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Index for this page...
All The Following Items Were Posted On August 1, 2009 Angels: Most people who use the word "angels" have before their minds the image they derive from paintings of winged creatures robed in white. This is far from the proper meaning of the word "angel" to denote an immaterial substance -- a spiritual being. In taking this view, Thomas Hobbes employs a eulogistic and dyslogistic criterion of meaningful speech. He says, in effect, that when anyone speaks of immaterial substances, such as angels, they are making no sense whatsoever. A name denoting that which does not and cannot exist is nonsense. There is no philosophical proof of the existence of angels. It is an article of religious faith for Jews, Muslims, and Christians. But the denial that angels exist and the further statement that they are impossible is sheer dogmatism on the part of materialists. What the materialists do not understand is that we cannot prove a negative assertion, such as angels do not exist. What is affirmed without proof is dogmatically asserted if it is not self-evident that angels are impossible and cannot exist. It is not self-evident that the immaterial is impossible; hence the dogmatism of materialists remains. The discussion of angels properly belongs to theology as an exposition of the articles of religious faith. The philosophical interest in angels is mainly concerned with what I have called "angelistic fallacies." Blaise Pascal tells us that man is neither angel nor brute. It is unfortunate that he who would act the angel, acts the brute. Those who, like Plato and Descartes, are dualists affirming that there are both material and immaterial substances -- body and soul, for Plato; res extensa and res cogitans for Descartes -- cannot avoid committing angelistic fallacies by attributing to the human intellect properties it does not have. Thinking that the human intellect is an immaterial substance, they cannot avoid thinking of it as if it had angelic properties. There are four angelistic fallacies. The first is angelistic politics. Alexander Hamilton tells us that "if men were angels, no government would be necessary." What he should have said is that if men were angels, coercive force would not be necessary to sustain the rule of law. There are other reasons for government that apply to angels as well as to men. It is the philosophical anarchist who commits this angelistic fallacy, thinking that some principles of government -- either the rule of a leader or majority rule -- are not indispensable for making decisions. Even a peaceful society of angels or men involves deciding matters that are morally neutral -- neither intrinsically right or wrong -- and so require some rule to decide. The second fallacy is in psychology. It is telepathy. Angels, if they exist, communicate with one another through nothing physical, such as human speech. Angels communicate with one another telepathically. There are parapsychologists who claim that one man can read the mind of another by telepathy; that is, without the intervention of spoken or written words. Telekinesis is another phenomenon that some parapsychologists describe. It consists in moving a physical thing without touching it, not using any physical means to do so. The third fallacy is angelistic linguistics. The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz committed this fallacy when he conceived the possibility of inventing a language, which he called a "Universal Characteristic," from which all ambiguities are removed. By using this language, human beings would be able to communicate with one another as angels do, without any chance of misunderstanding. The fourth fallacy is angelistic ethics. Plato asserts that knowledge is virtue -- that if one knows what one ought to do, one will also do it. This assertion may hold true of angels who do not suffer from an intrinsic conflict between their lower and higher faculties, between their sensitive appetites and their reason, but it is not true of human beings, who have such faculties. Not being angels, human beings can be incontinent in Aristotle's sense of that term. They often allow their passions to prevail over their reason, and so they often confess their remorse about having done what they know they ought not to have done, or failing to do what they ought to do. Such remorse does not afflict angels. Aristotle is not a dualist as Plato and Descartes are, but he does assert that the human intellect is distinct from all the sensitive faculties. It is an immaterial power. This assertion poses for Aristotelians the problem of where humanity stands with regard to the boundary that separates the material world from the spiritual -- the realm in which God and angels exist. An easy solution to this problem would place man in both realms -- in the physical by reason of his body and the senses; in the spiritual realm by reason of his intellect. But that is not quite correct. Man stands at the dividing line with both his feet and the rest of his body planted in the material or physical realm. Standing thus, he manages to lean over that line looking into the spiritual realm by the powers of his immaterial intellect. Source: Adler's Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher's Lexicon. Have you a copy of this book in your personal library? If not, consider getting one. Read Max Weismann's review of this book by Clicking Here.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Ancient Greek philosopher "Aristotle's parents, Nikomachos and Phaistis, were living in Stagira on the Chalkidie peninsula when he was born sometime between July and September in 384 BC. One of three children, he had a sister Arimnestê and a brother Arimnestos. Both parents, of noble lineage, could trace their descent from Asklepios, the god of Medicine. Nikomachos was close to the Macedonian king Amyntas III (Alexander's grandfather) serving as his physician at the royal court in Pella.... Aristotle and the crown prince Philip became close friends. His perceiving eyes may have seen too much during these years, for he developed a strong dislike of princes and court intrigues. Both his father and mother died within a few years, and the orphaned youth was went back to Stagira to be cared for and educated by a man named Proxenos.... Aristotle must have performed brilliantly in his studies for, at age seventeen, he was accepted as a student in Plato's Academy in Athens." (Source: Volume 1 of The Wisdom Seekers: Great Philosophers of the Western World, by James L. Christian. If you want an excellent and comprehensive history of philosophy, the two volumes in this set are among the best available.)
Read about Aristotle in The Radical Academy. Also see The Philosophy of Aristotle in the Classic Philosophers section and Books by and about Aristotle in The Radical Academy Bookstore.
FOR THE RECORD National ID: The Battle Begins ... Again, by James W. Harris Last year REAL ID -- the Bush administration's plan to turn state driver's licenses into a national ID card -- was stopped by a heroic grassroots effort. Ultimately, an amazing 23 states enacted anti-REAL ID bills or resolutions, driving a stake into the heart of that monstrous proposal. But a national ID is just too terrible an idea not to appeal to power-hungry government offinational ID - gothiccials, whatever their party. And so the fight is on again. REAL ID is back, under the name PASS ID and with the support of President Obama and the Department of Homeland Security. And like its predecessor, PASS ID is radical Big Brother legislation of the very worst kind. PASS ID, introduced in the Senate on June 15, will create America's first-ever national ID card. Like REAL ID, PASS ID will subject every driver's license applicant to a "mandatory facial image capture" resulting in a holographic photograph readable by face-recognition technology (which opens the possibility of tracking by surveillance cameras). A digital signature and other biometrics are also required. Each driver's license will also contain machine-readable bar codes with unique numbers for each individual, which critics warn could be used to amass databases of citizens who attend gun shows or other "controversial" events. PASS ID further allows the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips to identify and track individuals, though it does not (yet) mandate them. Homeland Security has already worked with some states to develop RFID-chipped licenses which emit signals that can be read as far as twenty feet away. PASS ID requires states to conduct national background checks on all driver's license applicants -- by running their names through federal immigration, Social Security and State Department databases, as well as the driver's license databases of other states. Further, as the ACLU notes: "your driver's license will have to be PASS ID-compliant if you plan on using it to board an airplane or enter any federal facility more critical to homeland security than your local post office." Those attempting to fly without PASS IDs will be subjected to time-consuming and invasive interrogation and searches. Even the name PASS ID, whether intentionally or not, sounds like what it in fact is: a national internal PASSport -- a document required simply to travel within our own borders. Or a national "hall PASS" required by our Homeland Security "school monitors" to go about our business. This is something never before seen in America and a hallmark of tyranny. PASS ID has eliminated some parts of REAL ID that stirred up opposition. But that's just window dressing. PASS ID is just REAL ID with lipstick and a new hairdo: a national ID, posing extreme threats to our freedom. Should it becomes law, it can quickly and easily be expanded to become even more dangerous. As the Cato Institute's Jim Harper notes: "PASS ID places no limits on how the Department of Homeland Security, other agencies, and states could use the national ID to regulate the population. ... A simple law change or amendment to existing regulation would expand those uses to give the federal government control over access to employment, access to credit cards, voting... And these are just the ideas that have already been floated." PASS ID is a nightmare. Americans must urge lawmakers to "PASS up" this wretched proposal. Source: Liberator Online James W. Harris is the editor of Liberator Online, a publication of Advocates for Self-Government. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and he has been a Finalist for the Mencken Award, given by the Free Press Association for "Outstanding Journalism in Support of Liberty." Historic Bible Pages Put Online About 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible have been recovered and put on the internet. Visitors to the website www.codexsinaiticus.org can now see images of more than half the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript. Fragments of the 4th Century document -- written in Greek on parchment leaves -- have been worked on by institutions in the UK, Germany, Egypt and Russia. Experts say it is "a window into the development of early Christianity". Source: BBC News Online Humans Can Learn To "See" With Sound, Study Says With just a click of the tongue, anyone can learn to "see" with their ears, according to a new study of human echolocation. Several animals, such as bats, dolphins, whales, and some shrews, are known to use echolocation, the process of making noises and then sensing what's around them surroundings based on patterns of reflected sound waves. Inspired by a blind man who also navigates using sound, a team of Spanish scientists has found evidence that suggests most humans can learn to echolocate. Source: National Geographic News Eavesdropping On The Music Of The Brain What does the human brain sound like? Now you can find out thanks to a technique for turning its flickering activity into music. Listening to scans may also give new insights into the differences and similarities between normal and dysfunctional brains. Brain scans created using functional MRI consist of a series of images in which different areas light up with varying intensity at different times. These can be used to determine which parts of the brain are active during a particular task. To turn such scans into music, philosopher Dan Lloyd at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, identified regions that become active together and assigned each of these groups a different pitch. He then created software that analyses a series of scans and generates the notes at these pitches as the corresponding brain areas light up. Source: New Scientist Winning The Ultimate Battle: How Humans Could End War Optimists called the first world war "the war to end all wars." Philosopher George Santayana demurred. In its aftermath he declared: "Only the dead have seen the end of war." History has proved him right, of course. What's more, today virtually nobody believes that humankind will ever transcend the violence and bloodshed of warfare. ... [Most] think war is inevitable. Whether male or female, liberal or conservative, old or young, most people believe it is. ... Such views certainly seem to chime with recent research on the roots of warfare. Just a few decades ago, many scholars believed that prior to civilisation, humans were "noble savages" living in harmony with each other and with nature. Not any more. Ethnographic studies, together with some archaeological evidence, suggest that tribal societies engaged in lethal group conflict, at least occasionally, long before the emergence of states with professional armies. Source: New Scientist The Fewer The Competitors, The Harder They Try What relationship there is between the number of participants in a competition and the motivation of the competitors has long eluded researchers. Does the presence of a lot of rivals stimulate action or lead someone to give up hope? It is more than an academic question. Or, rather, it is a very academic question indeed, for it may affect the way that examinations are conducted if they are to be a fair test for all. To investigate the matter two behavioural researchers, Stephen Garcia at the University of Michigan and Avishalom Tor at the University of Haifa in Israel, looked at the results of the SAT university entrance examination in America in 2005. This test generates a score supposedly based on the test-taker's verbal and analytical prowess. Source: Economist Why the Imp in Your Brain Gets Out The visions seem to swirl up from the brain's sewage system at the worst possible times -- during a job interview, a meeting with the boss, an apprehensive first date, an important dinner party. What if I started a food fight with these hors d'oeuvres? Mocked the host's stammer? Cut loose with a racial slur? "That single thought is enough," wrote Edgar Allan Poe in "The Imp of the Perverse," an essay on unwanted impulses. "The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing." He added, "There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge." Or meditates on the question: Am I sick? Source: New York Times Swearing Like A Sailor May Alleviate Pain Although the news probably won't stop parents from washing kids' mouths out with soap, it turns out that cussing a blue streak may be a good thing. A study appearing in the August 5 NeuroReport suggests that four-letter words may help alleviate pain. "Swear words are unique," says Timothy Jay, a psychologist at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, who has studied the role of naughty words in linguistics. "They're really the link between the language system and the emotional system." Inspiration for the new study came to psychologist Richard Stephens as he listened to his wife let loose with some unsavory language during the throes of labor. So he and his colleagues at Keele University in England conducted an experiment to test whether uttering emotion-laden choice words can actually change the amount of pain people feel. Source: Science News Lab Analyst Decision Complicates Prosecutions The predictions are dire. In New York, murderers could walk free. In Fairfax County, drunken driving cases could be dismissed. And nationwide, thousands of drug cases might have to be thrown out of court annually. Legal experts and prosecutors are concerned about the results of last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires lab analysts to be in court to testify about their tests. Lab sheets that identify a substance as a narcotic or breath-test printouts describing a suspect's blood-alcohol level are no longer sufficient evidence, the court ruled. A person must be in court to talk about the test results. Source: Washington Post In Search For Intelligence, A Silicon Brain Twitches For the last four years, Henry Markram has been building a biologically accurate artificial brain. Powered by a supercomputer, his software model closely mimics the activity of a vital section of a rat's gray matter. Dubbed Blue Brain, the simulation shows some strange behavior. The artificial "cells" respond to stimuli and suddenly pulse and flash in spooky unison, a pattern that isn't programmed but emerges spontaneously. "It's the neuronal equivalent of a Mexican wave," says Dr. Markram, referring to what happens when successive clusters of stadium spectators briefly stand and raise their arms, creating a ripple effect. Such synchronized behavior is common in flesh-and-blood brains, where it's believed to be a basic step necessary for decision making. But when it arises in an artificial system, it's more surprising. Source: Wall Street Journal ... Philosophers and biologists have ... for centuries [noted] that humans are universally drawn to music. It consoles us when we are sad, pumps us up in happier times and bonds us to others ... Some scientists conclude that music's influence may be a chance event, arising from its ability to hijack brain systems built for other purposes such as language, emotion and movement. ... But as a result of that serendipity, music seems to offer a novel system of communication rooted in emotions rather than in meaning. Recent data show, for example, that music reliably conveys certain sentiments: what we feel when we hear a piece of music is remarkably similar to what everybody else in the room is experiencing. Emerging evidence also indicates that music brings out predictable responses across cultures and among people of widely varying musical or cognitive abilities. Source: Scientific American Thinkers Meet To Plot The Future Leading thinkers in technology, design and science are gathering in Oxford to share their ideas about the future. TED Global (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is the European cousin of an already established top US event. The invitation-only conferences are dedicated to "ideas worth spreading" and have seen talks by former US presidents and Nobel Laureates. This year's event will explore questions in neuroscience, astrophysics and economics. "It is about all the hidden, invisible, not yet discovered or fully explored parts of our lives, society and the world," said Bruno Giussani, European director of TED. Source: BBC News Online Apes May Imitate But They Struggle To Innovate For all their cognitive prowess, chimpanzees will never build four-stroke engines, stone pyramids, or even a simple wheel. Technological innovation and improvement seem to be uniquely human traits, despite culture and ample tool use in chimpanzees and other animals. New research on children and chimpanzees might explain why. "For culture to accumulate - to become more and more complex - requires innovations and one of the first ways in which hominins clearly went beyond chimpanzees was in making stone tools," says Andrew Whiten, a psychologist at St Andrew's University, UK. He and researchers in Germany argue that this difference comes down to the distinct ways in which humans and chimpanzees learn new tricks from others. Source: New Scientist Artificial Brain '10 Years Away' A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain. He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses. Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said. "It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years," he said. "And if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk." Source: BBC News Online "We should stop treating people as criminals because they smoke marijuana. ... Announcing that the Barney Frank government should mind its own business on marijuana is really not that hard. There's not a lot of complexity here. We should stop treating people as criminals because they smoke marijuana. The problem is the political will. ...there should be a small number of things that the government makes illegal, but the great bulk of human activity ought to be none of the government's business. People can make their own choices." -- U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), interviewed in Esquire magazine about his new bill to eliminate federal penalties for personal possession of small amounts of marijuana. Source: Esquire
COUNSELING CORNER: What a difference a century makes! . . . These are some statistics from the year 1906:
A LITTLE OF THIS & A LITTLE OF THAT A Little Wisdom: Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. A Little Advice: My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition. A Little Quip: Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons! A Little Proverb: Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. A Little Question: If we aren't supposed to eat animals why are they made of meat? A Little Reflection: "Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." -- Henry Ford A Little One-Liner: I'm willing to make the mistakes if someone else is willing to learn from them. A Little Admission: I'd love to live life in the fast lane... unfortunately, I'm married to a speedbump. A Little Observation: "He is a self-made man and worships his creator." -- John Bright A Little Warning: Don't argue with a fool. The spectators can't tell the difference. A Little Quote: "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." -- Henry Adams A Little Put-Down: "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." -- Irvin S. Cobb
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