Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
Do we now live in an enlightened age?
Craig Rowley is a regular Webdiarist, an esteemed moderator and a Director of Webdiary. His articles have included Everybody's talking about the bird ... but it's a very human story, Show us your true colours: An adventure into the sea of Australian humanity, and most recently (with Richard Tonkin) Follow the Big Money: Bad Business with Baghdad.
by Craig Rowley
"We should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organisation of society." - Albert Einstein (1949)
Science and technology were hailed as the new hope of humankind, as the road to wisdom and the key to happiness and freedom. Enlightenment was meant to be "man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity". That's what Immanuel Kant told us. And way back in 1784 he wrote that if asked, "Do we presently live in an enlightened age?" the answer is, "No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment."
As Peter Gay pointed out in his prize winning book The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Science of Freedom at the height of the Age of Enlightenment there seemed little doubt that in the struggle of man against nature the balance of power was shifting in favour of man. We went on to welcome modernisation with open arms and embrace the maelstrom of change that came with it. We placed scientific knowledge on a pedestal, knowledge to be esteemed above all others.
Most tend to equate science with technology, perhaps as a result of the constant reinforcement of a word association. Technology though, in its essence, precedes and is more fundamental than science. Technology, with origins in the Greek word technologia from techne (craft) and logia (saying), is about tools and techniques used to apply knowledge and achieve some practical result. The word ‘science’ comes from the Latin word, scientia, which means knowledge; thus the phrase scientia potentia est: knowledge is power.
Science and technology then are related, but not the same. The basic difference between science and technology, in the prodigious business thinker Peter Drucker's view, was not in the content but in the focus of the two areas. Science was a branch of philosophy, concerned with understanding. It was misuse and degradation of science to use it according to Plato's famous argument. Its object was to elevate the human mind. Technology, on the other hand, was focused on use. Its object was increase of the human capacity to do.
We’ve used science and technology to do things, like spark the growth of a new world, new forms of society, new ways of living. They produced for us great discoveries, changed our images of the universe (and our place in it), and they brought on the industrialisation of production. Now contemporary Western society is suffused with the products of scientific and technological 'progress', and hence the West has made its powerful presence felt in every corner of this small planet. So we’ve made our way out the dark ages and into modernity, but did the Enlightenment project really enlighten us?
Back in the eighteenth century Kant had said no, but asserted that there were “clear indications that the way is now being opened for men to proceed freely in this direction [toward enlightenment] and that the obstacles to general enlightenment - to their release from their self-imposed immaturity - are gradually diminishing.” The standing obstacles may have been diminishing, but we are creatures handy at constructing new ones. In taking up Kant's call to "Sapere Aude!" (Dare to know!) you could think we would have done a better job with Socrates' suggestion that we heed that precept inscribed in gold letters over the portico of the temple at Delphi - gnothi seauton (know thyself).
Science was meant to be a light that would, as Francis Bacon said, “eventually disclose and bring into sight all that is most hidden and secret in the universe” and it was meant to lead the way in the battle against blind faith. Instead we founded a new religion. The vast majority of scientists believe in the inviolability of progress and they do so with the driven purity of terrorists. Is it enlightened not to question the privileged status of scientific knowledge and associated technologies?
Here is a question we might ask to test our enlightenment: Could it be, as Herbert Marcuse wrote in what some consider to be the most subversive book of the twentieth century, that as a result of technical progress "a comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization"? Has science delivered us into a new kind of slavery rather than the universal liberation promised?
Francis Bacon entertained the idea of the universe as a problem to be solved, examined, meditated upon, rather than as an eternally fixed stage, upon which man walked. It didn’t seem to dissuade him from trying to construct a new eternally fixed stage of sorts though. Way back when there were relatively few readers – yet alone enlightened readers – Bacon wrote the utopian novel The New Atlantis (published would you believe by Dr Rowley). In the Introductory note to Fishburne’s 11th edition of The New Atlantis it says that “no reader acquainted in any degree with the processes and results of modern scientific inquiry can fail to be struck by the numerous approximations made by Bacon's imagination to the actual achievements of modern times”. Bacon had imagined an ideal commonwealth; he’d depicted a society where the best and brightest citizens attended a college called Salomon's House, in which scientific experiments are conducted in Baconian method in order to understand and conquer nature, and to apply the collected knowledge to the betterment of society.
A little over two-hundred years later Aldous Huxley, member of a family that had produced a number of brilliant scientific minds, had set out his fourth novel Point Counter Point. In it his characters decry the dangers of sacrificing humanity for intellectualism, and express concern about the staggering progress of science and technology. The theme from this novel of ideas was carried through to Huxley’s fifth novel, his most famous and his first attempt at a utopian novel – Brave New World.
In between we find a history of utopia (or dystopia depending on your view) in which science is central. The widely held view of science is that scientific knowledge is proven knowledge. In the explanation of the world provided by empiricist science all knowledge is based on objectively verified sense experience and this is the way in which science was looked upon by those that set about to transform the world by scientific means.
So, given the pattern of scientists promoting their own social prescriptions, it is no surprise that in the nineteenth century, Auguste Comte, who saw himself as the Pope of Positivism, stated that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge. It was logical he would then advocate using science (as defined by empiricism) to govern human affairs. That’s why he is also known as the “grandfather of sociology” and why he penned the Plan de traveaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société (1822) (Plan of scientific studies necessary for the reorganization of society). It is also why he founded what you’d have to call a vehicle to the utopia he envisioned: the Religion of Humanity, a humanistic, non-theistic religion.
There are two outstanding events in Comte’s early life that help to explain the nature of his thought. The first was his attendance at the École Polytechnique, which he came to see as the model for a future society ordered and sustained by a new elite of scientists and engineers (enter the technocrat). And it was in Paris that Comte met Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet – French philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist. Condorcet was an optimist on social progress, believing in the ultimate "perfectibility" of humanity.
The second great event in Comte’s life took place in 1817. It was in that year that Comte became the secretary to the French utopian so-called socialist Claude Henri de Saint-Simon and you can’t properly comprehend Comte without making some sense of Saint-Simon. By any careful definition, Saint-Simon cannot be properly labelled a socialist. The idea that he was arises because so many of his follows became socialists at a later stage. He was of an ancient noble lineage, had fought alongside Lafayette and the American revolutionaries. On his return to France he had become a friend of the financiers and speculators who flourished in the Thermidorean Reaction (the revolt in the French Revolution against the excesses of Reign of Terror) and he himself did well under the Directoire. He was just the kind of person who would be detested by fellow Frenchmen who were actual utopian socialists, like François Fourier and François-Noël “Gracchus” Babeuf.
For some time, Saint-Simon appeared to be a typical liberal aristocrat, a man who spoke a language favourable to the emerging liberal and progressive bourgeoisie. Yet Saint-Simon was something consistently more than a liberal, more than a simple-minded defender of laissez-faire capitalism. As his thought became more refined he became more and more concerned with the dangers inherent in uncontrolled individualism. Saint-Simon perceived the ramifications of the new industrialism of his own time and he attempted to place his perceptions into a broad theoretical framework. He idealised productivity, organisation, efficiency, innovation and technological discovery. Sounding familiar?
Yes, Saint-Simon condemned kings, nobles and the clergy as useless and parasitical (common enough a view in his time), but while he incorporated the working classes into his vision of the future, the workers were not to play a dominant or even important position. While manual labour would be honoured and the parasites pushed away from power, what would distinguish the new system were not so much labour but labour’s reorganisation and the application of technology to it. Thus, a meritocratic elite of intelligence and creativity would assume the highest positions of prestige and authority. Arise the technocracy. Saint-Simon was undeniably elitist.
So Comte had soaked up the Saint-Simonian view and unlike those that looked to capitalist growth with a suspicious eye, Saint-Simon had welcomed it. Both men had sought a science of human behaviour, what Saint-Simon had called a physique sociale or social physics and Comte came to call sociology. And it was sociology, Comte claimed, that would give ultimate meaning to all the other sciences - it was the one science which held the others together. Once a science of society had been developed, we’d achieve a synthesis of order and progress, opinions would once again be shared, and society would be stable. Once there was true social knowledge, people would not be as willing to fight over religious or political opinions. We would achieve true freedom.
Problem is that from Comte’s point of view true freedom is a new kind of submission. To Comte and those he influenced true freedom lies in the rational submission to scientific laws. The gradual awareness and understanding of these laws is what Comte meant by the word progress. The task then for a follower of Comte was to provide in effect a new religion and a new faith (with the technocrats as the new clergy). So Comte has a crucial, but insufficiently recognised, place in the formation of modern and post-modern thought. He and his followers set about busily building a “positive science” and a new “positive religion” - a nontheistic, atheistic religion, a religion of man and society.
What of that new religion? Based on a 'demonstrable faith', but otherwise homologous with the Catholic form of Christianity it was 'destined' to replace, the religion of Humanity was to be a triple institution. Its full establishment required dogme (a doctrine), regime (a moral rule) and culte (a system of worship), all organised and coordinated through a Positivist Church. Taken as a whole, the Positivist System would provide the scientific-humanist equivalent to what systematic theology had been in the high Middle Ages: it would serve as the intellectually unifying basis of the new industrial order. A new system of education would be needed, one geared to a lifelong process of moral education.
There were prescriptions for every major institution such as the family, the sphere of production, and the broader polity (reduced to the humanly manageable scale of a small republic). Most importantly, these institutions would be ordered and directed and that overarching direction would be provided by a leadership of temporal and spiritual authorities – les patriciens, which was to consist of bankers, industrialists and engineers (in other words the technocrats) to act as temporal authorities comprised as committees, and a new class of spirituals, the scientists-philosophers-teachers-pastors (the Positivist priesthood). Under the Positivist System it would be the elites of bankers, industrialists and engineers who would control the repressive organs of the state.
Does it all sound so strange to you? In practical terms, Comte's religious project was of course judged a complete failure. But was that failure so total? Look around and listen carefully and you can just make a hint of the Comtean Positivist System now. You can hear the echo of it in certain views of the role of family in our free-market world, in talk about work ethics (could we start to hear it in discussion of WorkChoices?), and whenever a politician says “Trust us, we’re the Government” as it sets us on a certain course (without much consultation, of course).
You can hear the echo of it in almost any voice that portrays the image of science as one of certainty and authority. I heard it the other week echoed in ideas shared by another Webdiarist. In discussion of Ralf Dahrendorf’s beliefs about an ugly phenomenon of our violent times we’d tossed around a question about how to create more harmonious relationships among the peoples of the world and the 'diarist offered a view of Eugenics as a way forward. I can’t see Eugenics on the likely path to enlightenment myself, but the other ‘Diarist professed, “In one or two generations we could have heaven on earth, a perpetual love-in.” The idea he shared sounds like it shares a lot in common with an emergent philosophy – Transhumanism, the movement advocating use of new sciences and technologies to increase human physical and cognitive abilities and improve the human condition in unprecedented ways and described by its sympathisers as the "movement that epitomises the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity" and by its critics as the "the world's most dangerous idea".
Aldous Huxley’s brother Julian, a biologist, was a proponent of Eugenics as a method of bettering society. He saw Eugenics as important for removing undesirable variants from the human gene pool as a whole, but he also believed that all peoples were equal, and was an outspoken critic both of the eugenic extremism that arose in the 1930s and of the received wisdom that working classes were eugenically inferior. He was a proponent of Transhumanism and as a Transhumanist believed that humans can and should use technologies to become more than human.
Have you considered the convergence of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science? The Transhumanists have, and they would like to use them as well as hypothetical future technologies such as simulated reality, artificial intelligence, mind uploading (transfer of a human mind to a computer) and cryonics to fundamentally change the nature of human beings. They speculate that human enhancement techniques and other emerging technologies may facilitate a quantum leap, the next significant evolutionary step for the human species by the midpoint of the 21st century. But when you shine a light on their ideas what do you see? Do we want to go where their ideas would lead us?
From the Utopian optimism of the Age of Enlightenment, in which science and technology were upheld as agents of human liberation, through modernity - with its focus on constant change, progress and the realisation of ends, through the pessimism of the postmodern, to the heaven or hell this idea of making a technology-enabled human-transformation into a posthuman condition, science and technology have been central to debating the direction society will take in future, as well as interpretation and judgement of the path it has taken in the past. So perhaps we need to bring on some enlightenment and examine these ideas of those who want to redesign the human condition and decide whether its utopia or dystopia we see on the path ahead of us.
 |
 |
 |
| © 2006, Webdiary Pty Ltd |
| Disclaimer: | This site is home to many debates, and the views expressed on this site are not necessarily those of the site editors. Contributors submit comments on their own responsibility: if you believe that a comment is incorrect or offensive in any way, please submit a comment to that effect and we will make corrections or deletions as necessary. |
The point is to question
The point Daniel is to question and keep questioning. We don't need a vote on this (as if the result would be some final resolution giving us the opportunity to pack up and go home), rather what we need is to constantly challenge and question as I highlighted with Einstein's words:
"We should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organisation of society." - Albert Einstein (1949)
I'll tell you what I'm going to question now Daniel - your motive. What is it? Why drop in daily to take the piss?
Social or Individual ?
Ross, thanks for the further clarifications, it’s a very complex issue, and I do appreciate an exchange of differing views.
I think one difference between us is how we are focusing on the issue. Your focus seems to be on the Individual level, whereas my focus is on the social level. The words I consistently use should make very little doubt of this. I cannot conceive of an individual without a culture, the concept just simply does not exist for me.
If I listen to Mozart I hear Haydn, if I listen to Schubert I hear Beethoven, I simply cannot stand listening to music any other way. Now the contradiction of course is that I have absolutely no connection culturally to the Viennese tradition. My connection is very much as an abstraction, from the outside so to speak.
And this in a nutshell is where I stand, or I should say more appropriately this is an issue where I have nowhere to stand, politically it manifests itself in my concern for what I see happening globally, and at the domestic level the same issues are involved. Much of the music I hear today is simply unbearable to my ears, it simply sounds out of tune, and by out of tune I am not thinking about mathematical relationships from within the music, I am thinking out of tune in accordance with all the concepts I have been trying to develop.
In the Berkley example, for example, we have Jimi Hendrix, African American from the 1970’s and Gustav Mahler, Jewish from the late 19th Century, so both artists are separated in culture and time. Now their music, which is their identity, is placed into perspective with the falling tree, which from within my philosophy stands for the source of life. Maybe you can call it God.
I love a phrase by the late Existential Theologian Paul Tilich, “God is the ground of all Being”. So my interest in a concept such as Soul should be obvious. When I was a child I would simply lose my self in my father’s record collection, and I can still see my self now, wondering why all the music sounded so different, and who created the music and why etc. In fact I am still asking the same questions.
Now what does this have to do with the notion that the brain is made up of chemicals? The notion itself does not worry me in the least; in fact you have stimulated me to thought about the issue.
The problem I have is one of balance. When is the brain balanced and healthy? Who decides when the brain is balanced and healthy? And most importantly how do the above two questions relate to issues of culture and social interaction? When is it a social or cultural problem and when is it a problem on the individual level to do with ethics and morality?
Last Time
Ross, you're right, just a bit of frustration on my part, when very little confirmation comes your way, it gets to the point were you start to question your own sanity, and I am sure that Daniel will get a great deal of satisfaction from that comment.
Time has more depth for me, when I hear music from the past in my inner imagination I imagine Time frames, these Time frames are Aural Spaces that the music occupies.
Juxtapose two Time frames and you have a dissonance, at first I thought that consciousness exists in Time, but I have been thinking in the last few days that Consciousness is Time.
The Berkley example creates a point of reference, or put a different way, I can freely juxtapose different Time frames against the energy that is produced by the Universe which to me is symbolised by Berkley’s falling tree.
Anyway I am only repeating myself, and obviously boring everyone.
These issues are important to me, if not anyone else.
How politically convenient to reduce humanity to chemicals, you than can do away with social, cultural responsibility. How much more complex is a country's Foreign Policy, and how much easier is it for institutions to justify there actions to the public and themsleves.
A concept such as Cultural Time would change the whole dynamics of how minorities are viewed within the dominant groups. Introduce responsibility and humanise our society, what a chilling thought that must produce in our corporate institutionalised thought police.
Charles, speak
Hey Charles, don't be discouraged please. You may find you and I do have similar theories/thoughts if we explore such on terms we both understand. I use fairly simple language and am not ashamed to admit I don't understand some terms you have used, or others.
That's no big deal, I could write on topics that I know intimately and very few would understand much of what I wrote. To me plain language is the best way to comunicate as anything else loses the attention of people reading or discussing, in any environment. Plus I learn as terms I don't understand come up. Online dictionaries etc are great for such. To me the attempted put downs many try to use through demonstrating their deeper knowledge is frequently a demonstration of their own failings and need to feel superior when they are not.
I see the chemical issue seems to be difficult for you to accept in some ways. Why do I think that way? Simply because I have been in a deep depressive episode for about six years solid to date. During that the entire focus has been on how my thinking works or doesn't work and what drugs (chemicals) help me deal with life as I slowly recover. As such I am highly focused on the effect of chemicals on me, physically and mentally.
During this period my thinking has been extremely affected and I have had to think on a base level, simply for survival. What I see though is that a large majority of people think and operate on that base level all the time so it's difficult to speak in other terms without some wanting to attack simply because they don't think that way, or can't.
Essentially I have said that humans are simply a collection of chemicals and physically that is true. It is also true of our brains, that it is made of chemicals and controls the rest of the body which in turn is also chemicals.
So, functionally we are chemical, actually mainly plain old H2O.
But the issue of soul or brain or belief is what our brains create for us. Call it what you will, it's a unique and barely understood organ. It creates good feelings, bad feelings, ideas, theories, hatred, love and every other emotion or motive that can be named. It all happens in the brain.
None of that is to say we are just chemicals. Of course we are not. It's that thought function that, to me, is me, not the chemicals. Does that make sense to you? Perhaps this is the first issue we need to come to an understanding of between us.
I would very much like to continue the discussion with you regardless of others who read what is written. There really hasn't been a thread that I've contributed to that some have used to vent their own anger, failure and scorn. It angers me and I respond in kind where it occurs but the editing policy saves me from displaying the depth of my anger and feelings. That's a good thing for me and the site.
What that means though Charles is that those who have nothing to say for themselves will snipe and do so in a manner that appears palatable and in line with WD's policy.
I say forget them, they are bored and have little to offer and they know it. It is why I offered email exchange as I've found such communication much more controlled and civil therefore satisfying but I too would prefer to speak here on WD as there are plenty of good people here too mate. Some are just caustic as that is their nature and some are rather shy about voicing their opinions and thoughts.
I seek your response on my explanation of me and chemicals. Hopefully you can see the difference in what I may have offered previously.
What is Coherence?
Ross, maybe it’s simply a matter of experience and what we focus our energies on.
For example I made the statement in a previous post “that the forest cannot create a symphony”, read out of context it make absolutely no sense, but from within my own experience and my philosophy based on that experience it becomes coherent to me, if not to anyone else who has no interest or motivation to go deeper into someone else’s thoughts.
So any thing we believe and experience is just a small part of a much larger whole, if I only experience a small part of your world than I will probably not understand what your experiences have been.
So without mutual respect, and without empathy and just simply taking the time to really listen and enter the world people with differing ideas, nothing is achieved.
Ross, I sincerely hope that will not be the case here.
Jumping
Hey Charles, you're jumping around a bit and I am not sure what to respond to. Re your empathy and respect comment, I give such until others show they will not accept or respond in the same manner. I see no need to have other than those qualities in a discussion with yourself Charles.
I'm open to ideas from others, to not be so is to ensure no further learning and I learn new things every day, some not in line with my knowledge and experience to that time. Learning and accepting that learning is not always easy though.
For example those that have seen my comments about religion over the last few months may be rather confused about my views. That would be in line with my own thinking on it as posting comments on that subject have helped me refine my views and I thank those people for that. Prior to commenting on religion on WD I simply held the view that religion was rubbish but discussion has allowed me to see more of how I really feel and think about it.
I'm not sure what your view on music is compared to my own but that can be explored as you wish. From what you have written so far on this thread I think you are right in that we have differing ideas on music. I don't think much about music although it is an integral and vital part of my life. At various stages of my life music was just about everything but in other periods it has been just an accessory.
Perhaps I could go back to the time comments as a starting point. To me time is everything, it is how I measure my illness and recovery and it goes slowly or fast depending on how I am feeling. It does the same when I am enjoying myself as opposed to not. It goes faster as I get older although curiously the weeks and months fly by but the days frequently seem endless.
That's just my perception of time in relation to my world. It is, to me, simply another tool man invented to give mankind some certainties, some way to measure change as change is always with us. To me it is just the same as money, that too doesn't really exist. It's a tool created by man to represent other values.
Our concept of time has been created based on the alignment of a number of planets etc. It could have been measured in many ways but the way that we use it is understood by all in that we know when days start and end as we do years, although those years need an adjustment every few years to keep it in line with the rotations of the relevant planets.
I suspect that many of those mystery ancient buildings, pyramids and similar (Stone Henge) are devoted to measuring time. A way for people of those times to know when a certain event is due or needed to be celebrated. That would explain their focus on the heavens and such precise buildings in relation to the solstices and so on.
Thinking is hazardous!
Ross, why don't you invite Charles to go into a forest with you? He seems keen. Together you might hear a tree fall. The fact it might fall upon a snake busily composing a symphony, sorry slitherphony (suddenly there seem to be a lot of "phonies" running through this thread) is a chance the snake will have to take. Being artistic has its hazards!
I note also that Charles, in a comment addressed to me, is thinking about giving up thinking. I think that he should seriously consider giving up thinking. After all, I wouldn't want a tree to fall on him.
But if the tree did fall upon him, and he yelled, and no one heard it, would that mean the tree didn't fall upon him? Or does it mean that Charles doesn't exist.
PPS. Charles, please take a mobile phone with you whenever you venture into a forest. And a first aid kit.
Thanks Daniel
Hey Daniel, glad to see you participating in the manner I've come to expect from some both here and in the world in general. What's the need mate? What is it that annoys you to the extent you have to resort to abuse? I respond in kind usually Daniel and I'm quite good at it, I just dislike myself when I do so. How do you feel about your own comments?
You should know also that taking a mobile phone into a forest in Australia is useless given Telstra's coverage. I think a blanket and a load of kindling would be more effective. I'll gather some.
Man is a Social Animal
Robyn: “My verdict is no. Enlightenment is more than knowledge. We can use science and our intellects to discover more and more facts about our world, but until we learn more about our selves we will never be able to cooperate enough to overcome the problems which currently threaten our survival. I'll stop using the word soul, because this is too important to alienate those who don't accept the divine.”
I feel the same way you do, Robyn, and I also think the reason may be tied in with what Roger and Ross use as their basis for understanding human experience, the chemical basis of the brain. I have no judgement at this point in time, but I do feel that it is in competition with other possible explanations.
I guess concepts and the use of language have a social basis, and some concepts are used because they have been sanctioned by the powers that dominate any social group. The powerful groups may be religious, or any form of institutionalised power structure. The close nexus of powerful groups in any society will determine what concepts and language is accepted by the majority.
Soul is just out of fashion. What about the social psychology of concepts.
Baffled
Phil Moffat: “PS. How does the mind perceive infinity and is such a thing perceivable?”
I don’t know, Phil. Daniel’s got me thinking that maybe I should stop thinking.
Transcendental Anesthetics
Newton's Laws Again
On one view, it might just be semantics again but, if you'll forgive me being pernickity, in order to stop, one first has to start. Why is it so? Well it just is; and what is, is right.
Lets Start
Ross, I agree with most of your last reply to Robyn. Where I think we differ is that I view music differently than you do; maybe this is something we can explore.
Also it should be obvious that I use the word culture persistently, I cannot reconcile the chemical basis of the brain, with my own inner feeling about culture, music, identity etc.
Also I believe that culture can only be transmitted via institutions, so this is a big problem I have with both you and Roger. By focusing on the chemical basis of the brain, the doors are wide open for minorities to be destroyed.
And my understanding of what is happening in much of the world today is just that, that larger and larger grouping are destroying minorities, and the chemical paradigm for explaining human experience and behaviour can be used as justification for the destruction of minorities and their cultures.
Infinite infinitives
I wish to sincerely apologise for splitting infinitives in previous posts and this post. I also wish to pre-emptively apologise for any infinitives split in future posts. However, be it known that when yours truly splits an infinitive it bloody well stays split for infinity.
PS. How does the mind perceive infinity and is such a thing perceivable?
Oh, Malcolm!
Emotional intelligence then
Daniel Smythe: "I hope I'm not being pushy but I was wanting to ask whether or not we live in an enlightened age?
My verdict is no. Enlightenment is more than knowledge. We can use science and our intellects to discover more and more facts about our world, but until we learn more about our selves we will never be able to cooperate enough to overcome the problems which currently threaten our survival.
I'll stop using the word soul, because this is too important to alienate those who don't accept the divine. "Emotional intelligence" will do (and I must read Daniel Goleman's books because I think I'm on about the same thing he is). While we have been concentrating on the rational, we have been neglecting the emotional part of our natures. Worse than that, in dismissing religion, we have discounted the value of religious communities, some (not all) of which have been providing opportunities for the further development of people's emotional intelligence, opportunities which are not easily found elsewhere.
We need leaders with more than knowledge at their command. We need people who have done the work necessary to be able to use their emotional facilities to inspire, engage and motivate us. We need people who can easily diffuse and resolve conflict, bring out the best in others, and facilitate teamwork. We need all of us to consciously attend to developing our emotional intelligence, and we need some system which will assist us. And soon.
Re: Emotional Intelligence
Robyn Clothier answers the question "do we live in an enlightened age?" with "My verdict is no. Enlightenment is more than knowledge. We can use science and our intellects to discover more and more facts about our world, but until we learn more about ourselves we will never be able to cooperate enough to overcome the problems which currently threaten our survival" and "We need leaders with more than knowledge at their command."
This is a really good point, Robyn. We do live in a more "informed" age, with a range of facts and technical capabilities at our fingertips unimaginable even decades ago. Maybe even "informed" is not the right word. What we live in is a very "data-rich" environment, struggling to make sense of a fog of data using the same "hardware" (neurological wiring) we've had for at least tens of thousands of years.
We also have access to a wide range of philosophical and theological viewpoints - again unimaginable to our ancestors. Our grandparents, for the most part, went to the church they went to, which was the same church their grandparents went to, and that was that. No need for any other religions. "Any more Buddhist talk out of you, young man, and I'll give you some dukkha - right upside the head!"
I don't think all this information has made us more "enlightened." At least not in the ways we need to be to overcome the kinds of problems we now face. Some of those problems of our own making, and arguably the result of knowledge without enlightenment.
I think, ironically, many people are retreating from what they perceive as the moral, spiritual, and philosophical emptiness of the heavy-on-science-and-technology "enlightenment." Thus the pull of fundamentalist branches of religions, insular sects, and rejections of science such as Creationism and "Intelligent Design."
Some of the people drawn to such ideas, in my view, have a valid concern: so what if we know we're all descended from some microbe 3 billion years ago? What does it mean? Does it mean we live in a completely random amoral universe, where anything goes? (Yeeha! Some might say). And unfortunately the science and technology doesn't give much guidance on these issues. It's "neutral" (or perhaps amoral) and doesn't dictate any particular actions.
Nature may be "red in tooth and claw" but does that mean we have to be? Who among us doesn't feel overwhelmed by the "tyranny" of choices we have in modern Western liberal societies like Australia, at least sometimes? (Marketing psychologists have caught on to this, and are studying the optimal number of choices to present to consumers. Too many choices, they've found, and people buy nothing.)
It's tempting to join a sect where you don't have to make very many decisions. The Hasidim (an Orthodox Jewish sect), for example, aren't agonising every day over what to wear. Men aren't looking in the mirror wondering if they'd look younger with a 'stache. People aren't in a quandary wondering what they and all their friends are doing Friday night. They know exactly what they're doing Friday night. Every Friday night. ( I'm not putting this kind of life down by any means - I respect it even if it's not for me). I can understand the appeal.
So are we living in an enlightened age? I'm with Robyn in saying "no." That's not to say there isn't enlightenment. But I don't think we have any better idea how to attain it now than people did millennia ago.
The sole idea
Hey Robyn,
Please continue using the word soul. I've defined what it means to me and others will have their versions as well. Soul is a very good all encompassing term for what makes us what we are, emotional, chemical beings.
As to dismissing religion, I don't think that anyone should do so, particularly the communities that aspire to the ideals that religions espouse. I believe very strongly in much of what religion is supposedly about. I just don't believe in that external entity and I definitely do not support religious institutions, they are and have been the source of too much misery to deserve any respect. Despite my current opinions on religion though I do remain open to the production of proof and read more and more on this topic to try and understand why so many attach faith essentially to happenings 2 thousand or more years ago. That seems illogical to me so I continually question it.
If religions were simply based on the belief that good and evil exist within man and try to encourage the good then I would be a follower as that is logical to me. I don't believe in all the supposed history that is used as proof of religions. To believe in a book (any religion) that was pieced together and edited and... just defies my logic in so many ways and gives me the certainty that such religions are falsely based. and essentially are political tools.
Re leaders. It is rather sick to me that leaders try and lead with the paucity of knowledge they have. I saw Tony Abbott, I think on Sunday, responding to the question of whether politicians should decide issues rather than the people and he genuinely stated and seems to believe that we elect politicians to make decisions for us which we, the people, are essentially unqualified to deal with. What sheer arrogance and contempt that answer displays. It explains a lot to me about him in particular.
Blair's "worried frown" too I find particularly offensive as he uses it when he is talking about things that are "too hard" for the average being. Bloody actor!
You see my view is that politicians are, or should be, merely administrators that ensure the population is provided with essential services and so on. They are agents for our wishes, wants and needs, not us in need of paternalistic, condescending political manouvering.
unenlightened leaders
Robyn says that: “We need leaders with more than knowledge at their command.”
But I thought our leaders were constantly saying they had no knowledge! It's a worry!
In pursuit of clarity
We used to have a system that was of some assistance: grammar. It aided communication by proscribing, for example, the splitting of infinitives.
Bullshit baffles brains.
My father had a favourite saying, that of: Bullshit baffles brains. He was not right about many things but he certainly got that right.
I hope I'm not being pushy but I was wanting to ask whether or not we live in an enlightened age? Have we arrived at any verdict yet or is it all too hard?
PS. I saw a snake in the bush yesterday. I noted how rhythmically it moved. I then thought music moves in rhythms. I wondered if the sound it made as it moved along touching different surfaces and materials was actually music and if I attached a recording device to its back would the snake actually be composing a symphony or, more correctly, a slitherphony.
And then I wondered if a probe was attached to the snake, one that analysed its changing chemistry (flight and fight, etc), whether the result, when graphed, would also show a rhythm, and perhaps, if musical notes were attached to it, might actually show a musical harmony with its slitherphony. Or even a calculated dissonance!
PPS. I can't work out how to attach the instruments to the snake without reaching a premature utopia. I need enlightening!
Are Politicans made of Chemicals?
Ross, maybe better if we can integrate it into the rest of the themes discussed here, would be more interesting I think, what do you think?
You know Stars are made of chemicals and so are we, so time must also have a chemical manifestation.
Hey even politicians are made of chemicals.
Sounds good Charles
Hey Charles,
Sounds good to me, hopefully others will join in and hopefully I'll have some idea what you are talking about!
Re politicians, yes they are but I suspect there is a fair proportion of hydrogen sulphide in their makeup, apologies to Malcolm.
I'll have another read of all that is below as time seems to be a key to some of the discussion here. Always have been a fan of Dr Who.
Ross, Ok
Ross, the main idea that started me thinking about this question, was, The Soul a bleak view, my post in this thread, essentially the nature of Technology and the manipulation of time and its bearing on human beings.
Good Charles, how and where?
Hey Charles, sounds fine to me. Do you want to do so here on WD or by email? You can contact me initially at enuffenuff@fastmail.fm if you prefer email.
My Position
Malcolm and Scott, to further clarify my position:
Stars will still be born and die without Human consciousness, events will still occur in the Universe, a conception of Human Time is not necessary for the existence of events to occur in the Universe. A conception of Time exists that transcends Human Time, to suggest otherwise, is to infer that Human Consciousness created the Universe.
The Mahler Symphony being played on a CD player in the forest will still generate measurable energy, but this energy could not have been created outside of Human Consciousness, it is dependant on a human conception of sound, whereas the energy of the falling tree is not dependent on Human Consciousness for its existence, it is not dependant on a human conception of sound. The issue is not wether a human ear or a recording device can measure the energy, the issue is, what is the nature of Sound and Time without a Human Conception and without a Human Consciousness?
What is the nature of Sound and Time within Cultural Time?
Malcolm, remember I said a modified version of Bishop Berkley, I used it with a different aim, to illustrate the nature of Consciousness and Cultural Time.
Just to clarify, I originally wrote:
'If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does the sound exist?' He (Matthew Field) modified it to, if someone took two battery operated CD players one, with Jimi Hendrix, Foxy Lady, and the other with Mahler’s 9th Symphony and pressed play, and than drove off, if there was no human ear to hear Hendrix or Mahler would the sound exist?
Now my answer was that the tree belonged to the Universe, so therefore it does not need a human ear for its existence, where as Mahler and Hendrix exist within Cultural Time, which is if you see my description, is Consciousness’s movement within a Time – Space Continuum.
Man made time
Does time really exist or is time simply a convenient man made calibration of change? Do we experience time or do we experience change and by what processes does experience reveal itself in the human psych?
Maybe time is simply the tool we use to make our lives more organised or efficient. It is something we use as a variable when we plan our futures or define our past, however change is the reality we experience in our day to day lives, albeit dictated by self imposed schedules.
Plato spoke of “the rabble of the senses” but as I understand it Kant would not have a bar of that. Kant argued that time and space were not things perceived but modes of perception. In short, we humans inherit the human mind with these a priori modes of perception as an intrinsic part of that human mind.
Allow me to summarise (recklessly if I may) Kant in terms we may better understand. Our minds are a bit like a computer program. All humans are born with this program, however this program has to process data, or in our case, experiences of our subjective empirical world, which we begin to experience from birth. In short our mind orders and makes sense of our experience, stores those experiences (knowledge) or data and recalls (and manipulates) them when required.
After all, sensation is nothing more than unorganised stimuli, perception is simply organised sensation and conception is organised perception. This is a process, a method or a mode (an a priori), that our minds are programmed to do from birth which allows us to know and learn from the world about us. Maybe science is organised knowledge and wisdom organised life. I'll leave that up to you to decide.
Somehow I wouldn’t get all worked up about this time thing, for if you really want to “experience” time then simply don’t think about it.
Kant is cant you need to unpick the Locke
The computer analogy is interesting but I do not think it is correct.
John Locke, in what is arguably the most important philosophical work of the post renaissance, got very close to getting it right with his concept of the "mind" as a tabula rasa. He was, of course, limited by the technology of his time and his necessary division of Ideas into simple and complex was wrong as a result.
My view is that there is a genetic predisposition (in your terms, prewiring) which causes neurons to grow, axons to form and synapses to interact. Where Locke was completely correct was that, particularly in the higher mammals, and higher as one goes, the cortex is experientially determined. That goes for slightly lower order structures like vision, hearing, speech, touch etc.
The physical world to which we are exposed actually determines how our brains will be hardwired. Now, part of that experience is the chemical mix that flows past the blood-brain barrier and in which synapses release the chemical messages that transfer information from one neurone to another (which is why it may well be that most of us function more or less in a fairly similar way as far as gross behaviour goes whether we are schizophrenic, manic depressive, sociopaths or whatever – short of physical impairment we can all wash up – it is just that some of us lack the motivation to do so.)
Time may well be a relationship or a construct rather than a physical "entity". It may be that experiencing it is what it is all about rather than it being an absolute. After all, time goes so much faster when one is having fun whereas test cricket is a terribly slow read.
whose Energy
Malcolm, I freely admitted that I have never read Bishop Berkeley, and that I know of the falling tree example from a discussion I took part in, I only used it in relation to Scott’s:
It came to my mind in relation to Scott’s example if there is no human consciousness does time exist? If there is no human consciousness does sound exist? The sound produced by a musical consciousness might be made up off the same physical properties of energy as the falling tree, but the forest cannot spontaneously produce a symphony, that is the point I wanted to make, and so to with time, if human consciousness is not there to perceive or experience time, that does not mean that time does not exist.
Ignorance is always free but comes at a price
The ontological problem is, how could time "exist" otherwise? If not perceived, what is it? Perhaps the difficulty you are encountering is one we all have to cope with: semantics. What was being suggested to you, if I read it correctly, was that time is a relationship. It is not the length of a bit of string but the relationship between the two ends. Assuming there was a big bang, was there time before it? (A question better addressed to Hawking than me.) Putting it another way, does a point on a line connote time? Does a point on a time line denote time? Is there honey still for tea?
Honey's off, dear.
All God's Children aint got Soul
To both Roger and Ross in particular.
What are the political ramifications of our differing views?
I would personally love to explore this with you, in terms of domestic local politics and global Capitalism.
I'm in, Charles
Hey Charles,
The whole area I find fascinating, particularly around the fringes of my or your or mankind's current knowledge.
Politics is too but I'm not too sure what you mean by your question. It's such a large area I assume that's why you suggested a discussion?
Either way I'd like to be involved, particularly if the discussion is actually exchanging thoughts and ideas rather than the usual negative responses many like to provide. I fall for that too I'm afraid and would like very much to not do so.
Speculating
Craig:
Kant had something to say about time. He asserted that time is not objective reality and suggested a subtle relationship between time and mind - that our mind structures our perceptions so that we 'know' a priori that time is like a mathematical line. He saw time as a form of conscious experience. In other words as something subjective.
"Before Kant," the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, "We were in time; now time is in us".
Craig I don’t know enough about Kant's philosophy to really make a reasoned judgement of the above and how it fits into his complete philosophy, but you have stimulated me to speculate.
In the Bach and Time post from within this thread I speculated that “Consciousness exists in time; the mathematical relationships that formed Bach’s consciousness were a product of the movement of cultural time.”
I have also been speculating about ear-mind relationships in Cultural Time!! The ear-mind, being based on prior mathematical relationships, that have been formed in consciousness by a process of Foreground, Background Synthesis, that are transcribed by the composer within his inner ear.
“We were in time; now time is in us".
Mathematical Time, Mathematical Proportions, Aural and Visual Space, from within Consciousness, that the composer than transcribes from within an Authentic Ear-Mind Relationship, firmly located from within Cultural Time.
Gorilla's are Cool
Roger: “But, let's be completely clear, it is chemicals and structures made from chemicals, specifically in the brain, from go to whoa.”
Roger you have stimulated my thoughts, let us say for sake of argument that I accept your statement about that all we have is chemicals in the brain. Would it than not follow, that Cultural Time and Cultural Dissonance is a product of a chemical reaction, in other words these chemicals in the brain are part of an interactive process. If this follows, than would it not also be true that the creative process is a chemical reaction between members of the community?
Beethoven existed in Cultural Time, again for sake of the argument does it follow that Beethoven was a product of chemical reactions of relationships that he had within his Cultural Time?
If Beethoven was a set of Chemical Reactions within a Cultural Time frame, should not the same be true for all members of the human species?
Does it follow that I am being self-indulgent by using as my example people who have left evidence of their creative achievements, to base my speculations, when I do not have any evidence of say for example the existence of Beethoven’s grandfather?
Roger I am only speculating, I do not have enough knowledge, but again let's assume I accept your argument, could I not build up a hypothesis that the Soul is made up of chemical reactions between certain individuals and groups within Cultural Time.
Would this be proof of an animating force within the human body?
Could the notion of Soul be interpreted as a socially induced chemical reaction?
If you say our brain is just made up of chemicals, I take that I can extend this to Consciousness itself, if this is the case can I extend this to the notion of Time, does it than follow I can't further extend this to the notion that Consciousness can be located in time, via a relationship to chemical formations in the brain.
If you look at the Soulless Bodies post you will notice that Raglar Hanavak made this comment:
That's an excellent example Charles Camilleri. As music is a creative force that can be measured, so could the “soul”. You could measure that by the mental creations that are materially manifested within our society. Music is used to create and drive many things, war, religion, mood, you can see and measure that, but can't catch and bottle it. You could also say that we can't measure the soul outside a brain because we need the brain as an amplifier to transpose our thoughts to this material dimension and probably to know we exist here.
But then again it will probably be lights out for good. The thing that makes me think that there has to be something is that we spent our lives learning then just die. All this knowledge appears of no consequence to life. Except for communication and acceptance what is the difference that makes one mind strive to survive and another just follow to the grave.
Roger: “So I would rephrase your Beethoven question in the context of why could not a great ape produce something as sublime?”
I don’t assume that the human species are a gift from the gods, I would very much love to see a string quartet played, by Gonzo the Gorilla on 1st Violin, Harry the Hog on 2nd Violin, Bruce the Bat on Viola and Leslie the Seal on Cello.
Mozart’s opening bars of the Dissonance quartet would be very appropriate.
Cultural Time from Bingo
Craig, I think its worth tracing my concept of Cultural Time from your Bingo Post:
Craig, will need to rest a bit on this topic and regain some focus.
But one thing I will suggest is that if you place all my posts in a word document, you will see pretty much the same theme. Every answer I have given is in the same word document at home.
But I will briefly comment on "From memory it is about moving through time and the importance of timelines to a person's sense of reality".
This is something of what I have been trying to express. I will give an example: Many jazz musicians learn their craft by transcribing the solos that they, for whatever reason, find appealing.
Now let us say for example a young musician learns a solo from a recording from an early Louis Armstrong recording. He sits in front of the record player and using his ear slowly copies the music, until he can play it identically, the right notes, time, and general feeling that the music conveys.
Now the young musician is internalising the thought density of the music. The harmonies, the melodies and all that it takes to convey the essence of the music.
Now our young musician, lets call him Charlie meets up with another musician, lets call him Dizzy, and they play together, exchanging ideas, showing each other what they have worked at etc, and they discover a common musical bond.
As time progress's they start to feel a need to advance because they are beginning to master all the recordings that formed their early listening experience, and have developed a need for experimentation.
So their experimentation starts with the harmonies; they start to incorporate more chords, and at a faster rate of change, they do inventive things with the melody and embellish it in very different creative ways, they speed up the tempo and play with time etc.
In short, they develop a new art form which starts to spread amongst the community of fellow musicians and they establish a musical culture. The next generations of young musicians go through the same process, they listen, play by ear, experiment, communicate with others who share their passion and so it goes.
The same with the European classical tradition; texts and theories are passed on to each successive generation.
Now let's play a little thought experiment. Take a person from one tradition; let's say someone who lived between: 1881-1945 and place him within the same tradition that existed between: 1756-1821. What can you imagine the response of the musician going back in time would be? What can you imagine the response of the musician going forward in time would be?
First off the cultural differences. The musician going back would find that the densities of the older music would probably sound a bit hollow and cliché. The musician going forward would probably experience total incomprehension of the more advanced musical practices. A common complaint thrown at inventive musicians, that runs pretty much through history, is that there is too many notes.
Now, in my previous posts, the too many notes would be a more advanced thought density.
Let's get back to Architecture as frozen music. Maybe within my descriptions it would probably be better expressed as “Society is frozen music”.
Above we played a thought experiment where we played with cultural time within the same tradition. Now let’s expand on the experiment and introduce two musicians going back and forward not only between time but also cultures. Let’s imagine our musician Charlie the American jazz musician above from 1945 going back to play with Wolfgang, our Austrian musician from 1781. And the reverse Wolfgang going forward and sitting in on jazz session.
As you can see the concept of “Society being frozen music” or “Cultural time” introduces interesting ideas of what happens when cultures interact, what happens with culture identity, and the possibilities of dissonance and consonance.
This is the process of the mind of the individuals who form the transmission belt of creativity from within a musical tradition and community. These individuals also occupy a place amongst the community of people who listen to them, who are also going through a learning curve of assimilating the new sounds etc.
What I have been speculating about is that culture transmits thought densities that, in our case above, consist of the sound worlds that are passed on between individual musicians and also between the larger collective.
Now transpose my musical examples to other aspects of culture and think about the relationship that different people have in our society, the possibilities of dissonance and consonance.
Back to my earlier question. What is the relationship of the suicide bombers to Western culture? My references to Schoenberg and Bartok, and their development, now extrapolate that to an individual who cannot achieve resolution of cultural differences.
Neurosciences & such
Will Howard, re the neurosciences, I haven't noticed many of the best neuroscientists - like Elkhonon Goldberg, or Antony Damasio - supporting the "minimalist" take on consciousness that Daniel Dennett and some others push, if that's the kind of "disturbing" you're refering to? To my mind, on the contrary, the best current works on the relevant brain areas (forebrain, particularly) has mainly demolished philosophical shibboleths, rather than the anything else. Me, I happen to think "folk psychology" is standing up much better... and, the current brain is looking increasingly social, in very interesting ways, and top down (as it were) in ways that make nonsense of minimal or epiphenomenal approaches to consciousness.
On evolutionary psychology, this is still too dominated by excessively modular theories, unfortunately, since the current neuroscience work argues against these in the key areas for the most interesting stuff (decision-making, ethical thinking, etc). Merlin Donald's been developing a much more useful version - increasingly supported by the neurobiology (review here) for about the last two decades and, to my mind it doesn't take anything away. Instead, it makes sense of a vast range of evidence from all sorts of experience.
All the best.
Whatever
Daniel, you’re entitled to your opinion, others are entitled to theirs. If the only engagement you offer me is insult than you leave me with nothing to say to you.
Scott engaged with me and I was stimulated to answer him.
Hamish: yep. Your last post only just got past the moderator Daniel. With respect to all concerned, let's keep it constructive (doesn't mean uncritical) or nothing.
Webdiary Woes.
Excommunicated by Charles. Censored by Hamish. Ignored by Craig.
Oh dear. What will become of me? Like a leper, I'm being pushed away, punished for being me, for daring to ask questions, for having the courage to say what others think, for putting forward ideas that are unconventional, that challenge the status quo. Obviously I am in the wrong time warp and I can never get out.
I weep at my desk, gnash my teeth, howl! My partner kindly asks if anything is wrong. My son explains to her, "Dad's having a bad-hair day. It's that bloody Webdiary."
Suddenly peace comes. Something must have happened to my chemicals (perhaps something similar to Bach's chemicals when he composed a symphony).
Those pills certainly help!
PS. But telling the doctor that I need pills to continue with Webdiary is causing concern I can tell you. "Why don't you give it up?" he asks me. I just shrug and tell him it's addictive.
Bonfiring the Vanities
I've only just had time to start reading this thread.
As for your piano, Daniel Smythe, I hate pianos – let me know where it is and I'll burn it for you.
As to "Consciousness" and Bishop Berkeley, Charles J Camilleri, I find it rather difficult to be polite in light of your posts (to the extent that I find it possible generally to be polite at all). Let's take the good cleric's tree in the forest first. Leaving aside Heisenbergian uncertainty, the falling tree (or some wailing pop star for that matter) generates measurable energy. If that energy is measured by a device capable of detecting sound, like the human ear or a recording device, the falling tree makes a sound. If there is no recording device it does not make a sound at all. It does, however, still generate the energy. That is an inferential statement assuming a standard tree in a standard forest (i.e. containing air to transmit the energy). The point of the looney analogy in Berkeleyan philosophy was to justify the proposition that nothing can exist without the intervention and existence of an universal perceiver: God. It was silly philosophy then and it is silly philosophy now; likewise your convoluted discussions of "consciousness" which is nothing more than a semantic construct. That we perceive things is undoubted (in a Realist sense). One can call the ability to do that "consciousness" if one wishes yet it is but to confuse the real issue. There is nothing more complex than perception going on. We stop perceiving, we cease "consciousness." How this advances a philosophical debate about the means of perception is beyond me. It is just a fancy (and potentially waffly confusing) way of saying "a rock is a rock." It doesn't get us any further than a tedious application of the scroll button to get past it as quickly as possible.
With all due respect to those who are having difficulty fully coping with the ideas and references in this thread, for my part it was these very discussions which induced me to contribute to Webdiary in the first place. I have learned much from all sorts of unlikely people whom I would not otherwise have encountered.
The question is: Do we live in an enlightened age?
The answer, as always, is: no. We live in an age with much enlightenment in it but, as humans always have, we live in a world where the vast majority of the population is ignorant of the most basic concepts other than sheer survival (and for many that is not exactly a long suit either). For most, life is still short, brutish and nasty. The hope of the Enlightenment was that that could and would change – there is one factor working assiduously against it – procreation. While that continues at its present rate (even though Malthus was wrong as to the timing of the consequences) it seems that enlightenment does not limit the population expectations of its beneficiaries to enable their restricted birth practices to outstrip those of the unenlightened.
As to pessimists, Roger Fedyk, lawyers are pessimists by nature and experience. We are pessimists so that, perhaps, one day, optimism might thrive in a well ordered society devoid of avoidable inequalities of opportunity and affluence, particularly for lawyers. We do not yet seem to be succeeding at either in my experience but that is no reason to stop the struggle.
Lawyering On
Malcolm B, optimistic lawyers could not afford the malpractice insurance that goes with that state of mind. Conservative/pessimistic works best in every case except when working on contingency which is another world altogether.
In considering time, there is a very simple concept to grasp. Time only has meaning when something changes. If today was identical in every aspect to yesterday then we would have a problem recognising which day it was. In fact there would be no day at all.
Put even more simply, time is an artifact of motion. If nothing moved then time would cease to exist. Even simpler, Energy is one measure of something moving. So if everything existed at 0 degrees Kelvin (absolute zero, all energy exhausted) then time would also stand still. We have time because of the relentless and ubiquitous distribution and transfer of energy. Nothing metaphysical about, unfortunately, and one could not write music or wax lyrical without it.
Gold Futures
My Fortune Is Made
Malcolm B., nah just send money.
In any case I fail to see how the very basis of Einsteinian physics (not Newtonian, as Isaac firmly believed that time was a fixed phenomenon) can be an aid to solipsistic musings. Observed time is external to the self as our own clock (ageing etc) runs too slow to be useful.
However, here is another physicistic musing. Do you ever wonder at the fact that we exist at the very cold end of the energy spectrum? There are parts of the universe that are energetic enough to encounter temperatures at hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius and here we are barely 300 K above absolute zero. Strange?
Back on time, can you envisage a circumstance where time cannot exist but life (perhaps not as we know it, Jim) can?
Money into Gold?
No, observed time is external to the self only because it is observed.
A circumstance where time cannot exist but life can? Try Popper.
It might be an idea to look up solipsism.
Look Up Time
Malcolm B, why would I want to do that? My comment about observed time being external goes to the very heart of solipsism. Perhaps you missed the subtlety or perhaps it's a lawyerly thing, the need to assume that others do not know?
On Popper, I am not aware that he bothered to address the conundrum that I proposed. Maybe you can extrapolate something useful out of his Three Worlds theories but I would not have thought so.
Who's Driving Who
Ross: “Others have mentioned the soul. What soul? Is there any evidence of a soul? Apart from Motown music?”
Isn’t that enough? How do you explain human creative vision? Anyway the word soul has many a negative connation and I dislike using it myself.
Soul for me is simply an inner world.
Ross: “It's the brain, that's where everything happens. No brain and we are simply a collection of chemicals.”
What proof do you have for this?
What are the exact chemicals that can produce a Beethoven symphony?
Ross: “To believe in a soul you must also believe in religion, whatever version you prefer. It's just not logical to believe there is something other than our own thoughts driving us, enabling us.”
If there is nothing beyond our own thoughts, why contemplate anything that isn’t known? When by your definition, nothing is driving us.
Driver's seat
Hey Charles, thanks for your response. It is an interesting topic.
Re Motown music being called soul music, human creative vision comes from thought, from the brain as influenced by a person's experiences and learning in their lives. Motown music is called soul as it tended to explore the sadder side of life, not to the extent of Blues but part way there. It is called soul too to distinguish it from Pop music which, at the time Soul became popular, was mainly simple boy/girl tunes, good songs but simple. All of it is about feelings and thoughts. Feelings come from thoughts so it's back to the brain again.
As to soul being an inner world, I agree with you entirely. I just call that inner place the brain as that is where all thoughts are processed and directions given to the various parts of the body.
Re the brain being where everything happens I would suggest proof of such is where people are declared brain dead but kept physically functioning by artifical means. The decision to turn those machines off is not a decision about killing the brain, it's already ceased to function and accordingly so has the rest of the body.
Re brain and our bodies being a collection of chemicals, it's actually Science 101 stuff Charles. See here, at item 8 for a summary of the situation. Google will give you any amount of detail if you need such.
As to what chemicals might produce a Beethoven symphony isn't it clear to you? It's the chemical make up of Beethoven's brain of course, whatever that may have been, as influenced by his life experience and learning.
As to whether chemicals can affect or produce creativity many of the great musicians of the 60's and later used a number of chemicals to produce music they couldn't while straight or sober. It wasn't always the best but many of the most popular musicians are renowned for their drug use. Much music from the 60's and early 70's was intended to be heard while under the influence of various substances. Perhaps Beethoven too may have dabbled?
As to how chemicals affect our thinking that's exactly what treatment for depression and other mental illnesses is based on. Trying to change the person's thinking patterns, outlook and attitudes by introducing chemicals either lacking in that person's makeup or simply to motivate various parts of the brain. It's well documented Charles.
As to whether there is nothing beyond our own thoughts it really is a matter of opinion isn't it? The belief that there is an external force or entity that oversights us, our thoughts, our actions and the way of the world is as old as human beings are. Why do people think this way? It's a basic human need, to feel secure knowing there is an all knowing authority to save them if they need saving. Such an entity or force works the same way as any placebo. If you believe it then it's true for you. I choose not to so believe.
As to nothing driving us, if I indicated that was true then forgive me. Our bodies and brain drive us. The survival instinct, the need to breed, fight or flight reflexes are all part of our hard coding if you like and that is what drives us, simply the need to survive. Don't ask me why that is there as I certainly can't answer that, but without those drives there would be no human race would there? Those things are a part of why we live and continue to do so.
People do contemplate what is beyond our knowledge as that is our nature, to question, to seek, to learn. We want to know "why" and "how". Without that we would have either perished or still be living in caves. Whether there is an answer to those questions is as yet undetermined so we have to decide for ourselves. Due to lack of evidence I don't believe in religion or gods.
Re my mobile phone diversion this appeared in today's Courier Mail in Brisbane.
Monkey See Monkey Do
Charles J, there is something self-indulgent in viewing ourselves in terms of our creative achievements.
We should be all aware by now that we differ very little from many other life forms. Of course, we are virtually identical to our primate cousins. So I would rephrase your Beethoven question in the context of why could not a great ape produce something as sublime?
If it is for lack of a soul then we can wander down the the great metaphysical path to nowhere and amaze ourselves with our own hot air. It would appear on first viewing that the 1-3% difference in our DNA makeup has given us the superior frontal lobe capability with which we make the abstract, concrete.
Lack of language makes it almost impossible for our cousins to communicate any profundity. However, that does not necessarily mean that they cannot make some efforts in that area.
Regarding your rhetorical question, it is all the chemicals that he possessed that made Beethoven what he is. Without the chemicals, he would not exist. To point to one or another is fruitless because it is by all of them acting in concert that our uniqueness finds expression. But, let's be completely clear, it is chemicals and structures made from chemicals, specifically in the brain, from go to whoa. The best place to get a sense of this is in an accident trauma rehabilitation clinic.
Steinway
Daniel: “Thus far, I have managed to do it without knowledge of Cultural Dissonance, Time Continuum, Cultural Time equals Consciousness relative to Time-Space, as Time Dissolves, and Consciousness forms a new relationship to Space, which is a key factor in what we perceive as Tradition... etc.
PPS. Should I burn my piano?”
I don’t know Daniel, if my thoughts don’t interest you ignore them, if my thoughts are erroneous help me to understand your view points.
As for the piano, if it’s a Steinway email me and I will arrange transport for it to be delivered to me.
Soul music?
Charles, I can't tell if your thoughts are erroneous because, even with a broad and very successful University education plus musical training, I have no idea what your thoughts are (and I venture to suggest that most other people don't either).
Though this may not apply to you, generally I've always found when people resort to psycho-babble complemented by heavy sprinklings of jargon words, be very, very suspicious.
PS. Sorry, it's not a Steinway.
PPS. The only soul I'm aware of is soul music.
Inner World
Robyn: “To combat the threats to our survival we will need to use our souls”
The notion of Soul for me is by far the most difficult thing to understand, I have so much trouble with it, find it so hard to integrate into all my other thoughts, but I simply can not get away from the belief that the human body is set into motion by an inner force, but Robyn I totally agree with you, but it's so paradoxical, because it seems we have achieved material progress because of and at the expense of our inner world, and now this material progress at this point of historical time wants to deprive us of all mirrors in which to view our inner world.