“The humanities expose us — often with brutal honesty — to vocabularies and insights adequate to the complexity of human experience, especially for an age marked by stubborn violence and tempted by reductive simplicity.”

[gggg...@gmail.com]

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/05/04/question-evil-humanistic-inquiry

[Ed Cryer]

gggg...@gmail.com wrote:
> https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/05/04/question-evil-humanistic-inquiry
>

Can he give me an insight into Islamist terrorism?
I've been trying ever since 9/11 to get a handle on it (as the
terrorists compete with each other to raise the evil scale), but without
success. Every road I try ends in a dead-end; and most particularly that
of religion.

Ed

[Ned Latham]

Ed Cryer wrote:

> ggggg9271 wrote:
> >
> > https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/05/04/question-evil-humanistic-inquiry
>
> Can he give me an insight into Islamist terrorism?

Not a chance. In Plato's day, the age of murderously violent
monotheist extremism was only just beginning to dawn with the
return of the Jews from exile in Babylon. It didn't really
show its teeth until Roman times. The Dead Sea scrolls and
the "Jesus" story give us a glimpse of it, as does Josephus,
but Plaro would not hace seen any of it.

> I've been trying ever since 9/11 to get a handle on it (as the
> terrorists compete with each other to raise the evil scale),
> but without success.

You have a very unfortunate mental defect: it's called rationality.
AFAIk, the only cure is Maxwell's Silver Hanner.

> Every road I try ends in a dead-end; and
> most particularly that of religion.

That';s becayse religion is the key, and particularly monotheism.
I did an analysis some years ago and came up with this:

"Religion is primitive, childlike, wishful thinking. At best, it is the
first fumbling attempts of a human species to explain why things are so,
and as such it can be regarded as a precursor of science. But in fact it
explains nothing: it is delusion, and a dismal failure. When all's said
and done, it's one of the silliest things we've ever done to ourselves.

"More than that, organized religion is one of the evillest things we've
ever done to ourselves: it dogmatizes and demands delusion, and
inculcates it en masse; it has denied our species the benefit that
might have accrued from the work of inestimable numbers of bright
minds; it has blighted more lives than we can ever know. And the
monotheist religions are the evillest creeds we own, because they add
institutionalized bigotry to the mix."

With "institutionalized bigotry" O'm referring to the "one god"
dogma central to all three, to the distrust, fear and hatred of
"infidels" that it spawns, and to the resultant genocides and
other atrocities that all three are guilty of.

Islam is the most virulent of the three; its reign of terror began
with its founder, Mohammed, and has never really stopped, though
there have been periods of relative peace. Islam is directly
responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths over the centuries,
and terrorism is employed at all levels, from Empire and Khalifate
down to lone wolf nutters. As an aexample, the "Old Man in the
Mountain" was a petty tyrant who wielded massive infleunce in his
time because he employed suicide attackers against rulers who
defied him. His agents were called Hashishim because he gave
them a taste of the Paradise Islam promised wjich consisted of
houris and hashish (that part of being ab assassin must have been
pretty good, I'd say).

They call Islam the religion of peace, but that's even less accurate
than the myth of the Pax Romana (rememver the Greek who said "you
Romans; you create a desert, and you call it peace"). The peace
Islam offers is death.

The two main sects, Sunni and Shia, have been at each other's throats
since Mohammed's death, and their differences are irreconcilable.
They have no regard for their own lives and no regard for each others'
lives, so of course, no regard for the lives of infidels. While ever
there are Muslims, there will never be peace for the living.

I mentioned periods of relative peace. Those are achieved by strong
secular governments; when such governments fall or desecularuse,
war breaks out and spreads like wildfire. The "Arab Spring" of a
few years ago was the beginning of the current state of affairs,
and the world's leaders are doing nothing effective to contain it.
Indeed, the West's immigration policies are facilitating it.

If what I've written above seems farfetched, test it: just keep
your eye on Turkey and Indonesia. Both countries have begun to
deseculatise: Erdogan is aiming at restoring the Turkish Emoire,
with, I believe. himself as Sultan amd Khalif. Idonesia a week
or so ago convicted a Christian government official of "blashphemy"
because he criticised Muslim clerics for interfering in elections.

Stay tuned.

[Ed Cryer]

Get beyond religion in your search for evil. And it's easily done. Just
ask yourself how Stalin got away with his purges, how Pol Pot got away
with his Killing Fields, or how Hitler got away with his final solution
with the Jews.
You'll come down to psychology; personal, family and social. And you'll
see that evil is endemic to the human condition.

Crowd behaviour; hanging your family-conditioned hang-ups out to dry on
some social rationalisation; "hatred" finding an easy scapegoat.
Religion is just one of quite a few ideologies to explain why the hell
this crazy old world is the way it is.

You'll find evil by the bucket-load in nature itself. The animal world
that we come from. The survival techniques of some species at the cost
of other species; including some things that even Islamic terrorists
haven't hit on yet.

And you probably know as well as I do that the big question with
psychologists from Freud onwards is "Why do we humans have this moral
conscience?". Well, one answer is enshrined in religion, the fall from
grace in the garden of Eden.
Religion offers more than just pre-scientific explanation; it offers
comfort, it offers explanation for our higher aspirations, it offers
companionship.

Karl Marx wrote that religion is the opiate of the masses; that
political engagement would free them and advance them. And many have
lived and died for that ideology; and it's been abandoned by the world
generally, a social experiment among many social experiments tried in
the last two centuries.

Ed

[Ned Latham]

Ed Cryer wrote:
> Ned Latham wrote:
> > Ed Cryer wrote:
> > > ggggg9271 wrote:
> > > >
> > > > https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/05/04/
> > > > question-evil-humanistic-inquiry
> > >
> > > Can he give me an insight into Islamist terrorism?
> >
> > Not a chance. In Plato's day, the age of murderously violent
> > monotheist extremism was only just beginning to dawn with the
> > return of the Jews from exile in Babylon. It didn't really
> > show its teeth until Roman times. The Dead Sea scrolls and
> > the "Jesus" story give us a glimpse of it, as does Josephus,

> > but Plato would not hace seen any of it.

----snip----

> Get beyond religion in your search for evil.

You asked specificakky about Islamic terrorism.

> And it's easily done.
> Just ask yourself how Stalin got away with his purges, how Pol Pot
> got away with his Killing Fields, or how Hitler got away with his
> final solution with the Jews.

Islam exceeded all of those put together with its murders in India
and Africa alone.

> You'll come down to psychology; personal, family and social.

Yep.

> And you'll see that evil is endemic to the human condition.

I presume you mean that it's omnipresent in us.

I disagree. The tendency is, but without the "right" influences,
it doesn't develop. In some cases, even then the individual can
resist it.

The problem is that the "right" influences can be many and
varied, and throughout the world, there are few societies
that do not include at least some of them. Civlised societies,
for example, are infected with hostility; between the haves
and the have-nots, between favoured and disfavoured groups,
between self-segregating groups living in ghettoes, between
nations and between regions both within and without nations...
the environment is toxic; it *breeds* evil.

> Crowd behaviour; hanging your family-conditioned hang-ups out to dry on
> some social rationalisation; "hatred" finding an easy scapegoat.
> Religion is just one of quite a few ideologies to explain why the hell
> this crazy old world is the way it is.

No. religion takes it to another level. The evils wrought by
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et al all stemmed from their
personal characters (I know, ideologies were involved, but
the genocides were personal solutions to perceived problems);
with religion, the evil stems from the creed itself; it
demands and inculcates mass delusion, which is insanity,
and the three monotheisms, as I said, add institutionalised
bigotry to the mix.

With Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the believer cannot
escape growing up with hostility as the driving force of
their character: they are indoctrinated almost from birth
with suspicion, fear and hatred of the infidel so effectively
that they don't even notice it until some demagogue inflames
their passions. And even then, they don't so much notice it
as surrender to it.

You will hear people defending their religion against that
sort of charge with words to the effect that the evils are
wrought by persons "using" the religion for evil purposes;
there is some truth in that: there is also the fact that
the bigotry of monotheists is embedded at the very core
od their creed: that "one god" dogma is at the centre of
their creed and is itself a bigoted notion. It engenders
hostility and the evils that flow from it.

> You'll find evil by the bucket-load in nature itself.

Absolutely not. Nature has no moral value; it simply
*is*. The mere fact that we dislike something doesn't
define it as evil.

----snip----

> And you probably know as well as I do that the big question with
> psychologists from Freud onwards is "Why do we humans have this
> moral conscience?". Well, one answer is enshrined in religion,

According to religion. That is no recommendation.

> the fall from grace in the garden of Eden.

That muth is peculiar to the monotheisms.[1]

> Religion offers more than just pre-scientific explanation;
> it offers comfort,

It manufactures an irrational fear, then offers comfort wrt that
fear. We can do quite well without both.

> it offers explanation for our higher aspirations, it offers
> companionship.

So does simple humanity.

> Karl Marx wrote that religion is the opiate of the masses; that
> political engagement would free them and advance them. And many have
> lived and died for that ideology; and it's been abandoned by the world
> generally, a social experiment among many social experiments tried in
> the last two centuries.

It didn't fail because some of its adherents embraced the implied
atheism; it failed because, like capitalism, it violates too many
of our biological imperatives, and because its economic theory is
fatally flawed. The former deprived it of popular support; the
latter made it vulnerable to the economic warfare waged by the US.

(China's Maoism survived becayse of its huge population and power,
and its isolationism, but it's now moving towards a more capitalist
system; North Korea has survived because of strong totalitarianism
and Chinese support; Cuba has survived because of the government's
attention to people's well-being and to the ease of maintining the
rage against the imperialist yankee dogs and their vicious and
oppressive sanctions... who else is there3?)

Ned

[1] You might be interested in my interpreatation of the garden
of Eden myth; The curse laid on Adam and Eve when they were
driven out got me thinking: "in the sweat of thy brow shalt
thou earn thy daily bread" struck me as a folk memory of the
transition from the indolent lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer
to the endless drudgery of low-tech agriculture, probably
stemming originally from the Sumerians, and possibly picked up
by the ancestors of the Hebrews. The bible does record a "visit"
to Ur.

[Ed Cryer]

Modern day theoretical physics has taken on something of a religious
flavour.
I constantly hear that many things can only be modelled mathematically;
and that makes Platonists of the scientists; and (as you know)
Christianity is Platonism for the masses.

We live in a world of unknowing. We have a basic dichotomy between
classical physics and quantum mechanics; the laws of chance and
likelihood tell us that there should be other intelligent species like
us, but we can't find them; and then there's "dark matter" and "dark
energy"; a Big Bang and we humans forever cut off from what may have
occurred before that; how the dickens does the brain create mind; how
did moral creatures such as we are rise to the top of the food-chain;
why (when nature loves biodiversity) do we have no closer relatives in
species.

Has there ever been a society without religion; without some speculated
goings-on behind the scenes? Without a supposed purpose and meaning for
our existence? Has there ever been a society that can blithely accept
that all the stuff out there just exists for no reason and purpose at
all? Has there ever been a society that is so in-bred and trusting of
all its members that it can live and love nothing more than what is sees?

Ed

[gggg...@gmail.com]

According to the following:

- ...The social structures within which we live are constructed so as to keep us childish: grownup citizens are more trouble than they’re worth. The state’s desire for control and our own desire for comfort combine to minimise conflict...Those who rule society promote our dependency, cultivating our taste for luxuries to distract us from thinking about the real conditions of our lives...

http://clinicalpsychreading.blogspot.com/2016/04/

[gggg...@gmail.com]

The following article begins:

- ...Adult culture is waning in America...

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/are-video-games-the-new-novels/

[Ned Latham]

Ed Cryer wrote:
> Ned Latham wrote:
> > Ed Cryer wrote:

----snip----

> > > Karl Marx wrote that religion is the opiate of the masses; that
> > > political engagement would free them and advance them. And many have
> > > lived and died for that ideology; and it's been abandoned by the world
> > > generally, a social experiment among many social experiments tried in
> > > the last two centuries.
> >
> > It didn't fail because some of its adherents embraced the implied
> > atheism; it failed because, like capitalism, it violates too many
> > of our biological imperatives, and because its economic theory is
> > fatally flawed. The former deprived it of popular support; the
> > latter made it vulnerable to the economic warfare waged by the US.
> >
> > (China's Maoism survived becayse of its huge population and power,
> > and its isolationism, but it's now moving towards a more capitalist
> > system; North Korea has survived because of strong totalitarianism
> > and Chinese support; Cuba has survived because of the government's
> > attention to people's well-being and to the ease of maintining the
> > rage against the imperialist yankee dogs and their vicious and
> > oppressive sanctions... who else is there3?)
> >

> > [1] You might be interested in my interpreatation of the garden
> > of Eden myth; The curse laid on Adam and Eve when they were
> > driven out got me thinking: "in the sweat of thy brow shalt
> > thou earn thy daily bread" struck me as a folk memory of the
> > transition from the indolent lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer
> > to the endless drudgery of low-tech agriculture, probably
> > stemming originally from the Sumerians, and possibly picked up
> > by the ancestors of the Hebrews. The bible does record a "visit"
> > to Ur.
>
> Modern day theoretical physics has taken on something of a religious
> flavour.

Indeed, Rather more so than you're aware, I shouldn't be surorised.

> I constantly hear that many things can only be modelled mathematically;

One of the big problems is that many physicists take the model for
the object; exactly the same folly as that of the navigator who
takes the map for the territory.

> and that makes Platonists of the scientists; and (as you know)
> Christianity is Platonism for the masses.

LOL. I've never seen it put that way vefore.

> We live in a world of unknowing. We have a basic dichotomy between
> classical physics and quantum mechanics;

The same dichotomy also separates Einstein's relatiivity theories
from Quantum Mechanics.

> the laws of chance and
> likelihood tell us that there should be other intelligent species like

r us, but we can't find them;

No-one should be surprised by that; the distances from here to
quite literally *anywhere* with the potebtial to support life
are quite mind-boggling when you sit down and have a serious
think about them. Those distances equate to huge delays and
massive energy requirements just for communications; for actual
contact, we're looking at energies greater than we know how to
produce, and since the only practical type of engine we know is
the reaction drive, we're also looking at moon-like amounts of
reaction mass.

To all intents and purposes, we can't get there, and if there's
someone out there, they can't get here.

Fantasists talk of hyperdrives and wormholes and so on, but unless
we come up with some sort of scientific basis for such, it's just
idle speculation.

As to communication, even with the energy problem gone, the delay
problem is a killer; if there's someone out there 100 million light
years away, their signal won't reach us, and our signal won't reach
them, for 100 million years. We can't *ever* contacy them.

> and then there's "dark matter" and "dark energy";

Or not. Those are postulates, not obeserved phenomena: they are
attempots to explain discrepancies in the Stamdard Model of the
Universe, which is mathematical, and based on those increasingly
doubtful theories of Einstein's.

> a Big Bang

The Big Bang "Theory" is in my opinion a dud.

> and we humans forever cut off from what may have occurred
> before that;

Not if it didn't occur.

> how the dickens does the brain create mind;

http://www.users.on.net/~nedlatham/Science/ModellingMind/index.html

> how did moral creatures such as we are rise to the top of the
> food-chain;

Intelligence is a prerequisite for morality. So too is survival.

> why (when nature loves biodiversity)

You're anthropomorphising Nature again, Ed. It isn't moral; it
doesn't have purpose; it doesn't love.

It just *is*.

> do we have no closer relatives in species.

We do have closely related species. It's just that they're extinct.

> Has there ever been a society without religion;

I very much doubt it. I also very much doubt the continued existence
of our species beyond the current millennium unless we develop one.

Soon.

> without some speculated goings-on behind the scenes? Without a
< supposed purpose and meaning for our existence?

I'm not convinced that we NEED purpose, but no matter; we can always
invent one for ourselves. The continued survival of our species, for
example, would make for a good interim purpose for all but the most
demanding of geniuses among us.

> Has there ever been a society that can blithely accept that all
> the stuff out there just exists for no reason and purpose at all?

Almost certainly not. But without the manufactured fear of death,
and the manufactured need for a purpose, it might be possible to
develop one.

> Has there ever been a society that is so in-bred and trusting of
> all its members that it can live and love nothing more than what

> it sees?

Nope. There's no reason to pstulate one either.

[Ed Cryer]

We call it "dumbing down" in the UK.
Unfortunately only a few intellectuals cry that banner; the rest are too
down-dumbed.

Ed

[Ed Cryer]

We are the oddity. Our secular societies are the oddity; the divergence
from the norm.
And that puts us in the position of having to explain our view, our
Weltanschauung.
What could possibly have produced beings without a religious outlook?
Atheists (and notice the very word itself; alpha privative + theists,
which implies that theism proceeds atheism). Not agnostics, not people
who suspend judgement in the absence of evidence, but atheists, people
who advocate no-behind-the-scenes-goings-on.

When science itself screams "we don't know, we don't know", how do we
account for atheists?
Well now, welcome to the machine; welcome to the universe that human
seeking gives us.
A machine; we can understand a machine. We can see the cogs turning, get
into the mind of the maker, and perhaps get beyond him, like an acorn on
a forest floor having the canopy above cut off by older trees and
preventing its rise to greatness as they block out the sunlight.
In short power-enfranchisement; a way of removing the opposition that
stands in our way; a way of controlling things.

Ed

[gggg...@gmail.com]

"The Vanishing American Adult..." (new book):

https://us.macmillan.com/thevanishingamericanadult/bensasse/9781250114402/

[Ed Cryer]

This old Harvard entrance exam would probably sift out most triers
today; perhaps even everyone.
https://www.themarysue.com/harvard-entrance-exam-1899/

Ed

[Ned Latham]

Ed Cryer wrote:
> Ned Latham wrote:
> > Ed Cryer wrote:

----snip----

> > > Modern day theoretical physics has taken on something of a religious
> > > flavour.
> >
> > Indeed, Rather more so than you're aware, I shouldn't be surorised.
> >
> > > I constantly hear that many things can only be modelled mathematically;
> >
> > One of the big problems is that many physicists take the model for
> > the object; exactly the same folly as that of the navigator who
> > takes the map for the territory.
> >
> > > and that makes Platonists of the scientists; and (as you know)
> > > Christianity is Platonism for the masses.
> >
> > LOL. I've never seen it put that way vefore.
> >
> > > We live in a world of unknowing. We have a basic dichotomy between
> > > classical physics and quantum mechanics;
> >
> > The same dichotomy also separates Einstein's relatiivity theories
> > from Quantum Mechanics.
> >
> > > the laws of chance and
> > > likelihood tell us that there should be other intelligent species

> > > like us, but we can't find them;

> >
> > No-one should be surprised by that; the distances from here to
> > quite literally *anywhere* with the potebtial to support life
> > are quite mind-boggling when you sit down and have a serious
> > think about them. Those distances equate to huge delays and
> > massive energy requirements just for communications; for actual
> > contact, we're looking at energies greater than we know how to
> > produce, and since the only practical type of engine we know is
> > the reaction drive, we're also looking at moon-like amounts of
> > reaction mass.
> >
> > To all intents and purposes, we can't get there, and if there's
> > someone out there, they can't get here.
> >
> > Fantasists talk of hyperdrives and wormholes and so on, but unless
> > we come up with some sort of scientific basis for such, it's just
> > idle speculation.
> >
> > As to communication, even with the energy problem gone, the delay
> > problem is a killer; if there's someone out there 100 million light
> > years away, their signal won't reach us, and our signal won't reach

> > them, for 100 million years. We can't *ever* contact them.

It's only the norm so far. IMO, we, the species, have reached a crisis
and will not survive unless we advance betond religion. If we do, and
avoid extinction, irreligion will have become the norm.

> And that puts us in the position of having to explain our view,
> our Weltanschauung.

I don't see why. Tie current norm is irrational.

Actually that should read "the currents norms are irrational":
the societies we live in are irrational too.

> What could possibly have produced beings without a religious outlook?

Rationality.

> Atheists (and notice the very word itself; alpha privative + theists,
> which implies that theism proceeds atheism).

I disagree. Compare it with the word agnosis, which on that reasoning
woukd imply that knowledge precedes ignorance.

> Not agnostics, not people
> who suspend judgement in the absence of evidence, but atheists, people
> who advocate no-behind-the-scenes-goings-on.

I've never seen it that way. To me, it's always been nothing more than
rejection of the god hypothesis. I see no belief system, no agenda, no
lobby groups...

> When science itself screams "we don't know, we don't know", how do we
> account for atheists?

By recognising that science itself (as opposed to individuals who
happen to be scientists) does not, in fact, say anything at all
about matters involving untestable hypothes.

Individuals who do have something to say about such matters are
speaking from belief.

> Well now, welcome to the machine; welcome to the universe that human
> seeking gives us.
> A machine; we can understand a machine. We can see the cogs turning,

Seeing isn't necessary to understanding; we cas't see the electrons
moving around a solid-state ciruit, for example, but we can understand
computers (not that everyone *does*, just that we *can*).

> get into the mind of the maker, and perhaps get beyond him, like an
> acorn on a forest floor having the canopy above cut off by older
> trees and preventing its rise to greatness as they block out the
> sunlight.

I don't see that as a good analofy. For me, getting beyond the maker
(or better, the designer) is best exemplified, rather than analogised.
We can go beyond Thomas Edison's light bulb, for exampole, into valve
technology, and the beginnings of electronics... and we can go beyond
that into semiconductor technology and solid-state electronics.

> In short power-enfranchisement; a way of removing the opposition
> that stands in our way; a way of controlling things.

Well, you know what they say; knowledge is power. As I see it, in
that area the difference between rekligion abd science is the same
as the difference between theism and atheisn, and it is, quite
simply, that religion tries to control people's thoughts, while
science tries to control the environment we live in.

[gggg...@gmail.com]

But can reason be dangerous? (recent article):

https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-frankfurt-school-diagnosed-the-ills-of-western-civilisation

[gggg...@gmail.com]

- Traditional societies have been shaped by the principles of a moral order, usually of a religious nature. The transition to modernization in most such traditional societies has involved a gradual trend toward a more secular basis for government, especially as different interests emerged among the people as the result of social and economic development. In time such interests found it necessary to contend with each other and to make demands on government for policies favorable to them. A transition to a political order based on a balance of conflicting interests would follow. In a very fundamental sense successful modernization has thus meant replacing a state-society system in which the state enforces the NORMS of a traditional moral order with a system in which the legitimacy of the state depends upon the dynamics of politics--that is, politics as a process involving the competing interests of a diversified and complex society. NORMS of behavior are no longer dictated by political leaders who are presumed to be a moral elite. Instead it is a society and its interests that determine public life and politics. Stability comes out of the interplay of forces in the society and from government's responses to the demands of participating citizens who seek to shape their destinies rather than being told how to behave by government.

"China: An Introduction",4th ed.(1991,Pye)

[gggg...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, May 25, 2017 at 11:12:31 PM UTC-10, gggg...@gmail.com wrote:
> https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/05/04/question-evil-humanistic-inquiry

Concerning "reductive simplicity", does the following recent article apply?:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/2017/05/uncomfortable-with-contradiction.html

[Ed Cryer]

Ned Latham wrote:

(I've snipped a lot because we were getting rather too broad and diverse
in our discussion).

>
>> Atheists (and notice the very word itself; alpha privative + theists,
>> which implies that theism proceeds atheism).
>
> I disagree. Compare it with the word agnosis, which on that reasoning
> woukd imply that knowledge precedes ignorance.
>

No.
"Gnosis" is "prior" to "agnosis" in cognitive terms.
"Knowing" and "unknowing". They are judgements made only by a knowing
mind. The fact that we can look back on our former selves and posit a
time of unknowing takes knowing.

"Science" is an ideology, just like, say, religion. It's an outlook. It
says something like "We humans are capable of fully penetrating truth
and reality using our rationality"; whereas religion says something like
"There's a power behind it all that we'll never find".
And, just as religion has its organised churches with power in the hands
of priests, so does science have its leaders and followers.

Herodotus has a story of some Egyptian pharaoh who had a baby brought up
by mutes in isolation. He wanted to see what language it first came out
with. Its first word was "bekos", the Phrygian for "bread", from which
he concluded that the Phrygian race must antedate the Egyptians.
Hhhmm!
It would be interesting to know what beliefs it arrived at about its
world. I doubt very much that it would have concluded that reason is
supreme, and that only empirical truths should be taken on board. A bit
like Tarzan brought up in a jungle with apes; he must have had strange
notions of the world; the least of which would have been that what works
is truth.

Ed

[Ned Latham]

Ed Cryer wrote:
> Ned Latham wrote:
>
> (I've snipped a lot because we were getting rather too broad and diverse
> in our discussion).

Goof thinjing.

I note that below, the matter of mental activity has retured. Have you
checked out the link I gave as answer to your question "how the dickens
does the brain create mind"?

http://www.users.on.net/~nedlatham/Science/ModellingMind/index.html

> > > Atheists (and notice the very word itself; alpha privative + theists,
> > > which implies that theism proceeds atheism).
> >
> > I disagree. Compare it with the word agnosis, which on that reasoning
> > woukd imply that knowledge precedes ignorance.
>
> No.
> "Gnosis" is "prior" to "agnosis" in cognitive terms.
> "Knowing" and "unknowing". They are judgements made only by a knowing
> mind. The fact that we can look back on our former selves and posit a
> time of unknowing takes knowing.

Again, I disagree. That interpretation of knowing is ideological. In
practical terms, not knowing precedes knowing just as, and because,
infancy precedes adulthood.

> "Science" is an ideology, just like, say, religion. It's an outlook.

Yep.

> It says something like "We humans are capable of fully penetrating
> truth and reality using our rationality";

Leave out the word fully and I agree.

> whereas religion says something like "There's a power behind it all
> that we'll never find".

No. Religion claims certainty. Rememver, it is religion that relies
on dogma, and it is the behaviour of religionists that motivated
the derived word "dogmatism".

Consider Islam and its claim of certainty. And the hundreds of
millions of murders that "certainty" has engendered.

> And, just as religion has its organised churches with power in the
> hands of priests, so does science have its leaders and followers.

Yes.

> Herodotus has a story of some Egyptian pharaoh who had a baby brought up
> by mutes in isolation. He wanted to see what language it first came out
> with. Its first word was "bekos", the Phrygian for "bread", from which
> he concluded that the Phrygian race must antedate the Egyptians.
> Hhhmm!

"Bekos" is a Hellenisation of whatever it was that Herotos was told.
Anyone who's seen infants develop from noise to the beginnings of
speech should know that it's simple syllables like "ma" and "ba",
not whole words, which are quite a bit more difficult to utter.

The only interest that story has lies in its provenance: did the
temple priests make it up (laughing at the uncouth tourist they
were milking of money), or is it a true report of a rather silly
and inhumane experiment?

I incline to the former, myself.

> It would be interesting to know what beliefs it arrived at about
> its world. I doubt very much that it would have concluded that
> reason is supreme, and that only empirical truths should be taken
> on board.

Examine yourself. Try to think about something without resorting
to langauge; words such as you utter every day.

I consider that a person brought up in ancient times by mutes would
have done very liitle thinking; their mental activity would almost
exclusively be perception. It might be very subtle (we can "think"
non-verbally), but there is much cognitive activity that he simply
could not do.

> A bit like Tarzan brought up in a jungle with apes; he must have
> had strange notions of the world; the least of which would have
> been that what works is truth.

A person brought up by apes would be handicapped similarly to
a person brought up by mutes in ancient times. I don't see how
he could develop a concept as abstract as truth.

[Ed Cryer]

What is mind? How does it arise?
There's no doubt that it's a property of the human brain. But how does
the brain produce it?
Science's answer to this question is nothing more than a stumbling
perhaps. Something like; well, mind is an emergent property, something
that arises from the degree of complexity of the hardware. The human
brain is the most complex organism we know of.
And beyond that we soar into the realm of fantasy. Things like; we are
the way the universe becomes aware of itself. In a word "metaphysics";
pure speculation; why's and wherefore's that science doesn't allow, but
human thinking raises almost instinctively.
And when you try to stamp on that "instinctively" and bring it back into
the fold, well, you're divorcing one self from another, disintegrating
the integral self.

We have this in us; this reaching-out beyond the known, rebellious to
the status-quo, disruptive of the calm, but we worship it.
We call it " the human spirit"; and we value it very highly.

Ed

[John W Kennedy]

On 6/3/17 1:10 PM, Ed Cryer wrote:
> Ned Latham wrote:
>
> (I've snipped a lot because we were getting rather too broad and diverse
> in our discussion).
>
>>
>>> Atheists (and notice the very word itself; alpha privative + theists,
>>> which implies that theism proceeds atheism).
>>
>> I disagree. Compare it with the word agnosis, which on that reasoning
>> woukd imply that knowledge precedes ignorance.
>>
>
> No.
> "Gnosis" is "prior" to "agnosis" in cognitive terms.

But the English word “agnostic”, with its specific technical sense
having to do with religion, is not yet a century-and-a-half old. It was
coined by Huxley.

> "Knowing" and "unknowing". They are judgements made only by a knowing
> mind. The fact that we can look back on our former selves and posit a
> time of unknowing takes knowing.
>
> "Science" is an ideology, just like, say, religion. It's an outlook. It
> says something like "We humans are capable of fully penetrating truth
> and reality using our rationality"; whereas religion says something like
> "There's a power behind it all that we'll never find".
> And, just as religion has its organised churches with power in the hands
> of priests, so does science have its leaders and followers.
>
> Herodotus has a story of some Egyptian pharaoh who had a baby brought up
> by mutes in isolation. He wanted to see what language it first came out
> with. Its first word was "bekos", the Phrygian for "bread", from which
> he concluded that the Phrygian race must antedate the Egyptians.
> Hhhmm!
> It would be interesting to know what beliefs it arrived at about its
> world. I doubt very much that it would have concluded that reason is
> supreme, and that only empirical truths should be taken on board. A bit
> like Tarzan brought up in a jungle with apes; he must have had strange
> notions of the world; the least of which would have been that what works
> is truth.
>
> Ed
>
>
>

--
John W. Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"

[Ed Cryer]

I thought we were into "gnosis" and "agnosis"; knowing and unknowing
generally, not the technical "religiously agnostic" that you mention.
You can "know that you don't know ..." but can you "not know that you
know ....". The latter is used (if it is used at all) incorrectly for "I
later found out that I had known all along".

Ed

[John W Kennedy]

As soon as the word “atheist” slips into the discussion, as it did
above, the Huxlean sense of “agnostic” (and its modern abuses) must
automatically enter the game.

> You can "know that you don't know ..." but can you "not know that you
> know ....". The latter is used (if it is used at all) incorrectly for "I
> later found out that I had known all along".

I don’t see how the one phrasing is any more “incorrect” than the other.
To some degree, the concept itself is a paradox, but it is true
psychology among us poor rational animals.