12.31.11
Posted in General at 3:40 pm by nemo
Bugs may be resistant to genetically modified cornBy RICK CALLAHAN, Associated Press – 2 days ago
One of the nation’s most widely planted crops — a genetically engineered corn plant that makes its own insecticide — may be losing its effectiveness because a major pest appears to be developing resistance more quickly than scientists expected.
The U.S. food supply is not in any immediate danger because the problem remains isolated. But scientists fear potentially risky farming practices could be blunting the hybrid’s sophisticated weaponry.
Permalink
Posted in General at 3:30 pm by nemo
In search of history: introduction to the ‘eonic effect’
We discussed already the problem people have with Darwin dissent, but Richard implied a similar situation with respect to my views on evolution.
I think that these views are robust, and deliver what is promised, but if that isn’t clear on sight, then maybe there is a problem. There is! The reality of evolution is complex, elusive and not easily understood, especially if you have been overtrained to believe in the magic of natural selection. This oversimplification will make you lazy and unwilling to do the long uphill to understanding how evolution works (to whatever extent we can arrive at that). In a word, evolutionary study is going to be hard work. To be sure, simply looking backward at deep time is easy: we can detect evolution as a chronicle of forms. But it is not so easy to understand how it all works.
My purpose with the study of the ‘eonic effect’ was to
show why history must reflect evolution
show how this evolution detected is embedded in history
suggest how this visible pattern can tell us what ‘evolution’ is really like, i.e.
that it is directional, i.e. teleological,
that is operates on two levels, one expressing an invisible template (but not exactly),
with the second level carrying out the details, in a different action,
showing thus, that the deeper side to evolution is invisible to us
but that its action is so spectacular we might confuse it with design/theistic processes.
And much more.
But the basic point of all this is to do some systems analysis. People claim that history is random. A little systems analysis (throw a sine curve at the data) will show quite easily that this is false, and that contrary to common intuition an organized directionality is at work (overlaid on a chaotified divergence and diversity).
The final suspicion is that this ‘evolution’ (evolution because we defined it that way, period) is also a strong hint about how earlier human evolution produced homo sapiens: a ten thousand year sequence of transitions operating on populations in Africa, after the fashion of what we see in world history, but of course different in details in a different context, but a kind a macroevolutionary operation on populations of hominids, leading them to higher states of language, mind, culture and ‘ethics’ (which really means ‘moving toward free will’), in ways that resemble perhaps what we see in the Axial Age where high speed convulsions/transformations over a mere few centuries produce massive innovations, the genetics to follow no doubt.
There is in any case no chance Darwinists are going to explain, say, language. The eonic effect shows cases of ‘linguistic’ art sequences arising by correlated explosions in the direct path of the sequential process. That tells us something, a hint at least. The data is in essence simple: we see a creative phase (i.e. the Axial period) then a middle or medievalizing period, then another ‘punctuation’. Then we discover that this pattern replicates backward. There is clear evidence of system at work, that this system shows developmental sequencing…. Case established: a non-random pattern in world history (disguised by all sort so variously random processes).
So, I am mindful of the problems people have with the eonic effect, but its content is finally no more than simple periodization using known facts about world history which shows what it shouldn’t show: non-random directionality. I don’t have to explain anything: all I have to do is point to the facts of world history present in any text on the subject, if you can manage a bird’s eye view. That’s my strength: I don’t have to ‘explain’ evolution with a ‘theory’. All I have to do is point to evolution in a sequence, albeit incomplete. That this ‘evolution’ isn’t genetic makes no difference. I doubt if genetics is the key to evolution anyway. It is a secondary level that works in its own way under the influence of various outside forces.
Keep in mind that it is Darwininism that is crackpot. Once we suspect that evolution must be something else, and that it must show its echoes in world history we can start the easter egg hunt. Not long before the puzzle comes together.
Permalink
Posted in General at 2:48 pm by nemo
I am not quite ready to review this book as promised, but will start anyway by noting that there is an explicit reference to Darwinism in the book as a background motivation to ‘naturalizing buddhism’: The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized [Hardcover]
Owen Flanagan
That is totally misguided. I often wonder who I am dealing with as I observe someone reject Buddhism because it won’t fit in with Darwinism. Throwing out Darwinism is unthinkable. One can only throw up one’s hands.Buddhism has been tested by time, and enters secularism by the back door in Schopenhauer. You may prefer the old buddhism to Schopenhauer, not my point. The issue is to see that modernity is completely open to the past recreated inside it, if that is germane.
I recall, btw, Rajneesh making the observation that buddhists were always afraid philosophers would destroy them! So it seems here. Flanagan’s book is simply useless, but it sounds the note of academic pronunciamento pretty well, and will be hard to counter for many.
So let me rush to point out that Buddhism is already as naturalistic as you can get, despite a decided trend toward ‘weeds and foliage’ in Mahayana, and the obscurities of Tibetan buddhism.. But the basic core is eminently suited to the mood of science. So why this obsessive nitpicking with bad philosophy to completely flatten the whole subject. Not even nirvana remains as a conceptual core. It is a strange mindset, like having a problem with flowers because they stand out from the plant and stem. So with enlightenement (no coincidence the metaphor of the lotus bloom arises here so often) as a state of rare blooming that fulfills but is distinct from its source and surroundings. Flowers are supernatural exceptions, ???. Not
The naturalism of buddhism is, or should be transparent. To be sure Vedantists and Samkhya-ists often quarelled over the ‘dualism’ of Samkhya. But the latter is just a model. The unity of purusha and prakriti is somehow inevitable, but less clear to explanation. Who knows.
You have no grounds in saying that ‘nirvana’ is a supernatural state. Some might say so, but it is completely unnecessary. I could be wrong here. After all, if the Kantian categories show how close our minds are to the ‘out of matter’ hallucination, it might be ‘discussable’ to see enlightenment standing beyond nature. But you will always be haunted by the lotus bloom example: beyond, yet within.
It is a misunderstanding of what nature is, as the Romantics tried to show, btw. But even if you can’t see to put the state of enlightenment into a purely material context, so what? It is very close to something that must coexist in and with nature, just as, with our discussion of being and existence, there are things that are real but have a different form of existence. We can’t avoid this. Physicists shout their material ideology, but then use Platonic ideas in the form of mathematical equations to do all the explaining.
In any case, I point to the case of Rajneesh, a clear exemplar of the Enlightened state, who never indulged philosophical issues such as these. They never entered his path to enlightenment (although after he reached enlightenment as a teenager he went on to spend his early adulthood studying philosophy at the university, before he spoke publicly). I don’t think the question of the ‘path’ being some spiritual way outside of natue ever arose in his mind, as he always grooved over nature, jungle scenes, and the animalistic substrate of man. He certainly thought about going beyond mind, thought, to, what is that? It seems all too natural for buddhas to have arisen with the coming of homo sapiens.
These philosophical quibbles with buddhism, apart from some valid objections to accretions of nonsense, are ‘mind madness’, and part of the turmoil arising in the attempt to still the mind.
Permalink
Posted in General at 2:35 pm by nemo
Comment from Richard on Flanagan’s book on buddhism
Richard said,
December 30, 2011 at 10:20 pm · It’s a strange historical moment. People who are ignorant of the religion and meditation are attempting to rewrite it (third-rate philosophers and technicians of Iron Cage “intelligence” such as Sam Harris). In the end, the dharma (note that I didn’t say “Buddhism”) gets the last laugh as the historical machine claims its victims of mechanized consciousness.
———————–
nemo said,
December 31, 2011 at 11:51 am · It is good you have returned as I try to discuss this book. We have had this discussion before, as you recall, but I hadn’t connected with Flanagan’s book. I have tried persistently to forestall new age postmodern ideologies using spiritual themes as anti-modernism, but the attack on buddhism such as we see (entirely unnecessary) is a false secularism that ironically yields to semi-buddhist legacies (I won’t say ‘buddhism’ as such). There is no contradiction with modernity. As I pointed out many times here the framework of Schopenhauer tries to put these questions in a modern context with ‘transcendental idealism’, recognized by that philosopher to be explicitly close to what he called Upanishadism (he uses the term via a now archaic Persian/Latin translation ‘oupnekat’)
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:47 pm by nemo
Richard comments on “Should you despair of the Darwin debate?”
Richard said,
December 30, 2011 at 11:42 pm · “Truth hides itself, and is rarely a public reality.”
That isn’t the only thing that hides itself. Hell…we already know that all of the big players in the evolution debate (ID and Darwinian) read this blog anonymously. It’s funny that they don’t know how to engage this blog (both parties must have made a tacit agreement not to mention it since it is too subversive to both of them), since it doesn’t fit into either side’s mental parameters.
You are right, and I am often puzzled myself here, but I know from what happened years ago ca. 2006 when a number of Darwinists went out of their way to comment here, briefly, and then announced they would comment no more. After that a wall of silence began. But, you are right, there are a lot of anonymous readers here. I think of Ruse who has produced two books commenting without direct reference to me on my considerable, and constant discussion of the philosopher Kant. I have tried to correct his amateurish confusions here, but Ruse will never acknowledge in public any connection to me. The same for Alan Wood who suddenly several years ago began commentary on Kant’s views of history, obviously trying to scotch my Kantian philosophy of history discussion. And that discussion is not even controversial, but Kant scholars are terrified when someone points out that Kant could never have been a Darwinist, or that he created teleomechanism. And then a group of scholars produced a whole tome on Kant’s essay, obviously intended to block me: they wouldn’t even answer an email. Look at my discussions of Kant, it is almost elementary, so their silence has to be something else, fear. Alan Wood was fixated on the idea Kant was a historical materialist, which is nonsense. The same is true of Karen Armstrong’s book on the Axial Age, and there are many other examples. I suspect the same in Bellah’s book on the Axial Age. My interpretation is a big threat to them. I know that thousands of term paper hounds read my web sites every semester, and many professors are aware of this. I should be fair and note that Bellah is almost as ignored as I am. Any reference to the Axial Age produces this syndrome.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Posted in General at 1:08 pm by nemo
We see a surge in atheism at the moment, but I doubt if that trend will prove the end of the matter. The whole initiative is likely to fade out as it reaches a plateau. The new atheists could be stopped in their tracks by anyone but Christian theologians trying to defend side issues. And that’s the point, perhaps: the ‘theism’ of everyday Christian belief is so confused and infantile that it is small wonder skeptics would say, enough. Christians (I won’t include Muslims, but I wonder) have so trivialized the ‘god’ reference with false prayer beliefs, and personalized ‘divine agency’ fictions that a kind of clearing of the undergrowth becomes necessary.
But the irony is that the atheism of the new atheists is almost as superstitious as anything in religion. The reason is simple: you can’t negate what you won’t define. To declare the non-existence of ‘god’ is without meaning if you won’t define god, and take that in association with five to fifty other things also to be negated or affirmed. Thus ‘atheism’ means also that ‘soul’ doesn’t exist, and that Darwinism is an abolutely correct theory, etc… You just do this in such a sloppy way. It is all gibberish.
Since noone knows what they are talking about it is hard to make a serious case either for the existence or non-existence of god.
Meanwhile, buddhists who, after a fashion, are atheists of long standing are baffled that they are out in the cold. What will satisfy these new atheists.
Meanwhile an important absurdity lurks near this discussion. As J. G. Bennet points out (but I will speak for myself in my own version), the issue of ‘god’s’ existence is a misunderstanding. The failure to distinguish ‘being’ from existence pervades all discussion. But if you consider ‘god’ to be outside ‘existence’ (say, in relation to the Big Bang) then the whole debate is nonsense. I note that Muslims often speak, btw, of the ‘will of god’, and this echoes the distinction of being and will in Bennett, et al.(It is not his original idea). The point is that the ‘existence’ of the universe (evidentally since the big bang, if we accept that cosmology) and the putative ‘existence’ (or being) of ‘god’ can’t be put into the same category. You can sense if not define the difference between being and existence by thinking of isoceles triangles (etc,…): an isoceles triangle is a mathematical abstraction (Platonic idea) that has ‘being’ in some sense but no existence until it is realized in, say, a diagram, which can only approximate the idea in the creator’s mind, as he examines a triangular drawing. Failure to be clear what is being said is therefore a characteristic of this false debate. Actually, as this example shows, we can’t proceed toward meaningful statements about god, a statement that is not atheistic.
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:53 pm by nemo
Booknotes: Pinker book on violence.
I am a little puzzled by Pinker’s book here. It is strange to make the claims he does, and there is also a danger in thinking you can refute him. The simple fact of the matter is that the violence of the twentieth century can’t be set aside and makes any conclusions here premature, to say the least. We are not at a point in history with enough finality to make such generalizations.
In part the question is up to us: we can realize the Kantian aspiration/prediction of ‘world peace’, but the option to recycle war is an obvious strategy even as we speak in the American Military-Industrial Complex.
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:32 pm by nemo
Will 2012 Be the Year of the Atheist? By BRANDON G. WITHROW – THE HUFFINGTON POST – RELIGION
Added: Friday, 30 December 2011 at 7:02 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644425-will-2012-be-the-year-of-the-atheist
Let’s hope 2012 will see a renewed challenge to the new atheists in a form not muddled by Christians defending Christianity.
The New Atheism is not ready to ship as a world view dominating secular society. It simply is not, and is pervaded with false understandings as accessory to the issue of atheism.
I hold no brief for theism, but I think the new atheism has demonstrated the seeds of a new intolerance, even before it is anywhere near mainstream. We can see the reality already in the universities where the combined dogmas of darwinism, scientism, and the new atheism reign as a dominating paradigm, with important exceptions and diversity still. But we can see the danger in the way Darwinian ideology has moved to become a scheme of near mind-control with no serious chance of dissent. A similar regime with respect to atheism would be the dangers of theocracy all over again.
I think a robust agnosticism would be far more cultural sane than the near crackpot distortion of atheism being promoted by the new atheists.
All the benefits of sanity to be had from liberation from narrow religion have been thrown away in the cultic ideology of this new group, whose worst confusion is the destruction of secularism in the name of secularism.
But one thing is sure, these fanatics will not listen, and they will likely achieve a fair degree of false success. But in the end the limits of this formulation, repulsive even to many old atheists, will rise to put a brake on its expansion.
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:27 pm by nemo
Darwin censored by the Turkish government’s porn filter By TOM CHIVERS – THE TELEGRAPH
Added: Friday, 30 December 2011 at 5:37 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644423-darwin-censored-by-the-turkish-government-s-porn-filter
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:12 pm by nemo
Great Apes Make Sophisticated DecisionsScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2011) — Max-Planck-researchers have shown that chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans make decisions carefully.
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:11 pm by nemo
Before Sounding an Alarm, Chimps Consider Information Available to Their Audience
ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2011) — Wild chimpanzees monitor the information available to other chimpanzees and inform their ignorant group members of danger.
Permalink
Posted in General at 12:00 pm by nemo
Defenders of Wildlife: California Dreaming: Lone Wolf Entering California Marks Historic Conservation Success
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/12/30-1
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:58 am by nemo
Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez: Let Your Life Be a Counter-Friction to Stop the Machine
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/30-3
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:58 am by nemo
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman: Has America’s Stolen Election Process Finally Hit Prime Time?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/30-2
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:57 am by nemo
The Decline of the American Empire
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/12/30
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:56 am by nemo
Despite Obesity Crisis, Failures to Rein in Fast Food Industry
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/30-2
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:56 am by nemo
9th Circuit: US Govt Can Be Sued for Domestic Spying
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/30-1
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:55 am by nemo
‘Terrible’ and Plenty of It: The Oil That Comes in from the Cold
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/30-4
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:54 am by nemo
Private Contractors Endemic to US Drone ‘Kill Chain’
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/30-0
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:53 am by nemo
Keeping Oil in the Soil: Can Ecuador Forest Be Model?
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/30-5
Permalink
Posted in General at 11:53 am by nemo
Mark Engler: Iowa: The People’s Caucus
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/30-4
Permalink
12.30.11
Posted in General at 2:58 pm by nemo
—
Marginal revolutionariesThe crisis and the blogosphere have opened mainstream economics up to new attack
Permalink
Posted in General at 2:50 pm by nemo
The ambiguity of the OWS, revolutionary tide or mainstream renewal, should play well in Iowa, and I hope the OWS can bug the heck out of the moribund democrats wallowing in terminal stupidity. Much of the political slide is the result of lowered awareness, and the slinky distracted skulking off from real liberal politics by newly purchased political whores, Dems or otherwise, people who can easily be woken up with loud noises shouted in their sleep. Hopefully the party faithful will be so disorganized, discouraged, near the boundary to clinical depression, that they will be forced to be ‘born again’, after a purifying crucifiction by activist loudmouths. LOUDER!
Permalink
Posted in General at 2:44 pm by nemo
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/opinion/keynes-was-right.html?_r=1
New York Times ec. 29/11
Keynes Was Right
By Paul Krugman
“The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.”
So declared John Maynard Keynes in 1937, even as F.D.R. was about to prove
him right by trying to balance the budget too soon, sending the United
States economy — which had been steadily recovering up to that point — into
a severe recession. Slashing government spending in a depressed economy
depresses the economy further; austerity should wait until a strong
recovery is well under way.
Permalink
Posted in General at 2:27 pm by nemo
Occupy the Caucuses Meets to Plan A Week of Protests
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/occupy-the-caucuses-meets-to-plan-a-week-of-protests/
DES MOINES, Iowa – An offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement met Tuesday evening to organize and plan protests in Iowa’s capitol during the week leading up to the state’s caucuses next Tuesday.
About 200 people involved in the Occupy the Caucuses movement met in East Des Moines and split up into groups by the GOP candidates they want to “occupy” this week. Protestors have said they will also camp out outside President Obama’s headquarters.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
Posted in General at 2:22 pm by nemo
Flanagan’s book on buddhism, cited in the previous post, throws around the term ‘naturalism’ as if its meaning were transparent, and the private property of those trained in scientism. The reality is that the boundaries of nature are incoherently defined, making the demarcation with the supernatural confused. The point should be obvious. The mind should by all accounts be a part of nature. But its study provokes those who see ‘supernatural’ elements there to apply reductionist neuroscience to the elimination of the real meaning of mind. And so it goes on and on. The preconceived limits of naturalism are assumed in advance, and anything that fails to conform gets ostrich treatment.
The work of Kant, and then Shopenhauer pioneered something more intelligent: the unfortunately named ‘transcendental idealism’ whose core can reconcile the usually false divisions of nature and supernature. In any case, that branch of philosophy is needed at the point that scientists attempt to eliminate consciousness, will, and values from the sciences they construct.
Permalink
Posted in General at 2:17 pm by nemo
http://www.amazon.com/Bodhisattvas-Brain-Buddhism-Naturalized/dp/0262016044/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325272196&sr=1-1-spell: The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized [Hardcover]
Owen Flanagan
I just got a copy of this book. I commented here at length on Stephen Batchelor’s similar work on buddhism. This book deserves an even harsher critique, and I will probably review the book at Amazon. A quick glance shows so many points of attack for a critique that I am embarrassed near a massacre (purely in the mind).
Naturalizing buddhism isn’t going to work, for the simple reason that science can’t resolve the question of nature, or even define what it is. This leads the author to all sorts of nonsense in the name of science. To take ‘nirvana’ out of buddhism in the name of science is a brand of stupidity that leaves me breathless.
The issue here is not hard to resovle. The accumulate dross in a religion as old as Buddhism asks for some critical pruning. But the author cannot distinguish these accretions from the core Buddhist tenets of great profundity that cannot be taken away in the name of science. I am puzzled this kind of thinking ever gained a foothool, and feel a sense of alarm at the rising stupidity of the science community. It is starting to mimic all the dogmatic aridity and idiocy of the religions it critiques. More soon.
If we are material beings living in a material world–and all the scientific evidence suggests that we are–then we must find existential meaning, if there is such a thing, in this physical world. We must cast our lot with the natural rather than the supernatural. Many Westerners with spiritual (but not religious) inclinations are attracted to Buddhism–almost as a kind of moral-mental hygiene. But, as Owen Flanagan points out in The Bodhisattva’s Brain, Buddhism is hardly naturalistic. Atheistic when it comes to a creator god, Buddhism is otherwise opulently polytheistic, with spirits, protector deities, ghosts, and evil spirits. Its beliefs include karma, rebirth, nirvana, and nonphysical states of mind. What is a nonreligious, materially grounded spiritual seeker to do? In The Bodhisattva’s Brain, Flanagan argues that it is possible to subtract the “hocus pocus” from Buddhism and discover a rich, empirically responsible philosophy that could point us to one path of human flourishing. “Buddhism naturalized,” as Flanagan constructs it, contains a metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics; it is a fully naturalistic and comprehensive philosophy, compatible with the rest of knowledge. Some claim that neuroscience is in the process of validating Buddhism empirically, but Flanagan’s naturalized Buddhism does not reduce itself to a brain scan showing happiness patterns. Buddhism naturalized offers instead a tool for achieving happiness and human flourishing–a way of conceiving of the human predicament, of thinking about meaning for finite material beings living in a material world.
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »