09.26.11
Posted in you've got mail at 9:38 am by nemo
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/can-china-save-the-world-again/article2178600/
Globe and Mail Report on Business Sep. 24, 2011
Can China save the world again?
Iain Marlow, Andy Hoffman and David Ebner
For those who once questioned the rising power and influence of China on the
world economic stage, the 2008 global financial crisis laid any doubts to
rest.
As stocks plunged, credit markets froze and major financial institutions
collapsed, economies around the world went into freefall. China was caught
in the storm too, as demand for its exports sank.
Infographic China’s economy losing steam
But the slowdown in China was exceedingly brief. In response to the
downturn, Beijing rolled out an enormous stimulus package worth four
trillion yuan or $570-billion (U.S.). China’s economy took flight almost
immediately as a slew of infrastructure projects including roads, rail and
buildings sparked bank lending and GDP growth.
Permalink
Posted in General at 9:36 am by nemo
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29200.htm
Information Clearing House
Follow the Money: Behind the European Debt Crisis Lie More Bank Bailouts The price of this financial crisis is being paid by people who
absolutely did not cause it.
— Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England *
*By David MCNALLY*
While I was cursing the inane mainstream commentary on the global economy
recently, I was reminded of a pivotal scene in the 1976 movie, All the
President’s Men. As two young reporters investigate the burglary of
Democratic Party offices in the Watergate Hotel, a disgruntled, high-ranking
FBI agent, code-named Deep Throat, advises, “Follow the money. Always follow
the money.”
Permalink
Posted in General at 9:34 am by nemo
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/21/crisis-of-capitalism
The Guardian 21 September 2011
A crisis of capitalism
The financial problems plaguing Europe and Italy are not home-grown. They
are part of a global attack on labour
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
09.25.11
Posted in General at 1:30 pm by nemo
Nature Shows the Way: Self-Healing MembranesScienceDaily (Sep. 24, 2011) — The plant liana, whose stabilization rings of woody cells heal spontaneously after suffering damage, serves as a natural example to bionic experts of self-repairing membranes. Such membranes could find use, for example, in rubber dinghies. Empa researchers have borrowed this trick from nature and developed a polymer foam surface coating with a closed cell construction which not only reduces the pressure loss after the membrane is damaged but also makes the inflatable structure more resistant and giving it a longer operational life.
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:27 pm by nemo
A New Age Begins:
Debates over secularism and religion have forgotten that the modern age begins with the Protestant Reformation, and that the modern transition is like a hybrid of the Israelite, and Greek Axial transitions. The antagonism to ‘religion’ is really the action against the Axial legacy, and has nothing for/against religion at all. But the attempt to recast the essence of religion is proving much harder than expected, and isn’t moving toward success, as yet.
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:25 pm by nemo
Aryans, Hinduism,
And a Buddhist Revolution
Debates over Christianity are often disguised behind the term ‘religion’, so it is important to see how chauvinistic that is, and to begin to look at the entire legacy of the Axial period.
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:18 pm by nemo
The Old Testament As Eonic Data
The question of monotheism, and of Jewish, then Christian/Moslem culture, remains a riddle unsolved by all parties, religious, post-religious, secular or traditional.
The clue of the Axial Age leads to a larger perspective that might unlock the mystery.
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:10 pm by nemo
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2657/varieties-of-irreligious-experience
The idea of atheism has never been as clear as you might expect. Etymologically, it ought to refer to the idea that there is no such thing as God, or an attitude of indifference or defiance even if there is.
The problem is that ‘god’ is almost impossible to negate, without making a whole new set of metaphysical claims. And the result is often worse than theism.
Getting past ‘god’ ideas is hard work, and subject to fallacies of all kinds. The simpler solution is a fuzzy agnosticism.
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:00 pm by nemo
http://darwiniana.com/2011/09/25/atheist-jews/
This fascinating post prompts me to attempt some controversial statements on Jewish culture and assimilation: perhaps we should export this to The Gurdjieff Con, since much of my commentary here springs from jews themselves, from years ago in the New Age movement. The most ferocious anti-semites I ever met were jews, who regretted their background because it coopted their chance to be spiritual leaders. A lot decided to try it anyway, hoping there would be no problems.
The basic issue is to be mindful of the troubled history of jews and Xtians, but to ask, if Xtians (to, say, new atheists) are to renounce their religion, then the equivalent (a terrible catch-22) for Jews is assimilation. Jews will protest this, but if look at modern Israel, you can see that secularization didn’t work: ‘jews’ as a people remained unable to create a proper political state because of the obsession with Jewish culture. What to do?
It is your problem, if you are jewish: there is zero profit in a gentile preaching to jews here. It matters little to me, save to note that there is always the chance of confusing attempted contributions to general culture if they appear in a jewish cultural context. Karl Marx understood this issue, and was desperate to be seen as un-jewish. Franklin Roosevelt is the classic exemplar: his deep antecedents, many generations, were jewish: his contribution was unmatched, and completely secure from jewish chauvinism.
Secular atheist jews can lead the way here by creating a new semi-jewish but very much post-jewish culture of hyibrid, semi-assimilated universal culture.
Protests that this is anti-semitism are in vain: the case of modern Israel shows that jews can’t be trusted to create a fair and equal social milieu.
Lest this seem prejudice, the same charge can be laid against Christians. But Christian culture is not defined by birth. So the problem is easier to solve.
Look at the rise of modernity: we see a host of very smart jews, but none of them, except in science, have been able to make seminal contributions, with a host of arguable exceptions. All the really basic foundations were from gentiles, sometimes visibly less capable. Why? The tooth fairy dare not risk seeding cultural universals via Jewish sources, it seems.
Again, it is for jews to figure this out. I spend little time worrying about this. But history is moving on. Jewish culture was a transient artifact of the Axial Age. It has no continuations over the long term. This is partly up to the individual jewish person: if you wish to maintain a jewish culture, fine, go ahead. But those, like Marx, who wish to speak to a universal audience, reflect on your position.
I therefore speak only to those jews who care to listen, the rest is none of my business. And I don’t care. But I would suggest that murphy’s law in its worst form haunts the life of Jews and Christians. A culture of Jewish atheism is going to backfire. Best to be long gone, start now, and create a field for your descendants, like FDR, whose jewish antecedents were almost forgotten by him.
This seems unfair, and I would be glad to hear counterarguments, but the reality of modern israel shows the problem. Jews are very smart, but not smart enough, it seems to handle a modern nation state. The world is sick to death of the last generation of Israeli stupidity. Nota bene. And argue if you wish. But the smarter strategy is to slip away (next to Xtians slipping away, and having an easier time of it).
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:32 pm by nemo
Richard comments on Harris/lying post:
Richard
72.152.14.107 Submitted on 2011/09/24 at 5:53 pm
“We really don’t know how morality evolved, and the ‘common ordinary morality’ depicted by Kant is a tough nut to crack as to the understanding of morality, and/or how it evolved.”
I would agree and there seems to be something fundamental to the nature of lying in moral systems. One can cite the Buddhists, where the principle of not lying is regarded as far more important than the other ones (even the one against killing).
“We really don’t know how morality evolved, and the ‘common ordinary morality’ depicted by Kant is a tough nut to crack as to the understanding of morality, and/or how it evolved.”
I would agree and there seems to be something fundamental to the nature of lying in moral systems. One can cite the Buddhists, where the principle of not lying is regarded as far more important than the other ones (even the one against killing).
Good point: a kind of universal ethic is visible across many boundaries. At the same time, we should export this issue to The Gurdjieff Con to discuss the emergence of lying in monotheism, sufism, and the Gurdjieff cult.
The issue of Kantian morality and its seeming contradictions, as I noted yesterday, is used by people who have a motive to pass into a Nietzschean nihilism (cf. figures like Stuart Kauffman?), or other agendas.
But those issues, like the problems with set theory, don’t really change the deep insight that Kant had. We still use set theory, despite Bertrand Russell’s classic expose of its potential for problems.
I think that it is important to see that Kant is the ‘Newton’ of moral theory, and that a larger generalization is waiting its Einstein. Beyond that, the status of morality is too complex for our humble intellligence. We have spontaneous moral behaviors, but what makes them tick. Kant, it seems, advanced the subject immensely, but his assumptions may still be too limited.
But, as you note, the issue of lying is part of the universal substrate of moral intuitions.
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:07 pm by nemo
Again a popular post: re-Repost: Unexpectedly popular post from yesterday: six hundred reads.
Evolution: a glimpse
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/intro1_1.htm
It is remarkable to consider that scientists don’t understand evolution because they have never observed it. But as we examine the traces in world history we get a set of hints.
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:06 pm by nemo
Sam Harris ebook/Kant, lying, politics…
Sam Harris’ ebook on Lying
I am relinking to this to keep a debate open here, in my own mind, at least. Harris surprised me, in the middle of my criticisms of his The Moral Landscape, with his near-Kantian take on lying. This view doesn’t seem compatible with his useless utilitarian ethics. His stance is courageous, but/and will probably end by discrediting his larger framework. Terrific. He can move on to something serious.
I have yet to read his book, so…
But I recite this link in part to connect with Darwiniana (among other reasons), evolution:
Humans have evolved to lie well, and no doubt you’ve seen the social lubrication at work. In many cases, we might not think of it as a true “lie”: perhaps a “white lie” once in a blue moon, the omission of a sensitive detail here and there, false encouragement of others when we see no benefit in dashing someone’s hopes, and the list goes on. In LYING, Sam Harris demonstrates how to benefit from being brutally—but pragmatically—honest. It’s a compelling little book with a big impact.
Tim Ferriss, angel investor and author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers, The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek
Harris is in trouble with what is probably his Darwinian view of man, I would guess with high probability. As this blurb mis-states the issue: ‘humans have evolved to lie well’??? Really? Where’s the proof. We really don’t know how morality evolved, and the ‘common ordinary morality’ depicted by Kant is a tough nut to crack as to the understanding of morality, and/or how it evolved.
No doubt some ‘natural selection’ process might well deteriorate the basic ethical framework of that evolved morality, but the macro and the micro, well, they are different things.
The whole question here is goiing to be garbage in, garbage out. Harris is obviously in the standard muddle over darwinism, to the vitiation of all that he is trying to do.
I recommend looking at the Kantian tradition on this question, and Kantian ethics, which despite its probable contradictions here, remains, as indeed Harris senses more generally, a cogent starting point, the source no doubt of Harris’ strong stand on lying.
We have lost perspective on this question: Kant came at the last moment when a stand against Machiavellian politics was still possible, that is, at a moment of revolutionary action. But that revolutionary tradition didn’t learn much from Kant, more from Hegel, no doubt. Machiavelli is an acute, yet corrupting influence from the pre-democratic age. Sorry to say it, but it is true. But the tares were resown by him, and have displaced Kant (starting with figures like Hegel/Marx). Unlike the question of slavery, which achieved abolition, the basic corruption of politics passed into the demoractic age. The question is no doubt complex, but the final outcome should caution against the Machiavellian idee fixe.
Kant’s take here, like that of Harris, is a motion against the tide.
If you think it doesn’t matter, well, poor sucker. The gangster politicians have taken over the government, and, well, lied about what they did. Since they lied, your reenslavement will happen behind a veil of lies. And the diseasse seems progressive.
In general, Kant sensed rightly that the ‘right to lie’ that Benjamen Constant thought appropriate for politicians is the wrong approach, and we can see now has left us without any real government.
You need to see the point: don’t be an asshole here and think you have a government of free men.
Look at the politics of the last ten years, and then the last two generations: we can see the final stage of decay and loss of democratic government. All in the full tide of the ‘political lie’. And the surface of democracy continues, as a lie.
Kant was denounced as a fool, but he will get the last laugh, in a fiendish din of cackling devils.
Btw, Stuart Kauffman in his Reinventing the Sacred replays the standard attack on the issue of a contradiction in Kant’s ethical reasoning. I reviewed that book at Amazon, trying to ‘stir up a lynch mob’ for Kauffman’s thinking: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3DUQJJ2JZCAZO/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
A serious effort at Gallow’s humor? Not so fast. This isn’t funny.
At the end of the progression of political lies, you are dead, but first waterboarded perhaps. bye.
The problem arises from the way that Kant defines the categorical imperative. But the contradictions that arise remind me of set theory. We still use set theory, we must, but the contradictions there demand a larger framework.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:30 am by nemo
Twin Study Reveals Epigenetic Alterations of Psychiatric DisordersScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2011) — In the first study to systematically investigate genome-wide epigenetic differences in a large number of psychosis discordant twin-pairs, research at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London provides further evidence that epigenetic processes play an important role in neuropsychiatric disease.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:29 am by nemo
From the Comfort of Home, Web Users May Have Found New PlanetsScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2011) — Since the online citizen science project Planet Hunters launched last December, 40,000 web users from around the world have been helping professional astronomers analyze the light from 150,000 stars in the hopes of discovering Earth-like planets orbiting around them.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:12 am by nemo
Monkeys Also Reason Through Analogy, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (Sep. 24, 2011) — Recognizing relations between relations is what analogy is all about. What lies behind this ability? Is it uniquely human? A study carried out by Joël Fagot of the Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (CNRS/Université de Provence) and Roger Thompson of the Franklin & Marshall College (United States) has shown that monkeys are capable of making analogies.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:06 am by nemo
Published on Sunday, September 25, 2011 by The Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)
‘Zombie Economics’ and Undersized Stimulus
by Rick Wilson
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It’s starting to look as if the United States, like Dante at the beginning of The Divine Comedy, is finding itself in a dark wood, having lost the true path.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:05 am by nemo
Published on Sunday, September 25, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Junk Food for the Mind
by Thomas S. Harrington
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/25
A small but growing number of Americans have finally realized that much of what the agro-business industry sells them at large food stores is not only not nutritious but, in many cases, a threat to their health. Hence, they have begun to seek out new sources of nutrition.
How long will it take for these same health-conscious Americans to realize that the agro-business assault on their bodies has a very clear correlate in the information diet offered up by the mainstream media in this country?
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:02 am by nemo
Published on Sunday, September 25, 2011 by the Sacramento Bee (California)
America Should Halt the Use of Unmanned ‘Killer’ Drones
by John B. Quigley
Armed pilotless drone aircraft are the weapon of choice these days in our military forays into the Middle East.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/25-4
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:01 am by nemo
Published on Sunday, September 25, 2011 by Minneapolis Star Tribune (Minnesota)
Let’s Explore the History of ‘Class Warfare’
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/25-3
by Myles Spicer
Recently, Warren Buffett remarked that America was engaged in “class warfare.” Conservative reaction was immediate, indignant, and anticipated. When President Obama followed up this week with his “Buffett Tax,” conservatives again were aghast.
Words like “class warfare” are not commonly used anymore — they were considered anachronisms from the days of “commies and socialists.” Nevertheless, they are appropriate — and Americans should not be horrified by them.
Permalink
Posted in General at 10:54 am by nemo
Rad-Green
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/pax-americana-is-over-1.386383
Haaretz 23.09.11*
*Pax Americana is over* *Unlike Great Britain in 1947, the United States
cannot pass the Middle East torch to a friendly global power willing to
assume its responsibilities. * * By Leon Hadar*
Permalink
Posted in General at 10:51 am by nemo
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/prosecute-dick-cheney-for-torture-human-rights-group-tells-ottawa/article2179140/
Globe and Mail
Sep. 24, 2011 *
Prosecute Dick Cheney for torture, human rights group tells Ottawa*
Toronto— The Canadian Press
A human rights group is urging the federal government to bring criminal
charges against former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney, accusing him of
playing a role in the torture of detainees during the years of the Bush
administration.
Mr. Cheney will be in Vancouver on Monday to promote his book, In My Time: A
Personal and Political Memoir, which outlines his views of the war on terror
and other events during the administration of president George W. Bush.
Human Rights Watch claims that overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush
administration, including at least two cases involving Canadian citizens,
are grounds for Canada to investigate Mr. Cheney and comply with the
Convention Against Torture.
In addition, the New York-based group said that Canadian law expressly
provides for jurisdiction over an individual for torture and other crimes if
the complainant is a Canadian citizen, even for offences committed outside
of Canada.
It said in a news release issued Saturday that Canada had ratified the
Convention Against Torture in 1987 and incorporated its provisions into the
Canadian Criminal Code.
“The U.S. has utterly failed to meet its legal obligation to investigate
torture by the Bush administration, but that shouldn’t let other countries
off the hook,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
“Cheney’s visit to Vancouver is a rare opportunity to remedy this shameful
failure to uphold the rule of law.”
A spokesperson for Mr. Cheney could not be reached for comment, but in the
past the former vice-president has been a staunch defender of the policies
of the Bush years.
He frequently appeared on the U.S. talk-show circuit to say he’s
unapologetic about waterboarding and other controversial interrogation
techniques. He has repeatedly insisted such tactics saved “hundreds of
thousands of lives.”
The complaint from the human rights group came on the heels of a New
Democratic Party MP’s call on Friday for the federal government to bar Mr.
Cheney from entering Canada.
Don Davies sent a letter to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney urging the
federal government to deny Mr. Cheney entry, also citing the treatment of
detainees during the Bush administration years.
Mr. Kenney’s office could not be immediately reached for comment.
Human Rights Watch said it had documented the role of senior Bush
administration officials in authorizing torture of detainees, including
“waterboarding” and prolonged exposure to heat and cold.
The group further said the U.S. was directly responsible or complicit in the
alleged torture of at least two Canadian citizens, Maher Arar and Omar
Khadr.
U.S. authorities deported Mr. Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, back to Syria in
2002 when he stopped in the U.S. on the way home to Canada. He was jailed in
Damascus and tortured into giving false confessions about terrorist links.
Mr. Khadr was convicted a year ago in Guantanamo Bay after pleading guilty
to war crimes he committed as a 15-year-old in Afghanistan.
“Canada’s own investigation into the Maher Arar case shows there is
sufficient evidence to investigate Cheney for authorizing torture,” Mr. Roth
said.
“Bush, Cheney, and others authorized the abusive detention regime that
Canadians and thousands of others were subjected to. They should be held
accountable.”
Antiwar activists are expected to protest in Vancouver during Cheney’s trip.
_______________________________________________
Permalink
Posted in General at 10:50 am by nemo
RG mail
Go to URL to see pictures and videos….
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/09/24/2011-09-24_police_clashes_with_protestors_calling_for_greater_financial_reform_at_union_squ.html
Police clashes with ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters as hundreds march
on Union Square
BY Ashley Fleming AND Christina Boyle
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
A man is arrested on 12th Street near Union Square. Dozens were
arrested after a march from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in
lower Manhattan.
Protesters calling for greater financial reform and social equality
clashed fiercely with police in Manhattan Saturday.
Scores of arrests were made as hundreds of people marched near Union
Square waving banners and calling for the end of a system which
benefits the rich and hinders the poor.
There were unconfirmed reports that mace may have been used on some
protesters, and witnesses said they saw up to 50 people getting arrested.
Police created a roadblock at E. 12th St. and University Place, where
tensions became especially fraught and many of the arrests took
place, according to witnesses.
The protesters are loosely connected under the banner of an
organization called “Occupy Wall Street” and have been occupying
parts of Liberty Plaza in the financial district since last weekend.
“We’re seeing an absolute erosion of our civil rights,” said
23-year-old student Patrick Bruner, of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Police were seen pushing some protesters against walls and
handcuffing them, but it did not stop the throngs from continuing
their walk from Union Square towards Liberty Plaza.
“When [police] started hitting and throwing people down on the floor
I felt like I was under attack,” said student Jaron Peterson, 22,
from Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
“We had no weapons, just our voice.
“This is my first protest to fight against the ruthless corporations.”
With Matthew Deluca.
Permalink
09.24.11
Posted in General at 12:51 pm by nemo
Carnivorous Plant Inspires Coating That Resists Just About Any Liquids
ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2011) — After a rain, the cupped leaf of a pitcher plant becomes a virtually frictionless surface. Sweet-smelling and elegant, the carnivore attracts ants, spiders, and even little frogs. One by one, they slide to their doom.
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:27 pm by nemo
Sam Harris’ ebook on Lying
I am relinking to this to keep a debate open here, in my own mind, at least. Harris surprised me, in the middle of my criticisms of his The Moral Landscape, with his near-Kantian take on lying. This view doesn’t seem compatible with his useless utilitarian ethics. His stance is courageous, but/and will probably end by discrediting his larger framework. Terrific. He can move on to something serious.
I have yet to read his book, so…
But I recite this link in part to connect with Darwiniana (among other reasons), evolution:
Humans have evolved to lie well, and no doubt you’ve seen the social lubrication at work. In many cases, we might not think of it as a true “lie”: perhaps a “white lie” once in a blue moon, the omission of a sensitive detail here and there, false encouragement of others when we see no benefit in dashing someone’s hopes, and the list goes on. In LYING, Sam Harris demonstrates how to benefit from being brutally—but pragmatically—honest. It’s a compelling little book with a big impact.
Tim Ferriss, angel investor and author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers, The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek
Harris is in trouble with what is probably his Darwinian view of man, I would guess with high probability. As this blurb mis-states the issue: ‘humans have evolved to lie well’??? Really? Where’s the proof. We really don’t know how morality evolved, and the ‘common ordinary morality’ depicted by Kant is a tough nut to crack as to the understanding of morality, and/or how it evolved.
No doubt some ‘natural selection’ process might well deteriorate the basic ethical framework of that evolved morality, but the macro and the micro, well, they are different things.
The whole question here is goiing to be garbage in, garbage out. Harris is obviously in the standard muddle over darwinism, to the vitiation of all that he is trying to do.
I recommend looking at the Kantian tradition on this question, and Kantian ethics, which despite its probable contradictions here, remains, as indeed Harris senses more generally, a cogent starting point, the source no doubt of Harris’ strong stand on lying.
We have lost perspective on this question: Kant came at the last moment when a stand against Machiavellian politics was still possible, that is, at a moment of revolutionary action. But that revolutionary tradition didn’t learn much from Kant, more from Hegel, no doubt. Machiavelli is an acute, yet corrupting influence from the pre-democratic age. Sorry to say it, but it is true. But the tares were resown by him, and have displaced Kant (starting with figures like Hegel/Marx). Unlike the question of slavery, which achieved abolition, the basic corruption of politics passed into the demoractic age. The question is no doubt complex, but the final outcome should caution against the Machiavellian idee fixe.
Kant’s take here, like that of Harris, is a motion against the tide.
If you think it doesn’t matter, well, poor sucker. The gangster politicians have taken over the government, and, well, lied about what they did. Since they lied, your reenslavement will happen behind a veil of lies. And the diseasse seems progressive.
In general, Kant sensed rightly that the ‘right to lie’ that Benjamen Constant thought appropriate for politicians is the wrong approach, and we can see now has left us without any real government.
You need to see the point: don’t be an asshole here and think you have a government of free men.
Look at the politics of the last ten years, and then the last two generations: we can see the final stage of decay and loss of democratic government. All in the full tide of the ‘political lie’. And the surface of democracy continues, as a lie.
Kant was denounced as a fool, but he will get the last laugh, in a fiendish din of cackling devils.
Btw, Stuart Kauffman in his Reinventing the Sacred replays the standard attack on the issue of a contradiction in Kant’s ethical reasoning. I reviewed that book at Amazon, trying to ‘stir up a lynch mob’ for Kauffman’s thinking: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3DUQJJ2JZCAZO/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
A serious effort at Gallow’s humor? Not so fast. This isn’t funny.
At the end of the progression of political lies, you are dead, but first waterboarded perhaps. bye.
The problem arises from the way that Kant defines the categorical imperative. But the contradictions that arise remind me of set theory. We still use set theory, we must, but the contradictions there demand a larger framework.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:46 am by nemo
Repost: Unexpectedly popular post from yesterday: six hundred reads.
Evolution: a glimpse
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/intro1_1.htm
It is remarkable to consider that scientists don’t understand evolution because they have never observed it. But as we examine the traces in world history we get a set of hints.
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:44 am by nemo
Another comment on Dawkins and magic
Richard
207.138.47.153 Submitted on 2011/09/23 at 9:46 am
Weber was ridiculously prescienct:
“4.2 Reenchantment via Disenchantment
In point of fact, Weber’s rationalization thesis can be understood with richer nuance when we approach it as, for lack of better terms, a dialectics of disenchantment and reenchantment rather than as a one-sided, unilinear process. Disenchantment had ushered in monotheistic religions in the West; in practice, this means that ad hoc maxims for life-conduct had been gradually displaced by a unified total system of meaning and value, which historically culminated in the Puritan ethic of vocation. Here, the irony was that disenchantment was an ongoing process nonetheless. Disenchantment in its second phase pushed aside monotheistic religion as something irrational, thus delegitimating it as a unifying worldview in the modern secular world.
Modern science, which was singularly responsible for this late development, was initially welcomed as a surrogate system of orderly value-creation, as Weber found in the convictions of Bacon (science as “the road to true nature”) and Descartes (as “the road to the true god”) [Weber 1919/1946, 142]. For Weber, nevertheless, modern science is a deeply nihilistic enterprise in which any scientific achievement worthy of the name must “ask to be surpassed and made obsolete” in a process “that is in principle ad infinitum,” at which point, “we come to the problem of the meaning of science.” He went on to ask: “For it is simply not self-evident that something which is subject to such a law is in itself meaningful and rational. Why should one do something which in reality never comes to an end and never can?” [Ibid., 138: translation altered]. In short, modern science has relentlessly deconstructed other value-creating activities, in the course of which its own meaning has also been demolished beyond repair. The result is the “Götterdämmerung of all evaluative perspectives” including its own [Weber 1904/1949, 86].
Irretrievably gone as a result is a unifying worldview, be it religious or scientific, and what ensues is its fragmentation into incompatible value spheres. Weber, for instance, observed: “since Nietzsche, we realize that something can be beautiful, not only in spite of the aspect in which it is not good, but rather in that very aspect” [Weber 1919/1946, 148]. That is to say, aesthetic values now stand in irreconcilable antagonism to religious values, transforming “value judgments (Werturteile) into judgments of taste (Geschmacksurteile) by which what is morally reprehensible becomes merely what is tasteless” [Weber 1915/1946, 342].
Weber is, then, not envisioning a peaceful dissolution of the grand metanarratives of monotheistic religion and universal science into a series of local narratives and the consequent modern pluralist culture in which different cultural practices follow their own immanent logic. His vision of polytheistic reenchantment is rather that of an incommensurable value-fragmentation into a plurality of alternative metanarratives, each of which claims to answer the same metaphysical questions that religion and (early modern) science strove to cope with in their own ways. The slow death of God has reached its apogee in the return of gods and demons who “strive to gain power over our lives and again … resume their eternal struggle with one another” [Weber 1919/1946, 149].
Seen this way, Weber’s rationalization thesis concludes with two strikingly dissimilar prophecies — one is the imminent iron cage of bureaucratic petrification and the other, the Hellenistic pluralism of warring deities. The modern world has come to be monotheistic and polytheistic all at once. What seems to underlie this seemingly self-contradictory imagery of modernity is the problem of modern humanity (Menschentum) and its loss of freedom and moral agency. Disenchantment has created a world with no objectively ascertainable ground for one’s conviction. Under the circumstances, according to Weber, a modern individual tends to act only on one’s own aesthetic impulse and express arbitrary convictions that cannot be communicated in the eventuality; the majority of those who cannot even act on their convictions, or the “last men who invented happiness” à la Nietzsche, lead the life of a “cog in a machine.” Whether the problem of modernity is accounted for in terms of a permeation of objective, instrumental rationality or of a purposeless agitation of subjective values, Weber viewed these two images as constituting a single problem insofar as they contributed to the inertia of modern individuals who fail to take principled moral action. The “sensualists without heart” and “specialists without spirit” indeed formed two faces of the same coin that may be called the disempowerment of the modern self.”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/
Weber was ridiculously prescienct:
“4.2 Reenchantment via Disenchantment
In point of fact, Weber’s rationalization thesis can be understood with richer nuance when we approach it as, for lack of better terms, a dialectics of disenchantment and reenchantment rather than as a one-sided, unilinear process. Disenchantment had ushered in monotheistic religions in the West; in practice, this means that ad hoc maxims for life-conduct had been gradually displaced by a unified total system of meaning and value, which historically culminated in the Puritan ethic of vocation. Here, the irony was that disenchantment was an ongoing process nonetheless. Disenchantment in its second phase pushed aside monotheistic religion as something irrational, thus delegitimating it as a unifying worldview in the modern secular world.
Modern science, which was singularly responsible for this late development, was initially welcomed as a surrogate system of orderly value-creation, as Weber found in the convictions of Bacon (science as “the road to true nature”) and Descartes (as “the road to the true god”) [Weber 1919/1946, 142]. For Weber, nevertheless, modern science is a deeply nihilistic enterprise in which any scientific achievement worthy of the name must “ask to be surpassed and made obsolete” in a process “that is in principle ad infinitum,” at which point, “we come to the problem of the meaning of science.” He went on to ask: “For it is simply not self-evident that something which is subject to such a law is in itself meaningful and rational. Why should one do something which in reality never comes to an end and never can?” [Ibid., 138: translation altered]. In short, modern science has relentlessly deconstructed other value-creating activities, in the course of which its own meaning has also been demolished beyond repair. The result is the “Götterdämmerung of all evaluative perspectives” including its own [Weber 1904/1949, 86].
Irretrievably gone as a result is a unifying worldview, be it religious or scientific, and what ensues is its fragmentation into incompatible value spheres. Weber, for instance, observed: “since Nietzsche, we realize that something can be beautiful, not only in spite of the aspect in which it is not good, but rather in that very aspect” [Weber 1919/1946, 148]. That is to say, aesthetic values now stand in irreconcilable antagonism to religious values, transforming “value judgments (Werturteile) into judgments of taste (Geschmacksurteile) by which what is morally reprehensible becomes merely what is tasteless” [Weber 1915/1946, 342].
Weber is, then, not envisioning a peaceful dissolution of the grand metanarratives of monotheistic religion and universal science into a series of local narratives and the consequent modern pluralist culture in which different cultural practices follow their own immanent logic. His vision of polytheistic reenchantment is rather that of an incommensurable value-fragmentation into a plurality of alternative metanarratives, each of which claims to answer the same metaphysical questions that religion and (early modern) science strove to cope with in their own ways. The slow death of God has reached its apogee in the return of gods and demons who “strive to gain power over our lives and again … resume their eternal struggle with one another” [Weber 1919/1946, 149].
Seen this way, Weber’s rationalization thesis concludes with two strikingly dissimilar prophecies — one is the imminent iron cage of bureaucratic petrification and the other, the Hellenistic pluralism of warring deities. The modern world has come to be monotheistic and polytheistic all at once. What seems to underlie this seemingly self-contradictory imagery of modernity is the problem of modern humanity (Menschentum) and its loss of freedom and moral agency. Disenchantment has created a world with no objectively ascertainable ground for one’s conviction. Under the circumstances, according to Weber, a modern individual tends to act only on one’s own aesthetic impulse and express arbitrary convictions that cannot be communicated in the eventuality; the majority of those who cannot even act on their convictions, or the “last men who invented happiness” à la Nietzsche, lead the life of a “cog in a machine.” Whether the problem of modernity is accounted for in terms of a permeation of objective, instrumental rationality or of a purposeless agitation of subjective values, Weber viewed these two images as constituting a single problem insofar as they contributed to the inertia of modern individuals who fail to take principled moral action. The “sensualists without heart” and “specialists without spirit” indeed formed two faces of the same coin that may be called the disempowerment of the modern self.”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/
Richard
1
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:42 am by nemo
Luke comments on Dawkins and magic:
Luke Rondinaro
dianoeidos.wordpress.com
72.73.6.58 Submitted on 2011/09/22 at 10:34 pm
Can’t pass up commenting here … I know Dawkins is doing this because it’s a children’s book, but both he and his adult audience should be getting this “magic”-thing right nevertheless. That said …
Dawkins & Co. SHOULD re-read Frodo the Hobbit (if they haven’t done so already). They should be re-visiting Tolkien on mythology, because then they’d discover the real story of this ‘magic’ behind reality. The point is, it’s ART not MECHANISM that lies at the heart of real things in the world. Elves in the Tolkien mythology understood this, they being the quintessential artists. “Mechanism” as in strangle-holding Nature for purposes of “technologism” or “power” was what Sauron did; not “magic” as such, but “sorcery.” If Dawkins and his followers REALLY want to pursue this line, they should at least get the basics right both for themselves and for the kids they’re trying to inspire with science and the study of nature.
The “machine” comes from Mordor and Isengard, “magic” comes from the world of nature and experience. The knowledge of Science/Nature, as such, is like a Palantir; good in itself, but all too prone to being used for the wrong reasons (i,e., technologism) in the name of scientific advancement [=Scientism]. Dawkins isn’t Sauron, or even Saruman for that matter, but only a confused type of Denethor daunted by the powers of his Palantir and the [metaphorical] Saurons of the world. … Reality is “magic”, but don’t expect to learn the craft of how to best wield it from either the Denethors of “Science” nor the Grima Wormtongues of “Religion.” … Best to learn it on its own terms.
Richard Dawkins: welcome to “Middle Earth”! … Not “Middle World” as you call it, but a world that’s far richer and more poignant than anything that the wonders of scientific advancement and technology have ever given us here upon this earth; a world that awaits us in the greater reading/study of History, Philosophy, and Literature. In the words of Gandalf the White to Theoden of Rohan on pgs. 151 and 153 of Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers “I bid you come out before your doors and look abroad” … “Cast aside your prop.” (LOTR, TTT, Ballantine Paperpack edition, 1973)
Dawkins & Co., then, should set aside their “scientism” for the moment and step out into the world, seeing it for what it is: an experience. Science is fine; but when it becomes a mechanism of control rather than an artist’s brush for rendering the world as if as on a canvas, that’s where it becomes its own worst enemy and the enemy of human progress. It’s time the so-called “science crowd” stepped into this larger world. Once they do, they – and indeed our whole world – will never be the same for it. That’s where the real magic of reality lies; not in the palantiri of technology, but in the arts of nature itself.
Understand that, and you’ve captured the real essence of reality’s “magic.” All else I’d say is just cut-rate, second-end “sorcery” by comparison.
Can’t pass up commenting here … I know Dawkins is doing this because it’s a children’s book, but both he and his adult audience should be getting this “magic”-thing right nevertheless. That said …
Dawkins & Co. SHOULD re-read Frodo the Hobbit (if they haven’t done so already). They should be re-visiting Tolkien on mythology, because then they’d discover the real story of this ‘magic’ behind reality. The point is, it’s ART not MECHANISM that lies at the heart of real things in the world. Elves in the Tolkien mythology understood this, they being the quintessential artists. “Mechanism” as in strangle-holding Nature for purposes of “technologism” or “power” was what Sauron did; not “magic” as such, but “sorcery.” If Dawkins and his followers REALLY want to pursue this line, they should at least get the basics right both for themselves and for the kids they’re trying to inspire with science and the study of nature.
The “machine” comes from Mordor and Isengard, “magic” comes from the world of nature and experience. The knowledge of Science/Nature, as such, is like a Palantir; good in itself, but all too prone to being used for the wrong reasons (i,e., technologism) in the name of scientific advancement [=Scientism]. Dawkins isn’t Sauron, or even Saruman for that matter, but only a confused type of Denethor daunted by the powers of his Palantir and the [metaphorical] Saurons of the world. … Reality is “magic”, but don’t expect to learn the craft of how to best wield it from either the Denethors of “Science” nor the Grima Wormtongues of “Religion.” … Best to learn it on its own terms.
Richard Dawkins: welcome to “Middle Earth”! … Not “Middle World” as you call it, but a world that’s far richer and more poignant than anything that the wonders of scientific advancement and technology have ever given us here upon this earth; a world that awaits us in the greater reading/study of History, Philosophy, and Literature. In the words of Gandalf the White to Theoden of Rohan on pgs. 151 and 153 of Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers “I bid you come out before your doors and look abroad” … “Cast aside your prop.” (LOTR, TTT, Ballantine Paperpack edition, 1973)
Dawkins & Co., then, should set aside their “scientism” for the moment and step out into the world, seeing it for what it is: an experience. Science is fine; but when it becomes a mechanism of control rather than an artist’s brush for rendering the world as if as on a canvas, that’s where it becomes its own worst enemy and the enemy of human progress. It’s time the so-called “science crowd” stepped into this larger world. Once they do, they – and indeed our whole world – will never be the same for it. That’s where the real magic of reality lies; not in the palantiri of technology, but in the arts of nature itself.
Understand that, and you’ve captured the real essence of reality’s “magic.” All else I’d say is just cut-rate, second-end “sorcery” by comparison.
Luke Rondinaro
http://dianoeidos.wordpress.com
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:40 am by nemo
Two comments from Richard
Richard
207.138.47.153 Submitted on 2011/09/22 at 6:55 pm
“How Reaganism actually started with Carter:”
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/02/08/lind_reaganism_carter
“How Reaganism actually started with Carter:”
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/02/08/lind_reaganism_carter
rmbr117@yahoo.com
Richard
1
ApproveUnapprove | Reply | Quick Edit | Edit | History | Spam | Trash Comment on the lost decade
1 #
Richard
rmbr117@yahoo.com
207.138.47.153 Submitted on 2011/09/22 at 6:51 pm
Why libertarians apologize for autocracy
The experience of every modern democratic nation-state proves that libertarianism is incompatible with democracy:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/30/lind_libertariansim
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »