cherished wisdom even from such as children or fools, even if I hear some great man saying something foolish, or some reknown scholar or war-hero muttering some blithe insanity and being widely lauded for it, I may thankfully turn a deaf ear to them, and rather hear, participate, and learn from attending to the true-song of a morning-lark, or the constant murmur of evening traffic sounds, singing to me of the unity and perpetuity of creation.
Error -- from any source -- is error, and inferior to truth. We mustn't entertain it as much when recognized but with our spare resources, mindful of the real need to do so to be inclusive of all opinions but, even then, also of our limitations.
Have a good weekend and week ahead, everyone.
-----
-----
16 November 2013
"prioritizing study, of truth & error"
I learned with Descartes, maybe through Kant and Locke, that the study of error threatens our time be wasted, our distraction or confusion, and some possible entertainment, depending on tastes. It is not very useful. Error abounds in the world; it is the height of vanity to pretend we can exhaust in study the bloating abyss of it.
This, I know is true.
Now, where I have always loved and cherished wisdom even from such as children or fools, even if I hear some great man saying something foolish, or some reknown scholar or war-hero muttering some blithe insanity and being widely lauded for it, I may thankfully turn a deaf ear to them, and rather hear, participate, and learn from attending to the true-song of a morning-lark, or the constant murmur of evening traffic sounds, singing to me of the unity and perpetuity of creation.
Error -- from any source -- is error, and inferior to truth. We mustn't entertain it as much when recognized but with our spare resources, mindful of the real need to do so to be inclusive of all opinions but, even then, also of our limitations.
Have a good weekend and week ahead, everyone.
-----
-----
Saturday, 9 November 2013
Reaction Paper # 1 – John Hick (The Problem of Evil)
Reaction Paper # 1 – John Hick
Premise:
I
agree with everything Hick presents in our materials. Thus my “How
I agree?” is "Completely". As to Why I agree: I present
here the seven main points Hick makes in our course-work as I
understand them, following each with my thoughts and reasons as to
why I agree with them.
Reactions:
Hick
recognizes the Fact of Evil as a positive objection to belief in God,
but not to the reasonableness of his existing. This view posits an
impediment (if only a seeming one) without detracting or negating
anything.
He
suggests that analysis of the Judeo-Christian tradition necessarily
rules-out several inconsistent solutions to the problem of evil:
First, they rule-out the solution presented by Christian Science that evil is only but an illusion of the mind. This is easily refuted by all the strife, human tension and insecurity, and even martyrdoms and the Cross in the Bible.
Secondly, the Judeo-Christian tradition nullifies the supposed solution of the Boston "Personalist" School that God is but an imperfect deity who cannot manage to end evil but does the best he can, pulling-together the divided elements of himself from across and within the universe. The ancient Judeo-Christian tradition of an infinitely sovereign monotheistic God clearly refutes this.
Third and most-inclusive is the ruling out by Judeo-Christian tradition of ANY proposed solution to the problem of evil that sets Evil as coordinate-to or substantially coexisting with Good in the Universe. St Augustine and the early Church fathers speak against the possibility of evil existing as anything but the parasitic - misuse, misappropriation-of, or corruption or distortion of Good. We see this as early as the Creation narratives, with the fall from grace of Satan, created Lucifer - the light-bringer.
I am compelled to agree with these being historical based on my knowledge of these traditions.
First, they rule-out the solution presented by Christian Science that evil is only but an illusion of the mind. This is easily refuted by all the strife, human tension and insecurity, and even martyrdoms and the Cross in the Bible.
Secondly, the Judeo-Christian tradition nullifies the supposed solution of the Boston "Personalist" School that God is but an imperfect deity who cannot manage to end evil but does the best he can, pulling-together the divided elements of himself from across and within the universe. The ancient Judeo-Christian tradition of an infinitely sovereign monotheistic God clearly refutes this.
Third and most-inclusive is the ruling out by Judeo-Christian tradition of ANY proposed solution to the problem of evil that sets Evil as coordinate-to or substantially coexisting with Good in the Universe. St Augustine and the early Church fathers speak against the possibility of evil existing as anything but the parasitic - misuse, misappropriation-of, or corruption or distortion of Good. We see this as early as the Creation narratives, with the fall from grace of Satan, created Lucifer - the light-bringer.
I am compelled to agree with these being historical based on my knowledge of these traditions.
Reaction Paper # 1 – John Hick, cont'd
Reactions, continued:
Highlighting
the Christian tradition and Moral Evil:
A. Moral Evil goes hand-in-hand with personhood, allowing free persons to choose their actions from greater and lesser-good options.
B. Creating persons without the possibility of moral evil is contradictory.
C. Only free, imperfect beings may choose without being compelled.
These points clarify the meaning of "person" as someone who may be free to choose, and clarify the meaning of "moral evil" as consistent lesser goods by degree, which I understand.
A. Moral Evil goes hand-in-hand with personhood, allowing free persons to choose their actions from greater and lesser-good options.
B. Creating persons without the possibility of moral evil is contradictory.
C. Only free, imperfect beings may choose without being compelled.
These points clarify the meaning of "person" as someone who may be free to choose, and clarify the meaning of "moral evil" as consistent lesser goods by degree, which I understand.
While
Theodicy cannot explain suffering from without man, it does show how
the Judeo-Christian tradition is incompatible with the Hedonist world
view. Change or growth are dynamic, and limited good means or Natural
Evils are conducive to this, as a setting for values.
I tend to agree with this because it is simple history. It does not over-reach, and allows for the neutrality of natural limited goods such as storms in death.
I tend to agree with this because it is simple history. It does not over-reach, and allows for the neutrality of natural limited goods such as storms in death.
Despite
the Skeptic view of God as necessarily the curator of perfection,
this view has never been compatible with Judeo-Christianity. As per
Ireneus and St Paul, the world is a stage for "Soul-Building",
for Creation-being-Created. The purposefulness of Life draws from the
value of limitations, necessitated by Natural Laws unaffected by a
jinn-god. As it is now, this world remains idyllic for growth, for
development. This limitation of natural goods, called natural or
non-moral evils, creates value for what does exist, setting a stage
where right or wrong acts may occur.
I'm
skeptical of Skepticism, and agree there is no conflict: Christian
history, and an imperfect world as a stage for rightness and growth
are consistent.
Regarding
an After-life, Perfection, or Greater Being After Death:
As rightness and folly can both lead to either strength and development, or toward a disintegration of character (fear, hopelessness, distrust, etc.). This life of imperfect and ever=ambivalent "soul-building" must somehow continue toward a completion.
Great Failures and Rises relate - none are guaranteed but changing. Having this resolve in the end is ALL there is, and consistent with growth-creation.
As rightness and folly can both lead to either strength and development, or toward a disintegration of character (fear, hopelessness, distrust, etc.). This life of imperfect and ever=ambivalent "soul-building" must somehow continue toward a completion.
Great Failures and Rises relate - none are guaranteed but changing. Having this resolve in the end is ALL there is, and consistent with growth-creation.
Reaction Paper # 1 – John Hick, cont'd
Reactions, continued:
On
the Judeo-Christian Tradition's Hope amidst Suffering and Evils:
In
these faiths, the focus on a development never-satiated in life
allows the necessary eschatology to look to an afterlife of
completion. Thus we are assured that the bumpy road we travel is
worth the effort, despite the struggles.
Part
Memento-Mori, part hopeful resolve... time is finite, and change a
constant, so we are assured in this that our fleeting moments have
value, and are worth valuing.
Hick’s Main Arguments against the Problem of Evil:
An All-loving and All-powerful creator God allows moral and natural evil to exist, while maintaining the qualities of being all-loving and all-powerful.
Natural
Evil seen rightly is natural goods existing in limited quality and
quantity, such as the division of labor, death, illness, and other
unavoidable events not caused by man, permitted for the express
purpose of allowing a value to things and actions amidst and because
of their finite means.
Moral
evil seen rightly is greater and lesser good choices we must all
decide upon. Less-benevolent choices are evil by comparison to
greater ones available, again, as an opportunity for right action.
As
to undoing moral evil, or the option of greater and lesser good
choices, this would nullify the potential for persons, who freely
choose how to act.
As
to undoing natural evil, or natural good in limited quality and
quantity, this would nullify the potential existence of everything
beyond free will.
In Closing:
I
am not the best interpreter of John Hick's philosophy on good and
evil. Far from it. Yet, given my limitations, I do what I can with
all the effort I can muster, trusting it is good to some degree. If
my work is judged poor and insufficient, then, it is as it is. Still
it has meaning. Still it has value. Whatever my work or I, or the
world may be worth, or judged to be worth, it is all just a
work-in-progress, toward its completion, and there is good in it.
Thursday, 7 November 2013
D9: On Free Will
Discussion Nine: On Free Will
Q:
Who do you think is right in this week's readings?
A: I think
Richard Taylor is most right this week. We do deliberate things for
ourselves, and we do and must make decisions all the time. If we do
not do these things, no outside influence does them for us! As we
cannot be reduced out of the equation of getting things done in our
lives, it is much easier to allow that determinism is wrong, than to
accept the possibility that our seeming decisions are illusionary.
Not opposing the idea of influence frees him from a defending a huge
mistake, as it is an obvious thing that we are influenced, and
leaving the door open to the possibility that he may be wrong, and
more importantly that the world and a man is far more mysterious than
we may allow frees him from having to defend hubris. While he does
not WIN, per-se, he cannot lose and, most importantly, he is
-relate-able-!
A: Holbach blithely teaches a fatalist determinism, from our text hardly seeming at all soft, suggesting that we are not free to choose anything, because we [our faculties] restrain our freedom. He does less than Mill with much, much more, but it just seems like so much mental gymnastics desperately and quite decoratively working to defend the position of moral unaccountability, while not being explicit about it.
A: Indeterminalist Compatibilism proposes that indeterminism & determinism may be compatible, and that while most things, mainly the external, are determined by causality, some personal or internal decisions may be freely made.
A: John Stuart Mill posits his views seemingly from the Compatibilist perspective (although many names are offered for his views). While we are subject to external influences, Mill argues that our internal motivations and tendencies are within our control. He's actually quite concise, especially in comparison to Holbach's flowery verbosity, and I am tempted to agree with his Necessitarianism/Soft-Determinism. He puts forth a really tight argument!
A: Indeterminalist Philosophical Libertarianism argues that choice can & should be free from external & internal psychological cause & effect. As I understand imperfection and the world, this is not practical or conducive to the process of growth.
A: Holbach blithely teaches a fatalist determinism, from our text hardly seeming at all soft, suggesting that we are not free to choose anything, because we [our faculties] restrain our freedom. He does less than Mill with much, much more, but it just seems like so much mental gymnastics desperately and quite decoratively working to defend the position of moral unaccountability, while not being explicit about it.
A: Indeterminalist Compatibilism proposes that indeterminism & determinism may be compatible, and that while most things, mainly the external, are determined by causality, some personal or internal decisions may be freely made.
A: John Stuart Mill posits his views seemingly from the Compatibilist perspective (although many names are offered for his views). While we are subject to external influences, Mill argues that our internal motivations and tendencies are within our control. He's actually quite concise, especially in comparison to Holbach's flowery verbosity, and I am tempted to agree with his Necessitarianism/Soft-Determinism. He puts forth a really tight argument!
A: Indeterminalist Philosophical Libertarianism argues that choice can & should be free from external & internal psychological cause & effect. As I understand imperfection and the world, this is not practical or conducive to the process of growth.
A: William James
professes indeterminism by a two-pronged refutal of determinism: 1.
We cannot predict actions perfectly from mere causes, and 2. that the
determinist consequence as-he-sees-it of moral unaccountability is
unacceptable.
A: Robert Kane
states that any belief in human free will necessitates an indwelling
immaterial soul not bound by the causal rules of the physical world.
Discussion Nine: Free Will, cont'd
Q: Is Holbach
correct?
A: Holbach is not correct. Reading (trudging) through his words, I could only think “Which Red is more Red: the Red that opposes Red, or that Red that is opposed by Red?”. Holbach divides a man's brain, motives, and thoughts from the man, attributing their functions to something else as external causes. Can they belong to another, if not the man? If they were to, would they first belong to another before them, and another, ad infinitum? A man's thoughts and motives, however informed, are -informed-, not controlled, or subverted. He says our motives and acts are limited by... our new motives and acts? In not so few words, Holbach says we get in the way of we, but then, “Who are the We?? Lots of SAT words, but not nearly enough sense, unless I really misunderstood him, which I own is possible. Pretty sure I am not alone in this.
A: Holbach is not correct. Reading (trudging) through his words, I could only think “Which Red is more Red: the Red that opposes Red, or that Red that is opposed by Red?”. Holbach divides a man's brain, motives, and thoughts from the man, attributing their functions to something else as external causes. Can they belong to another, if not the man? If they were to, would they first belong to another before them, and another, ad infinitum? A man's thoughts and motives, however informed, are -informed-, not controlled, or subverted. He says our motives and acts are limited by... our new motives and acts? In not so few words, Holbach says we get in the way of we, but then, “Who are the We?? Lots of SAT words, but not nearly enough sense, unless I really misunderstood him, which I own is possible. Pretty sure I am not alone in this.
Q: Is it
impossible to choose without being influenced?
A: Information is influence. It is not possible to live without being influenced, so it is not possible to choose without being influenced. We are intelligent animals, not merely instinctual. We learn, explicitly and implicitly (I'd argue mostly implicitly, even in organized systems), and all the information we learn may be thought of as influence. Where our choices are decisions between comparative values, influences inform our decisions, and that information we use to change our perception of the comparative worth of values we decide upon, given the circumstances in which we believe our decisions will take effect.
Q: What does it mean to be free?
A: I agree somewhat with Taylor in this, in that I believe freedom is not merely feeling you can decide who you are and what you do, or having the capacity to make these decisions, but that being free is actualizing, and enlivening these things into being, in our own irreducibly unique way. Freedom, then, is not an idea, or a capacity, but healthy and intentional living.
Q: Are people free?
A: We are free inasmuch as we conscionably act aright, to the degree our act is right.
To the degree and inasmuch as we do wrong, or withhold from doing that greatest right within our power -- be it by error, poor choice, or through compulsion -- we are more slave and subject than free, be it to a poorly-informed conscience or intellect within, or some dominating force without.
A: Information is influence. It is not possible to live without being influenced, so it is not possible to choose without being influenced. We are intelligent animals, not merely instinctual. We learn, explicitly and implicitly (I'd argue mostly implicitly, even in organized systems), and all the information we learn may be thought of as influence. Where our choices are decisions between comparative values, influences inform our decisions, and that information we use to change our perception of the comparative worth of values we decide upon, given the circumstances in which we believe our decisions will take effect.
Q: What does it mean to be free?
A: I agree somewhat with Taylor in this, in that I believe freedom is not merely feeling you can decide who you are and what you do, or having the capacity to make these decisions, but that being free is actualizing, and enlivening these things into being, in our own irreducibly unique way. Freedom, then, is not an idea, or a capacity, but healthy and intentional living.
Q: Are people free?
A: We are free inasmuch as we conscionably act aright, to the degree our act is right.
To the degree and inasmuch as we do wrong, or withhold from doing that greatest right within our power -- be it by error, poor choice, or through compulsion -- we are more slave and subject than free, be it to a poorly-informed conscience or intellect within, or some dominating force without.
Thursday, 31 October 2013
on Apologizing, and Forgiveness, 31 Oct 2013
Apologize when you feel, remorse or guilt?
When the feeling passes, can you no longer apologize?
Can you do this when you don't hurt, or forgive when you do?
If you cannot, know you are enslaved to your passing emotions.
- - -
"Forgive them. They know not what they do".
"Forgive us, as we forgive those who trespass against us".
- - -
What rules in your life: will, or passions?
What frees you to decide?
What compels you to blind action?
When the feeling passes, can you no longer apologize?
Can you do this when you don't hurt, or forgive when you do?
If you cannot, know you are enslaved to your passing emotions.
- - -
"Forgive them. They know not what they do".
"Forgive us, as we forgive those who trespass against us".
- - -
What rules in your life: will, or passions?
What frees you to decide?
What compels you to blind action?
HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2013!!
Happy Halloween / Hallow's Even / All Saint's Day's Eve everybody!!
Enjoy this awesome holiday!
(-[^]__[^]-) _b
Enjoy this awesome holiday!
(-[^]__[^]-) _b
Ethics & Solidarity - D8: Egosim and Ethics
Q1: Can we only act to benefit ourselves (psychological egoism)?
A1: Psychological Egoism is really a perspective and not an argument. It cannot be disproven. This impasse has cost me plenty and dearly, so I just nod and smile and let it meander on by in it's supposed argument. When even subconscious reasons for altruistic can be argued selfish, I can think of no fitting rebuttal. Too sterile and arbitrary for my liking or accepting, so when someone chooses to hold it, I no longer bother to contest it.
Q2: Ought we all be selfish (ethical egoism)?
Q3: Are we obligated to consider others [first] (altruism)?
A2,3: I see no divide here. Maybe I am wrong. -I- (my free person) cannot give or help others unless I be free and whole in my means and capacities, so I must consider myself first if I am to be able to consider the needs of others, for what can I give that I do not have?? The first and last thing we have is our being -- that prime subjective observer and actor we cannot rid ourselves of, that we ARE. That may seem self serving, but for the following: by giving to others, by the pouring out of my being as fully as I may, I redeem the value of what I am, and possess it all the more, as the light of a torch shared and spread to others is not diminished, but more present and realized. So, in giving to others, I have what I am more, and in strengthening myself for this purpose, I give to others and myself a greater ability to share through my person. Giving to my self does not deny others, giving to others does not deny me.
Were living a competition alone, this may seem mad, but what hermit is fulfilled in a solitude without at least praying for others? Likewise, what devoted spouse or parent is at all diminished by striving to better their loved ones?
To finalize this example of self & other being fulfilled in a BOTH/AND vs. an US-vs.-THEM or a SELF-vs.-OTHER, consider a lifeguard trying to save a drowning victim under a pier. Should the lifeguard:
1. let the person drown, neither protecting them nor cultivating anything worthwhile by his position?
2. place his own body between the drowning person and the pylons, risking both their lives hould he hit his head against one when a wave pushes them? Or
3. place the victims body between him and the pylons, so that, should the victim be concussed, the lifeguard may yet save them both, if not at least himself and any future victims he may save?
Your best interests and mine are not, and must not be thought to be opposed. If I am to love you, to serve you, to protect you and the value of what life and means I have, I must love and protect myself as well. If I am to love, serve, and cultivate what I am and have, I must put it to use in service of others.
Q4: What do you think?
A4: Altruism and Ethical Egoism are both extreme and needlessly-opposing views that don't do nearly enough. We cannot attend to others without benefitting our own interests, as I am better when you are, and we cannot cannot attend to ourselves without benefitting others interests, as you are better off when I am. Only in the mind-state of opposition are these views possible.
- - - - -
p.s.
I admit my view of ethics may seem either completely off, or too radical to consider viable. It does not seek the comfort of ending thought, which is what Ethical Egoism, Altruism, and Psychological Egoism seem to. Living in a world where opposition is so often taken as the rule and not the exception, the BOTH/AND view of solidarity always risks dismissal, doubt, and opportunism. It is especially uncomfortable in the arenas of religion and politics.
-xv, 31st October 2013
A1: Psychological Egoism is really a perspective and not an argument. It cannot be disproven. This impasse has cost me plenty and dearly, so I just nod and smile and let it meander on by in it's supposed argument. When even subconscious reasons for altruistic can be argued selfish, I can think of no fitting rebuttal. Too sterile and arbitrary for my liking or accepting, so when someone chooses to hold it, I no longer bother to contest it.
Q2: Ought we all be selfish (ethical egoism)?
Q3: Are we obligated to consider others [first] (altruism)?
A2,3: I see no divide here. Maybe I am wrong. -I- (my free person) cannot give or help others unless I be free and whole in my means and capacities, so I must consider myself first if I am to be able to consider the needs of others, for what can I give that I do not have?? The first and last thing we have is our being -- that prime subjective observer and actor we cannot rid ourselves of, that we ARE. That may seem self serving, but for the following: by giving to others, by the pouring out of my being as fully as I may, I redeem the value of what I am, and possess it all the more, as the light of a torch shared and spread to others is not diminished, but more present and realized. So, in giving to others, I have what I am more, and in strengthening myself for this purpose, I give to others and myself a greater ability to share through my person. Giving to my self does not deny others, giving to others does not deny me.
Were living a competition alone, this may seem mad, but what hermit is fulfilled in a solitude without at least praying for others? Likewise, what devoted spouse or parent is at all diminished by striving to better their loved ones?
To finalize this example of self & other being fulfilled in a BOTH/AND vs. an US-vs.-THEM or a SELF-vs.-OTHER, consider a lifeguard trying to save a drowning victim under a pier. Should the lifeguard:
1. let the person drown, neither protecting them nor cultivating anything worthwhile by his position?
2. place his own body between the drowning person and the pylons, risking both their lives hould he hit his head against one when a wave pushes them? Or
3. place the victims body between him and the pylons, so that, should the victim be concussed, the lifeguard may yet save them both, if not at least himself and any future victims he may save?
Your best interests and mine are not, and must not be thought to be opposed. If I am to love you, to serve you, to protect you and the value of what life and means I have, I must love and protect myself as well. If I am to love, serve, and cultivate what I am and have, I must put it to use in service of others.
Q4: What do you think?
A4: Altruism and Ethical Egoism are both extreme and needlessly-opposing views that don't do nearly enough. We cannot attend to others without benefitting our own interests, as I am better when you are, and we cannot cannot attend to ourselves without benefitting others interests, as you are better off when I am. Only in the mind-state of opposition are these views possible.
- - - - -
p.s.
I admit my view of ethics may seem either completely off, or too radical to consider viable. It does not seek the comfort of ending thought, which is what Ethical Egoism, Altruism, and Psychological Egoism seem to. Living in a world where opposition is so often taken as the rule and not the exception, the BOTH/AND view of solidarity always risks dismissal, doubt, and opportunism. It is especially uncomfortable in the arenas of religion and politics.
-xv, 31st October 2013
Friday, 25 October 2013
MORE - on thoughts, oughts, shoulds, & musts
Regarding this
week's topic of moral relativism vs. universalism, and how they are often
thought of as outward-facing instead of internally-reflecting, I would
like to share these two considerations with you all. Looking forward to
any thoughts on this!:
Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
More - a short film by Mark Osborne
Have a great weekend, all.
Pulse and Breath,
-X.
Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
More - a short film by Mark Osborne
Have a great weekend, all.
Pulse and Breath,
-X.
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Discussion Seven: Moral Relativism AND Moral Universalism, Oct 2013
Discussion
Seven: Moral Relativism AND Moral Universalism
“Which
side do you think is right?
Are
you an objectivist or a relativist?
Which side do you think has the most virtues?
Does the other side have any intolerable faults?”
Which side do you think has the most virtues?
Does the other side have any intolerable faults?”
An ongoing theme and
argument, truth. Objective or Subjective? Moral, religious,
political, ontological? Truth...
I was having this conversation with a friend recently, him supporting supposed-objectivism as a perspective. I did not support him, but neither did I support a relativistic perspective entirely. I don't think squeaky-wheel extremes really can grasp at truth with any worthwhile claim but rhetoric and noise, drowning others out and such. My point with my friend was merely that there is no objective or subjective thinking then, but thinking if anything at all. The whole objectivity thing is a myth - we are all and always subjective and biased, even in how we present facts as reasons and supports for moral arguments, which they cannot ever be.
Both sides are right, and wrong.
In judging the morality or worth of a thing, we must look to the act, the intention, and the circumstance. not one of these overrides the others, so favoring mysterious circumstances as a relativist, or favoring action alone as a universalist, does violence to the multi-faceted reality of the whole. Neither strict view is at all tolerable. Both are the same - my way for you and all, or nothing. Both are equally wrong.
How can we judge at all, then? I believe man is to judge himself and all, not toward a culpability of error, sin, or depravation, but toward our being good, noble, useful - in short, our happiness. Seeing things as what they are, to the degree that they are, is all we can ACTIVELY do. Here, the Moral Relativist is right to accept differences in cultural norm, and to be tolerant WITHOUT requiring or demanding tolerance of others. Here the Moral Universalist is correct in appreciating the similarity and gradiant degree of one-ness, good, and health manifest and manifesting in all things, peoples, and tribes the same.
Our similarities amidst personal and tribal incongruities are to be celebrated and honored, not imposed. Our differences should be known as the distinct and mysterious qualities beyond us, yet without disdain for that finiteness we recognize amongst our own distinct cultures and customs.
Our pulse and breath, individually and together, betray a hope in BEING. Here is from where we rightly judge, not by our divisions, but in one human family of many tribes, cultures, histories, and languages.
I was having this conversation with a friend recently, him supporting supposed-objectivism as a perspective. I did not support him, but neither did I support a relativistic perspective entirely. I don't think squeaky-wheel extremes really can grasp at truth with any worthwhile claim but rhetoric and noise, drowning others out and such. My point with my friend was merely that there is no objective or subjective thinking then, but thinking if anything at all. The whole objectivity thing is a myth - we are all and always subjective and biased, even in how we present facts as reasons and supports for moral arguments, which they cannot ever be.
Both sides are right, and wrong.
In judging the morality or worth of a thing, we must look to the act, the intention, and the circumstance. not one of these overrides the others, so favoring mysterious circumstances as a relativist, or favoring action alone as a universalist, does violence to the multi-faceted reality of the whole. Neither strict view is at all tolerable. Both are the same - my way for you and all, or nothing. Both are equally wrong.
How can we judge at all, then? I believe man is to judge himself and all, not toward a culpability of error, sin, or depravation, but toward our being good, noble, useful - in short, our happiness. Seeing things as what they are, to the degree that they are, is all we can ACTIVELY do. Here, the Moral Relativist is right to accept differences in cultural norm, and to be tolerant WITHOUT requiring or demanding tolerance of others. Here the Moral Universalist is correct in appreciating the similarity and gradiant degree of one-ness, good, and health manifest and manifesting in all things, peoples, and tribes the same.
Our similarities amidst personal and tribal incongruities are to be celebrated and honored, not imposed. Our differences should be known as the distinct and mysterious qualities beyond us, yet without disdain for that finiteness we recognize amongst our own distinct cultures and customs.
Our pulse and breath, individually and together, betray a hope in BEING. Here is from where we rightly judge, not by our divisions, but in one human family of many tribes, cultures, histories, and languages.
-xv, Oct 2013
Friday, 18 October 2013
Discussion Six: Rights Theory (Locke, Hobbes, Marx, & Mill), 18 Oct 2013
Discussion
Six: Rights Theory
(Locke, Hobbes, Marx, & Mill), 18 Oct 2013
John Locke:
Rights are: Our Lives. By extension, this includes our Liberty to be as we choose, and to own what property we create, but our lives are our rights, first and wholly.
Opinions for: I agree with Locke's assertion of our natural right to live, as our lives come to us from beyond us without our provoking, and we do make and posses what we are, and deserve to do as much. If this is governed or given over to a king or community, it is first possessed, and a part of us. That it should freely remain as such would be ideal, in a world that is about development, and not ideals. As an ideal, if not as a possibility, he mostly reaches the mark.
Opinions against: A bit too optimistic in his views that we naturally cooperate and negotiate with others. If Hobbes is all horror, then Locke is seemingly candy-land. Reality has both and more, and is neither a dystopia nor utopic. We surrender our rights in some ways, and demand their acknowledgement in others.
Thomas Hobbes:
Rights are: Powers. What you can take, you have a right to, and would naturally be compelled to take if not restricted by some greater power taking and selectively granting those rights or powers for his greater interest. A king increases his powers by keeping a social contract amongst his subservients, allowing individuals only enough powers to keep them in check. Allowing a king to do this keeps us all secure.
Opinions for: Hobbes is quite astute in his observations of greater and lesser powers, and his instrumental analyses of them, such as friendship, reputation, servants, influence, forces, and favor. If seeming inhuman, his observations are true to our animalistic and fearful nature - one he believes we at best keep at bay by consolidating these strengths. I can see how Hobbes thought about civilisation may have greatly influenced the growing of the Commonwealth, and have justified it's influencing of the Savages, or natural man. I also agree that democracies may tend to be watered-down versions of this power-dynamic Hobbes presents.
Opinions against: I disagree with Hobbes that a monarch should and can have every right or power within his grasp, including our religious beliefs and hierarchical authorities. The existence or tolerance of a black market in any system defies this reasoning, and reveals Hobbes' idealism that a king has every power. He cannot reasonably allow powers to work against his powers as a means of obtaining more power. While not so explicit, I also disagree with his view of uncivilised men of foreign lands being so favored by the imposing of such civilised rule as he supposes. Lastly, the concept of there being no justice or injustice, or morality outside of government is something I find repugnant, believing as-I-do that all men must first and lastly govern themselves: “You can't have a cop on every corner, but you can have a father and mother in every home”.
General opinion: Rights being Powers, and Powers Rights, morality doesn't seem very important to man's nature in Hobbes view. We have centralized government then as a necessity of nature, ala Dog-Eat-Dog, where a monarch is the Alpha and secures and consistently imposes his position, and the pack allows this for the order it provides for everyone. Our American democracy so often resembles this, especially in the case of empowered popular opinions being unanswerably wrong.
Karl Marx:
Rights are: Alienating and Divisive. From the onset, he attributes Being – in this case the divisions of social classes – not as an opportunity for shared growth, but as a stage for oppression that grows ever-more sheer between the haves, and have-nots. All men should govern and use (if not necessarily own) goods equally and together.
Opinions for: An ideal that might have been useful, if it could manifest through our limited human context; something Marx does not seem interested in. Who takes from me does not permit me to give. Who proffers me stolen means denies me my power to share of my vulnerablity for the redeeming of the strong through their own charity – the little power I yet have that touches the great ideal Marx grasps at – without molesting any.
Opinions against: Just as Hobbes' and Locke's, Marx' vision is a fancy apart from reality.
Who best understands rights?
Marx sees rights as divisive, and in an ideal where all men and none are king, power is distributed and must also be governed my all. Yet we fail. Corruption enters, and abuses and tyranny follow. What cannot be known as true communism comes to attain and sustain unrepresentative centralized powers that yet claim it to be.
Hobbes' King is the alpha-dog running the pack – for better or worse – who the pack allows to rule for it's own benefit. All fine and good if not for illegal actions and the black market. A king or kingdom divided against himself is not really then the Alpha, and a society functioning in accord with this model can never be a peaceful one.
Locke's society – attempted in the Great Experiment of the United States – may be one of the most free states between communism and monarchy. Still far too often,though, we vote ourselves and our idyllic and seeming-democracy further and further from our own freedoms, our property, and our self-ruling ideals, as if our harmony exists not in them, but in just that one law that would bring us closer to not having to think and be responsible for our lives, criminalising a bit more of our freedom each time so as to, somehow, be more free. As a friend and teacher of mine was wont to say: “America needs a Statue of Responsability in San Francisco Bay to even us out!”. If we value our Lockean liberty so, we must remember it is not a Liberty-From conscious thought and examined living, but a Liberty-For right and free actions.
John Mill has the quietest and yet most-coherent voice of these four. By the zealous guarding of our most fundamental and necessary right and responsibility to speak and debate freely, arguments such as these about “What government is best?” are possible, and may come to their most inclusive and useful ends. His view is both more prudent in scope, and more realistically and immediately attainable, inclusive, and beneficial than any of the other views' ideals. It is the most readily useful, and best represents an understanding of what rights are.
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Discussion Five: Introduction to Political Philosophy, "What are [not] rights?"
Discussion Five: Introduction to Political Philosophy
Koheleth: "What are [not] rights?" Hokma: "Why?"
---
What do you think rights are?
Why do we have rights?
Do we have rights because we're human?
Are rights unspoken agreements?
Are rights gifts that governments protect?
Are rights obligations that governments protect?
---
Optimus Prime: "Freedom is the Right of all sentient beings."
Rights are Just freedoms. Like respect, rights are not earned. Many deserving respect get little, and others deserving but little get more than they deserve. If someone is determined not to acknowledge you, to respect you or your rights, it doesn't matter what the circumstance. Outside of some corrective measure, neither respect as man nor any other right may be acknowledged.
Whatever they are, rights are not a matter of popular opinion.
Many if not all would agree that a man (gender inclusive) of good will has a right to live peacably, and as a man, participate freely in social exchanges as is our nature. Yet some are killed, oppressed, imprisoned, or ostracized for myriad reasons by the will of others, either through direct and social force, or through indirect executing powers such as laws, community standards, and armed services.
Whatever they are, rights are not beyond social custom.
A train is right to be on a track, not off it. A fish is right to be in water, not out of it. Man is right to be healthy in all that entails: as a social creation working their way through time and change, in whatever society they are in, and to whatever degree they best can.
Man has this right alone: to be well.
Where we have the -ability- to be unwell, to cause violence to the better natures of ourselves and others, it cannot be said we have a right, but a capacity to abuse the means to our right to be well. Herein we have our choices, and our capacity to freely grow as persons. Here we can freely reach out beyond our circumstances to become more real as persons. Here we embody a virtue beyond bestial, slavish automata.
Whatever rights are, they are nothing of worth without first determining "What is Right?", save mandate opinions of duties and expectations.
These words may not satisfactorily address what rights are, why we have them, if they are gifts or obligations, if they are agreements, if they are human, or whatall else. I think that is good. With a topic like this, I think it is good not to be satisfied.
Whatever rights are, they are tied to the mystery of what Man is, and what he might be. As a discussion, and at the risk of completely missing the question, I think it just-as, if not more important to discuss what rights are not and cannot be.
Koheleth: "What are [not] rights?" Hokma: "Why?"
---
What do you think rights are?
Why do we have rights?
Do we have rights because we're human?
Are rights unspoken agreements?
Are rights gifts that governments protect?
Are rights obligations that governments protect?
---
Optimus Prime: "Freedom is the Right of all sentient beings."
Rights are Just freedoms. Like respect, rights are not earned. Many deserving respect get little, and others deserving but little get more than they deserve. If someone is determined not to acknowledge you, to respect you or your rights, it doesn't matter what the circumstance. Outside of some corrective measure, neither respect as man nor any other right may be acknowledged.
Whatever they are, rights are not a matter of popular opinion.
Many if not all would agree that a man (gender inclusive) of good will has a right to live peacably, and as a man, participate freely in social exchanges as is our nature. Yet some are killed, oppressed, imprisoned, or ostracized for myriad reasons by the will of others, either through direct and social force, or through indirect executing powers such as laws, community standards, and armed services.
Whatever they are, rights are not beyond social custom.
A train is right to be on a track, not off it. A fish is right to be in water, not out of it. Man is right to be healthy in all that entails: as a social creation working their way through time and change, in whatever society they are in, and to whatever degree they best can.
Man has this right alone: to be well.
Where we have the -ability- to be unwell, to cause violence to the better natures of ourselves and others, it cannot be said we have a right, but a capacity to abuse the means to our right to be well. Herein we have our choices, and our capacity to freely grow as persons. Here we can freely reach out beyond our circumstances to become more real as persons. Here we embody a virtue beyond bestial, slavish automata.
Whatever rights are, they are nothing of worth without first determining "What is Right?", save mandate opinions of duties and expectations.
These words may not satisfactorily address what rights are, why we have them, if they are gifts or obligations, if they are agreements, if they are human, or whatall else. I think that is good. With a topic like this, I think it is good not to be satisfied.
Whatever rights are, they are tied to the mystery of what Man is, and what he might be. As a discussion, and at the risk of completely missing the question, I think it just-as, if not more important to discuss what rights are not and cannot be.
Friday, 4 October 2013
Discussion 4: The Meaning of Life (or Meaning-In-Life), 04 October 2013
Discussion
4: The Meaning of Life
Questions:
Are Tolstoy and Camus right or wrong to say nothing has value other than what we put on it?
Ought we look outside ourselves for value, as Tolstoy says?
Must we make and be responsible for values all on our own, as Camus suggests?
Observations:
Both Tolstoy and Camus' crises resolve by reexamining and making peace with their situations.
Leo Tolstoy is not so much comforted by faith in God, as he is by a trust and alliance with the happiness in the lives of yet common men, that he comes to admire and even love for their simplicity-of-heart, so far removed from the intellectual elitism and listlessness which he had become accustomed to.
Albert Camus comes to a meaningful awareness despite his unshakable ideal of accepting meaning only in certainties, by a close scrutiny of his circumstances. No matter how much he longs for some transcendent truth beyond his possible knowing, it could never fit with his ideal of certainty. So be it, he resolves. His ideal of certainty-alone intact, and adrift and apart from some transcendent meaning he yet longs for but can never allow, he decries existence itself as absurd and devoid of meaning, and makes his peace only by deciding to live on in defiance of this absurdity. This enduring of the absurd he does not admit as meaningful, though it does close his line of thought...
Both Tolstoy and Camus also long for greater meaning and purpose than their present circumstances allow, and find it in unexpected ways.
For Camus, meaning comes in living a life of defiance against an existence without meaning despite our longing for it, though he does not address his conviction as such.
For Tolstoy, meaning awakens within him by coming to accept, appreciate, and even love the happiness of the common man who trusts in what he does not wholly know - God, the greater unity he experiences together-with them allowing him to come to do the same and be at peace and happy -despite- the depressing conventions of his elite intellectual circle.
Questions:
Are Tolstoy and Camus right or wrong to say nothing has value other than what we put on it?
Ought we look outside ourselves for value, as Tolstoy says?
Must we make and be responsible for values all on our own, as Camus suggests?
Observations:
Both Tolstoy and Camus' crises resolve by reexamining and making peace with their situations.
Leo Tolstoy is not so much comforted by faith in God, as he is by a trust and alliance with the happiness in the lives of yet common men, that he comes to admire and even love for their simplicity-of-heart, so far removed from the intellectual elitism and listlessness which he had become accustomed to.
Albert Camus comes to a meaningful awareness despite his unshakable ideal of accepting meaning only in certainties, by a close scrutiny of his circumstances. No matter how much he longs for some transcendent truth beyond his possible knowing, it could never fit with his ideal of certainty. So be it, he resolves. His ideal of certainty-alone intact, and adrift and apart from some transcendent meaning he yet longs for but can never allow, he decries existence itself as absurd and devoid of meaning, and makes his peace only by deciding to live on in defiance of this absurdity. This enduring of the absurd he does not admit as meaningful, though it does close his line of thought...
Both Tolstoy and Camus also long for greater meaning and purpose than their present circumstances allow, and find it in unexpected ways.
For Camus, meaning comes in living a life of defiance against an existence without meaning despite our longing for it, though he does not address his conviction as such.
For Tolstoy, meaning awakens within him by coming to accept, appreciate, and even love the happiness of the common man who trusts in what he does not wholly know - God, the greater unity he experiences together-with them allowing him to come to do the same and be at peace and happy -despite- the depressing conventions of his elite intellectual circle.
Opinions:
There is value and meaning inasmuch as we live, as being is necessarily more valuable, and so more meaningful, than oblivion. One is greater than zero.
We may think of God or any value-source externally, as Tolstoy suggests, only inasmuch as that external source can exist within us as a concept, filtered through our initial apprehension, memories, and imaginations.
Whether as external objects of thought as Tolstoy suggests necessary, or as fully-internalized value determinations as Camus illustrates, we come to understand and assert value and meaning only by first conceiving of the possibility within, even if we only conceive of it as we act upon it.
I think this view is akin then to both Tolstoy and Camus', if also very unlike theirs; that meaning and value are immediately inherent in the act of being, no matter what we think of it.
We manifest our developing understanding-of and participation-with that value, that meaningfulness of being based-on our apprehension, conceptualization, and imagination of all things both within and without by means of our actions.
I drink a glass of water. I do not know this glass of water intimately, immediately, as-it-is: the molecules, the sediments, the glass. I know this glass of water imperfectly, by my apprehending of
it, conceiving of it by my memories of experiences like it. I really believe it to be cool and refreshing, and that I actually interact with it, as an external, real thing, through my senses and concepts, which are internal and part of me.
As to external or internal, then, to Tolstoy or Camus: I say neither fully, yet both.
...but I am still thirsty.
There is value and meaning inasmuch as we live, as being is necessarily more valuable, and so more meaningful, than oblivion. One is greater than zero.
We may think of God or any value-source externally, as Tolstoy suggests, only inasmuch as that external source can exist within us as a concept, filtered through our initial apprehension, memories, and imaginations.
Whether as external objects of thought as Tolstoy suggests necessary, or as fully-internalized value determinations as Camus illustrates, we come to understand and assert value and meaning only by first conceiving of the possibility within, even if we only conceive of it as we act upon it.
I think this view is akin then to both Tolstoy and Camus', if also very unlike theirs; that meaning and value are immediately inherent in the act of being, no matter what we think of it.
We manifest our developing understanding-of and participation-with that value, that meaningfulness of being based-on our apprehension, conceptualization, and imagination of all things both within and without by means of our actions.
I drink a glass of water. I do not know this glass of water intimately, immediately, as-it-is: the molecules, the sediments, the glass. I know this glass of water imperfectly, by my apprehending of
it, conceiving of it by my memories of experiences like it. I really believe it to be cool and refreshing, and that I actually interact with it, as an external, real thing, through my senses and concepts, which are internal and part of me.
As to external or internal, then, to Tolstoy or Camus: I say neither fully, yet both.
...but I am still thirsty.
Monday, 30 September 2013
2013. ENTER: October
ENTER: October.
"Harvests. Autumn. Dry, cool air. Time & Nature mirror urgency. Days wane shorter. Limbs, stiffer. Leaves change."
"Harvests. Autumn. Dry, cool air. Time & Nature mirror urgency. Days wane shorter. Limbs, stiffer. Leaves change."
Saturday, 28 September 2013
PHI 2010 - D3: The Problem of Evil
Opinion on The Problem of Evil.
The Problem of Evil is difficult. Death, murder, robbery, abuse, genocide, and natural accidents take things we set our happiness on, things we'd love, and sometimes our hope along with them. If our Hope is in God or in something else, these evils can diminish that hope by proxy. It’s common, if unhealthy, to hinge our happiness onto one ideal or another; not doing this, can be a much healthier way to be.
There are things I repeatedly practice in my life that help me remain hopeful in the face of moral evils. I avoid a dependence on emotional highs as to not be dependent and despair when the lows inevitably come. I also normalizing perceiving limitations as capacities, much as the beauty of scars being wounds allowed to heal and not mere aberrations. Recognizing my happiness-held-hostage attachments - to people, relationships, ideas - as what they are helps as well. This better prepares me for when the winds inevitably change against my favor. Instead of cursing the wind, or celebrating it, I am then more-free to adjust my sails, and further on. These attitudes defy in-group mentalities that invariably identify with something other than pulse and breath. While these two important things remain, there is always an ember of hope from which fires great and small may yet be ignited.
As for a god in The Problem of Evil, if one exists as I believe he does, he can survive our disbelief. We must first believe in ourselves, working with whatever great-or-small grace we have. If this grace, this state-of-being matches our ideals or not, the world remains as it is, so there is no use in resenting it. We’ve every right, however, to be grateful for what spark and breath remain, and to use them for the greatest moral good within our given varying capacities (or limitations). I do not recognize Ontological Evils then as-much-as greater and lesser natural or material Goods. These Goods we employ for more-or-less useful moral purposes, less useful purposes being Morally Evil by comparison. This choice of how to employ material Goods by our informed and dynamic consciences is a grace God gives us - our means, and free-will. When we reject the possibility of a god, it is never a god mysterious to us.
Does Evil prove or disprove a loving, all-powerful god? How?
I am not of the opinion that the presence of Evil disproves the presence of an all-loving, knowing, and powerful God. This is due to my belief that all material existence is good, and that moral evil is but the choosing of lesser-good acts in place of equally-accessible greater ones. This ability to choose the greatest moral act - and thereby participate in our own creating - I attribute to the gracious nature of a generating and sustaining god who does not violate his creation into a danse-macabre, a mindless puppetry, but would gradually and gently romance man toward perfection, making all our crooked lines straight with us. The existence of a moral evil, then, is not an option to fail, but for success, and redemption.
Do you side with Hume or Hick? Is Hick's reply the best?
I tend to agree with most everything Hick shares in our reading. Perhaps if I understood Hume’s circumstances more I could speak better about his argument. I have little love for refutals, and strongly disagree with each of Hume’s four seemingly-idealized points against a god existing despite the presence of evil, if for different reasons.
Are there other replies? Are there better replies?
There are more and better replies to The Problem of Evil than just Hume and Hick’s. The world is vast, with many philosophies in it, which we have come across before, and will likely encounter. Ours is only an Introductory Philosophy class, and it is unlikely that we can plumb the depths of The Problem of Evil here. Boethius' Consolation in our text (14th Edition), for example, is an amazing and heartening read on the subject that greatly helped me wade through Hume's rhetoric.
---
-XV, 27 September 2013
The Problem of Evil is difficult. Death, murder, robbery, abuse, genocide, and natural accidents take things we set our happiness on, things we'd love, and sometimes our hope along with them. If our Hope is in God or in something else, these evils can diminish that hope by proxy. It’s common, if unhealthy, to hinge our happiness onto one ideal or another; not doing this, can be a much healthier way to be.
There are things I repeatedly practice in my life that help me remain hopeful in the face of moral evils. I avoid a dependence on emotional highs as to not be dependent and despair when the lows inevitably come. I also normalizing perceiving limitations as capacities, much as the beauty of scars being wounds allowed to heal and not mere aberrations. Recognizing my happiness-held-hostage attachments - to people, relationships, ideas - as what they are helps as well. This better prepares me for when the winds inevitably change against my favor. Instead of cursing the wind, or celebrating it, I am then more-free to adjust my sails, and further on. These attitudes defy in-group mentalities that invariably identify with something other than pulse and breath. While these two important things remain, there is always an ember of hope from which fires great and small may yet be ignited.
As for a god in The Problem of Evil, if one exists as I believe he does, he can survive our disbelief. We must first believe in ourselves, working with whatever great-or-small grace we have. If this grace, this state-of-being matches our ideals or not, the world remains as it is, so there is no use in resenting it. We’ve every right, however, to be grateful for what spark and breath remain, and to use them for the greatest moral good within our given varying capacities (or limitations). I do not recognize Ontological Evils then as-much-as greater and lesser natural or material Goods. These Goods we employ for more-or-less useful moral purposes, less useful purposes being Morally Evil by comparison. This choice of how to employ material Goods by our informed and dynamic consciences is a grace God gives us - our means, and free-will. When we reject the possibility of a god, it is never a god mysterious to us.
Does Evil prove or disprove a loving, all-powerful god? How?
I am not of the opinion that the presence of Evil disproves the presence of an all-loving, knowing, and powerful God. This is due to my belief that all material existence is good, and that moral evil is but the choosing of lesser-good acts in place of equally-accessible greater ones. This ability to choose the greatest moral act - and thereby participate in our own creating - I attribute to the gracious nature of a generating and sustaining god who does not violate his creation into a danse-macabre, a mindless puppetry, but would gradually and gently romance man toward perfection, making all our crooked lines straight with us. The existence of a moral evil, then, is not an option to fail, but for success, and redemption.
Do you side with Hume or Hick? Is Hick's reply the best?
I tend to agree with most everything Hick shares in our reading. Perhaps if I understood Hume’s circumstances more I could speak better about his argument. I have little love for refutals, and strongly disagree with each of Hume’s four seemingly-idealized points against a god existing despite the presence of evil, if for different reasons.
Are there other replies? Are there better replies?
There are more and better replies to The Problem of Evil than just Hume and Hick’s. The world is vast, with many philosophies in it, which we have come across before, and will likely encounter. Ours is only an Introductory Philosophy class, and it is unlikely that we can plumb the depths of The Problem of Evil here. Boethius' Consolation in our text (14th Edition), for example, is an amazing and heartening read on the subject that greatly helped me wade through Hume's rhetoric.
---
-XV, 27 September 2013
Thursday, 26 September 2013
2013 Sep 26 -"Eye has not seen,..": a small reflection on Heaven & Autumn.
"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard..."
You think you know.
...you don't know. ...I don't know.
Saints, martyrs... are not bloody-masquerades, horrific masks of what was done to them. They are happy, purposeful, peaceful, hopeful. Joyous!
Who cannot find that attractive, to be that way?.. To get to know THAT? and have it get to know you?
You think you know.
...you don't know. ...I don't know.
Saints, martyrs... are not bloody-masquerades, horrific masks of what was done to them. They are happy, purposeful, peaceful, hopeful. Joyous!
Who cannot find that attractive, to be that way?.. To get to know THAT? and have it get to know you?
Thursday, 19 September 2013
PHI2010 - D2: Religious Faith
XV
D2: Religious Faith
PHI2010 INTRO TO PHIL
Thursday, 19 September 2013
This week's readings all center on the topic of faith - so what do you think of the idea of faith? Is faith more of a belief, or an idea that we have, in a god-like being as Pascal suggests? Do you believe that Kierkegaard is right and that faith can only work as a deep, meaningful relationship with a god? Or is faith just a made up concept that misguides people?
- - - - -
Thinking of how higher-order knowledge matters such as the concept and/or existence of God and the subject of religious faith; matters with communal, local and global culture repercussions are addressed at the beginning of our philosophy course, when we are least informed and capable of addressing them, as opposed to later-on or at the end, when we'd be more informed and capable of addressing issues with such historic and yet topical interest, as well as how Pascal's Wager, so-called, is taken seriously hand-in-hand with the approach of that illuminating and necessary leap-of-faith presented by Kierkegaard provokes in me a great desire to cuss, and to use colorful metaphors unsuitable for minors and those with gentler social customs than fishermen and construction-workers may possess, comparing prostitution and marriage, and the like.
Pascal is about as wrong as I imaginable with his wager:
He supposes faith, is nothing more than a choice... like what tie or shoes we'll wear on a given day. How many believe, trust, and love, by choosing??
Pascal supposes a god fit for worship, in the custom of his community on their own formative faith journey, that might yet somehow condemn one's soul (that being most souls) for not carrying themselves as his own faith community does, professing faith in YHWH, Jesus and the Holy Church, despite their circumstance... to the reward of an infinitely-happy Paradise if they do, and the eternal condemnation of Hell if they don't. Such a monstrous-puppeteer god, who would see no worthy nobility in unprofessing men of good will without the intervening of a formal dogmatic profession would not be fit for service.
Pascal follows that all noble men must eventually come to believe, thus being able to live noble lives, where only the wretched and miserable would choose (choose!) not to believe. And what of the Church's since-refined teaching on free-will versus predestination, master? Perhaps in a couple weeks...
Kierkegaard, he gets it. Faith is a cliff. It is Jesus walking over the abyss of the unknown and threatening deep, calming the waters as "Who is this man, that even the wind and seas obey him?"... the seas of the in-group beyond, into, and amidst the out-group. It is that trust, hoped-for-but-unproven in the support and enduring loyalty of a loving spouse. It is a gift given and sought to and from the beyond, unknown that, once having and dynamically participating with it, opens up progressing new avenues of accepting, of allowing, of understanding - a lens, and perspective to connect and relate that Known, and the previously and constantly Unknown.
Faith, is a leap, not a choice; a bridge, not a wager; a gift, not a gamble. Faith is not the utterly analytic, impersonal, flawed and unthinkable proposition we see in Pascal's Wager. Faith... is a relationship that Great Other has with our very personal, immediate, vulnerable-and-yet manifest self.
Saturday, 14 September 2013
D1: Proofs for the existence of God
PHI 2010 : D1: Proofs for the existence of God
Arguments:
1 St Anselm's Ontological Revelation (argument)
2 St Thomas Aquinas' Cosmological Arguments
3 Willaim Paley's Teleological Argument
4 Blaise Pascal's Wager toward the Reasonableness of Choosing Religion
-----
Do they speak to believers?
The ontological argument through St Anselm does speak both to and from belief, as he says.
St Acquinas' cosmological argument does not speak to believers, but as a believer yet to other mere men, making a case for an uncaused first principle consistent with our a reasoning of gradience in being, like from what we know of absolute zero temperature to unknown limits of heat, energy, etc.
William Paley's teleological argument of the watch necessitating a watchmaker does not necessarily speak to believers, but merely presents the reasonability of wagering in favor of religion.
Blaise Pascal's wager in favor of the reasonability of choosing religion does not speak to believers.
Do they understand god & being?
Based on St Anselm's position, I do not think he sees God so much as the ACT of BEING, but as an entity similar yet ineffably greater than all, somehow proven to exist because the opposite is unthinkable to him. His critics in our text do little better if at all.
St Aquinas' argument doesn't seem intent on understanding God, but on seeing in him a root foundation for all act and being. He does not here define God, but does demonstrate an understanding of the nature of the world, time, & causation, and of how God places in our order of events.
Neither William Paley nor Blaise Pascal seem to present an understanding of God but both focus more on the nature of existence or creation, albeit from differing aspects.
Do they prove anything?
St Anselm and the critics of his ontological faith-argument in our text do not prove or disprove the existence of a god, but concepts merely.
The cosmological argument of St Aquinas I find very compelling, as it reaches only into our common human experience of cause & effect and the necessity of primal, universal truth.
Neither Pascal nor Paley present a proof of God.
pick one argument:
St Anselm didn't have a proof or discovery. He had a revelation, as he attests, through and to belief, without which such a supposed argument would be impossible, as he also claims, that God must exist, because he - as the greatest of all perfections beyond which there can be nothing - cannot be fathomed not to exist. Taking his account as a proof is not valid, as it is more based on illumined knowledge, that is, a faith seeking proof after belief, and not mere proof for any and all. It must remain in context.
Charles Hartsborne asks if the eternal being would not have to be changing, likely as a misappropriation of his seeming changing in the Old Testament salvation narrative, which should rightly be interpreted as a change in Israel reflected in the character of unchanging YHWH, and not an actual change in himself.
James Rachels assumes an apriori understanding of God-worship as this vs. that and not both/and, and upon this his 3-point anti-god argument fails. Were worship, meaning service, without one's role as an autonomous moral agent, it could only be as without the one first, just as identity foreclosure remains ones identity. It rests on a false-polemic of an imagined autonomy apart from relation against a worship construed somehow as creative yet self-abandoning act. A train on rails, as-expected, remains a train being itself, and loses nothing of it's essence by doing as expected. This metaphor describes how we lose nought of ourselves, but are more ourselves, more realized, doing freely as is yet expected of us, so long as it is yet a free act. What good then is strength, but to give? Surely having is not enough.
Norman Malcolm:
The concept of an unlimited being not being self-contradictory, illustrates only that the conceiving of such am unlimited being is possible. NM reaches to say the concept requires the existing of such a being to be necessary, where such a being could only be either impossible or necessary, as if the conceiving would require the act of such a being existing. This is just as St Anselm does, a reach, as no concept of infinity can exceed being a concept of itself, nor require a reality beyond itself. A dream is real inasmuch as it is real as a dream, yet reality exists even unconceived.
Paol Davis:
Were God a being -in- the Universe, he'd be subject to physics, as we understand it. God as being-in-act, or as the act of being, would have the Universe existing then by him, this of course redefining him as something other than a being among beings, more consistent with the creation mythos than empiricism, or with the wonder of poetry vs the delineament of mathematics. "The poet seeks merely to get his head into the heavens. The logician, the heavens into his head... and it is his head that splits!".
Charles Hartsborne states two reasons for his belief. First: a need for a God to understand order as possible, though we observe order before coming to any belief, as in our tripping before and besides the -concept- of gravity, if not apart from it; and the Second in our text: a need for significance in our mortality beyond the present now existing, somehow immortalized by his god-concept in a reality other than the now.
St Anselm's proof, as supposed as one, and the ontological unexperienced arguments, refutals, and criticisms of the argument he represents in our text do not compel my belief or disbelief, as all are closed to an existence of God irreverent of our conceiving. None are near big enough.
Arguments:
1 St Anselm's Ontological Revelation (argument)
2 St Thomas Aquinas' Cosmological Arguments
3 Willaim Paley's Teleological Argument
4 Blaise Pascal's Wager toward the Reasonableness of Choosing Religion
-----
Do they speak to believers?
The ontological argument through St Anselm does speak both to and from belief, as he says.
St Acquinas' cosmological argument does not speak to believers, but as a believer yet to other mere men, making a case for an uncaused first principle consistent with our a reasoning of gradience in being, like from what we know of absolute zero temperature to unknown limits of heat, energy, etc.
William Paley's teleological argument of the watch necessitating a watchmaker does not necessarily speak to believers, but merely presents the reasonability of wagering in favor of religion.
Blaise Pascal's wager in favor of the reasonability of choosing religion does not speak to believers.
Do they understand god & being?
Based on St Anselm's position, I do not think he sees God so much as the ACT of BEING, but as an entity similar yet ineffably greater than all, somehow proven to exist because the opposite is unthinkable to him. His critics in our text do little better if at all.
St Aquinas' argument doesn't seem intent on understanding God, but on seeing in him a root foundation for all act and being. He does not here define God, but does demonstrate an understanding of the nature of the world, time, & causation, and of how God places in our order of events.
Neither William Paley nor Blaise Pascal seem to present an understanding of God but both focus more on the nature of existence or creation, albeit from differing aspects.
Do they prove anything?
St Anselm and the critics of his ontological faith-argument in our text do not prove or disprove the existence of a god, but concepts merely.
The cosmological argument of St Aquinas I find very compelling, as it reaches only into our common human experience of cause & effect and the necessity of primal, universal truth.
Neither Pascal nor Paley present a proof of God.
pick one argument:
St Anselm didn't have a proof or discovery. He had a revelation, as he attests, through and to belief, without which such a supposed argument would be impossible, as he also claims, that God must exist, because he - as the greatest of all perfections beyond which there can be nothing - cannot be fathomed not to exist. Taking his account as a proof is not valid, as it is more based on illumined knowledge, that is, a faith seeking proof after belief, and not mere proof for any and all. It must remain in context.
Charles Hartsborne asks if the eternal being would not have to be changing, likely as a misappropriation of his seeming changing in the Old Testament salvation narrative, which should rightly be interpreted as a change in Israel reflected in the character of unchanging YHWH, and not an actual change in himself.
James Rachels assumes an apriori understanding of God-worship as this vs. that and not both/and, and upon this his 3-point anti-god argument fails. Were worship, meaning service, without one's role as an autonomous moral agent, it could only be as without the one first, just as identity foreclosure remains ones identity. It rests on a false-polemic of an imagined autonomy apart from relation against a worship construed somehow as creative yet self-abandoning act. A train on rails, as-expected, remains a train being itself, and loses nothing of it's essence by doing as expected. This metaphor describes how we lose nought of ourselves, but are more ourselves, more realized, doing freely as is yet expected of us, so long as it is yet a free act. What good then is strength, but to give? Surely having is not enough.
Norman Malcolm:
The concept of an unlimited being not being self-contradictory, illustrates only that the conceiving of such am unlimited being is possible. NM reaches to say the concept requires the existing of such a being to be necessary, where such a being could only be either impossible or necessary, as if the conceiving would require the act of such a being existing. This is just as St Anselm does, a reach, as no concept of infinity can exceed being a concept of itself, nor require a reality beyond itself. A dream is real inasmuch as it is real as a dream, yet reality exists even unconceived.
Paol Davis:
Were God a being -in- the Universe, he'd be subject to physics, as we understand it. God as being-in-act, or as the act of being, would have the Universe existing then by him, this of course redefining him as something other than a being among beings, more consistent with the creation mythos than empiricism, or with the wonder of poetry vs the delineament of mathematics. "The poet seeks merely to get his head into the heavens. The logician, the heavens into his head... and it is his head that splits!".
Charles Hartsborne states two reasons for his belief. First: a need for a God to understand order as possible, though we observe order before coming to any belief, as in our tripping before and besides the -concept- of gravity, if not apart from it; and the Second in our text: a need for significance in our mortality beyond the present now existing, somehow immortalized by his god-concept in a reality other than the now.
St Anselm's proof, as supposed as one, and the ontological unexperienced arguments, refutals, and criticisms of the argument he represents in our text do not compel my belief or disbelief, as all are closed to an existence of God irreverent of our conceiving. None are near big enough.
Friday, 7 June 2013
the sky of today
Saw a cool, dark near-double rainbow last night at the edge of the light, with a rose inner-iris starkly contrasting against the gray, lightning-cracked oncoming storm without.
Better, the ordinariness of today, our now.
-XV
07 JUN 2013
Better, the ordinariness of today, our now.
-XV
07 JUN 2013
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Risk beyond Choosing; To Be...
When confronted with the immediate reality of Rot or Risk, there is no choice to be made. You must Risk!
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
factory-farmed lives
factory-farmed lives
---
The beat has changed.
The media is now less a sheepdog and more our soul-abattoir, fattening up for harvest those choice masses best fit for consumption, yet we still think it all our own tender offspring, alternately naughty and whimsical...
"Don't make me think" is our mantra, so we miss even when our fancied "guardians" are consumed and switched with wolves.
Wiley coyotes own our factory-farm lives now.
"Eee!" i.e.: "I owe!".
-XV
---
The beat has changed.
The media is now less a sheepdog and more our soul-abattoir, fattening up for harvest those choice masses best fit for consumption, yet we still think it all our own tender offspring, alternately naughty and whimsical...
"Don't make me think" is our mantra, so we miss even when our fancied "guardians" are consumed and switched with wolves.
Wiley coyotes own our factory-farm lives now.
"Eee!" i.e.: "I owe!".
-XV
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Act & Admiration, centre of all hearts
Act, not to be admired. Act but admirably.
Mercy.
Heart of Jesus, king & center of all hearts: have mercy in us.
----
Echoing, reverberating constantly since the weekend...
blending into the ambient, but not dying out,
like a fortification to an existing architecture.
Act but admirably. ...LHM.
-xv.
4/26/13
Mercy.
Heart of Jesus, king & center of all hearts: have mercy in us.
----
Echoing, reverberating constantly since the weekend...
blending into the ambient, but not dying out,
like a fortification to an existing architecture.
Act but admirably. ...LHM.
-xv.
4/26/13
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