tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28358674431787418562024-03-05T03:05:06.166-08:00Philosophy and Literature BlogThis blog will contain comments on philosophy and literature I am currently reading. I invite comments, disagreement, and complaints.Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.comBlogger186125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-29824753710669647682021-03-01T15:04:00.007-08:002021-03-01T15:23:35.137-08:00Concluding Unscientific Postscript Entry 2, Courage of Dialectic<p> So, as I've been reading this book along with <u>Courage of Truth</u> by Foucault, I can't help seeing parallels, real or imagined, there they are. Kierkegaard's point here at the beginning is that disputations about the truth of the Bible do not provide assurance of eternal happiness; they can't, even if the historical proofs are good, because you can only get approximation in this world. And even if you could get a proof, where would the passion of your faith be? Faith, he implies in some passages, requires imperfection:</p><p>"For someone who believes that there is a God and a providence, things are made easier(in preserving the faith) in an imperfect world, where passion is kept alive, easier too in definitely gaining faith(as against an illusion) than in an absolutely perfect world. Indeed in such a world faith is unthinkable. Hence the teaching that faith is abolished in eternity."(Concluding Unscientific Postscript pp.26-27)</p><p>For Kierkegaard faith IS passion, not something objective; it is subjective. In eternity, in heaven, in front of God, obviously there can be no faith. And faith is not some bargain, some wager. It is a passion for one's eternal happiness. I've read some Christian books about how it's "not about you", but for Kierkegaard it IS about you, as he would say, about the little self.</p><p>Now for the connection... Kierkegaard goes to some length to discuss the knife's edge one is on if one tries to build one's eternal happiness of some dialectic without a conclusion. He goes over and over how such a thing will not accomplish it's desire. Searching for historical or philosophical truth in this way cannot create the assurance of eternal happiness, because at any moment, the current of an argument, a bit of philology, anything, can turn awry. To give into an argument on this is to imply one is lacking in passion.</p><p>I have, on many occasions, and on many things, found my sense of well-being dependent on the outcome of some argument. It doesn't have to be about religion, it can be about anything: ethics, the nature of the Self, the meaning of life, all sorts of things. Yet there must be courage in these matters to investigate them. If I've committed myself to some view, built my life, my sense of self on it, only to have it undermined by an argument, that's quite a moment. It takes courage.</p><p>Foucault is talking about Plato's dialogue <u>Laches</u>. In this case he is talking about the definition of courage, and courage is displayed by all who engage in the account one has to give of themselves over the course of the dialogue. The dramatic difference, what is are the stakes? Eternal happiness? Perhaps, actually. If the dialectic were to show the soul doesn't exist, so much for the soul.</p><p>Is the soul a bit of metaphysics, though? Or can it be viewed as one's subjectivity? We can secularize all of this and become existentialists. The dialectic in one's life is then the facing of one's subjectivity, the principles one lives by, what I AM. That is a very dangerous thing to have to face, and it requires courage. Foucault repeatedly refers to the 'care of the self' as the purpose of his work. </p><p>Is the care of the self the risking of the dialectic? The risk of discovering the truth of one's life, of life itself? Ultimately, I don't believe in God, but I find value in Kierkegaard for his revelation of the risk of life, the leap into the absurd that faith requires, or in fact of anything one sets one's life by.</p><p>In one's subjectivity, the leap from one stage of life to another, one set of principles to another, one form of life to another, is in some way always ungrounded, as later existentialists would say, no matter how grounded you think you are. So, in the Socratic Dialogues we end in Aporia, but the dialectic itself is the protagonist, in Kierkegaard, the dialectic requires courage but can imply a lack of passion, unless the passion is that of the dialectic itself. I guess that's the point.</p><p>Next time, I'll consider further Kierkegaard and also the possibility that undermining this is Foucault's normal view that everything is a 'practice' or a 'discourse', rather than being truth itself, that is 'truth' is relative to some collection of power-relations, in the case of the dialogues, Socrates has the power, he is running the game. What are the games being run on me?</p>Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-12174467051881543072021-02-14T12:48:00.002-08:002021-02-14T12:49:52.362-08:00 Concluding Unscientific Postscript Entry 1<p>Looks like I'm going to be reading this book this year. The book is very, very long, and I have bad eyes, so I will likely be reading it for a long time. I seem to be in a Kierkegaard frame of mind these days. You don't have to be religious or mystical to like Kierkegaard as I do, perhaps it helps if one has an unconscious remnant of religion from one's youth, I don't know. These things have a way of coming back, insisting themselves on you. But in some important ways that's beside the point. The point is one's subjectivity and individuality.</p><p>The forward of the book mentions that some have suggested that Wittgenstein's reference to the words of the <i>Tractatus </i>as a reference to this book ,which the author of the forward says Wittgenstein admired. Wittgenstein combined this powerful mystical bent with his analytic writing; one is tempted to think that the mysticism is responsible for his more radical later statements Russell so hated. </p><p>In the meantime I've been reading a book which is a collection lectures by Foucault from 1983-1984 that goes under the title <i>Courage of Truth.</i> Foucault, very different from Kierkegaard, is nevertheless dealing with things in this book that has resonance with thoughts inspired by Kierkegaard: namely the stance of the one who speaks truth to power, with the primary example being, of course, Socrates. </p><p>For Foucault speaking truth to power always takes place as a practice within a 'regime of truth'. Thus, the truth one is hazarding, is not the TRUTH, but the truth possible to express plainly within the context of truth-teller, be it Church corruption, the corruption of a democracy, etc... The language the truth teller tells is given to the truth teller. Yet the truth teller has within themselves the ability to mutate the language in a manner dangerous to the powers that be, else how is parrhesia(Foucault uses this term a lot) even possible? This is the sort of wrench in the machine that makes all Dystopian dramas tick.</p><p>For Kierkegaard, 150 years earlier, things are not so relative. Individuals are individuals, not created by society, as Foucault might say, but individuals as such. So, It will be interesting to play these two off each other over the course of these posts.</p>Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-70769472344477690762021-01-10T06:06:00.035-08:002021-02-05T13:10:10.325-08:00The Crowd is UNtruth by Soren Kierkegaard -- some thoughts in light of January 6, 2021<p> The events of January 6, 2021, a terrible day for the United States, and I fear not the end, have prompted me to post some thoughts on this short book. It seems to me that I might think I'm being an individual when I'm online when I'm really not, I'm really part of a crowd, but it's not always clear which crowd. There are philosophers who think we are always part of a crowd since we inherit our language and mores from various crowds, and they may be right. But I want to suggest that, notwithstanding, there is usefulness in considering ourselves as individuals. If I posit myself as an individual, does that make me one? Maybe so. Another reason to think I might actually be an individual is that it sure seems like my body is distinct from that of others, and furthermore the character of my mind and heart, including the details of my aortal sclerosis, are unique to me.</p><p>So I want to, perhaps against the grain here, suggest that there ARE individuals and that you are one, and I am one. And that we should avoid crowds, beware when we find ourselves slipping into one, at least, be aware when we slip from one crowd to another, especially if we think of ourselves as all independent.</p><p>"There is a view of life which holds that where the crowd is, the truth is also, that it is a need in truth itself, that it must have the crowd on it's side." (Kierkegaard p. 6)</p><p>This view, in fact, the scientific world view, insists that a specific crowd -- of scientists -- have to assent to something and to the method by which a particular truth is supported, or at least not falsified. But Kierkegaard is radically unscientific, and I like him for it: being UN scientific, in this way of thinking, is not the same thing as being ANTI scientific. But even in the scientific world, individuals are present, it's part of the problem of philosophy of science. My smartphone works for me, and the truths used to create them are public truths, yet they affect me as an individual. But this is NOT what Kierkegaard wants to talk about, as we shall see.</p><p>"There is another view of life; which holds that wherever the crowd is, there is untruth, so that, for a moment to carry the matter out to its furthest conclusion, even if every individual possessed the truth in private, yet if they came together into a crowd (so that "the crowd" received any decisive, voting, noisy, audible importance) untruth would at once be let in." (Kierkegaard p. 6)</p><p>I can't go further without reminding myself of the line from Walden: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it's because he hears a different drummer." I've wondered about me and different drummers, because I certainly am not keeping up. It could be that I'm just not too bright, but it's more pleasant to flatter myself about a different drummer.</p><p>Critical Theorists are surely right that our own self-talk is conditioned by our society, and perhaps there's no room for an individual form of life(see Wittgenstein here), but what if there IS room somewhere? What if there IS a private language? The nice thing about a private language is that it's private, you don't get to know about mine or I yours. </p><p>But we have to be aware that in our attempt to be 'individuals' we might actually act in bad faith and join a crowd -- and that's what has led me to think about January 6. If we are to be individuals, how do we avoid this, or can we? An element of the self set over AGAINST ALL CROWDS, period. I think of the romantic poets and novels about solitude and so on. Not all of us in solitude are authoritarian personalities, spinning strange conspiratorial webs. You can be an individual without ending up in the Capitol sporting a pair of horns. You can be an individual without buying into Ayn Rand or the Chicago School. And you can be an individual with at least a passing familiarity with The Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, the POMOs, and social psychology. And you don't even have to believe in free will.</p><p> Kierkegaard says of this Biblical line(I Cor, 9:24) -- </p><p><span face="Roboto, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize."</span></p><p>-- that the race is won as an individual. Our relationship with God is as an individual, "only one" wins the prize, that is, only AS one, not in a crowd. Perhaps this is why the soul on the burning sands loses: he runs the race for the public prize. But the prize is not public, it is private, for you alone to win or lose. It has nothing to do with the world's prizes.</p><p><br /></p><p>He goes on:</p><p>"The worldly, temporal, busy, socially-friendly person says this:</p><p><span> 'How unreasonable, that only one should receive the prize, it is far more probable</span><br /></p><p><span><span> 'that several combined receive the prize; and if we become many, then it becomes</span><br /></span></p><p><span> 'more certain and also easier for each individually.'</span><br /></p><p><span>Certainly, it is far more probable; and it is also true in relation to all earthly and sensuous prized;</span></p><p><span>and it becomes the only truth, if it is allowed to rule, for this point of view abolishes both God</span></p><p><span>and the eternal..."(Kierkegaard p. 8)</span></p><p><span>In Inferno Canto 15, Dante refers to a soul in Hell running on the burning sands, as one who won the race, instead of lost -- this is both a reference to the Bible and to an annual race in Verona. He makes an impressive show, but he loses. Over the course of my life, the main thing I have run after is security and safety. I would also like to have people think I'm great and awesome, the best and all that. But it does feel like I'm running on hot sand, goaded by something very unpleasant, and in the end it's all fake news. So I'm trying to step off, all the way off, let it go. Blow it all off.</span></p><p><span>Kierkegaard continues:</span></p><p><span>"so that to be a human being is like being a specimen which belongs to a race gifted with reason, so that the race, the species, is higher than the individual, or so that there are only specimens, not individuals."(pp.8-9)</span></p><p><span>Again, how romantic, but how awesome.</span></p><p><span>Crowds never, he says, work "for the highest end."(pg. 9) </span>To work for the highest end requires an individual, with the help of God.</p><p><span><span> Kiekegaard gives what are by now cliché warnings about how people do things in crowds they wouldn't do as individual, but then he says some very strong things about what we would call 'populist demogogues':</span></span></p><p><span><span>"There is therefore no one who has more contempt for what it is to be a human being than those who make it their profession to lead the crowd."(Kierkegaard p. 14) </span></span></p><p><span><span>But Kierkegaard is usually far more radical than most people are willing to be. I think Kierkegaard is saying this about ANYONE who leads crowds for a living. Anyone who does that is undermining their individuality. Whatever the crowd decides is the truth, for Kierkegaard, cannot be the real, human, individual truth, and thus, it is UNtruth. A crowd leader is someone who discovers that they have the ability to talk and convince others, a power Socrates warns about. I don't suppose I can follow Kierkegaard all the way here. Some leaders are great, the words they use have good effect. But the individuals under the sway, even of a great leader, should try to maintain their individuality, or else.</span></span></p>Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-78142697524860898132020-11-07T16:34:00.002-08:002020-11-07T16:55:38.359-08:00Remember Remember the Seventh of November<p> I had just poured myself a cup of Highlander Grogg, non-alcoholic of course, and added some caramel syrup, when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were declared the winners of the 2020 election. Suddenly a weight lifted from my chest and I was able to breathe more deeply. Today could be one of the great days in American History if we will seize it. From now on Highlander Grogg will be my toast to this day, I hope I will remember it for the days I have left.</p>Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-60084895542121175032020-08-10T11:42:00.003-07:002020-08-10T11:42:48.475-07:00Responses and some links for my readings of James Baldwin Post 1My recent reading of James Baldwin has turned into a full-on binge. In order simply to keep up with myself, I'm going to be putting links and thoughts in this blog. The first link below is the YouTube video of the debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, which is a must-see:<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tek9h3a5wQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tek9h3a5wQ</a></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Next are two videos of James Baldwin on Dick Cavett:</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWwOi17WHpE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWwOi17WHpE</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzH5IDnLaBA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzH5IDnLaBA</a></div><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div><div>The next video is an examination of James Baldwin's <u>No Name in the Street</u> with Darryl Pinckney:</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW6KwSE4958">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW6KwSE4958</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-90004443558030105732019-03-11T16:49:00.003-07:002020-10-09T15:59:13.606-07:00What We Owe To Each Other Post 2 <div>
Scanlon is dilating on the notion of 'reasons to act' and whether one can be right or wrong about such things. As a mathematician I really liked this great paragraph where he describes mathematical reasoning as not about oneself, something one can be right or wrong about, but not being outside the self. That way, we are not committed to Platonism. A very nice summary of this position. </div>
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Can reasons for action be the same way? Can we be incorrect? If so, how can we know we are incorrect? Is there a logic underlying reasons for action that is close enough in analogy to math that we should at least not dismiss? It does seem that we have a kind of Kantian thing going on here -- adoption of rationality in some form as a way to decide about action. I have to admit I am attracted to this general philosophy.</div>
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Look, you can say 'why should I be reasonable anyway?' and I don't have a good answer. But, being reasonable has helped me in so much of my life, perhaps I should give it a go here as well. If I take this little step, what do I end up with? If I don't take the step, I get nowhere -- it is not fruitful. And, I am not a dictator and will not be one. One might say, what about Gyges? Oddly, and I can't tell if I'm becoming soft-brained or if I'm actually realizing something , but I think Plato is right and Thrasymachus and Callicles are wrong. And as for the Nietzschean Superman, don't they have reasons? Even if they are consciously irrational or Homeric ones? There is still some logic, predicated on some construction of the self that Nietzsche suggests, 'the free spirit' and all that... But that isn't the only way to construct the self, if the self should even be constructed. Now look, I know that the self-overcoming of Nietzsche should not be confused with the Leopolds and Loebs of the world, so don't start. I'm just saying that suppositions such as I shouldn't live for another world, I should live in this one, not be a Platonist and so on, are just that, suppositions. There is no freedom, no self creation -- that's an illusion. So give it up. The empirical self as posited in our culture, at least in previous eras, I'm not sure about the self in our time, I feel it may not really be there anymore, has its good points and its bad points, but the 'freedom' posited with that self is an illusion. Dennet and his allies are wrong as well. My brain is better off when I give something like reason and compassion a try, so it's selfish. Does that make me a Niezschean? Well, not if you take what he says literally, but that's what so great about him, you shouldn't.<br />
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What happens inside my own mind is so important, that I can at least see the point that it is better to be innocent and wrongly convicted than to get away. I can't get over the force of Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing -- I know, you're like, Kierkegaard, bleh! But it's my blog, so deal. But maybe this is the self-righteous thinking of a sheltered person and I shouldn't tempt fate in this way. Or, maybe, like my arguments against religion, I am only objective when my back is not up against the wall and I should trust my judgement now rather than if I am actually in that situation. I can't tell.</div>
Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-60947178961664379162019-02-21T17:27:00.003-08:002019-02-21T17:55:47.884-08:00What We Owe To Each Other by T.M. Scanlon #1Over the last year I have gotten more heavily into reading moral philosophy. As a result, some of my long-held views have been significantly challenged -- most especially my Nietzschean or nihilist intuitions have been challenged. Thus I have to admit that in the past I have not given sufficient attention to certain other views, especially more contemporary views, including, perhaps, though I need to read him more thoroughly to know for sure, the views of Derek Parfit. But, before I haul off and read thousands of pages of Parfit, I will start by looking at this book by Scanlon, which I am just now reading. But first, I'm going to describe the main consideration that has made me re-think things.<br />
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It all started with Kant. I listened to the Critique of Practical Reason on audiobook -- my eyes are such that physically reading is difficult, though there is no audiobook of Scanlon that I know of. The basic point is, do I have a reason to be rational in my moral behavior? If not, then so much for Kant and his followers. If, however, I can make a case that being rational about moral matters is a good thing... Well, here's the point, I, without even thinking much about it, assume that being rational or empirical is a good thing in virtually every other thing I think about, even if there is ultimately no PROOF of anything in those spheres -- why don't I give such latitude to morality?<br />
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In summary, then... I think I have been inconsistent in my overall thinking: I admit scientific reasoning, which lacks certainty, in scientific spheres, even generalizing scientific style thinking to my general thinking, but use the fact that philosophical certainty is lacking in moral matters as a reason to simply dismiss morals as squishy. I should at least give this more considerationJoel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-64409380995513104272017-06-29T15:28:00.000-07:002017-06-29T15:56:04.617-07:00An Aside about Wittgenstein and MathI haven't really studied Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. I read the entry in the <u>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy </u>on this subject, which I highly recommend.<br />
This does NOT qualify me as anywhere near an expert on this subject, but since I've studied math in my life it was interesting to read, whether I completely agree, or even understand, or not.<br />
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My own experience of math has had moments where I felt like I was entering a Platonic realm. But, according to what I read, Wittgenstein will have none of this!<br />
If you're like me, and you've experienced an other worldly sensation sometimes in math -- something unexpected suddenly makes sense, like coming over a hill and seeing an awesome view, a space that you can't help but believe somehow existed before you got there -- then you might not like his philosophy. The Encyclopedia says Wittgenstein insisted that math was invented, not discovered. It is a language game that involves truth.<br />
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He famously rejects the Incompleteness Theorem. From what I've gathered so far from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy the argument is something like: mathematical propositions are those propositions that can be proved or disproved in a logical calculus, therefore undecidable propositions are not mathematical as defined by the logical calculus. End of story.<br />
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Now, if someone else, who actually knows this part of Wittgenstein, happens to read this and wants to disabuse me of my misapprehensions, I would appreciate greatly.<br />
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Why do I bring this up? The reason is what I mentioned in the second paragraph. I can only describe some experiences I had as metaphysical, a step away from religious. Wittgenstein is kind of a downer on all of this. Math is purely invented and 'mathematical objects' don't exist until they are being used in the practice of math. It is interesting to me that someone who wanted so badly to be metaphysical would take such a view. Is it an example of his empirical conscience chiding him? Or is it because he prefers to think about God as real rather than numbers?Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-6001569299531073562017-06-23T12:16:00.001-07:002017-06-23T13:39:43.781-07:00Wittgenstein, Religion, and the Problem of LifeIf this post title doesn't bring in readers... <br />
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"The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that will make the problematic disappear.<br />
The fact that life is problematic shows that the shape of your life does not fit into life's mould. So you must change the way you live and, once your life does fit into the mould, what is problematic will disappear.<br />
But don't we have the feeling that someone who sees no problem in life is blind to something important, even to the most important thing of all?"(CV 27e)<br />
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Seems to me we have two things going on here:<br />
1. Your problem is a lack of alignment with life. The problem is to get in alignment.<br />
2. The problem is something important about life itself.<br />
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Does 1 contradict 2? Wittgenstein goes on to say that if you see the problem correctly it isn't a sorrow but a joy. So the problem exists, but is a good thing?<br />
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Well, what to make of that? A little later we get:<br />
"In the course of our conversations Russell would often exclaim 'Logic's hell!'...<br />
I believe the main reason for feeling like this was the following fact: that every time some new linguistic phenomenon occurred to us, it could be retrospectively show that our previous explanation was unworkable....<br />
But that is the difficulty Socrates gets into trying to give the definition of a concept."(CV 30e)<br />
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This makes it sound hopeless, that is, trying to fit everything into a conceptual scheme that satisfies you logically, much less existentially.<br />
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So, what does this have to do with religion? Well, we can try to solve our existential worries by bringing our thinking into alignment with life, but it seems to be impossible on two counts: the problem is in life itself, every solution produces other problems. If religion is a system of reference, perhaps a system of reference trying to solve the 'problem of life', does the above mean that these schemes are destined to fail? Or that they can only succeed by ignoring the problems they give rise to logically or otherwise? How can ANY system satisfy every question? I've met people, religious and not religious, who seemed to have an answer to everything. And while I did come way from these conversations unable to refute their position based on what I could figure out about their presuppositions, I also came away feeling they were missing something. Something big. The problem of life. In fact, it seemed a kind of insanity.<br />
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What's the answer here? No answer? Serial answers? Distracting myself with questions? Politics? My whole life there's seemed to be a problem, but my experience has revealed thus far that there is no answer, at least for me. <br />
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<br />Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-8197762149271255012017-06-20T14:47:00.001-07:002017-06-20T17:55:42.218-07:00Wittgenstein and Religious ReferenceWittgenstein writes in <u>Culture and Value:</u><br />
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"It strikes me that religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it's about belief, it's really about a way of living, or a way of assessing life."(CV 64e)<br />
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So, what is a 'system of reference'? Let's see, I suppose words are supposed to refer to things and if you have a system of those you have locutions, games, patterns of speech. So, the word God, while not referring to something empirical, has its use in the center of a religious system of reference that has empirical consequences. These consequences involve how one spends their time, their money, how one evaluates life situations, talks themselves into various emotional states, copes with life's stresses, thinks about the future, in many cases provides a community. A religious system of reference can accomplish all of these things.<br />
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He further says in 64e:<br />
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"It would be as though someone were first to let me see the hopelessness of my situation and then show me the means of rescue until, of my own accord, or not at any rate led to it by my <i>instructor, </i>I ran to it and grasped it."<br />
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The system of reference presents as a solution to hopelessness the adoption of a religious system of reference. For a system of reference to be able to do this it has to present hope and ways of responding within oneself and to others that reinforce the reference system, and thus the hope, even in the face of opposition, or, especially in the face of opposition. A system of reference is thus not merely an abstract set of game, but very practical, real-world games, where hope is at stake.<br />
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When people 'lose their religion', or regain and then lose it again, they have a rather difficult relation to the hope these reference systems, and the ways of life they create and embody, proffer. If one has felt the hope, had it taken away, regained it, and then lost it again, is there a 'diminishing return' in trying to regain it again? A loss of emotional credibility, perhaps.<br />
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This approach to religion suggests the possibility of new systems of reference, without the dogmatic aspects of religion, that can play a similar role in restoring hope to the hopeless to religion. For many of us the widely available 'systems of reference' do no work. Thus we have to devise our own in the meantime. Is such a thing possible without a community? Or is it impossible for a solitary individual to do this?<br />
<br />Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-51021834070688517582017-06-14T17:24:00.000-07:002017-06-14T17:26:53.092-07:00Wittgenstein and Religion 2Quoting from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy quoting from <u>Culture and Value</u>: <br />
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"Rules of life are dressed up in pictures. And these pictures can only serve to <i>describe</i> what we are to do, not <i>justify</i>
it. Because they could provide a justification only if they held good
in other respects as well. I can say: "Thank these bees for their honey
as though they were kind people who have prepared it for you"; that is <i>intelligible</i>
and describes how I should like you to conduct yourself. But I cannot
say: "Thank them because, look, how kind they are!"--since the next
moment they may sting you." p. 29e<br />
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While this is not directly a religious statement, I think for Wittgenstein ethics and religion both involve language games that exceed what <i>I'll </i>call the "Logical Positivists' theory the of Legitimate Use of Language"(LPL for short). But for Wittgenstein it seems, the most important things are beyond LPL.<br />
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And it is difficult for me not to agree with this. Having passed the midpoint of my life, I find I am looking more and more for things beyond LPL, probably because of fear of death, but also a sense that LPL and those things within its confines do not give me the degree of peace I want; sorry, it doesn't, might as well be up front about it. I don't have any tricks up my sleeve or anything. I'm not going to spring something on you, like, "the answer was Jansenism all along".<br />
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But where can I turn? The vexing thing with this view is that there doesn't seem to be anywhere to go within this gloss on Wittgenstein. I call it a gloss because maybe someone out there has something better to say. <br />
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<br />Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-30199620197969231162017-06-10T14:35:00.001-07:002017-06-10T16:50:33.408-07:00Wittgenstein and Religion 1I've been reading, here and there, parts of <u>Culture and Value</u>, and just got another book on Wittgenstein's lectures and conversations on a variety of topics. I thought I would focus my thinking on some of his remarks on religion. I come to it with the thought that Wittgenstein, kind of a mystic, would not apply standard empirical blahblahblah to religious thinking, but would focus on parts of religious practice, language games, and emotions.<br />
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One remark that has me thinking is when he wrote that when a believer in God asks "where did it all come from" s/he is NOT asking for a causal explanation, but is expressing an attitude toward ALL explanations.<br />
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I think he is on to something here. In my religious periods I would have agreed with that. This suggests that a Wittgensteinian gloss on religious talk is that there are language games that practitioners engage in, the features of those games are different than other types of games; but, and this is what I would add and maybe he thought or maybe he didn't, the fact that these games are not like math or science or history, does not mean we should necessarily denigrate all of them.<br />
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I read a book by Lawrence Krauss, <u>A Universe From Nothing</u>, and, interesting though the book was, I felt like Krauss was missing the whole point of 'why is there something rather than nothing?' And I feel like Wittgenstein is pointing at part of my dissatisfaction with the book.<br />
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At another place he says that if Jesus did not resurrect, then he could <i>help </i>(italics in original). He said we would be trapped down here in 'hell'. Again, it's something I understand in some way, otherwise how to explain my love of Dante?<br />
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I've also been re-reading Tolstoy's <u>The Kingdom of God is Within You</u> (Wittgenstein was very moved by Tolstoy) and I want to agree with him so much but I can't. <br />
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This is the how I am responding to this so far, we'll see where it goes. In further posts I will have my copy of <u>Culture and Value</u> with me, so the posts will be better, I hope.<br />
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<br />Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-48845852532589296282016-04-15T16:44:00.002-07:002016-04-15T18:22:56.227-07:00Plato's Gorgias, Entry 3I noticed in part of the argument that Socrates mentions that goodness of something is due to the 'presence' of goodness, badness due to the 'presence' of badness. He uses this to defeat Callicles. Now, this is all in translation, so I don't know how close 'presence' is to the actual Greek word. But you can't hear this and not think about Derrida. Callicles admits Socrates is right about all of this presence business. Is the fact that I found this line of argument questionable that I'm some sort of crypto-postmodern? I agree that the point where Callicles could stop losing the argument is by refusing to admit the 'presence' stuff.<br />
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But if you don't buy the presence stuff, you disagree with both Callicles and Socrates. Callicles is a moralist in the same way that Nietzsche is. I'm sure that using the word 'moralist' here may seem strange, but if you think about it, there is a kind of ubermench-ish morality in play here. The problem is the presence of the ubermensch, or the possible presence of the ubermensch. If the ubermensch is notable by its absence, not its presence, the whole thing falls down. The ubermensch is itself a kind of logocentrism(yeah, FU, Nietzschians, if you don't like it!) -- running around like Diogenes wondering where the ubermensch is, what a load.<br />
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Socrates is right when he points out to Callicles that the many, who Callicles derides as weak, get together, they are stronger than the ubermensch, and Callicles realizes it. Nietzsche just didn't like the fact that Socrates won this part of the argument. I know that Nietzsche admired Plato for inverting everything, preferring the snub-nosed philosopher for Achilles, but I'm sure he felt that the heroes of the Iliad and the tragedies were more moving.<br />
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I get that. Achilles and Agamemnon are so mighty. Compare them to, say, Humbert Humbert, a pathetic villain. Think this is a bad comparison? Think again. Think of the plot of the Iliad, what precipitates it -- and you should watch any movie with the great James Mason. How our society has changed, our values, the gulf that separates a novel like Lolita from the Iliad; trace this over time and realize Socrates played a role -- who knows how big? -- in this. How much is Humbert Humbert the shadow of Socrates?<br />
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There is also an obvious phallocentrism, or phallogocentrism, in this whole thing that I could go off on for some time. Nietzsche himself was horrible in this regard. People like to credit Plato with allowing for women philosopher-kings, but it was pointed out to me by a professor that Plato did not think this was likely, and pointed to the treatment of Xanthippe as more emblematic here. <br />
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I'm glad the gulf is there, between us and Agamemnon and Achilles, and that it is growing ever wider, I hope. Relativism, while it seems to be akin to Callicles and Nietzsche, is not. Relativism does not heroize Achilles, or, say, Hannibal Lecter, or Dexter, anymore than it sees universality in the Golden Rule. We relativists have our values, and feel them deeply, but we know they are not the inevitable products of dialectic. <br />
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<br />Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-30198095490594804872016-04-11T15:35:00.001-07:002016-04-11T15:36:07.778-07:00Plato's Gorgias, Entry 2After discussing rhetoric with Gorgias, Socrates takes on Polus and talks him around to agreeing that the one who suffers injustice is better off than the one who inflicts it. They discuss dictators who seize power unjustly and do not suffer punishment. I'm not going to rehearse the arguments, rather, I'm going to talk about the suffering of Macbeth.<br />
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The power of Macbeth for me is Macbeth's powerful imagination and the depiction of guilt and insecurity of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare dramatizes the damage the murders do to the psyche of the Macbeths. Macbeth says he heard voices saying "Macbeth has murdered sleep", and he goes on, indicating apparent remorse. And Lady Macbeth is driven to insanity and suicide. Macbeth himself degenerates to concluding "life's but a walking shadow". Is Macbeth's famous speech merely a representation of the effects of treason, or has Macbeth, in his degenerated state, seen a deeper truth? Or is the 'deeper' truth itself relative? I was reminded of this when Socrates talks about the good done to the soul by punishment and the idea that it rectifies a damaged soul. Perhaps, just as Macbeth realizes that Burnam Wood has come to Dunsinane and Macduff was not of 'woman born', Macbeth has his first psychological relief. Maybe his last moment, when he knew he was beaten, he got himself back. If so, than Shakespeare is gesturing at ideas like those of Plato. But it's difficult to pin Shakespeare down, that's why he's so much better than everybody else.<br />
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Unfortunately for this argument, it seems to me that there are plenty of examples of terrible people, people who have no conscience, and can do awful things with impunity and get away with it. Socrates may claim that in an 'objective' sense their souls are worse off, but my experience is subjective, not objective, and I reject the notion that there is an objective condition of the soul at all. What appears to the mind is all there is to the soul, nothing else. And if what appears to the soul is not suffering, argument over. Now most people feel guilty when they do things contrary to the society in which they are raised, very much including the Macbeths. But there are some people who don't, or not much to speak of, and often not nearly so much as to cause them to regret doing something bad if they gain a sufficient amount from it.<br />
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I should say here that I'm NOT encouraging people to be selfish dictators, selfish dictators suck. I'm only saying that we should face the reality of our condition, which is that all the attempts to prove that those who profit from injustice somehow are worse off, have failed and are doomed to fail. I wish I could agree with Socrates' arguments, I really do, but I can't -- it's too bad, really.Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-7010744623728280292016-04-09T17:37:00.003-07:002016-04-10T03:33:59.812-07:00Plato's Gorgias, Entry 1So I started listening to Plato's Gorgias on my MP3. I bring it up because it goes back to an issue I have wrestled with over the years: are there real answers to adversaries like Callicles? But before Callicles there is a VERY timely discussion of rhetoric. So I will concentrate on that here.<br />
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Gorgias admits that the rhetorician does not know medicine but knows how to persuade patients to submit to the knife. In fact, the specialty of the rhetorician is to persuade. Thus the students of Gorgias, and the other accomplished sophists, can be very powerful, more powerful than those who actually know the arts themselves. Now, convincing sick people to go to the doctor seems like a great thing. But, as Gorgias admits, specialists at persuasion can also persuade others to do bad things.<br />
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Gorgias says the teacher can't be held responsible for students using their training for evil. But rhetoric is a particular kind of skill, a skill at persuading, completely neutral, that bends others to the will of the speaker, so the potential for abuse is readily apparent.<br />
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I could go on at length about the many examples I've seen of rhetoric over the course of the presidential campaign, but I want to focus on an exchange one of the candidates had with the head of the Sierra Club before the campaign. You can find the video of this on YouTube if you want to see it. He demolishes this man, who was, admittedly, unprepared for the exchange. I still can't tell whether this candidate believes what he says, but he is certainly capable of defeating others in debate. I was so struck by this that I went back and examined the data for climate change, and of course it was overwhelming. The so-called 'pause' the candidate mentions is the result of an extremely warm year, 1998, apparently brought about by a powerful El Nino. The candidate went on at length about how it showed that there hasn't been global warming in 18 years. His poor opponent was not prepared for this exchange and looked bad.<br />
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I'm sure this exchange has also been used to try to defeat the experts who know about such things. So, you can see that this is directly to Socrates' point. Rhetoric can be used to convince those ignorant on a subject to believe things that are untrue. I'm sure you've also seen lawmakers evade the question of climate change by saying they are not scientists, just like Gorgias says rhetoricians are not doctors. But the scientists ARE scientists, and if those who don't know will go online and exert even the modest effort I made to understand the data, they will be convinced as I have been.<br />
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<br />Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-55039840502005390382014-12-21T10:08:00.001-08:002014-12-23T14:52:30.188-08:00Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Entry 17, The Case of the Cube In sections 139-142 are some of the most interesting so far. Here he uses the example of the cube to investigate the relations between the picture we get of a word and how we may use it. That is, how does the picture we get of a cube really limit the way we may use it.<br />
One may think that the picture we have of a cube will completely determine how we use the word. But, we will be surprised when we can think of a triangular projection of a cube and still have to call it a 'cube'.<br />
It is too easy to just say, as everyone does these days, that the USE of a word is what we mean by it. Wittgenstein, pun intended, turns it around in his mind and shows how the notion of 'use' reveals potentials in a word beyond what we immediately think when a picture occurs in our mind. We may think we mean the picture by the word, and that has to be an important part of it, but it is not the full expression of the word. It is the place the word in all our language games that reveal its potential.<br />
We do not immediately think of all possible uses of a word when we hear it, in that regard the picture is a central part feature of the 'meaning' of a word. Perhaps the 'meaning' of the word is not something that happens in a single instant when we hear it, and we should think of the meaning of a word as something extended in time, that mutates, expands and contracts. Now, this does not mean we mean NOTHING by the word, only that the meaning of a word is a complex of things 'before the Mind' and uses we make of it. The picture that comes to mind might always be the same, so doesn't change with time, but we use the word in time in new ways and contexts that the image in our mind alone does not immediately suggest. Wittgenstein emphasizes that the 'meaning' of a word is tied to how it is used in practice, which in turn depends on how we are trained to participate in language-games.Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-11907248365558335642014-11-26T12:17:00.002-08:002020-08-29T06:23:28.372-07:00Joel weighs in on FergusonAlright, I'm going to say a few things about Ferguson. Here goes:<br />
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1. The prosecutor did not want to prosecute the case, that's obvious. I think a special prosecutor would have avoided the appearance of a conflict of interest. The presentation he gave the night of the announcement sounded more like a defence attorney. Furthermore, while it may seem fair to present both sides to a grand jury, my gut tells me other defendants do not get the same consideration. This appears to be a double standard.<br />
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2. Wilson said he didn't carry a taser because it was 'bulky'. I understand that a police officer has to be agile, but we should consider the possibility that a bulky encumbrance is a small price to pay if it means not killing an unarmed person. Also, I've certainly heard of and even seen on TV police using tasers, I would need to know how they were able to carry them if they were so bad, but I'm not an expert on this and would be interested to hear other opinions.<br />
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3. I knew a number of small-time criminals when I was growing up who did worse things than what Brown did at the convenient store(they were all white). Several of them were arrested etc.. but NONE of them were killed by police. I realize this is anecdotal, but I seriously doubt if I would be able to report the same result if they were not white. By the way, I hope these kids have grown up to be law-abiding adults and I wish them well.Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-42150503261969152562014-10-26T16:33:00.003-07:002014-10-26T16:34:30.466-07:00Spirituality: Sam Harris versus Thomas Merton, Duelling Banjos of the Self So, I had a sudden inspiration to read Thomas Merton's book <u>The Inner Experience</u> , which talks a lot about the "I", and play that off against Harris' book, which will talk about how the "I" is an illusion, and see whether anything interesting comes from it. Maybe, maybe not.Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-70988803784070042732014-10-26T14:50:00.000-07:002014-10-26T14:50:50.674-07:00Spirituality: The Case of Sam Harris, Entry 3, Taking on OMMM Mechanics Here Harris is right on. There is no reason to conclude from QM that the universe is fundamentally Mind. QM is indeed mysterious and counter-intuitive in many ways, but Idealism is not the necessary consequence of this. As Harris points out, 'measurement' does not invoke Mind per say, it only invokes measurement.<br />
Now, there are strange things in QM, mainly non-separability, which is genuinely strange, but that doesn't mean we have to smoke doobies and try to use The Force.<br />
Additionally, Harris points out that the Mind is still dependant upon the physical processes within the body, and, as much as I find Penrose an interesting read, it is not obvious that QM gets us anywhere when it comes to solving the PHILOSOPHICAL problem of Mind. Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-36278346897941363032014-10-25T07:21:00.002-07:002014-10-26T08:38:17.622-07:00Spirituality: The Case of Sam Harris, entry 2 Here I'm going to digress onto some of his comments about Christianity and its relationship to mysticism. I'll open by quoting the opening of Dante's Paradiso:<br />
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"The glory of the One who moves all things<br />
permeates the universe and glows<br />
in one part more and in another less."<br />
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This is from the Allen Mandelbaum translation. Other Christian mystics, many of whom are quoted in <u>The Perennial Philosophy</u>, which Harris takes to task for being an inaccurate representation of Christianity, make similar points to the above. I see the mysticism in Christianity as not merely the result of a few outliers, but as part of the mainstream integration of Greek thought into Christianity. The opening Gospel of John is as mystical as anything you are likely to read:<br />
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"In the beginning was the Word<br />
and the Word was with God, and<br />
the Word was God ...<br />
All things were made and came into<br />
existence through Him; and without Him<br />
was not even one thing made that has<br />
come into being. In Him was Life, and the<br />
Life was the Light of men.<br />
And the Light shines on in the darkness, for<br />
the darkness has never overpowered it" <br />
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This shows an obvious neo-Platonic influence, whereas the Dante bit has a strong dose Aristotle as well. There is thus a tendency toward union with God that runs throughout Christianity that Harris downplays in remarks such as<br />
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"In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the human soul is conceived as genuinely separate from the divine reality of God. The appropriate attitude for a creature that finds itself in this circumstance is some combination of terror, shame, and awe. In the best case, notions of God's love and grace provide some relief -- but the central message of these faiths is that each of us is separate from, and in relationship to, a divine authority who will punish anyone who harbors the slightest doubt about His supremacy."(Harris, pg. 21)<br />
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His description here does NOT represent my own experience of being a Christian, nor do I think it adequately represents the relationship to God most of the Christians I know have, or think they have. God represents that which is the most real in the self, yet transcends the self. A relationship with God is with an entity that invades the soul, remakes the soul, unites with the soul. Harris' characterization, while good fodder for his atheist readers(including myself) is, in my opinion, a misrepresentation of a wide swath of Christian experience.<br />
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Lest you think this type of mysticism is only a Medieval Church thing, protestant thinkers like Paul Tillich(Martin Luther King wrote his dissertation on him) emphasized 'The Ground of Being' etc.. as central to his thought. This kind of talk can be hard to parse, and there is not the same emphasis in Christian thought as there is in Eastern religion that the self IS God, more that God is the activating principle behind all things, including the soul. This element is different from Eastern thought, but is not given its due by Harris. Aspects of this tendency are in the usual 'come to Jesus' invitations to allow "Jesus into your heart". <br />
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Finally, I'm not arguing that the Inquisition didn't come out against many mystics, of course it did, but I am saying that the experience of Christianity has had an element of UNION with God that is undeniable and Harris just misses the boat here.Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-75086935078977109962014-10-19T10:30:00.001-07:002014-10-25T07:46:14.256-07:00Spirituality: The Case of Sam Harris, entry 1 So, I got Sam Harris' new book, <u>Waking Up</u> . I am not going to venture into his recent controversy with Ben Affleck and Bill Maher. I am only going to respond to the topic of this book -- sorry, folks.<br />
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Harris recounts a life-changing experience on Ecstasy. I used to hear this kind of stuff when I was in college; I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now. When I started college I read a lot of Aldous Huxley, including The Doors of Perception and The Perennial Philosophy(which Harris quotes and then criticizes -- I'll have more to say about this later). I once wrote a paper in a philosophy class about Huxley -- it was assigned as our final paper. I wrote that if a drug can create the same experience as meditation then logic won't allow me to distinguish one from the other. The professor didn't like my answer: he claimed that the drug would have to make you virtuous etc..., in keeping with traditional Christian mysticism. I still disagree with him. Look, I have a lot of experiences, some when I'm tired or my blood sugar is high or low, some when I've had a lot of caffeine, and so on, but there is no reason to think an experience is telling me anything profoundly metaphysical, including about the nature of the 'self'. And it's certainly not obvious that virtue, faith etc.. are a gateway to mystical insight. So, in my paper I was rejecting the entire mystical program, which I am doing again.<br />
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I don't need to have a drug-induced, or meditation induced, experience, to reject traditional notions of the self; ordinary experience and logic suffice. It is interesting that Harris, who in other contexts tows the line of scientific atheism, would be prone to such hippy-dippy thought processes when it comes to Buddhism and the 'self'. This does not mean I think meditation is bad: it can be very relaxing and can allow you to pause and passively perceive what is occupying your mind in a way that you don't when you are too involved in your life.<br />
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In my next entry I will examine Harris' comments about the separateness of God in Western religion and the unity with God in Eastern religion. Not that what he says is necessarily wrong, but I'm going to talk about the influence of neo-Platonic and Aristotelian thought on medieval Christianity, which added some Eastern sounding elements -- which may not be surprising as Plato was influenced through Pythagoras, who is reputed to have travelled to the East.<br />
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Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-17488335707045625702014-09-06T11:43:00.001-07:002014-09-06T14:36:19.533-07:00Ender's Game: why it bothers me and does that make it a good book? Just saw the movie "Ender's Game". Good production values, good special effects. I never managed to finish reading the book. I took the book with me when I was going to get a sleep apnea test. I read about 30 pages and found the book rather repellent. I was unable to finish it.<br />
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When I have a strong reaction like this I question myself as to whether I'm justified. So I kept trying to give the story, and Orson Scott Card, a chance. Then I read about Card and didn't like some of the things he had said which it made it more difficult for me to be fair to the book.<br />
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Now, there seem to be some people who think of this book as some profound statement about the nature of reality. Why should that be?<br />
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And if a book can create such a response in me, does that mean the book really is great?<br />
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No.<br />
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The real question is, why do the people who like the book like it so much? I can think of two opposite reasons why people would like the book:<br />
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1. They like the heartless, militaristic, picture of the world and discipline. Ender never intentionally commits genocide, so he's innocent. See the following, and I think insightful, essay:<br />
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm<br />
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2. They like the end and interpret it to mean that the heartless, militaristic, picture of the world is terrible and leads to genocide, which is a bad thing.<br />
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Unfortunately, and maybe this is says something about ME, I think most people like the book because of 1. and not 2. -- and this is why I don't like them. Now, you could also like the book because it raises these issues, but that's squishy and academic, so I'll put it aside. <br />
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The wikipedia page on the book says that it has been used in military training, which suggests interpretation 1., that you suck unless you think mercilessly about life. Life is about tactics, about being cool under pressure, like Hemingway without the attempt at grandeur, and not about genuineness. Genuineness is for wimps.<br />
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Then there's the issue of the analysis given in the above essay: that the book centers around Ender's purported innocence because a. he didn't know it was a simulation, b. he had no choice. This is the more interesting take on the book. I also appreciate what Kessel says about 7th Grade morality. Really, you should follow the link above. It is a popular point of view that a person's intentions are all that matter when evaluating someone's actions from a moral point of view and Card does seem to push this question to an extreme, which makes the book itself interesting. But then, the ends justify the means stuff is what underlies most of the book, and despite the ending of this part of the trilogy(or however many books there are!) that I haven't read, it seems so far that this is the emphasis, and what leads me to think most people who like it, like it because of 1. -- and that's why I think I dislike the book.<br />
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Then there's the other question, should we act in video games as we do in real life on the off-chance that it's real? That sounds like a profound, 'The Matrix' kind of question, but I don't think so. There has to be a realm of human action where we don't have to act like morally perfect beings. <br />
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<br />Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-55589302578288477332014-07-24T18:50:00.001-07:002014-07-24T18:50:02.848-07:00An aside about Brave New World RevisitedSo, please let me interrupt the break-neck pace of posts about Wittgenstein to say a few words about Brave New World Revisited. For a trip down memory lane I took it to breakfast this morning to see what I think about it now. I did have a couple of thoughts:<br />
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1. Huxley's concerns about concentration of media are very timely, and put issues like net neutrality in relief. The internet provides a sources of information that might have made Huxley a little more optimistic. Sources such as www.democracynow.org<br />
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and others that provide an alternative to 'corporate' media. If I want to know something about what's going on in the news I wouldn't rely entirely on newspapers, cable news etc... when there's an infinite variety of opinions on any subject. The danger is if/when the current decentralized internet becomes just another space for what Morton Downey called 'pabulum'.<br />
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2. Technology. The pace is way too fast and I can't keep up. I try to sort of keep up but I frankly don't see the point most of the time. When I was young I wished I could live long enough to see all the new gizmos coming along, but frankly I find it a bit boring; that's right, I said BORING. Alas, if I were to prognosticate, I would say it will be a very, very long time before we zip around the galaxy. In the meantime it will be one more random collection of apps on whatever electronic what-have-you as we crowd onto our planet(yawn). <br />
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3. Huxley and many others I think did not appreciate the staying power of traditional religion to throw a wrench in their visions of future utopias/dystopias. They figured such things would be long gone. But there's no reason we won't see traditional religious fundamentalists far into the future; so there, humanists, your bright godless future is a fantasy, you'll just have to deal with the loss of your little pipe dream -- or maybe not, religionists don't. And lest you think religion will keep these dystopias from occurring, recall that the Nazi's appropriated the cross:<br />
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http://liberalslikechrist.org/Catholic/NaziCrosses.html<br />
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Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-11066985073351071962014-05-11T15:44:00.001-07:002014-05-11T15:44:38.541-07:00Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Entry 16, More on Kripke's Sceptical Interpretation and a Innate Ideas Proposal"Kripke detects an entirely novel form of sceptical argument that allegedly establishes that there is no fact, either in my mind or in my external behaviour, that constitutes my meaning something by the words I utter, or that fixes what will count as a correct application of a rule that I grasp. The conclusion of his sceptical argument -- that no one can ever mean anything by their words, or be following a rule that fixes what counts as a correct or an incorrect application of it -- is clearly deeply paradoxical, and it is impossible that anyone should rest content with it."(Marie McGinn, Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations, p. 75)<br />
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So, Chomsky argued that the number of possible languages a child would have to choose from is simply too large for there not to be a constraint on the possible syntactic structure the child actually selects from(otherwise the child would not be able to acquire language at all, especially as quickly as children do.) This seems to me to be his most powerful argument. As to what those structures are etc..., well that can be argued over forever. Wittgenstein's sceptical arguments about meaning and so on, have the feel of this kind of problem. If I'm reading all of this right, our uses of words do not sufficiently constrain their possible meaning and our definitions of rules are insufficiently 'fixing' of future use. A solution to this problem would be that there are certain structures underlying the use of language that render these problems solved, otherwise we couldn't communicate.<br />
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<br />Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2835867443178741856.post-34811475947598579702014-05-03T07:57:00.000-07:002014-05-03T15:04:10.584-07:00Philosophical Investigation, Entry 15, Language idling"The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing work."(Section 132)<br />
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He then launches into a discussion of propositions and the predicates 'true' and 'false'. I found this paragraph difficult and may not have got this right, but that's why this is a blog and not an article submitted for publication. He considers 'this is the way things are' as the basis for the types of sentences that may be true or false. Then he criticizes this and asks how does a proposition 'engage' truth?<br />
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To insist only propositions have truth-value is the same as insisting only a King may be checked. Does this mean that games where pawns are checkable are bad? Wittgenstein is once again criticizing the point of view that privileges a certain language game, that of propositions, and acts as though it were not a game among others and which could be formulated differently.<br />
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Then he moves on to ask about questions like 'who, what' etc.. and whether only certain answers fit. In so doing he circles back to the question of whether truth-value fits a proposition by asking a child whether a given sentence "is the kind of sentence where you can add 'is true' to the end of."<br />
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So, what do I make of all of this? He seems to be going over and over the same ground. In this case, deconstructing the notion of a 'natural' truth-valued language game. There is part of me saying he is wrong. Boolean type logic and propositions that can be true or false do seem to occupy an important place in language. Philosophical problems are not the result of needing therapy, they are the inescapable limits of that type of language -- there is no therapy for it. Or, maybe I'm just sick in the head.<br />
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In Section 138 Wittgenstein talks about the distinction between use and meaning. He says we may 'grasp' the meaning of a word in an instant and then 'use' it according to what we have grasped. In Section 139 he mentions the traditional view of having a 'picture' in our mind.<br />
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What to make of all of this? Well, Marie McGinn in her book Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations mentions Kripke's sceptical interpretation. The difference between meaning and use is unpacked in this section of her book using the word 'intention'. She gives the example, I'm not sure if it comes from Kripke, of 68+57. In what sounds like a reference to Nelson Goodman and the Grue/Bleen business, she says perhaps we mean by '+' not the usual summation but an operator that equals '+' until one of the numbers is at least 57 and and if one of the numbers is 57 or greater the answer is 5.<br />
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She writes:<br />
"If the skeptic is right, then there is no fact about my past intention, or about my past performance, that establishes, or constitutes, my meaning one function rather than another by '+'. "(McGinn, 75-76) <br />
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So, we are left with skepticism about language, whether words mean anything other than their use. Obviously this is the empirical situation, and the internal state of a person, whether they 'intend' this or that, or 'intention' means anything etc.. is not something that is empirical, possibly not even to the person using the word. <br />
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<br />Joel Kingston Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01148352270339360527noreply@blogger.com1