tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85767065374289907402024-03-06T11:10:07.051+02:00Technology RigSome days you wish had never started, then along comes one you hope will never end. Anything can happen in a day.Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.comBlogger154125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-806130534018420582017-07-01T02:33:00.004+02:002017-07-01T02:33:50.182+02:00Analytic Philosophy and Derrida<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Searle exemplified his view on deconstruction in The New York Review of Books, February 2, 1984; for example:<br />
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Anyone who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me: the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial.</blockquote>
In 1992, Quine led an unsuccessful petition to stop Cambridge University from granting Derrida an honorary degree. Such criticism was, according to Derrida, directed at Derrida<br />
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"no doubt because deconstructions query or put into question a good many divisions and distinctions, for example the distinction between the pretended neutrality of philosophical discourse, on the one hand, and existential passions and drives on the other, between what is public and what is private, and so on".</blockquote>
Quine regarded Derrida's work as pseudophilosophy or sophistry.<br />
<br />
Michel Foucault once characterized Derrida's prose style to me as "obscurantisme terroriste." The text is written so obscurely that you can't figure out exactly what the thesis is (hence "obscurantisme") and when one criticizes it, the author says, "Vous m'avez mal compris; vous êtes idiot' (hence "terroriste") </div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-36828948612103263592017-05-05T08:54:00.001+02:002017-05-05T08:54:37.081+02:00Notes on the Tractatus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Propositions<br />
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The sense of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with possibilities of existence and non-existence of states of affairs. So propositions are classified into:<br />
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senseless -> They can be logically analyzed to elementary propositions, but they do not have sense because they do not tell us anything about the world, but only its limits, they are necessary. Like propositions of logic, tautologies and contradictions “for the one allows every possible state of affairs, the other none”. They don't picture anything, and this includes the notion of limit and the limit points themselves. [Purble is a colour or a squared circle] (The problem with this point is epistimological, because Not all tautolgies are sensless, some have sense which was unknown then would be known, like the [a morning star and an evening star and venus, all of them being the same star])<br />
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non-sense -> when a proposition transcends the bounds of sense and can't be masured against reality or analysed. They become out of logic, illogical, logic can't judge them [what is good? or God or The Sufi recieved Knowledge from God or just I] We can't talk about it, but only name them (thinking about them, is thinking about concepts and names without further analysis), they can only be shown.<br />
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with sense -> Propositions which do have sense are bipolar; they range within the truth-conditions drawn by the propositions of logic. It doesn't matter if they are true or false. If they are false, they may be true in another world which is logically possible, they are contingent. But they can't be always true or false or else they would be sensless. [John is talking now, this man has wings]<br />
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The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.<br />
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Logic and Thought<br />
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How come I can think about God, even If God is out of Logic? Because we subject God to the same rules of our world, we logicze God to be part in our world. Hence comes all false doctrines of God, we say non-sense. We can't analyze God, we can Only name him and know that he is the source of value outside our world, outside space and time. And our Logic fails Outside of space and time.<br />
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What can be shown lies on the boundry between Logic and ILLogic, only names lie on this boundry. We try to find using Logic relations between this boundry and the Logical space i.e relations between those names and our world. The problem arise if we push the names in our Logical space.<br />
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Logic must look after itself. What makes logic a priori is the impossibility of illogical thought. Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. (1) Logic + senseless names that can be shown = Thought 2) Logic - Contradictions = Imagination, what we can conceive or form an idea about, is logically possible [a talking circle])<br />
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Thought and Language<br />
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What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think. (we shouldn't say what we cannot think, because we can say what we can't think [a squared circle], we can say non-sense statements. So Thought is subset of Language, so Logic is subset of Langauge.<br />
1) Language = Logic (with-sense and senseless)+ Illogical (non-sense)<br />
2) Language = Thought + Illogical<br />
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Sense outside of language and logic<br />
<br />
but all non-sense statemnets (illogical propositions) are nonsense, even if they can't be said, they can be shown. (metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic) propositions of philosophy belong in this group.<br />
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There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. What can't be said, can only be shown.<br />
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The power in the tractatus is in showing that illogical is different from a contradiction. And that although we can't talk about the illogical, it isn't nonsense, it sense can only be shown.<br />
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Who draw the limits of logic, the limits of language and the limits of the world?</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-57399012178021364112016-02-25T14:34:00.000+02:002016-02-25T14:36:03.342+02:00Frege's Philosophy of Language<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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While pursuing his investigations into mathematics and logic, in order to ground those investigations, Frege was led to develop a philosophy of language. Frege considered two puzzles about language and noticed, in each case, that one cannot account for the meaningfulness or logical behavior of certain sentences simply on the basis of the denotation (reference) of the terms (names and descriptions) in the sentence. One puzzle concerned identity statements and the other concerned sentences with subordinate clauses such as propositional attitude reports. To solve these puzzles, Frege suggested that the terms of a language have both a sense and a denotation (reference).</div>
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First Puzzle</div>
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The statement ‘a=a’ has a cognitive significance (or meaning) that is different from the cognitive significance of ‘a=b’. We can learn that ‘Mark Twain=Mark Twain’ is true simply by inspecting it (knowable a priori); but we can't learn the truth of ‘Mark Twain=Samuel Clemens’ simply by inspecting it, we have to examine the world to see whether the two persons are the same (discovered a posteriori). So the puzzle Frege discovered is: how do we account for the difference in cognitive significance between ‘a=b’ and ‘a=a’ when they are true? And why ‘Mark Twain=Samuel Clemens’ seems informative?</div>
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Second Puzzle</div>
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When we report the propositional attitudes of others, these reports all have a similar logical form:</div>
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x believes that p</div>
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x desires that p</div>
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x intends that p</div>
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x discovered that p</div>
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x knows that p</div>
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If John believes that Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn. And Mark Twain=Samuel Clemens, therefore, John believes that Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn. But this argument is not valid. There are circumstances in which the premises are true and the conclusion false. John may not believe that Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn. The premises of the above argument, therefore, do not logically entail the conclusion. So the Principle of Identity Substitution appears to break down in the context of propositional attitude reports. This law was stated by Leibniz as, "those things are the same of which one can be substituted for another without loss of truth," a sentiment with which Frege was in full agreement. As Frege understands this, it means that if two expressions have the same reference, they should be able to replace each other within any proposition without changing the truth-value of that proposition. Normally, this poses no problem. However, it is not always true that they can replace one another without changing the truth of a sentence. The puzzle, then, is to say what causes the principle to fail in these contexts. Why aren't we still saying something true about the man in question if all we have done is changed the name by which we refer to him?</div>
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Frege's Solution</div>
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Frege suggested that in addition to having a denotation (reference), names and descriptions also express a sense. The sense of an expression accounts for its cognitive significance, it is the way by which one conceives of the denotation (reference) of the term. The expressions ‘4’ and ‘8/2’ have the same denotation (reference) but express different senses, different ways of conceiving the same number. The descriptions ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star’ denote the same planet, namely Venus, but express different ways of conceiving of Venus and so have different senses. The name ‘Pegasus’ and the description ‘the most powerful Greek god’ both have a sense (and their senses are distinct), but neither has a denotation (reference). However, because the senses of these expressions are different--in the first sentence, the object is presented the same way twice, and in the second, it is presented in two different ways, it is informative to learn of the second statement.</div>
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Using the distinction between sense and denotation (reference), Frege can account for the difference in cognitive significance between identity statements of the form ‘a=a’ and those of the form ‘a=b’. Since the sense of ‘a’ differs from the sense of ‘b’, the components of the sense of ‘a=a’ and the sense of ‘a=b’ are different. Frege can claim that the sense of the whole expression is different in the two cases. Since the sense of an expression accounts for its cognitive significance, Frege has an explanation of the difference in cognitive significance between ‘a=a’ and ‘a=b’, and thus a solution to the first puzzle.</div>
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Moreover, Frege proposed that when a term (name or description) follows a propositional attitude verb, it no longer denotes what it ordinarily denotes. Instead, in such contexts, a term denotes its ordinary sense. This explains why the Principle of Identity Substitution fails for terms following the propositional attitude verbs in propositional attitude reports. The Principle asserts that truth is preserved when we substitute one name for another having the same denotation (reference). But, according to Frege's theory, the names ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘Samuel Clemens’ denote different senses when they occur in the following sentences:</div>
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John believes that Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn.</div>
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John believes that Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn.</div>
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If they don't denote the same object, then there is no reason to think that substitution of one name for another would preserve truth.</div>
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Sense of a Sentence</div>
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The reference of the whole proposition depends on the references of the parts and the sense of the proposition depends of the senses of the parts. Frege even suggests that the sense of a whole proposition is composed of the senses of the component expressions. Frege calls the sense of a sentence a thought, he supposes that there are an infinite number of thoughts and the denotation (reference) of a sentence is one of the two truth values.</div>
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On Frege's view, the sentences ‘4=8/2’ and ‘4=4’ both denote the same truth value. The function ( )=( ) maps 4 and 8/2 to The True, i.e., maps 4 and 4 to The True. So d[4=8/2] is identical to d[4=4]; they are both The True. However, the two sentences in question express different thoughts. That is because s[4] is different from s[8/2]. So the thought s[4=8/2] is distinct from the thought s[4=4]. Similarly, ‘Mark Twain=Mark Twain’ and ‘Mark Twain=Samuel Clemens’ denote the same truth value. However, given that s[Mark Twain] is distinct from s[Samuel Clemens], Frege would claim that the thought s[Mark Twain=Mark Twain] is distinct from the thought s[Mark Twain=Samuel Clemens].</div>
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Furthermore, recall that Frege proposed that terms following propositional attitude verbs don’t denote their ordinary denotation (reference)s but rather the senses they ordinarily express. For example:</div>
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John believes that Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn.</div>
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John believes that Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn.</div>
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Not only do the words ‘Mark Twain’, ‘wrote’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’ denote their ordinary senses, but also the entire sub-sentence ‘Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn’ also denotes its ordinary sense (namely, a thought). And since the thought denoted by ‘Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn’ in this context differs from the thought denoted by ‘Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn’.</div>
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Frege's analysis therefore preserves our intuition that John can believe that Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn without believing that Samuel Clemens did. It also preserves the Principle of Identity Substitution—the fact that one cannot substitute ‘Samuel Clemens’ for ‘Mark Twain’ when these names occur after propositional attitude verbs does not constitute evidence against the Principle.</div>
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-36189897624628639982015-11-20T09:47:00.001+02:002015-11-23T22:43:21.895+02:00The Theory of Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
To the yearning seekers of blossoms<br />
With pride, would I offer<br />
A delight of the eye,<br />
The green from under the snow<br />
In a mountain village in springtide!<br />
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The 'mystery' of Japanese aesthetics comes from the fact that there is a peculiar kind of metaphysics, based on a realization of the simultaneous semantic articulation of consciousness and the external reality, structurally comprising within itself, as an organic whole, the metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic experiences of the Japanese, dominating the whole functional domain of the Japanese sense of beauty.<br />
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It tries to create an associative network of semantic articulations, i.e. a non-temporal 'space' of semantic saturation, bringing into being a global view of a whole (a "field"), in which the words used are observable all at once which is impossible except within the framework of an extremely short poem like waka (31 syllables) and haiku (17 syllables). In a "field" thus constituted, time may be said to be standing still or even annihilated in the sense that the meanings of all words are simultaneously present in one single sphere. Instead of a linear, temporal succession of words, in which each succeeding word goes on obliterating, as it were, the foregoing word.<br />
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There are two most important points to be remarked about this spatial, non-temporal image of reality. The first is that, unlike in the reality imaged as the empirical field of causal sequence, there is not supposed to be any priority-posteriority relationship between the things and events which arise therein. Nor should there be any pivotal centers seen around which the things and events would coagulate and tum and at which the relational continuum of co-existence would terminate. That which sustains this image of reality is an awareness of diversity and manifoldness in the form of accidental coincidences, accidental correlations, correspondences and contrasts among things converging into a universal existence with its inner metaphysical dynamics, rather than the awareness of their temporal-causal sequence. In such a perspective, even what is ordinarily considered temporality would appear in a completely different light, for it would then appear identified simply as a perpetual 'inconsistency-transiency' (mu-jo).<br />
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As an aesthetic idea it is a feeling of aesthetic harmony fermented in and induced from contemplative awareness. This inner harmony, first projected onto the empirical dimension of things and events. The human reality in this sense may be structurally represented as a sort of existential 'field' that is actualized between the subject and object as its two poles. It would only be natural that the 'field' constituted in this way should have validity only for human existence. To express the same thing from its reverse side, human existence emerges and disappears together with the 'field', that is, human existence cannot maintain itself apart from the 'field'. Or we must say rather that human existence consists precisely in the act of constantly and ceaselessly producing the 'field'. Consequently it would be a sheer impossibility for man to go over the limits of this 'field' and step out of it while remaining at the same time a human being.<br />
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The first level of the contemplative 'field' comes into being when the cognitive focus of the subject-which ordinarily is directed toward the outer world unilaterally and one pointedly-begins as it were gradually to become enlarged and diffused until it transcends itself in the sense that it turns into a synchronically multiple awareness directed toward the entire 'field', which is replete with a particular dynamic tension arising from the very co-existence of all things in the all-comprising focal point of such an awareness in one single nontemporal dimension.<br />
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At the second level of the contemplative 'field', there no longer exists the vivacious beauty of the phenomenal world. The internal and the external, the subjective and the objective, the perceiver and the perceived, the field and the awareness of the field, the contained and the contaner: whichever of these pairs of opposing units we might posit as the ultimate realms of articulation, we invariably witness primordial poles of reality, almost fused into one another, leaving, however, their faint traces of articulate boundaries, constituting between them a harmonious equilibrium, like a silver bowl and snow heaped therein reflecting each other in an illuminating saturation of silvery light. Such is the whole reality and such is also the whole width of consciousness, and between the two is maintained a state of perfect equilibrium. There is nothing else. This is the whole that IS.<br />
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The transition from the second to the third level of the contemplative 'field' may figuratively be represented as a process by which an image of a physically visible extension gradually changes into an image of unfathomable depth. At this stage, hqwever, the never-reconcilable polarity between 'being' and 'not-being' loses its validity as a rationally immutable law. Here, for the first time, is opened a transcendental realm which makes it possible for an ambivalence between these two, 'being' and 'not-being', to be realized. All that have been articulated in recognizable forms fall into the depths of the darkness of night.<br />
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But once we reach the fourth level, we witness something beyond imagination. Quite contradictorily, the unfathomable darkness itself becomes suddenly transformed into a boundless dazzling light. However, this abysmal darkness can be at the same time the brilliance of the sunlight. The darkness and brilliance in this case are freely transmutable into one another, because neither of them is an outcome of the articulating activity of the mind. They are rather two forms of the self-manifestation of the primordial Nothingness, the non-articulated, comprising in itself all possible things. The 'mysterious singularity' is beyond the reach of all verbal expressions and indeed absolutely transcends all the activities of the human mind.<br />
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On the basis of the awareness of the essential structure of human existence, one may still cherish the intention to transcend its inherent limitations and go beyond them. Such is the nature and motivation of the Japanese form of contemplation. The same idea may also be expressed in a different way by saying that the supreme objective of contemplation consists in man's making an unremitting effort to intend, and approach as closely as possible, the undetermined whole, the nonarticulated Reality which lies beyond human existential reality. Even if by this effort he is able to catch only a brief and passing glimpse of a very narrowly limited aspect of the non-articulated, the attempt is still made. These poets and artists gaze intently at the invisible beyond the visible. They exert themselves to go beyond their sensuous limitations.<br />
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In the traditional terminology of Japanese thought, the nonarticulated is called Nothingness (mu), while the articulated is called 'being' (yil or u). In the metaphysical view of the Japanese, it is this very Nothingness as the non-articulated whole that is to be considered the sole Reality. The articulated is thus none other than the dimension of 'being' as the empirical field of life produced by the activity of the 'existential' articulation of human consciousness. This dimension of 'being' which has emerged out of Nothingness as its ground, is brought back to the vision of the original Nothingness through contemplative experience, dissolving its own phenomenal coagulations that have been produced by articulation. The inner strcuture of the aesthetics which we have analyzed so far is, as has been seen, based on a metaphysics having Nothingness as its ultimate goal to be reached, by actually realizing an exquisite organic whole of spatial equilibrium in its serene timelessness.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Waka</span><br />
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In waka it is usually the case that self-expression is almost necessarily interwoven with Nature-description. In fact waka could be defined as a self-expression through Nature-description. The inner domain of semantic associations linked with, and substantiated by, the associations of empirically articulated things in external Nature as related to human existential experiences. Thus Nature, actually envisaged by the poet, constitutes in itself a kind of Nature-'field' where the inner existential phenomenal activity of his Subjectivity, his inner 'field' of contemplative Awareness, finds its proper locus for externalization, where he can get into the most immediate and intimate contact with his own inner Self (the non-articulated).<br />
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As a result, the units of semantic association actualized in waka assume an evocative significance against the background of this vast, universal totality of the associative networks of Nature interlinked with human affairs. We may observe furthermore the peculiar fact that the associative network of natural things and events shows a remarkable tendency to go on dilating itself into the vastness of rarefied infinity. Consequently we hardly find a waka-poem, a tiny linguistic 'field' of 31 syllables as it is, devoid of a feeling of the cosmic amplitude of Nature, whether its main subject be love or grief.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yugen</span><br />
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Yugen, the first component of the word yugen, usually connotes faintness or shadowy-ness, in the sense that it rather negates the selfsubsistent empirical solidity of existence, or that it suggests insubstantiality. Gen, the second component of the word, means dimness, darkness or blackness. It is the darkness caused by profoundity; so deep that our physical eyesight cannot possibly reach its depth, that is to say, the darkness in the region of unknowable profoundity. It may be sufficiently clear from what has just been said that yugen is not a mere aesthetic idea but rather a complex one closely and fundamentally related to the awareness of existence. For we observe in it an inherent tendency which, if developed, would almost exclusively be directed toward a metaphysical awareness.<br />
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The beauty of yugen is faint, delicate, suggestive because it is based on the awareness of insubstantiality and delimitation of the human existential field. It is a beauty of spiritual aspiration and yearning motivated by the desire to have sensuous images of the non-articulated, non-sensuous reality of eternal silence and enigma in the midst of the phenomenal world. As we sometimes experience, even the empirical world in which we live, observing things and events coming into and going out of existence, becomes transformed before our eyes into a field, intangible and mysterious, in which things and events assume a tinge of yugen, losing the empirical solidity of self-subsistency, wafting as it were in the air, thus pointing to the presence of the primordial, non-articulated reality underlying them.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Wabi</span><br />
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The beauty of Nature as a positive aesthetic value, they thought, was not to be appreciated at the momentary height of its full actualization so much as in its transient process of subsiding, or even in its vestiges left after its nullification.<br />
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The idea of wabi thus metaphysically understood seems to show quite an obvious characteristic in its structure. It refers first of all to a peculiar metaphysical or existential region which is to be located as it were somewhere between the phenomenal and pre-phenomenal or the articulated and non-articulated whole. This structure observed in its dynamics of involvement and evolvement to and from Nothingness is the sole fundamental basis of the aesthetic idea of wabi.<br />
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The phenomenal things and events when viewed in terms of wabi, i.e. a particular metaphysics of Nothingess, naturally come to show quite a characteristic inner configuration as a temporal reflexion of the inner dynamics of the non-temporal structure of Nothingness. That is to say, the process of inner dynamics of evolvement and involvement finds its analogy in the phenomenal movement and changes which, though outwardly indistinct and invisible, are going on steadily, leaving their traces accumulated in the depths of the phenomenal things, as may be visualized by the example of a growth ring of a tree.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Haiku</span><br />
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In the world of haiku, Nature (and also human affairs) is not simply perceived, recognized and described. It must be 'grasped' on the spot by the poet in its dynamic momentum and immediate experiential actuality, as a phenomenal drama in which the existential whole of the creative-cognitive subject encounters the external world dialecticly. Each event of the subject-object encounter takes place once and for all, lasts only for a moment, ends once and for all, and 'disappears, leaving no trace behind', into Nothingness, the non-phenomenal, non-articulated whole. In each of the actual occurrences of dialectic encounter there are realized illuminating correspondences between the subject and object in their phenomenality. Both the creative-cognitive subject and the cognized object disclose their own phenomenal aspects to each other moment by moment in their limitless varieties and variegations. A certain phenomenal aspect ofthe creativecognitive subject illumines outward a certain particular aspect of the cognized object, which in its turn steers the self-illuminating focus upon another particular aspect of the cognitive subject itself, thus continuing indefinitely, and each phase of this illuminating correspondence forms the potential poetic 'field' of the event itself. The cognitive subject and the cognized object are merely the two poles constitutive of the energy 'field' of the phenomenal, existential event, which the linguistic 'field' of haiku tries to represent with its centripetal dynamics.<br />
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In the creative actuality of haiku, there should not be any interval even by a hair's breadth between the state of mind and the cognitive perceptual act. The first and faintest stir of the inner reality (bi) emerges from the thing, it activates the creative emotion of the poet (as an instantaneous sensation), which becomes crystallized on the spot into a poetic expression. There is a remark by the Master concerning the composition of verses: 'Crystallize the first flash of things perceived into words while your mind remains still illumined by its reminiscence.' In other words, the state of mind is most immediately connected with the cognitive act of perception itself with absolutely no intervention of inner activity of semantic articulation, resulting in the immediate descriptive expression of it, thus completing the whole process of the creative-cognitive 'event' of haiku. Thus what he describes or expresses should be superbly natural, with no arbitrary intricacy in itself. As the late Master once remarked: 'In the art of haiku a poem should always be composed in tune with the creative momentum'. He should, leaving at this stage no longer even a trace of doubt and vacillation in his mind, express instantaneously and with immediacy things that occur to his mind, without allowing, so to speak, any discrepancy even as a hair's breadth between his inner self and the writing desk, with a spirit comparable to that of "felling a giant tree down to the ground".<br />
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The old pond,<br />
A frog flops in,<br />
The water sound.<br />
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The faint sound of water which in itself has not even a trifle aesthetic meaning or which aesthetically makes no sense, by being recognized by the cognitive-creative subject. It is in this sense that in haiku the state of mind is linked immediately and directly with sensation and sense perception while in waka it is the inner activity of semantic articulation which is incorrigibly associated with the state of mind. The plainness, mundaneness or even vulgarity of haiku-expression- in contrast to the sophistication of the aesthetic idealism of waka-assumes an important significance only in this structural framework of haiku as an existential-aesthetic experience. What is implied thereby is that in this particular case the nonphenomenal Whole, the unknowable, is not to be found in the horizontal extension of the semantic articulation, and it is ontologically posited in an entirely different dimension. Accordingly its presence is only indicated by the very absence of phenomenal articulation. What is actualized 'here and now'. This inner state which is beyond the reach of all verbal expression, and in which there is no room for cogitation, and indeed which transcends all the activities of human mind-that precisely is the state of'myo' (the mysterious singularity). Myo (mysteriously singular) refers to a state beyond words, where the activity of the mind utterly disappears without a trace. The artistic state now transcends and is perfectly free from all fixed value-ideas, such as right-and-wrong and good-and bad in the ordinary sense of the words.<br />
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-49040370460977280092015-11-10T15:29:00.001+02:002015-11-10T15:46:44.729+02:00The Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times, every day and every night, from the morning of New Year’s Day through the night of New Year’s Eve.<br />
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As long as you keep death in mind at all times, and realize that the life that is here today is not certain on the morrow, for a knight, life is here today, uncertain tomorrow. Therefore he realizes everyday that he has this one day to serve, so he does not become bored or neglect any of his duties. Then when you take your orders from your employer, and when you look in on your parents, you will have the sense that this may be the last time-so you cannot fail to become truly attentive to your employer and your parents. This is why I say you also fulfill the paths of loyalty and familial duty when you keep death in mind.<br />
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In contrast to this, when you think you will be on the job forever, then trouble starts. You get bored, so you become inattentive and lazy. If people comfort their minds with the assumption that they will live a long time, something might happen, because they think they will have forever to do their work and look after their parents-they may fail to perform for their employers and also treat their parents thoughtlessly. Since no one takes personal responsibility for taking care of them, tasks pile up and there is nothing but snafus. These are all mistakes that come from counting on having time in the future.<br />
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The process of cultivating the practice of doing right begins with fear of being disrespected by those close to you, starting with your family and servants, then advances to refraining from doing wrong and deliberately doing right for fear of incurring the shame of being censured and ridiculed by society at large. Anywhere forbidden by the regulations of his employment, or disliked by his parents, he will avoid going even if he wants to. He will give up even those things that are hard to give up, just to avoid displeasing his employer and parents.<br />
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While it goes without saying that an attitude of hardness and strength is considered foremost in the way of the warrior, if strength is all you have you will seem like a peasant turned samurai, and that will never do. You should acquire education as a matter of course, and it is desirable to learn things such as poetry and the tea ceremony, little by little, in your spare time. If you have no education, there is no way for you to understand the reasons of things past or present. Then no matter how smart or cunning you may be, in actual practice dealing with events you will run into many obstacles.<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
How to deal with a knight who is corrupting your overlord</h3>
Now even if the whole establishment hated the knight in question, who makes up the tax rolls, denouncing him as a devil in the house and an enemy of the overlord, with nine out of ten testifying to his iniquities, seeing no alternative but to take the matter to court and argue their case verbally with-out dirtying their hands, the problem would hardly be resolved privately—the overlord's whole organization could be investigated by the central government, and if things grew worse it could become a public scandal and a cause for government action. Throughout history, there has never been a case where a baron who was unable to manage his establishment and therefore had to resort to the central government actually had the matter resolved that way and maintained his own position. Just as in the metaphors of killing an ox to straighten its horns, or burning down a shrine to catch a mouse, when the overlord loses his position the personnel of the whole establishment, major and minor, are all disenfranchised.<br />
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In this case, the logical thing to do is to seize the villain, that devil of the house, that enemy of the overlord, and do away with him as you will—run him through, or strike off his head—and then when that is done satisfactorily you immediately disembowel yourself, committing suicide. Then there will be no government inquiry, and the overlord's position will not be affected. Thus the personnel of the establishment will be secure, and the country will be peaceful. In this way you become a role model for knights of latter days—loyal, dutiful, and courageous—a hundred times better than one who kills himself to follow his overlord in death.</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-55316210156764540082015-10-07T23:10:00.001+02:002015-10-07T23:10:15.375+02:00Virtual Box Images Deployment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
zip files and ovf file<br />
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Select File->Import Appliance and choose SampleAppv207_OBI_11.1.1.6.2BP1.ovf file. Select ‘Next’. In Appliance Import Settings screen, go to the Virtual Disk Image property. Change the path to a desirable location where you’d like to create the deployed disk image files and click on Finish. It might take about 45 mins to import. After completing import, you may delete the unzipped .ovf and .vmdk files because you have created the new vbox and vmdk files.<br />
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vdi(ORACLE Virtual Box) or vmdk(VMWARE) disc image files<br />
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Select New -> Oracle Linux (64-bit) -> use existing Harddisk and spicfy the vdi or vmdk image file location, Once finished you can't delete the vdi or the vmdk file because you need it as you have created only vbox file.<br />
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Note: Oracle VM VirtualBox can open VMware native virtual machine hard drive files in .vmdk format. But VMware can't open VirtualBox .vdi files.</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-66747378282437509462015-09-10T13:25:00.001+02:002015-09-10T13:28:07.604+02:00توماس كون ضد بوبر<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style=" font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 24.32px;"><b>يعتبر توماس كون واحد من أهم فلاسفة العلم الذى ينادى بنظرية مختلفة تماما عن بوبر فيلسوف العلم الأشهر فى تفسير التقدم العلمى. وربما يرجع ذلك لأن كون هو من أعمدة "اللا واقعية" على العكس من بوبر "الواقعى". تنادى المدرسة الواقعية بأن العلم ما هو إكتشافات متتالية للحقيقة المطلقة فى كوننا وتلك الحقيقة مطلقة بمعنى أنها واحدة لأى عالم يتأمل فى الكون. وبالتالى فالعلم هو إكتشاف وليس إختراع، وأستكمل بوبر هذا الخط فى إعتبار أن أى شذوذ فى الملاحظات أو النتائج العلمية لا تستطيع النظرية الحالية تفسيره، يجعل النظرية خاطئة وفى حاجة للتصحيح الفورى بتغيير النظرية كلها أو على الأقل تغيير فرضية من فرضياتها وبإستمرار تلك السلسلة من التخطئة (Falsification) والتغيير، نقترب تدريحيا من الحقيقة المطلقة فى الكون وهو ما يسميه بوبر بأن لعبة العلم مفتوحة دائما. ويمكن تلخيص موقف بوبر من النظريات العلمية، أنه يفترض دائما أن النظرية العلمية خاطئة من الأساس حتى يتم إثبات ذلك وتغييرها بالنظرية الأفضل. ومن أهم نتائج هذه الأطروحة، أن أعتبر بوبر لغة العلم واحدة، فالمصطلحات التى تستعملها ميكانيكا نيوتن كالكتلة أو السرعة يمكن مقارنتها بنفس المصطلحات فى النسبية العامة وأن أى تغيير فى التعريف هو أساسا نتاج التغيير فى النظرية للأفضل.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style=" font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 24.32px;"><b>لكن توماس كون يرى العكس من ذلك تماما والذى نشر كتابه "بنية الثورات العلمية" عام 1962 أى بعد 30 عام من بوبر. فالمدرسة "اللا واقعية" التى ينتمى لها كون، ترى أن العلم إختراع نسبى وليس إكتشاف لحقيقة مطلقة، وبالتالى فالعلم ما هو إلا عدسة يستعملها كل شخص بفهمه وبطريقته الى تختلف من شخص لأخر وبالتالى فالمصطلحات العلمية تختلف من شخص لأخر وبالتالى من صاحب نظرية لصاحب نظرية أخر إذا فلغة العلم ليست واحدة بل تختلف من شخص لأخر أو على الأقل من نظرية لأخرى بل والأخطر أنه وفق تلك النظرة، لا يمكننا من مقارنة نظرية بأخرى بسبب إختلاف لغة العلم بينهما. وفى غياب حقيقة موضوعية مطلقة فى الكون وإبدالها وجهات بنظرات نسبية للعالم وبالتالى فكل النظريات صحيحة وفق نظرتها النسبية للعالم. والجدير بالذكر أن فكرة غياب حقيقة موضوعية مطلقة فى الكون ورؤيته للنظريات العلمية أنها وجهات نظر نسبية، قد جعل المجتمع العلمى يهاجم كون وأطروحته بأنها مهينة للعلم. من السهل أن نلخص تتابع النظريات العلمية فى منهج كون كالتالى:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style=" font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 24.32px;"><b>1) العلم يتكون من مجموعة من الأفكار والإفتراضات التى تنتج نموذج معين (paradigm)، وعند قبول المجتمع العلمى الحالى لهذا النموذج فإن إفتراضاته تعتبر من الثوابت الأرسوذكسية التى من المحرم التشكيك فيها. وأى نجاح لهذا النموذج فى تفسير الكون، يعتبر بمثابة درع له فى نفوس العلماء الذين يكبرون فى وسط هذا النموذج، ضد أى شذوذ فى الملاحظات أو النتائج العلمية، مما يجعلهم يقضون معظم حياتهم العلمية فى إيجاد حلول للشذوذ فى الملاحظات أو النتائج العلمية بتقوية النموذج وتكبيره وويسمى كون هذه العملية "العلم الطبيعى" (Normal Science).</b></span></span><br />
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<span style=" font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 24.32px;"><b>2) تستمر العملية السابقة حتى يظهر شذوذ معين فى الملاحظات أو النتائج العلمية، لا يستطيع النموذج الحالى تفسيره. ولكن حجم هذا الشذوذ يترك تقديره لنفوس العلماء فى المجتمع العلمى، فالعلماء القدامى سيدافعون عن النموذج القديم لأنهم تربوا عليه وعلى إفتراضاته وسيدعون أن الشذوذ كان نتيجة خطأ فى القياس أو أنه سيتم إضافة إفتراض جديد للنظرية يفسر ذلك الشذوذ كما أعتادوا أثناء مرحلة العلم الطبيعى، أما العلماء الشباب فسيسارعون للبحث عن نموذج جديد لتفسير كل ما فسره النموذج القديم بالإضافة إلى تفسير للشذوذ الذى فشل فى تفسيره النموذج القديم.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style=" font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 24.32px;"><b>3) نصل لمرحلة الكارثة (crisis)، عند وجود العديد من الحالات الشاذة والتى لا يستطيع النموذج تفسيرها، فيحدث إن المجتمع العلمى يتقبل التغيير فى صورة النموذج الجديد (paradigm shift)، وعزو كون التغيير لسبيين: إما أن سيطرة العلماء القدامى ضعفت على المجتمع العلمى بسبب الوفيات أو الإحلال والتبديل بالعلماء الشبان أو أن الكارثة كبيرة جدا لدرجة تغيير أن العلماء القدامى مضطرين لتغيير رأيهم. نلاحظ أن كون يتحدث عن أسباب الثورات العلمية كأسباب إجتماعية ونفسية وكصراع بين العلماء القدامى والعلماء الشباب بالأساس مما يتناسب مع نظرته اللا واقعية ونتائجها الإجتماعية.</b></span></span></div>
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-60175707481332399012015-09-08T23:37:00.002+02:002015-09-09T00:37:57.721+02:00Kuhn Vs Pooper<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Anti-realists believe that science is just a set of statements, it is a tool for humans to see the world, that’s why it cannot be objective and lead us to an ultimate goal as Popper told in his theory. By that logic, science depends on the individual, it is subjective; so it changes from person to person, no certainty for a single, neutral one. This is the reason why anti-realists treat science as invention instead of discovery.<br />
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Kuhn rejects progress in science and the method of falsification. To Kuhn, science is made up of a set of ideas, assumptions and worldviews taken as given and not subject to testing (paradigms), and scientific communities gathers around those paradigms, to form what he called Normal Science. In fact, the Paradigm as conceived by Kuhn is a sort of fundamentalist orthodoxy about how the world is. A whole generation of scientists grows up with a set of common assumptions and they exhibit strong resistance to any data that might call the central Paradigm into question. Kuhn states that scientists spend most (if not all) of their careers in a process of puzzle-solving. Their puzzle-solving is pursued with great tenacity, because the previous successes of the established paradigm tend to generate great confidence that the approach being taken guarantees that a solution to the puzzle exists, even though it may be very hard to find. Kuhn calls this process normal science. Normal Science is to Kuhn the process of elaboration of the Paradigm or central theory in ever more detail, so during the normal science periods, there is progress.<br />
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If an unexpected result occurs, this causes an anomaly. This can block the theory anymore, and uncertainty starts. As a paradigm is stretched to its limits, anomalies — failures of the current paradigm to take into account observed phenomena — accumulate. Their significance is judged by the practitioners of the discipline. Some anomalies may be dismissed as errors in observation, others as merely requiring small adjustments to the current paradigm that will be clarified in due course. Some anomalies resolve themselves spontaneously, having increased the available depth of insight along the way. But no matter how great or numerous the anomalies that persist, Kuhn observes, the practicing scientists will not lose faith in the established paradigm until a credible alternative is available; to lose faith in the solvability of the problems would in effect mean ceasing to be a scientist.<br />
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Once we reach a time of crisis (many unexplained analomis), it is a crisis, and radical changes occur. But in practice, Kuhn thought theories might only be replaced when the old guard dies out and a new generation replaces them who are not so invested in the old way of looking at things. The paradigm is sunk, and the system is replaced, a paradigm is changed by revolution. Scientific revolution is the phase in which the underlying assumptions of the field are reexamined and a new paradigm is established. In any community of scientists, Kuhn states, there are some individuals who are bolder than most. These scientists, judging that a crisis exists, embark on what Thomas Kuhn calls revolutionary science, exploring alternatives to long-held, obvious-seeming assumptions. Occasionally this generates a rival to the established framework of thought. The new candidate paradigm will appear to be accompanied by numerous anomalies, partly because it is still so new and incomplete. The majority of the scientific community will oppose any conceptual change, and, Kuhn emphasizes, so they should. To fulfill its potential, a scientific community needs to contain both individuals who are bold and individuals who are conservative. There are many examples in the history of science in which confidence in the established frame of thought was eventually vindicated. It is almost impossible to predict whether the anomalies in a candidate for a new paradigm will eventually be resolved. Those scientists who possess an exceptional ability to recognize a theory's potential will be the first whose preference is likely to shift in favour of the challenging paradigm. There typically follows a period in which there are adherents of both paradigms. In time, if the challenging paradigm is solidified and unified, it will replace the old paradigm, and a paradigm shift will have occurred. For Kuhn the scientific ideal is whatever has emerged as the dominant scientific community.<br />
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Two paradigms are incompatible and incommensurable which means two are not measurable by the same standards, values, langauage, terms and have no common basis for comparison according to Kuhn. As the people, especially the scientists would create different paradigms which are subjectively expressed and have its own language and worldview. The language of the theories that belong to Newton and Einstein are different from each other, they do not represent the same things. So these two theories are incompatible. Karl Popper will deny this quotation according his point of view and theories.<br />
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According to realism, science displays a process of discovery which means scientists deal with the things that already exist and one can discover those existing things that have not been realized before. Therefore, science is objective; as the scientists only discover the theories not inventing them. That’s why, the realists believe that the scientific improvements guide to a neutral, real truth common for everyone. The theory is used, and if it is falsified, then the new theory is build. If that latter theory is also falsified then a third one comes. The process continues like that as a chain which leads the scientific progress. So the realists and Karl Popper conclude that the scientific progress is a continuous process. In addition, this progress concludes a neutral language that means the same thing for everyone, same understanding for what is happening.<br />
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Kuhn sees the dominant paradigm as foundational, at least until it reaches a crisis. Popper on the other hand, insists we hack away at the very plank we are standing on to see if it holds up. Any scientific theory to Popper is always in the state of being not yet disproved.</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-4458849349477144082015-07-24T10:24:00.003+02:002015-07-24T10:24:59.292+02:00Jankelevitch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Jankelevitch said about the limitations of language: “There are not enough keys on the keyboard of language to be able to describe all the endlessly subtle nuances of thinking and passion. Therefore we have to speak beyond words and induce misty clouds, a twilight zone, a halo around those words where ambivalence simmers and the powers of desire grow.” And then he ponders about the “logic” of music and the music can evade rational discourse and thus be highly ambivalent: “Music uses tones without inner meaning, that way staying perpetually new and accessible. Therefore music is made to be played, not to be spoken about!”. In other words, the lived experience of the moment that escapes our understanding engenders in us a desire to understand what we cannot grasp but only intimate. Jankelevitch uses words to dance around a point without extension, an instant without interval, a tangency without touch. Whether in his analyses of charm, charity (love or forgiveness). Each of these ideas, which are difficult to locate and thus identify, represents "an animating and mobilizing principle". They do not have an essence, are not phenomena, or potential objects of cognition. They move us; they awaken, quicken, and enlighten concrete human life. In other words, they are almost nothing, but they are not nothing. They are in between being and nothingness. Like Plotinus, one of his main influences, Jankelevitch establishes a kind of immanent transcendence in which humans have something in them that is greater than themselves even if they do not know what it is. It is something in them but also something that is radically other than them, which remains irreducible to them .<br />
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-32175017592379593382015-07-01T20:43:00.001+02:002015-07-01T20:44:13.689+02:00المواقف والمخاطبات لمحمد بن عبد الجبار النفري <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">قال لي قصرت العلم عن معيون ومعلوم.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي المعيون ما وجدت عينه جهرة فهو معلوم معيون، والمعلوم الذي لا تراه العيون هو معلوم لا معيون.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي كل نطق ظهر فأنا أثرته وحروفي ألفته فانظر إليه لا يعدو لغة المعيون والمعلوم وأنا لا هما ولا وصفي مثلهما.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي فعلك لا يحيط بي وأنت فعلي.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقفني في ما لا ينقال وقال لي به تجتمع فيما ينقال.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي إن لم تشهد ما لا ينقال تشتت بما ينقال.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي ما ينقال يصرفك إلى القولية والقولية قول والقول حرف والحرف تصريف، وما لا ينقال يشهدك في كل شيء تعرفي إليه ويشهدك من كل شيء مواضع معرفته.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي الحرف يعجز أن يخبر عن نفسه فكيف يخبر عني.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي لا يعرفني الحرف ولا ما في الحرف ولا ما من الحرف ولا ما يدل عليه الحرف.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي انظر إلى الحرف وما فيه خلفك فإن إلتفت إليه هويت فيه وإن التفت إلى ما فيه هويت إلى ما فيه.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي إذا خرجت عن الحرف خرجت عن الأسماء، وإذا خرجت عن الأسماء خرجت عن المسميات، وإذا خرجت عن المسميات خرجت عن كل ما بدا وإذا خرجت عن كل ما بدا قلت فسمعت ودعوت فأجبت.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي الأفكار في الحرف والخواطر في الأفكار وذكرى الخالص من وراء الحرف والأفكار واسمي ومن وراء الذكر.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي العبارة حرف ولا حكم لحرف.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي كلما اتسعت الرؤية ضاقت العبارة.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي إذا تعرفت إليك بلا عبارة خاطبك الحجر والمدر.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">يا عبد لو كشفت لك عن علم الكون وكشفت لك في علم الكون عن حقائق الكون فأردتني بحقائق أنا كاشفها أردتني بالعدم فلا ما أردتني به أوصلك إلي ولا ما أردته لي أوفدك إلي.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">يا عبد أنا الذي لا تحيط به العلوم فتحصره، وأنا الذي لا يدركه تقلب القلوب فتشير إليه، حجبت ما أبديت عن حقائق حياطتي بما أبديت من غرائب صنعتي وتعرفت من وراء التعرف بما لا ينقال للقول فيعبره ولا يتمثل للقلب فيقوم فيه ويشهده.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">يا عبد إذا رأيتني رأيت منتهى كل شيء.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">يا عبد لست لشيء سواي فتكون به.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">يا عبد كيف تأيس مني وفي قلبك متحدثي.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">يا عبد بيتك مني في الآخرة كقلبك مني في الدنيا.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">يا عبد ابن لقلبك بيتاً جدرانه مواقع نظري في كل مشهود وسقفه قيوميتي بكل موجود وبابه وجهي الذي لا يغيب</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي إن خرجت من قلبك عبد ذلك القلب غيري.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي إن خرجت من قلبك أنكرني بعد المعرفة وجحدني بعد الإقرار.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وقال لي إن وقفت بين يدي لأنك عبدي ملت ميل العبيد، وان وقفت بين يدي لأني ربك جاءك حكمي القيوم فحال بين نفسك وبينك.</span></div>
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-9404313633898852652015-06-01T22:25:00.001+02:002015-06-01T22:25:41.745+02:00مدخل إلى فلسفة العقل - (2) السلوكية<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">اتكلمنا المرة الى فاتت على فلسفة العقل وتقسيماتها لمدرستين أساسيتين , المثنوية (Dualism) و الأحادية (Monism) , وتناولنا المثنوية بالتفصيل من خلال استعراض أفكار 5 فلاسفة هم الى كونوا أفكارها وهم افلاطون وارسطو وديكارت وليبنتز ومالينبراخ. حنتكلم انهارده عن الأحادية المادية وبدايات فلسفة العقل الحديثة فى القرن العشرين. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لحد بدايات القرن العشرين كانت أفكار ديكارت هى المسيطرة على فلسفة العقل لحد 1901, لما العالم الروسى بافلوف (Pvalov) وصل الى الاستجابة الشرطية (respondent conditioning) , بتجربته الشهيرة عن الكلاب عام 1901 , من المعروف عن الكلب أنه عند تقديم الطعام له يسيل لعابه كرد فعل طبيعي. بافلوف قام بإسماع الكلاب صوت جرس قبل تقديم الطعام وكرر العملية دية عدة مرات. ثم قام بإسماع الكلاب صوت الجرس بدون تقديم طعام. صوت الجرس وحده تسبب في إسالة لعاب الكلاب توقعا منها أن الطعام قادم. وبالتالى فى علاقة شرطية بين المؤثرات وردود الأفعال على المستوى الفسيولوجى.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">الفكرة دية دخلها عالم النفس الأمريكى واطسون (John B. Watson) لعلم النفس الى طبق الفكرة دية على الإنسان من خلال تجربته الشهير "ألبرت الصغير" (Little Albert) وفيها وضع لعبة أطفال, فأر مطاط أمام طفل صغير فلم يخف منه وأخذ يلعب به. فى المرجلة الثانية وضع أمامه طفل مطاط ولكن كلما أقترب الطفل من الفأر , كان واطسون يصدر صوتا عاليا مخيفا من وراء الطفل فكان الطفل يخاف ويثبت فى مكانه, وتكررت العملية عدة مرات حتى أصبح الطفل لا يقترب أبدا من الفأر اللعبة , فى المرحلة الثالثة كلما قرب واطسون الفأر المطاط من الطفل , كان الطفل يبكى خوفا. طبعا التجربة دية كانت مثيرة للجدل جدا لكن ما اراد واطسون اثباته تحقق , أن الانسان على المستوى الشعورى والعقلى يتعامل سلوكيا من خلال الاستجابة الشرطية.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وبكده بدأ علم النفس السلوكى(Behaviorism) الى اتطور على يد سكينر (Skinner) , الى من خلال تجربته "الحمامة المؤمنة بالخرافة" (superstitious pigeon) , بين أن الانسان من خلال سلوكه بيكون أفكار كتير تصل لدرجة الأفكار الخرافية. التجربة عبارة عن قفص فيه حمام جائع , وسكينر بيقدملهم الطعام عن طريق باب صغير بيفتح أوتوماتيك خلال فترات زمنية متغيرة. سكينر أكتشف ان الحمام ربط تقديم الطعام الاوتماتيكى ده بسلوكهم لحظة تقديم الطعام , يعنى لو حمامة كانت بتلف حوالين نفسها ساعة تقديم الطعام , كلما جاعت كانت بتلف حوالين نفسها تانى , لو حمامة كانت بتخبط منقارها فى القفص ساعة تقديم الطعام , فبرضه كلما جاعت كانت بتخبط راسها فى القفص برضه. وكأن فى علاقة بين السلوك وفتح باب الطعام , سكينر من التجربة دية ذهب لابعد من كده وقال ان السلوك ده عند البشر كمان فالانسان بيعمل بعض التصرفات الى بيظن انها بتجيب حظ حسن قبل ما يشرع فى عمل ما , أنه مثلا يحك ايده فى بعض او لاعب الكورة الى بيلمس النجيلة وهو نازل الملعب وهكذا. سكينر كمان وصل ان ممكن فكرة الدين تكون نشأت نتيجة سلوك الانسان ده.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">بكده أصبح سلوك الانسان هو المؤشر على الحالة النفسية والفكرية للانسان وهو ناتج عن المؤثرات الخارجية. يبقى لو لغينا الحالات النفسية الداخلية من المعادلة، حنلاقى ان المعادلة اتحولت الى مؤثرات خارجية داخلة للانسان = سلوك خارج من الانسان. الفكرة دية اتنقلت لفلسفة العقل مع الفلسفة الوضعية (Positivism), المدرسة الوضعية قائمة على مبدأ (Verificationism) وهو ان معنى الجملة قائم على قدرتى على التأكد منها , فلو معنديش قدرة انى اتأكد من مع معنى الجملة فالجملة عبارة عن وهم. أهم فلاسفة الاتجاه كان جلبرت رايلى (Gilbert Ryle) ويعتبر كتابه (The Concept of Mind) هو أول عمل فى فلسفة العقل الحديثة, الكتاب بالاساس كان هجوم على ثنوية ديكارت بالاساس وانتصار للسلوكية مستندا على فلسفة اللغة وأفكارها لفيتجنشتاين (Wittgenstein) بأن مشاكل الفلسفة دية مبنية على أخطاء لغوية واننا لو ضححنا لغتنا فمشاكل الفلسفة حتختفى من تلقاء ذاتها. رايلى بناء على الكلام ده قال ثنوية العقل والجسم , دية مشكلة لغوية لأننا بنتكلم عن العقل والجسم كأنهم "حاجتين" مختلفتين بس فى بعض الضفات المتشابهة بينهم.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">الكتاب بيشرح مفهوم يعتبر خطأ لغوى اسمه "التصنيف الخاطئ" (Category Mistake) , يعنى مثلا الجملة الى بتقول "بعد انتهاء المعركة, غطى المقاتلين التراب والمجد" , هل التغطية بالتراب زى التغطية بالمجد؟ أكيد لا , ده خطأ لغوي اننا نضع الاتنين فى نفس الجملة او تحت نفس التصنيف, يمكن ينفع فى الأدب , بس مينفعش فى الفلسفة, بس سهل اننا ندركها. مثال تانى من كتاب رايلى , شخص طلب أنه يشوف جامعة أوكسفورد , وبعد ما لف على المبانى والمكتبة والمعامل والطلبة والاساتذه , سأل هل جميل جدا , بس فين الجامعة؟ الاجابة حتبقى ان كل الى شافه ده هو الجامعة. طب هو سأل ليه فين الجامعة؟ عشان هو مصنف "الجامعه" على أنها من نوع "مبنى" فكان مستنى مبنى واحد اسمه الجامعه. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">طب لو طبقنا مفهوم التصنيف الخاطئ ده على العقل والجسم , حلاقى اننا بنعتبر انهم حاجتين مختلفتين فعلا وتحت نفس التصنيف يعنى فى صفات متشابهة مشتركة بينهم, فبنقول مثلا "ألم العقل غير ألم الجسم" , ده خطأ فى التصنيف وافترض ان العقل بيتألم شبه الجسم بس المختلف نوع الألم. مثال أخر "الذاكرة موجودة فى العقل والقلب موجود فى الجسم" , هل كلمة موجودة بالاستعمالين السابقين واحدة؟ أكيد لا. طب لو فتحت الجسم حلاقى القلب ولو فتحت العقل حلاقى الذاكرة ؟ أكيد لا. بس بإنى اقول الجملة دية فأنا بفترض ان فيه وجه تشابه بين الاتنين وده الخطأ فى التصنيف. طب لو صححنا اللغة بتاعتنا وفهمنا ان العقل والجسم مش حاجتين مختلفتين بينهم تشابه فى بعض الصفات, دول حاجة واحدة بس واحنا لغويا بنخطئ وبنتعامل على انهم اتنين. وبالتالى ثنوية ديكارت الى بتعتبر العقل والجسم شيئين منفصلين وبتقول فى روح داخل جسم "Ghost in the shell" هى خطأ ناتج عن خطأ لغوى. الصح من وجهة نظر رايلى انى مكلمش عن العقل لان مفيش عقل بالاساس, مفيش غير جسم ينتج عنه سلوك. وبالتالى اى سؤال او كلام عن العقل ده وهم , مجرد خطأ لغوى وبكده المشكلة من اساسها اختفت.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لو طبقنا الكلام ده على الانسان , ايه الى يخلينى أتأكد ان الى قدامى فرحان او حزين؟ هل عندى القدرة انى اشوف حالته النفسية الداخلية؟ أكيد لا وبالتالى فالحالة النفسية الداخلية وهم زى ما قلنا. طب ايه المؤشر الى ممكن أعرف بيه ان الانسان ده فرحان او زعلان وأقدر فى نفس الوقت أتأكد منه؟ الاجابة كانت من سلوكه , مثلا انه مبتسم او عابس.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">طبعا اى حد وهو بيقرأ الكلام ده ووصل للنقطة الى فاتت , أكيد كون مجموعة من الاعتراضات على الفكرة دية ف على سبيل المثال وليس الحصر: </span></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: large;">يعنى ايه الحالات النفسية الداخلية دية وهم؟ اومال احنا بنحس بايه ساعة الفرح او الحزن؟ </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">هل السلوك دايما بيعبر عن العقل ؟ يعنى لو انا حزين , مش ممكن أمثل انى مبسوط وسلوكى يبقى عكس الى انا حاسس بيه؟ </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">لو مفيش حالات نفسية داخلية , وان لاى مؤثر خارجى سلوك خارجى, ايه الى يفرق بين شخصين لما يتفرجوا على فيلم درامى , أن واحد يتأثر ويبكى وواحد ميتأثرش؟ أكيد فى حالة داخلية مختلفة عند الاتنين.</span></li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وده الى حصل فعلا فى الخمسينات من القرن العشرين على يد تشومسكى وأخرين , فالمدرسة دية خرجت تماما من فلسفة العقل بعد انهيار المدرسة الوضعية على يد كوين (Quine) وبوبر (Popper) وده أدى لظهور المدرسة التانية فى القرن العشرين وهى (Physicalism) الجسمانية.</span></div>
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-84762179342353590152015-06-01T22:18:00.000+02:002015-06-01T22:23:00.838+02:00مدخل إلى فلسفة العقل - (1) المثنوية<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">فلسفة العقل بتدرس طبيعة العقل والوعى وعلاقتهم بالمادة. العقل هو ما يمكن تسميتهم عند المؤمنين بالأديان الروح , من أول أفلاطون الى هو كان أول من تحدث فيها ولحد الأن , فى مدرستين أساسيتين:</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: large;">المثنوية (Dualism) , وهى بتقول ان العقل والمادة , حاجتين مختلفتين تماما فى عالمين مختلفين تماما.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">الأحادية (Monism) , وهى بتقول ان العقل والمادة حاجة واحدة بس , بس احنا بننظر لهم على انهم حاجتين وهما , وتحت المدرسة دية بنلاقى المادية الأحادية(Materialism) , الى بتقول مفيش حاجة اسمها روح او عقل , ده المخ البشرى المادى هو سبب الوعى والإدراك زى اى كمبيوتر. وكمان بنلاقى المثالية الأحادية (Idealism) ودية عكس المادية فبتقول , مفيش فى العالم ده غير الارواح وبيتهيألنا اننا بنشوف مواد بس هى فعليا غير موجودة.فكرة المثالية الأحادية دية فى فلسفة العقل , ظهرت مع بيركلى فى القرن ال16 وانتهت. </span></li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">خلينا نقول اننا عندنا مدرستين أساسيتين , المثنوية و الأحادية المادية. حنبدأ مع 5 من فلاسفة ما قبل القرن العشرين فى فلسفة العقل , عشان ندى مقدمة سريعة , لأن الى حصل فى القرن العشرين كان تطور ضخم جدا جدا مقارنة بكل القرون الى قبله. حنركز مع افلاطون وارسطو وديكارت وليبنتز ومالينبراخ , والخمسة كانوا من أنصار المثنوية.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">أفلاطون قال ان فيه روح منفصله تماما عن الجسم لدرجة انها لا تفنى بموت الجسم , فكان مؤمن بنوع من تناسخ الأرواح وكمان ان فى علاقة بين كل الأرواح الى فى العالم , لدرجة انه قال فكرة مشابهة لوحدة الوجود بتاعت سبنوزا ، ان العالم له روح واحدة بتكون من كل الارواح الى عايشه فيها (Anima mundi).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">أرسطو أخد نفس منهج استاذه استاذه فى الثنوية , بس غير بعض الأفكار زى مثلا أن الروح بتفنى بموت الجسم وان فى 3 درجات للأرواح مقابلة للإنسان والحيوان والنبات. وان روح الإنسان هى الأعلى لانها عندها مقدرة التفكير المنطقى.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">نوصل لديكارت , صاحب النشأة الفعلية لفلسفة العقل. ديكارت منهجه معتمد على الشك , فبدأ بإنه شك فى كل حاجة , شك فى حواسه لانه بيحلم والأخلام غير موجودة فعليا وكمان بسبب الخدع البصرية, فرفض الحواس كمصدر للمعرفة , وبالتالى شك فى وجود جسمه كمان لانه بيلاحظ وجوده بالحواس , ووصل فى الأخر الى انه شك فى وجود عقله وعند النقطة دية وقف. لو انا بشك فى عقلى , والشك نوع من التفكير , والتفكير لازم له عقل مفكر , يبقى لازم فى عقل موجود , ولو أنا صاحب التفكير ده , يبقى أنا عقلى موجود. وهنا وصل لمبدأ الشهير (Cogito) , "انا افكر اذن انا موجود".طب لو انا مقدرش أشك فى عقلى بدون تناقض منطقى زى ما شفنا فى الفقرة الى فاتت ولكنى اقدر اشك فى جسمى بدون تناقض, يبقى عقلى غير جسمى. وده اول أثبات قوى للثنوية. ديكارت أضاف اثبات تانى هو أن الجسم بيتميز بخصائص زى الأمتداد المكانى وانى أقدر أحس بيه على عكس العقل الى مالوش إمتداد زمانى وخارج نطاق الحس. يبقى العقل غير الجسم وده تانى اثبات لديكارت للثنوية.نوصل للمشاكل الى بعترف بوجودها ديكارت والى بتنقض فكرة الثنوية:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-size: large;">ازاى العقل الغير مادى بيأثر فى الجسم المادى بأنه يخلق أفعال الجسم؟ و ازاى العالم المادى يأثر فى العقل الغير المادى بأنه يغذيه المدخلات الحسية الى تخليه يفكر افكار غير مادية ؟ (mind-body problem) ودية أهم مشكلة لحد الأن. حل ديكارت أن العقل والمخ بيتفاعلوا مع بعض فى الغدة الصنوبرية فى المخ , طب ليه ديكارت أختار الغدة دية بذات؟ لأن المخ كله عبارة عن نصين متماثلين يمين وشمال , بس الغدة دية فى النص بالظبط فهى واحدة بس وملهاش مقابل , ديكارت كده محل المشكلة لان معنى ان الروح بتأثر فى جزء من المخ , ان لها جانب مادى وبكده وقع نظريته كلها.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">لما شخص بيتخبط فى دماغه , تأثير الخبطة دية لو وصل للمخ بيؤثر على العقل , بانه يفقد الذاكرة او يفقد القدرة على الكلام مثلا , المثال ده بيقول ان العقل والمخ شئ واحد , ازاى ده يتفق مع الثنوية ؟</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">العقل أثناء النوم , النتيجة الطبيعية لكلام ديكارت , "أنا أفكر اذا انا موجود" , ان الانسان لا يفكر اثناء نومه , يبقى الانسان غير موجود أثناء نومه. نظرية ديكارت مبتفسرش غياب الوعى أثناء النوم.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">العقل فى الحيوان , الحيوانات عندها عقل بمعنى انها بتقدر تستوعب حواسها وبتحس بالألم وغيره من النشاطات العصبية العقلية , بس معندهاش عقل مفكر منطقى ولا عندها لغة , وده خلى ديكارت يقول ان الحيوانات معندهاش أرواح او عقول. مشكلة نظرية ديكارت هنا انها مش بتقدم درجات للوعى.</span></li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">فضلت النظرية دية بمشاكلها لفترة طويلة , وحاول فلاسفة كتير تصحيحها من افكارهم عن حرية الارادة لان الارادة ظهرت كمشكلة فى العلاقة بين العقل والمادة , زى ليبنتز مثلا الى حاول يثبت الثنوية بالمنطق , فحط مبدأ ان لو شيئين خصائصهم واحدة تماما , يبقى الشيئين دول شئ واحد وده عرف بقانون ليبنتز , واذا كان خصائص العقل غير خصائص الجسم يبقى دول حاجتين مختلفتين. وان ربنا زى صانع الساعة , رتب كل أحداث الكون بحيت تتناسب مع ارادة أصحابها , يعنى لما انت توقع كوباية وتنزل تتكسر , فربنا وهو بيخلق الكون , كان واضع فى الكوباية دية انها فى لحظة الحدث ده تنفصل عن بعضها وعشان كده انها بنشوفها بتتكسر. طبعا الفكرة دية مستمدة من موقف ليبنتز الجبرى وبالتالى مفيش حرية إرادة.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">فيلسوف أخير اسمه مالينبراخ , نقل من الفلسفة الاسلامية وخصوصا كلام الغزالى فكرة ان العقل والمادة بيحتاجوا لوسيط بينهم , خارج عن الاتنين ويقدر يتعامل مع الاتنين وهو الله , وبالتالى الله بيخلق أفعال العباد. بس الحل ده ملاقاش قبول عند الناس لإنه بيفتح باب هل أفعال الشر خلقها الله بارادته؟ ونوصل لحل فى الإسلام بإختلاف المشيئة الربانية بين مشيئة كونية وبين مشيئة شرعية و المشيئة الكونية زى قوانين الفيزياء كده وفيها ما يحبه الله كالطاعات وما يبغضه كالمعاصى والشر فيها من تأثير المفعولات مش من الأفعال.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">الحلول دية برضه ملقتش قبول عن الفلاسفة الغربيين مع بدايات عصر العلم التجريبى المادى وانهيار أفكار الميتافيزيقا الحسية وظهور المادية فى صورتها الأحادية وفى مدارسها الثلاثة السلوكية (Behaviourism) والجسمانية (Physicalism) والوظيفية (Functionalism) و أخيرا (Property dualism) الى جناقشهم المرة الى جاية. سيبكم من الأسامى المعقدة دية , كل فيلسوف لازم يدورله على تعابير معقدة تشير لأفكاره , عشان يبان ان افكاره قوية وصعبة , بس لو كملت بعد التسمية حتلاقى الافكار بسيطة وجميلة. الفيزيائين عندهم قانون غير مكتوب كده , لو المعادلة مش جميلة , يبقى غالبا فيها غلطة </span></div>
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-51495934972639135412015-05-22T12:17:00.003+02:002015-05-22T12:19:06.666+02:00 The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When the famous warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune was a young boy going by the name of Ushiwaka-maru, his father, Yoshitomo, was assassinated by the Taira clan. Taira no Kiyomori, head of the Taira, allowed the child to survive on the grounds that he be exiled to the temple on Mount Kurama and become a monk. But one day in the Sojo-ga-dani Valley, Ushiwaka encountered the mountain's tengu, Sojobo. This spirit taught the boy the art of swordsmanship so that he might bring vengeance on the Taira.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Accept Everything, resistance is suffering</h3>
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It revolves around the Buddhist sentiment that attachment to one’s status in life whether rich or poor, famous or infamous is the source of suffering. "But rather, following good and bad fortune or prosperity and decline as one meets them, and calming enjoying oneself in the midst of creation and change: this is the greatest happiness under heaven". So "If I'm blown by the wind, I'll tumble along following the wind. If the winds stops, I'll stop too. And won't act contrary to things. just don't fight things and be happy with what you encounter". "I just entrust my body to the Creator and don’t intrude my own willfulness while I’m here. This is knowing the general drift of the Way." because "a person who worries over something he can do nothing about is an extraordinary fool."<br />
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In one section a dying man is talking with his family priest and says: "The ten thousand things are born from emptiness and return to emptiness." No need for sorrow of passing of anything.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
No-Mind</h3>
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"The common man hasn't cut yet through the root of confusion of life and death. This always lies concealed and acts as a cover over his spirit. When a thought stirs even a little, what has been concealed arises, emotions, attachments and desires". "When there is something in the mind, the chi is obstructed and your body can't respond with harmony".<br />
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“When you gamble for tiles, you are skillful. When you gamble for your belt buckle, you begin to hesitate; and when you gamble for gold, you get confused. Your skill is the same, but you get cautious because you value something outside yourself. When you do this you become awkward inside."<br />
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"The moon in the water, is a metaphor for when you can move and respond with no-mind, though there is a reflection, the moon reflects itself without thought. reflected in ten thousand streams or not, this doesn't add to the moon or subtract from it".<br />
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"Technique is cultivated by means of chi and chi uses the mind as a vehicle to put form into use. As you become skillful in the technique, the chi harmonizes. And when this has completely penetrated the mind and no more doubts remain, technique and principle become one, your spirit is settled, and practical application is completely unobstructed. The technique responds to the circumstances naturally". "Simply, without thinking, without doing anything, move by following your natural perception and your movement will have no form. And when you have no form, there is nothing in heaven and earth that could be your opponent"</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-44173172655254375392015-05-21T16:00:00.002+02:002015-05-21T16:02:19.308+02:00تهذيب الأخلاق لابن مسكويه<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">النفس<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">فإن تشوقها إلى ما ليس من طباع البدن وحرصها على معرفة حقائق الأمور الآلهية وميلها إلى الأمور التي هي أفضل من الأمور الجسمية وإيثارها لها وإنصرافها عن الأمور واللذات الجسمانية يدلنا دلالة واضحة إنها من جوهر أعلى وأكرم جدا من الأمور الجسمانية. لأنه لا يمكن في شيء من الأشياء أن يتشوق ما ليس من طباعه وطبيعته ولا أن ينصرف عما يكمل ذاته ويقوم جوهره فإذا كانت أفعال النفس إذا إنصرفت إلى ذاتها فتركت الحواس مخالفة لأفعال البدن ومضادة لها في محاولاتها وإراداتها فلا محالة إن جوهرها مفارق لجوهر البدن ومخالف له في طبعه.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">وأيضا فإن النفس وإن كانت تأخذ كثيرا من مبادىء العلوم عن الحواس فلها من نفسها مباد أخر وأفعال لا تأخذها عن الحوس ألبتة وهي المبادىء الشريفة العالية التي تنبني عليها القياسات الصحيحة. وذلك إنها إذا حكمت إنه ليس بين طرفي النقيض واسطة فإنها لم تأخذ هذا الحكم من شيء آخر لم يكن أوليا. وأيضا فإن الحواس تدرك المحسوسات فقط وأما النفس فإنها تدرك أسباب الإتفاقات وأسباب الإختلافات التي من المحسوسات وهي معقولاتها التي لا تستعين عليها بشيء من الجسم ولا آثار الجسم. وكذلك إذا حكمت على الحس إنه صدق أو كذب فليست تأخذ هذا الحكم من الحس لأنه لا يضاد نفسه فيما يحكم فيه ونحن نجد النفس العاقلة فينا تستدرك شيئا كثيرا من خطأ الحواس في مبادىء أفعالها وترد عليها أحكامها. من ذلك أن البصر يخطىء فيما يراه من قرب ومن بعد أما خطأه في البعيد فبادراكه الشمس صغيرة مقدارها عرض قدم وهي مثل الأرض مائة ونيفا وستين مرة يشهد بذلك البرهان العقلي فتقبل منه وترد على الحس ما شهد به فلا يقبله. وأما خطأه في القريب فبمنزلة ضوء الشمس إذا وقع علينا من ثقب مربعات صغار كحلل الأهواز وأشباهها التي يستظل بها فإنه يدرك بها الضوء الواصل إلينا منها مستدير افترد النفس العاقلة عليه هذا الحكم وتغلطه في إدراكه وتعلم إنه ليس كما يراه وتخطأ البصر أيضا في حركة القمر والسحاب والسفينة والشاطىء ويخطأ في الأساطين المسطرة والنخيل وأشباهها حتى يراها مختلفة في أوضاعها. ويخطىء أيضا في الأشياء التي تتحرك على الإستدارة حتى يراها كالحلقة والطوق ويخطىء أيضا في الأشياء الغائصة في الماء حتى يرى أن بعضه أكبر من مقداره ويرى بعضها مكسورا وهو صحيح وبعضها معوجا وهو مستقيم وبعضها منكسرا وهومنتصب.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">فيستخرج العقل أسباب هذه كلها من مباد عقلية ويحكم عليها احكاما صحيحة وكذلك الحال في حاسة السمع وحاسة الذوق وحاسة الشم وحاسة اللمس. أعني حاسة الذوق تغلط في الحلو تجده مرا عند الصد أو أشبهه وحاسة الشم تغلط كثيرا في الأشياء المنتنة لا سيما في المنتفل من رائحة إلى رائحة فالعقل يرد هذه القضايا ويقف فيها ثم يستخرج أسبابها ويحكم فيها أحكاما صحيحة.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">والحاكم في الشيء المزيف له أو المصحح أفضل وأعلى رتبة من المحكوم عليه وبالجملة فإن النفس إذ علمت أن الحس صدق أو كذب فليست تأخذ هذا العلم من الحس ثم إذا علمت أنها قد أدركت معقولاتها فليست تعلم هذا العلم من علم آخر لأنها لو علمت هذا العلم من علم آخر لاحتاجت في ذلك العلم أيضا إلى علم آخر وهذا يمر بلا نهاية فإذا علمها بأنها علمت ليست بمأخوذ من علم آخر البتة بل هو من ذاتها وجوهرها أعني العقل وليست تحتاج في إدراكها ذاتها إلى شيء آخر غير ذاتها ولهذا ما قيل في أواخر هذا العلم. إن العقل والعاقل والمعقول شيء واحد لاغيرية شيء يتبين في موضعه. فأما الحواس فلا تحس ذواتها ولا ما هو موافق لها كل الموافقة.</span></b><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">وقد تبين للناظر في أمر هذه النفس وقواها أنها تنقسم إلى ثلاثة أعني:</span></b></div>
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<li><b style="line-height: 17.25pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">القوة التي بها يكون الفكر والتمييز والنظر في حقائق الأمور</span></b></li>
<li><b style="line-height: 17.25pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">والقوة التي بها يكون الغضب والنجدة والإقدام على الأهوال والشوق إلى التسلط والترفع وضروب الكرامات</span></b></li>
<li><b style="line-height: 17.25pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">والقوة التي بها تكون الشهوة وطلب الغذاء والشوق إلى الملاذ التي في المآكل والمشارب والمناكح وضروب اللذات الخسية</span></b></li>
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<b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">وهذه الثلاث متباينة ويعلم من ذلك ان بعضها إذا قوي أضر بالآخر وربما أبطل أحدهما فعل الآخر وربما جعلت نفوسنا وربما جعلت قوى لنفس واحدة والنظر في ذلك ليس يليق بهذا الموضع وأنت تكتفي في تعلم الأخلاق بأنها قوى ثلاث متباينة تقوي إحداهما وتضعف بحسب المزاج أو العادة أوالتأدب.</span></b></div>
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<li><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">أما الحكمة فهي فضيلة النفس الناطقة المميزة وهي أن تعلم الموجودات كلها من حيث هي موجودة وإن شئت فقل إن تعلم الأمور الإلهية والأمور الإنسانية ويثمر علمها بذلك أن تعرف المعقولات أيها يجب ان يفعل وأيها يجب أن يغفل.</span></b></li>
<li><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">واما العفة فهي فضيلة الحس الشهواني وظهور هذه الفضيلة في الإنسان يكون بأن يصرف شهواته بحسب الرأى أعني أن يوافق التمييز الصحيح حتى لا ينقاد لها ويصير بذلك حرا غير متعبد لشيء من شهواته،</span></b></li>
<li><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">وأما الشجاعة فهي فضيلة النفس الغضبية وتظهر في الإنسان بحسب إنقيادها للنفس الناطقة المميزة واستعمال ما يوجبه الرأى في الأمور الهائلة أعني أن لا يخاف من الأمور المفزعة إذا كان فعلها جميلا والصبر عليها محمودا.</span></b></li>
<li><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">فأما العدالة فهي فضيلة للنفس تحدث لها من إجتماع هذه الفضائل الثلاث التي عددناها وذلك عند مسالمة هذه القوى بعضها للبعض وإستسلامها للقوة المميزة حتى لا تتغالب ولا تتحرك لنحو مطلوباتها على سوم طبائعها ويحدث للإنسان بها سمة يختار بها ابدا الإنصاف من نفسه أولا ثم الإنصاف والإنتصاف من غيره وله.</span></b></li>
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<b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">الأقسام التي تحت الحكمةْ</span></b><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><b><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>: </span></b><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">الذكاء. الذكر</span></b><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><b><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>)</span></b><b><span lang="AR-EG" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-EG; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">عدم النسيان)</span></b><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. التعقل. سرعة الفهم وقوته صفاء الذهن سهولة التعلم. وبهذه الأشياء يكون حسن الإستعداد للحكمة فأما الوقوف على جواهر هذه الأقسام فيكون من حدودها. وذلك أن العلم بالحدود يفهم جواهر الأشياء المطلوبة الموجودة دائما على حال واحد وهو العلم البرهاني الذي لا يتغير ولا يدخله الشك بوجه من الوجوه.</span></b><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">الأقسام التي تحت
الحكمةْ</span></b><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><b><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>: </span></b><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">الذكاء. الذكر</span></b><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><b><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>)</span></b><b><span lang="AR-EG" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-EG; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">عدم النسيان)</span></b><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. التعقل. سرعة الفهم
وقوته صفاء الذهن سهولة التعلم. وبهذه الأشياء يكون حسن الإستعداد للحكمة فأما
الوقوف على جواهر هذه الأقسام فيكون من حدودها. وذلك أن العلم بالحدود يفهم جواهر
الأشياء المطلوبة الموجودة دائما على حال واحد وهو العلم البرهاني الذي لا يتغير
ولا يدخله الشك بوجه من الوجوه.</span></b></div>
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-91395004231830993812015-05-15T10:18:00.003+02:002015-07-13T15:29:55.353+02:00Property Dualism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Property dualism asserts that an ontological distinction lies in the differences between properties of mind and matter, and that consciousness is ontologically irreducible to neurobiology and physics. A</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">lthough the world is constituted of just one kind of substance — the physical kind — there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.</span></span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">It asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e., in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge therefore it could be affected by any rearrangement of matter.</span></h3>
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Epiphenomenalism</h3>
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Whilst Cartesian dualism argues that there is a two-way interaction between mental and physical substances, not all forms of dualism agree. Epiphenomenalism argues that mental events are caused by - or are a by-product of - physical events, but that the interaction is one-way: mental events cannot affect physical ones. One of the curious side effects of this theory is that it implies that decision making is not a mental event. Apart from flying in the face of most common sense attitudes.</div>
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Biological Naturalism</h3>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Emergentism is the idea that increasingly complex structures in the world give rise to the "emergence" of new properties that are something over and above (i.e. cannot be reduced to) their more basic constituents. Applied to the mind/body relation, emergent materialism is another way of describing the non-reductive physicalist conception of the mind that asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e., organized in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge.</span></div>
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Searle holds that the brain is, in fact, a machine, but the brain gives rise to consciousness and understanding using machinery that is non-computational. On the level of neurons (Micro Level), which we search, there is no emergence of consciousness, but on the scale of the whole brain (Macro Level), consciousness emerge. If neuroscience is able to isolate the mechanical process that gives rise to consciousness, then Searle grants that it may be possible to create machines that have consciousness and understanding. However, without the specific machinery required, Searle does not believe that consciousness can occur.</div>
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Anomalous Monism or Eliminative Materialism or Predicate Monism</h3>
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According to which there can be no strict psycho-physical laws which connect mental and physical events under their descriptions as mental and physical events. However, all mental events also have physical descriptions. It is in terms of the latter that such events can be connected in law-like relations with other physical events. Mental predicates are irreducibly different in character (rational, holistic and necessary) from physical predicates (contingent, atomic and causal). Eliminative materialists maintain that such intentional predicates as believe, desire, think, feel, etc., will eventually be eliminated from both the language of science and from ordinary language because the entities to which they refer do not exist. The only argument that Davidson gives for this point is that mental phenomena, like beliefs and desires, are subject to constraints of rationality, and rationality has “no echo in physics.”<br />
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Step 1: There are causal relations between mental phenomena and physical phenomena.<br />
Step 2: Wherever there are events related as cause and effect they must fall under strict, deterministic causal laws.<br />
Step 3: But there are no such strict deterministic causal laws relating the mental and the physical. In Davidson’s terms, there are no psycho-physical laws.<br />
Step 4: Conclusion. All so-called mental events are physical events.<br />
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The first principle follows from Davidson's view of the ontology of events and the nature of the relationship of mental events (specifically propositional attitudes) with physical actions. Davidson subscribes to an ontology of events where events (as opposed to objects or states of affairs) are the fundamental, irreducible entities of the mental and physical universe. His original position, as expressed in Actions and Events, was that event-individuation must be done on the basis of causal powers. He later abandoned this view in favour of the individuation of events on the basis of spatio-temporal localization, but his principle of causal interaction seems to imply some sort of, at least, implicit commitment to causal individuation. According to this view, all events are caused by and cause other events and this is the chief, defining characteristic of what an event is.<br />
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Ted Honderich has challenged the thesis of anomalous monism, forcing, in his words, the "inventor of anomalous monism to think again". To understand Honderich's argument, it is helpful to describe the example he uses to illustrate the thesis of AM itself: the event of two pears being put on a scale causes the event of the scale's moving to the two-pound mark. But if we describe the event as "the two French and green things caused the scale to move to the two-pound mark", then while this is true, there is no lawlike relation between the greenness and Frenchness of the pears and the pointers moving to the two-pound mark.<br />
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Honderich then points out that what we are really doing when we say that there is "no lawlike relationship between two things under certain descriptions" is taking certain properties and noting that the two things are not in relation in virtue of those particular properties. But this does not mean they are not in lawlike relation in virtue of certain other properties, such as weight in the pears example. On this basis, we can formulate the generalization that Honderich calls the Nomological Character of Causally-Relevant Properties. Then we ask what the causally relevant properties of the mental events which cause physical events are.<br />
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-26455788829513932802015-05-13T16:09:00.002+02:002015-05-15T10:18:17.711+02:00Dualism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Dualism, is the view that that there are two separate and distinct substances that make up a human being: mind and body. In religious terms, the mind is sometimes equated with the soul.<br />
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Monism, because it describes a belief in one substance, can be used in two distinct ways:<br />
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To describe the view that only matter, or the physical body, exist (materialism).<br />
To describe the view that only mind, or spirit, exist (idealism).<br />
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Platonic Dualism</h3>
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Aristotle shared Plato's view of multiple souls and further elaborated a hierarchical arrangement, corresponding to the distinctive functions of plants, animals and people: a nutritive soul of growth and metabolism, that all three share; a perceptive soul of pain, pleasure and desire, that only people and other animals share; and the faculty of reason, that is unique to people only. In this view, a soul is the hylomorphic form of a living organism. Thus, for Aristotle, all three souls perish when the living organism dies. For Plato however, the soul was not dependent on the physical body; he believed in metempsychosis, the migration of the soul to a new physical body<br />
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Substance Dualism</h3>
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Descartes concluded that the mind was a completely distinct substance from matter because:<br />
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<li>Matter is measurable, has dimensions, can be sensed, divided, destroyed and altered. Mind, however, can almost be defined as the opposite of this, it is invisible, without dimensions, immaterial, unchanging, indivisible and without limit.</li>
<li>Descartes cannot doubt the existence of his mind, but can doubt the existence of his body. Since what I cannot doubt cannot be identical to what I can doubt (by Leibniz's Law), mind and body are not identical and dualism is established.</li>
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Descartes’ response was to suggest that the two substances meet in a part of the brain called the pineal gland. His reasons for choosing this seem to have been that the gland in central (unlike the other parts of the brain which are bilateral – mirrored on each side) and that it does not occur in animals. This latter fact was understood by Descartes as relating to the presence of a soul in humans and not in animals, whom he considered mere machines. However, modern research has also found a similar gland in mammals and lower vertebrates.<br />
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Critiques</h3>
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<li>How can conscious experiences like your pain exist in a world that is entirely composed of physical particles and how can some physical particles, presumably in your brain cause the mental experiences? (This is called the “mind-body problem.”).</li>
<li>How can the subjective, insubstantial, nonphysical mental states of consciousness ever cause anything in the physical world? How can your intention, not a part of the physical world, ever cause the movement of your arm? (This is called the “problem of mental causation.”) </li>
<li>No one has ever succeeded in giving an intelligible account of the relationships between these two realms.</li>
<li>Argument from brain damage, in instances of some sort of brain damage, it is always the case that the mental substance and/or properties of the person are significantly changed or compromised. If the mind were a completely separate substance from the brain, how could it be possible that every single time the brain is injured, the mind is also injured? Indeed, it is very frequently the case that one can even predict and explain the kind of mental or psychological deterioration or change that human beings will undergo when specific parts of their brains are damaged.</li>
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The correlation and dependence argument against dualism begins by noting that there are clear correlations between certain mental events and neural events (say, between pain and a-fiber or c-fiber stimulation). Moreover, as demonstrated in such phenomena as memory loss due to head trauma or wasting disease, the mind and its capacities seem dependent upon neural function. The simplest and best explanation of this dependence and correlation is that mental states and events are neural states and events and that pain just is c-fiber stimulation.<br />
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Searle says:<br />
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Notice that these arguments still leave dualism as a logical possibility. It is a logical possibility, though I think extremely unlikely, that when our bodies are destroyed, our souls will go marching on. I have not tried to show that this is an impossibility (indeed, I wish it were true), but rather that it is inconsistent with just about everything else we know about how the universe works and therefore it is irrational to believe in it.</blockquote>
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Occasionalism</h3>
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Following Descartes’ death, some philosophers – such as the Frenchman, Nicholas Malebranche (1638 – 1715) – recognised this problem and tried to address it whilst still holding to the dualist view. Malebranche’s suggestion was that neither body nor mind were causally related, but were in fact connected by divine interaction. So, whenever we wish to lift an arm, for instance, God must intervene to cause the body to obey (similarly, whenever the body feels pain, God must cause that sensation to occur in the mind). But problems arise: if God is responsible for all seeming causal interactions, is he also responsible for evil deeds? This would make him the unwitting agent in murders, crimes, etc.</div>
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-20078635735991856042015-05-12T15:48:00.004+02:002015-07-29T11:37:36.378+02:00Functionalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Some people said that the fact that neurons were either firing or not firing was an indication that the brain was a binary system, just like any other digital computer. Thus came the idea, mental states are computational states of the brain. But when we consider the computational operations, the manipulation of symbols in accord with formal rules, a computing machine performs, we‘abstract’ it from its underlying base, i.e whatever the hardware structure and the software operating this hardware, calculations are always the same. For example, a Function like showing a character moving from point X to Y, is realized by (Software (Windows+Game Engine) and Hardware) and Android and iPhone and so on. So in theory, same calculations (functions) can be done on whatever hardware. This is known as "multiply realizablity". So, pain, for example, is unlikely to just be C-fiber stimulation (or some other appropriate brain state), because octopuses and other such creatures can probably feel pain, despite their not having C-fiber stimulatory capacity. This led to the development of functionalism, which promised to unify physically different phenomena under the banner of causal (functional) similarity.<br />
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But what is the relation between functions (computations) and the underlying brain, neurons and synapses (software and hardware)? A functionalist prefers to say that computational processes are ‘realized’ in material systems but not dependent on them. The functionalist’s point is just that higher-level properties such as being in pain or computing the sum of 7 and 5 are not to be identified with,‘reduced to’, or mistaken for their realizers (the lower material level). Individual neurons are not conscious, but portions of the brain system composed of neurons are conscious. We may compare the brain with other organs, such as the eye. The individual parts that make up the eye all serve the function of seeing. For instance, the parts of the eye allow us to see, but the individual state of each part is not what we mean by "seeing".<br />
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Various reasons against reductive versions of physicalism have led many to accept some form of “nonreductive physicalism”, the view that despite everything being dependent on the physical, it is not the case that mental properties are identical to physical properties. Minds are not identifiable with brains; but neither are minds distinct immaterial substances mysteriously linked to bodies. Minds are functional states characterizable by their place in a structured large causal network, it has a particular role or a job description which is its function, if it responds to causal inputs (stimuli and mental states like believes and desires and other functional states) with particular kinds of output (other mental states and other functional states and external behavior), like a finite state machine.<br />
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Pains, for instance, might be characterized by reference to typical causes (tissue damage, pressure, extremes of temperature), their relations to other states of mind (they give rise to the belief that you are in pain, and a desire to rid yourself of the source of pain), and behavioral outputs (you move your body in particular ways, groan, perspire). Consider your being in pain as a result of your grasping the handle of a cast iron skillet that has been left heating on the stove. Here, you being in pain is a matter of your being in a particular state, one that stands in appropriate causal relations to sensory inputs, to output behavior, and to other states of mind. These other states of mind are themselves characterizable by reference to their causal roles. Another example is, to say that Jones believes that it is raining is to say that he has a certain state, or process going on in him that is caused by certain sorts of inputs (external stimuli—for example, he perceives that it is raining); and this phenomenon, in conjunction with certain other factors, such as his desire to stay dry, will cause a certain sort of behavior on his part, the behavior of carrying an umbrella.<br />
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But how can we know the functions of the mind, if we will abstract from its hardware? Imagine you are a scientist confronted with a computing machine deposited on Earth by an alien starship. You might want to know how the device was programmed. Finding out would involve a measure of ‘reverse engineering’. You would ‘work backwards’ by observing inputs and outputs,hypothesizing computational operations linking inputs to outputs, testing these hypotheses against new inputs and outputs, and gradually refining your understanding of the alien device’s program. It seemed to solve all issues, for example, a computing machine can‘crash’ because of a software ‘bug’, or because of a hardware defect or failure. That's why people with mind defects are either due to brain problems or a mental dis-functions like going crazy.<br />
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Now the million dollar question everyone is avoiding until now is "How are those Mind functions are realized in the Brain and the nervous system?". How these functions are realized in the underlying software and hardware of a specific type, let's say for example, humans? A functionalist would answer that this is out of his scope of study, because the Black Box's inner workings are the responsibility of the neuroscience. Functionalism made philosophy of the Mind similar to Computer engineering.<br />
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The first version of functionalism, machine functionalism, presented by Hilary Putnam in the early 1960’s, machine functionalism argues that mental states, more specifically, are states of a hypothetical machine called a Turing Machine. Turing Machines are automatons which can, in principle, compute any problem and which do so in virtue of what are called ‘system states,’ which are tied to instructions for computational steps (e.g., “If in system state S, perform computation C and then transition into system state S2, and so on). In doing this it uses a computer model which describes the mind as a “multiply realisable”, it is like the calculations and rules that make up a software program that can be run on any machine, or in our case for example, animals and humans. Furthermore, we have a test that will enable us to tell when we have actually duplicated human cognition, the Turing test. The Turing test gives us a conclusive proof of the presence of cognitive capacities. To find out whether or not we have actually invented an intelligent machine we need only apply the Turing test.<br />
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To differentiate between this model and behaviourism, this model assumes that the functional states cause (and are therefore not identical with) behaviour while acknowledging the insight (often attributed to Ryle) that the mental is importantly related to behavioural output or response (as well as to stimulus or input). The differences is that functionalism also refers to other mental states; further, these other mental states are interlinked with each other, stimuli, and behavior in a web of causal relations. This allows both an appearance of choice (“Shall I respond in this way?”) and the presence of beliefs independent of any possible behaviour.<br />
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The model also differs from identity theory in that it does not matter what the physical cause of the mental state is because a causal role can be defined independently of its physical realization (that is, because functional states are multiply realizable). So, whether my brain state is always the same when I do a particular thing, or whether it is consistent with other people’s or animals when they do, is immaterial because there are any number of different ways in which such an experience might be “realised”. Rather than define pain in terms of C-fiber firing, functionalism defines pain in terms of the causal role it plays in our mental life: causing avoidance behavior, warning us of danger, etc., in response to certain environmental stimuli.<br />
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Problems</h3>
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<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Consciousness remains deeply mysterious on anyone’s view. We have no idea how to accommodate consciousness to the material world, no idea how to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. <u><b>Chinese Mind Argument</b>:</u> The philosopher Ned Block has argued that a case could be made for creating a mind - according to the functional definition - on a grand scale where the population of China was fitted with radios which were connected up in just the same way that the neurons in the brain are connected up, and messages passed between them in the same way as between neurons. According to functionalism, this should create a mind; Functionalism relies on the idea that Functional states are “multiply realisable” – an idea which means that, not only may aliens and animals experience pain, but robots and the whole Chinese nation as well. But it is very difficult to believe that there would be a ‘Chinese consciousness’. If the Chinese system replicated the state of my brain when I feel pain, would something be in pain?</li>
<li>We said that you being in pain is a matter of your being in a particular state, one that stands in appropriate causal relations to sensory inputs, to output behavior, and to other states of mind. But if we keep analyzing states of Mind with other states of Mind we end with infinite circular accounts. <b><u>Solution</u></b>: The idea is that because the identity of every state depends on relations it bears to other states, we cannot characterize mental items piecemeal, butonly ‘holistically’ – all at once.</li>
<li>Qualia Problem. <b><u>Solution</u></b>:You are able to describe your experience as of a spherical red object, but it is the tomato that is spherical and red, not your experience. So the first distinction is between:<ol>
<li>Qualities of experiences (seen from third person perspective, like a scientist looking at your brain while you are seeing a tomato) </li>
<li>Qualities of objects experienced. (Seen from a first person perspective like you seeing a red and round tomato) </li>
</ol>
A functionalist might contend that an experience is a matter of your representing a throbbing occurrence in your big toe but nothing in fact throbs. In the state of a tomato, nothing is red or round, only we represent it like this. These are qualities we represent objects as having, but it does not follow that anything actually has the qualities – any more than from the fact that we can represent mermaids, it follows that mermaids exist. What opponents of functionalism describe as qualities of conscious experiences – qualia – are qualities of nothing at all! They are rather qualities we mistakenly represent objects and occurrences as having. Alternatively, to say that your experience possesses such qualities is just to say that you are representing something as having them.
<u style="font-weight: bold;">Problem:</u> But why do we represent them like this? And why are different conscious experiences have different qualities? And why this representation can be sensed?</li>
<li><b><u>Chinese Room Argument: </u></b>Any theory of mind that includes multiple realizability allows for the existence of strong AI. The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds. The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese? Searle calls the first position "strong AI" and the latter "weak AI". This is considered an argument for refutation of functionalism mainly. </li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<h3>
Chinese Room</h3>
Searle's Chinese room argument holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind", "understanding" or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave. The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese? Searle calls the first position "strong AI" and the latter "weak AI". This is considered an argument for refutation of functionalism mainly.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Suppose that I ’ m locked in a room and given a large batch of Chinese writing. I know no Chinese, either written or spoken. Now suppose further that after this fi rst batch of Chinese writing I am given a second batch of Chinese script together with a set of rules for correlating the second batch with the first batch. The rules are in English, and I understand these rules. They enable me to correlate one set of formal symbols with another set of formal symbols, and all that “ formal ” means here is that I can identify the symbols entirely by their shapes. Unknown to me, the people who are giving me all of these symbols call the call the [first] batch “ questions. ” Furthermore, they call the symbols I give them back in response to the [first] batch “ answers to the questions, ” and the set of rules in English that they gave me, they call “ the program. ” Suppose also that after a while I get so good at following the instructions for manipulating the Chinese symbols and the programmers get so good at writing the programs that from the external points of view – that is, from the point of view of somebody outside the room in which I am locked – my answers to the questions are absolutely indistinguishable from those of native Chinese speakers. As regards the [claims of strong AI], it seems to me quite obvious in the example that I do not understand a word of Chinese. I have inputs and outputs that are indistinguishable from those of the native Chinese speaker, and I can have any formal program you like, but I still understand nothing. (Searle, 417 – 18)</blockquote>
Any account of meaning has to recognize the distinction between the symbols, construed as purely abstract syntactical entities, and the semantics, the meanings attached to those symbols. The symbols have to be distinguished from their meanings. For example, if I write down a sentence in German, “Es regnet,” you will see words on the page and thus see the syntactical objects, but if you do not know German, you will be aware only of the syntax, not of the semantics. A program uses syntax to manipulate symbols and pays no attention to the semantics of the symbols, unlike our thoughts have meaning: they represent things and we know what it is they represent.<br />
<br />
If Searle doesn't understand Chinese solely on the basis of running the right rules, then neither does a computer solely on the basis of running the right program. All that is ever happening is rule-based activity (which is not how humans work), so manipulating symbols according to a program is not enough by itself to guarantee cognition, perception, understanding, thinking, and so forth; that is, the creation of minds. Searle's room can pass the Turing test, but still does not have a mind, then the Turing test is not sufficient to determine if the room has a "mind".<br />
<br />
<h4>
Replies on the Chinese Room Argument</h4>
<br />
<h4>
The System Reply</h4>
<br />
The basic "system reply" argues that it is the "whole system" that understands Chinese. While the man understands only English, when he is combined with the program, scratch paper, pencils and file cabinets, they form a system that can understand Chinese.<br />
<br />
Searle responds by simplifying this list of physical objects: he asks what happens if the man memorizes the rules and keeps track of everything in his head? Then the whole system consists of just one object: the man himself. But he still would have no way to attach “any meaning to the formal symbols”. The man would now be the entire system, yet he still would not understand Chinese. For example, he would not know the meaning of the Chinese word for hamburger. Searle argues that if the man doesn't understand Chinese then the system doesn't understand Chinese either because now "the system" and "the man" both describe exactly the same object.</div>
<div>
<br />
But what do we mean by understanding the symbols of a language? is it the link between a word and idea from the memory? Can't a computer do that? We learn rules of manipulation and when to use them, a computer can also learn them. When we hear a word, we try to recall its meaning, a computer can also do that. So it all depends on what one means by “understand”.<br />
<br />
<h4>
The Robot Reply</h4>
<br />
Some critics concede Searle's claim that just running a natural language processing program as described in the CR scenario does not create any understanding, whether by a human or a computer system. But these critics hold that a variation on the computer system could understand. The variant might be a computer embedded in a robotic body, having interaction with the physical world via sensors and motors (“The Robot Reply”).<br />
<br />
The Robot Reply concedes Searle is right about the Chinese Room scenario: it shows that a computer trapped in a computer room cannot understand language, or know what words mean. The Robot reply is responsive to the problem of knowing the meaning of the Chinese word for hamburger—Searle's example of something the room operator would not know. It seems reasonable to hold that we know what a hamburger is because we have seen one, and perhaps even made one, or tasted one, or at least heard people talk about hamburgers and understood what they are by relating them to things we do know by seeing, making, and tasting. Given this is how one might come to know what hamburgers are, the Robot Reply suggests that we put a digital computer in a robot body, with sensors, such as video cameras and microphones, and add effectors, such as wheels to move around with, and arms with which to manipulate things in the world. Such a robot—a computer with a body—could do what a child does, learn by seeing and doing. The Robot Reply holds that such a digital computer in a robot body, freed from the room, could attach meanings to symbols and actually understand natural language. </div>
<div>
<br />
Tim Crane discusses the Chinese Room argument in his 1991 book, The Mechanical Mind. Crane appears to end with a version of the Robot Reply: “Searle's argument itself begs the question by (in effect) just denying the central thesis of AI—that thinking is formal symbol manipulation. But Searle's assumption, none the less, seems to me correct … the proper response to Searle's argument is: sure, Searle-in-the-room, or the room alone, cannot understand Chinese. But if you let the outside world have some impact on the room, meaning or ‘semantics' might begin to get a foothold. But of course, this concedes that thinking cannot be simply symbol manipulation.”</div>
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Conclusion</h3>
<br />
The theory is obviously lacking, but In the absence of clear competitors, many theorists have opted to stick with functionalism despite what they admit are gaps and deficiencies, atleast until something better emerges. In this way, functionalism wins by default.</div>
</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-14228088495376545632015-05-11T17:21:00.000+02:002015-07-29T10:37:22.907+02:00Physicalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The theory states that when we experience something - e.g. pain - this is exactly reflected by a corresponding neurological state in the brain (such as the interaction of certain neurons, axons, etc.). From this point of view, your mind is your brain - they are identical. Mental events are in fact physical events. Modern technology allows us to map brain activity to specific areas of the brain. MRI has allowed scientists to study the structure and activity of the brain in detail. It is able to track blood flow. This allows us to see which areas of the brain are active when certain prescribed activities are performed.<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Type identity</h3>
<br />
Type physicalism asserts that mental events can be grouped into types, and can then be correlated with types of physical events in the brain. For example, Everytime anyone is happy, there is the same corresponding brain state. It is sometimes called the “identity thesis” because it asserted an identity between mental states and brain states.<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Critiques</h3>
Is it likely that the brain structures of all mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and molluscs realize pain, or other mental states, in exactly the same way? Do they even have the same brain structures? Clearly not. How is it possible then that they can share the same mental states and properties? The answer had to be that these mental kinds were realized by different physical states in different species.<br />
<br />
Can we really say that all my happy moods have something in common? If I write down the defining characteristics of all my different moods, won’t I find that some very different moods have a lot in common (fear and excitement, for instance)? So, doesn't this suggest that – even if brain states are mental states – all happy states might correspond to a range of very different brain states? And this idea was responsible for a refinement of the theory known as Token Identity Theory.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Token identity</h3>
<br />
Token identity physicalism, argues that mental events are unlikely to have "steady" or categorical biological correlates. These positions make use of the philosophical type–token distinction (e.g., having the same "type" (abstract general entities ex. car) need not mean same "token" (particular objects ex. BMW or a certain vehicle). A token of a type is a particular concrete exemplification of that abstract general type. We can see how the identity theorists were motivated to move from a type-type identity theory to a token-token identity theory. The token-token identity theorists did not require, for example, that all token pains had to exemplify exactly the same type of brain state. They might be tokens of different types of brain states even though they were all tokens of the same mental type, pain.<br />
<h3>
</h3>
<h3>
Critiques</h3>
<br />
The first technical objection was that the theory seemed to violate a principle of logic called “Leibnitz’s Law.” The law says that if any two things are identical, then they must have all their properties in common. So if you could show that mental states had properties that could not be attributed to brain states, and brain states had properties that could not be attributed to mental states, it looks like you would refute the identity theory. For example, for conscious states that have a location, such as pain, the pain may be in my toe, but the brain state that corresponds to that pain is not in my toe, but in my brain. So the properties of the brain state are not the same as the properties of the mental state. Therefore, physicalism is false.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Putnam</h3>
<br />
In several papers published by Hilary Putnam in the late 1960s, he argued that, contrary to the famous claim of type-identity theory, it was not true that "pain is identical to C-fibre firing." It is possible that pain corresponds to, or is at least correlated with, completely different physical states of the nervous system in different organisms and yet they all experience the same mental state of "being in pain." Putnam cited numerous examples from all over the animal kingdom to illustrate his thesis. Is it likely that the brain structures of all mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and molluscs realize pain, or other mental states, in exactly the same way? Do they even have the same brain structures? Clearly not, if we are to believe the evidence furnished by comparative neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. How is it possible then that they can share the same mental states and properties? The answer had to be that these mental kinds were realized by different physical states in different species.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Thus, if we can find even one psychological predicate which can clearly be applied to both a mammal and an octopus (say, “ hungry ” ), but whose physical – chemical “ correlate ” is different in the two cases, the brain state theory has collapsed. It seems to me overwhelmingly probable that we can do this. (Putnam, 436) </blockquote>
P1. If type - physicalism is true, then every mental property can be realized in exactly one physical way.<br />
P2. It is empirically highly plausible that mental properties are capable of multiple realizations.<br />
C1. It is (empirically) highly plausible that the view of type - physicalism is false ( modus tollens , P1, P2).<br />
<br />
In addition to undermining type - physicalism, Putnam ’s argument paved the way for the functionalist view of the mind.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Qualia</h3>
<br />
Given the scientific identification of heat with the motion of molecules, there is no further explanation that needs to be given:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"our knowledge of chemistry and physics makes intelligible how it is that something like the motion of molecules could play the causal role we associate with heat…. Once we understand how this causal role is carried out there is nothing more we need to understand." (Levine 1983) </blockquote>
In contrast, when we are told that pain is to be identified with some neural or functional state, while we have learned quite a bit, there is still something left unexplained. Suppose, for example, that we precisely identify the neural mechanism that accounts for pain—C-fiber firing, let's say. Still, a further question would remain: Why does our experience of pain feel the way that it does? Why does C-fiber firing feel like this, rather than like that, or rather than nothing at all? Identifying pain with C-fiber firing fails to provide us with a complete explanation along the lines of the identification of heat with the motion of molecules. Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), the famous physicist, had this counter-materialist take:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The sensation of color cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so.</blockquote>
This qualitative feel is called “qualia,” of which the singular is quale. Qaulia are the contents of your subjectiive experience, how the world looks and feels to you. Examples for it include how pain feels, how red looks, how a rose smells. There is a qualitative feel to drinking juice, which is different from the qualitative feel of listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Qaulia cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any other means than direct experience. For example colors, could you describe how a color looks to a blind person? you can only explain it to someone who already knows it. All materialist theories like functionalism deny their existence, so they are false. A full look on their types may include:<br />
<div>
</div>
<ol>
<li>Perceptual experiences, for example,experiences of the sort involved in seeing green, hearing loud trumpets smelling the sea air, running one's fingers over sandpaper. </li>
<li>Bodily sensations, for example, feeling a twinge of pain, feeling an itch, feeling hungry, having a stomach ache, feeling hot, feeling dizzy. Think here also of experiences such as those present during orgasm or while running flat-out. </li>
<li>Felt reactions or passions , for example, feeling delight, lust, fear, love, feeling grief, jealousy, regret. </li>
<li>Felt moods, for example, feeling happy, depressed, calm, bored, tense, miserable.</li>
</ol>
Qualia can’t be analysed in terms of functional role; so functionalism can’t explain it, it would leave out the subjective, qualitative, first-person, experiential phenomena. Consciousness involves a ‘point of view’, and there is something it is like, for a conscious creature, to be that creatures. Feeling pain causes you to cry out or withdraw your hand from the fire. But the feeling of the pain isn’t just these causal relations.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Mary's room</h4>
<br />
Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘ red ’ , ‘ blue ’ , and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘ The sky is blue ’ .What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will earn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all physical knowledge. Ergo there is more to have than that, and physicalism is false. (Jackson “ Epiphenomenal Qualia, ” 130)<br />
<br />
The point of the argument is that there exist real phenomena that are necessarily left out of the scope of their knowledge, as long as their knowledge is only of objective, third-person, physical facts. The real phenomena are color experiences and the bat’s feelings, respectively; and these are subjective, first-person, conscious phenomena. The problem in Mary’s case is not just that she lacks information about some other phenomenon; rather, there is a certain type of experience that she has not yet had. And that experience, a first-person subjective phenomenon, cannot be identical with the third-person, objective neuronal and functional correlates.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Zombie Argument </h4>
<br />
Many philosophers, including Chalmers in his book "The Conscious Mind", have recently claimed that we can coherently imagine the existence of zombies. This claim is taken to imply the possibility of zombies, a claim that in turn is taken to imply the falsity of physicalism. The zombies are by definition exactly like us physically. But if two creatures alike physically can differ with respect to consciousness, then it seems to show that consciousness is something over and above the physical. This argument says it is conceivable that my body could exist and be exactly as it is, but without my mind, therefore my mind is not identical with my body, or any part of, or any functioning of my body. It is sometimes suggested that God could have created a zombie world, if he had so chosen. From here, it is inferred that consciousness must be nonphysical. If there is a metaphysically possible universe that is physically identical to ours but that lacks consciousness, then consciousness must be a further, nonphysical component of our universe. If God could have created a zombie world, then (as Kripke puts it) after creating the physical processes in our world, he had to do more work to ensure that it contained consciousness.<br />
<br />
Zombie-like, non-conscious creatures that do not possess “qualia”. Such creatures, whilst fitting the Functionalist criteria for possessing a mind, could not – non-functionalists argue – be said to be human in the full sense (thereby implying that the Functionalist view is inadequate). For example, when Zack and Zombie Zack each take a bite of chocolate cake, they each have the same reaction—they smile, exclaim how good it is, lick their lips, and reach for another forkful. But whereas Zack, a phenomenally conscious being, is having a distinctive (and delightful) qualitative experience while tasting the chocolate cake, Zombie Zack is experiencing nothing at all. This suggests that Zack's consciousness is a further fact about him, over and above all the physical facts about him (since all those physical facts are true of Zombie Zack as well). Consciousness, that is, must be nonphysical.</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-49301874441858398032015-05-10T11:55:00.001+02:002015-05-10T12:09:49.709+02:00Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind (1949) is a critique of the notion that the mind is distinct from the body, and a rejection of the theory that mental states are separable from physical states. In this book Ryle refers to the idea of a fundamental distinction between mind and matter as "the ghost in the machine". According to Ryle, "Cartesian dualism", makes a basic "category-mistake".<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as 'the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine'. I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosopher's myth.</blockquote>
A category mistake is a semantic error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category or that a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property. For example:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"You are free to execute your laws and your citizens as you see fit." (William Riker, Star Trek: The Next Generation)<br />"[They] covered themselves with dust and glory." (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)<br />"Eggs and oaths are soon broken." (English proverb)<br />"A house they call the rising sun, where love and money are made." (Dolly Parton's rendition of House of the Rising Sun)</blockquote>
The first example Ryle gives is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the colleges and library, reportedly inquired “But where is the University?" The visitor's mistake is presuming that a University is part of the category "units of physical infrastructure" or some such thing, rather than the category "institutions", say, which are far more abstract and complex conglomerations of buildings, people, procedures, and so on, all what he have seen.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks 'But' where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University.' It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if `the University' stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong.</blockquote>
Cartesian dualism attempts to analyze the relation between "mind" and "body" as if they were terms of the same logical category, it speaks of mind and body as a substance, which is of course wrong. So it mistakenly assumes that a mental act could be and is distinct from a physical act, or even that a mental world could be and is distinct from the physical world. For example Thomas Szasz argued that minds are not the sort of things that can be said to be diseased or ill because they belong to the wrong category and that "illness" is a term that can only be ascribed to things like the body. This theory of the separability of mind and body is described by Ryle as "the dogma of the ghost in the machine". For him, there is no entity called "Mind" inside a mechanical apparatus called "the body". Then, dualist doctrines are mythic in an analytical sense.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this. It maintains that there exist bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements. 'I shall argue that these and other analogous conjunctions are absurd; but, it must be noticed, the argument will not show that either of the illegitimately conjoined propositions is absurd in itself.' I am not, for example, denying that there occur mental processes. Doing long division is a mental process and so is making a joke. But I am saying that the phrase 'there occur mental processes' does not mean the same sort of thing as 'there occur physical processes', and, therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two.</blockquote>
Ryle asserted that the workings of the mind are not distinct from the actions of the body. They are one and the same. Mental vocabulary is, he insists, merely a different manner of describing action. He also claimed that the nature of a person's motives is defined by that person's dispositions to act in certain situations. Mental events reduce to bodily events or statements about the body. Knowledge, memory, imagination, and other abilities or dispositions do not reside "within" the mind as if the mind were a space in which these dispositions could be placed or located.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When we describe people as exercising qualities of mind, we are not referring to occult episodes of which their overt acts and utterances are effects; we are referring to those overt acts and utterances themselves.</blockquote>
Ryle admits that his approach to the theory of mind is behavioristic in being opposed to the theory that there are hidden mental processes that are distinct from observable behaviors. His approach is based on the view that actions such as thinking, remembering, feeling, and willing are revealed by modes of behavior or by dispositions to modes of behavior. At the same time, however, he criticizes both Cartesian theory and behaviorist theory for being overly mechanistic. While Cartesian theory may insist that hidden mental events produce the behavioral responses of the conscious individual, behaviorism may insist that stimulus-response mechanisms produce the behavioral responses of the conscious individual. Ryle concludes that both Cartesian theory and behaviorist theory may be too rigid and mechanistic to provide us with an adequate understanding of the concept of mind.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It will also follow that both Idealism and Materialism are answers to an improper question. The 'reduction' of the material world to mental states and processes, as well as the 'reduction' of mental states and processes to physical states and processes, presuppose the legitimacy of the disjunction 'Either there exist minds or there exist bodies (but not both)'. It would be like saying, 'Either she bought a left-hand and a right-hand glove or she bought a pair of gloves (but not both)'.</blockquote>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Ryle's regress</h3>
The consideration of propositions is itself an operation the execution of which can be more or less intelligent, less or more stupid. But if, for any operation to be intelligently executed, a prior theoretical operation had first to be performed and performed intelligently, it would be a logical impossibility for anyone ever to break into the circle.<br />
<br />
Variants of Ryle's regress are commonly aimed at cognitivist theories. For instance, in order to explain the behavior of rats, Edward Tolman suggested that the rats were constructing a "cognitive map" that helped them locate reinforcers, and he used intentional terms (e.g., expectancies, purposes, meanings) to describe their behavior. To interpret this Cognitive map, we need a set of cognitive rules and to interpret those cognitive rules, we need another set of rules and so on.<br />
<br />
Kant's response to Ryle's regress<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But of reason one cannot say that before the state in which it determines the power of choice, another state precedes in which this state itself is determined. For since reason itself is not an appearance and is not subject at all to any conditions of sensibility, no temporal sequence takes place in it even as to its causality, and thus the dynamical law of nature, which determines the temporal sequence according to rules, cannot be applied to it.</blockquote>
In essence, Kant is saying that Reason is outside of the causative elements of the natural world and as such is not subject to the law of cause and effect. Hence, for Kant, Reason needs no prior explanation for any of its choices or volitions. Ryle's assumption is that all volitions are physicalistic processes and thus subject to cause and effect. If such is the case, then Ryle would be correct in his regress. However, if some volitions are not subject to cause and effect, per Kant, then Ryle's regress fails. The same as Wittgenstein's solution in saying "Logic Takes care of itself" or in "The propositions of logic describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather they represent it".</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-88231867771286061602015-05-10T10:49:00.003+02:002015-05-10T14:23:27.042+02:00Behaviourism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Behaviour is the range of actions that act as a response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs.<br />
<br />
The primary tenet of behaviorism, as expressed in the writings of John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and others, is that psychology should concern itself with the observable behavior of people and animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their minds. John B. Watson put the emphasis on external behavior of people and their reactions on given situations, rather than the internal, mental state of those people. In his opinion, the analysis of behaviors and reactions was the only objective method to get insight in the human actions. The mind just is the behavior of the body. For instance, if I say, "I am happy", this may be translated into a description of my physical state - increased heart rate, smiling, etc.Behaviorists acknowledged the existence of thinking, but identified it as a behavior. Cognitivists argued that the way people think impacts their behavior and therefore cannot be a behavior in and of itself.<br />
<br />
The most famous example of a behaviourist experiment is the one conducted by the Russian scientist Pavlov . In the experiment, Pavlov fed some dogs whilst simultaneously ringing a bell. Eventually, the dogs came to associate the bell ringing with being fed and began to salivate. In this way, one stimulus (the food) could be replaced with another which otherwise had no connection with it (the bell) in order to produce the same reaction (salivation).<br />
<br />
Another famous expirement is the superstitious pigeon. Skinner placed a series of hungry pigeons in a cage attached to an automatic mechanism that delivered food to the pigeon "at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird's behavior." He discovered that the pigeons associated the delivery of the food with whatever chance actions they had been performing as it was delivered, and that they subsequently continued to perform these same actions. One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food.<br />
<br />
Logical behaviorism says that when we attribute a belief to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead we are observing his behavioral dispositions or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in how a person behaves in one situation rather than another. Since all that we can know about another person's state of mind is through their behaviour, there is nothing else. In this way logical behaviourism is picking up where logical positivism left off. For logical positivism, the meaning of a statement is established by its method of verification. So, if there is no possible method of verification, then the statement is not a factual one and possibly meaningless. In a similar way, mental statements that cannot be translated into a statement about some actual or possible form of behaviour are considered to be meaningless. Logical behaviorism may be found in the work of Gilbert Ryle (1900–76)<br />
<br />
Critiques<br />
<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Chomsky claimed that the idea that when we study psychology we are studying behavior is as unintelligent as the idea that when we study physics we are studying meter readings. Of course we use behavior as evidence in psychology, just as we use meter readings as evidence in physics, but it is a mistake to confuse the evidence that we have about a subject matter for the subject matter itself.</li>
<li>Behaviorists would analyze Jones’s belief that it is going to rain into sets of statements about his rain-avoidance behavior, for example carrying an umbrella. But the difficulty with that is that we can only begin to make such a reduction on the assumption that Jones desires to stay dry. We did not really reduce the belief to behavior; we reduced it to behavior plus desire, which still leaves us with a mental state that needs to be analyzed.</li>
<li>The logical behaviorists had argued that mental states consisted in nothing but behavior and dispositions to behavior, but this runs against our common sense intuition that there is a causal relation between our inner mental states and our outward behavior.</li>
<li>Two people can watch the same film and react in opposite ways: one might hate it, the other one love it. So if we cannot predict how someone will react in a certain situation, then how can we be certain that they are just responding to stimuli and not actually thinking and choosing with a private self?</li>
<li>Another problem is related to the idea of Zombies or robots. In such imaginary cases, the behaviourist view would not give us any criteria for distinguishing them from “normal” humans.</li>
<li>Different behaviours can result from the same stimulus. Imagine that you hear the doorbell - how do you react? Perhaps you run to answer it because you are expecting an important visitor; perhaps you ignore it; etc. In other words, there is no one response that can be linked to the same stimulus. So, if this is the case, what causes us to behave differently? The non-behaviourist would answer that it is our beliefs. However, this is a problem for the behaviourist in that it presupposes something that cannot be explained simply in terms of actual or possible behaviour.</li>
<li>Different stimuli can produce the same response. As with the previous example, it is also difficult to say that there is a definite relationship between a certain type of stimulus and a certain response. For example, someone might laugh at someone falling over, seeing a photograph or from hearing a story - whilst someone else might not laugh at any of those things. In other words, there is no certain, one-to-one relationship between a stimulus and a response. If this is so, must we again say that beliefs are responsible for this?</li>
</ol>
</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-90842770560024548042015-04-22T10:30:00.001+02:002015-05-12T08:37:08.065+02:00Way of the Peaceful Warrior<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The first realization of a warrior is not knowing.<br />
<br />
My ignorance is based on this understanding. Your understanding is based on ignorance. This is why I am a humorous fool, and you are a serious jackass.<br />
<br />
Everything has a purpose, Danny; it‘s for you to make the best use of it.<br />
<br />
It's just one of the body's changes. When it happens, it happens. The warrior neither seeks nor flees from death.<br />
<br />
Reading the future is based on a realistic perception of the present. Don't be concerned about seeing the future until you can clearly see the present<br />
<br />
Knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Wisdom is the application of knowledge at the right time.<br />
<br />
One is insight, the willing of attention, the channeling of awareness to focus precisely on what you want to see. The other process is surrendering, letting go of all arising thoughts. That is real meditation; that is how you cut free of the mind.<br />
<br />
Ultimately, you will learn to meditate your every action.<br />
<br />
Because your greatest fear is death and your deepest craving is survival. You want Forever, you desire Eternity. In your deluded belief that you are this 'mind' or 'spirit' or 'soul', you find the escape clause in your contract with mortality. Perhaps as 'mind' you can wing free of the body when it dies, hmm??<br />
<br />
Fear and sorrow inhibit action‘ anger generates is. When you learn to make proper use of your anger, you can change fear and sorrow to anger, then turn anger to action. That‘s the body‘s secret of internal alchemy.<br />
<br />
The right use of gymnastic to focus your full attention and feeling on your actions; then you will achieve satori. Gymnastics draws you into the moment of truth, when your life is on the line, like a dueling samurai. It demands your full attention: satori or die!?<br />
<br />
And I felt a growing power, a wave of fury at all those who said I'd never perform again. My passion turned to icy calm. There, in that moment, my fate and future seemed in balance. My mind cleared. My emotions surged with power. Do or die.<br />
<br />
Warriors, warriors we call ourselves. We fight for splendid virtue, for high endeavor, for sublime wisdom, therefore we call ourselves warriors. — Aunguttara Nikaya a Buddhist scripture.<br />
<br />
That was to develop your will, you see, and to give your instincts a refresher course. And we can say that habit itself--any unconscious, compulsive ritual--is negative. But specific activities-smoking, drinking, taking drugs, eating sweets, or asking silly questions are bad and good; every action has its price, and its pleasures. Recognizing both sides, you become realistic and responsible for your actions. And only then can you make the warrior's free choice--to do or not to do.<br />
<br />
Responsibility means recognizing both pleasure and price, making a choice based on that recognition, and then living with that choice without concern.<br />
<br />
So whether or not my behavior meets your new standards or not, it should be clear to you that I have mastered all compulsions, all behavior. I have no habits; my actions are conscious, intentional, and complete.?<br />
<br />
It was over; I was through being a slave to random impulses.<br />
<br />
Why I call myself a Peaceful Warrior? Because the real battles we fight are on the inside.<br />
<br />
Find your answers from inside.<br />
<br />
Events may create physical pain but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is? the only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds.<br />
<br />
Never struggle with anyone or anything. When you’re pushed, pull; when you’re pulled, push.<br />
<br />
Granted that you may, in fact, experience the mind of a warrior on occasion; resolute, flexible, clear, and free of doubt. You can develop the body of a warrior, lithe, supple, sensitive, and filled with energy. In rare moments, you may even feel the heart of a warrior, loving everything and everyone who appears before you. But these qualities are fragmented in you. You lack integration. My task is to put you back together again, Humpty.<br />
<br />
There are no ordinary moments.<br />
<br />
This moment is the only thing that matters.<br />
<br />
Where are you? Here<br />
What time is it? Now<br />
What are you? This moment.<br />
<br />
The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.<br />
<br />
If you have enough money to satisfy your desires, Dan, you are rich. But there are two ways to be rich: You can earn, inherit, borrow, beg, or steal enough money to meet expensive desires; or, you can cultivate a simple lifestyle of few desires; that way you always have more than enough money.<br />
<br />
The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.<br />
<br />
If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.<br />
<br />
Wake up! Wake up! Soon the person you believe you are will die - so now, wake up and be content with this knowledge: there is no need to search; achievement leads to nowhere. It makes no difference at all, so just be happy now! Love is the only reality of the world, because it is all ONE, you see. And the only laws are paradox, humor, and change. There is no problem, never was, and never will be. Release your struggle, let go of your mind, throw away your concerns, and relax into the world. No need to resist life; just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are for more than you imagine. you are the world, you are the universe; you are yourself and everyone else too! It's all the marvelous Play of God. Wake up, regain your humor. Don't worry, just be happy. You are already free!<br />
<br />
I looked aimlessly at the clouds below, drained of ambition. All these years I had been sustained by an illusion--happiness through victory--and now that illusion was burned to ashes. I was no happier, no more fulfilled, for all my achievements.<br />
<br />
Finally I saw through the clouds. I saw that I had never learned how to enjoy life, only how to achieve. All my life I had been busy seeking happiness, but never finding or sustaining it.</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-41897507107613963922015-04-13T15:40:00.002+02:002015-04-14T11:59:55.864+02:00The Book Of Five Rings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Swordsman Miyamoto Mausashi had written The Book of the Five Rings with a practical approach to swordsmanship, on how to use the sword, where to stand and use the sun or shadows. For him, the point of battle was not showmanship it was winning.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
THE GROUND BOOK</h3>
<br />
It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of the pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways.<br />
<br />
The Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.<br />
<br />
In short, the Way of the Ichi school is the spirit of winning, whatever the weapon and whatever its size. This is the practical result of strategy.<br />
<br />
This is the Way for men who want to learn my strategy:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Do not think dishonestly.</li>
<li>The Way is in training.</li>
<li>Become acquainted with every art.</li>
<li>Know the Ways of professions.</li>
<li>Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.</li>
<li>Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.</li>
<li>Perceive those things which cannot be seen.</li>
<li>Pay attention even to trifles.</li>
<li>Do nothing which is of no use. </li>
</ol>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
THE WATER BOOK</h3>
<br />
With water as the basis, the spirit becomes like water. Water adopts the shape of its receptacle, it is sometimes a trickle and sometimes a wild sea. Water has a clear blue color. Be neither insufficiently spirited nor over spirited. An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let the enemy see your spirit.<br />
<br />
You should not have a favorite weapon. To become over-familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well. You should not copy others, but use weapons which you can handily properly.<br />
<br />
Look at things from a high point of view. The commander must know natural rules, and the rules of the country, and the rules of houses. He should take into account the abilities and limitations of his men, circulating among them and asking nothing unreasonable. He should know their morale and spirit, and encourage them when necessary. You must cultivate your wisdom and spirit. Polish your wisdom: learn public justice, distinguish between good and evil, study the Ways of different arts one by one, so that you can understand the enemy's stratagems, his strength and resources, and come to appreciate how to apply strategy to beat ten thousand enemies. When you cannot be deceived by men you will have realized the wisdom of strategy. It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
THE FIRE BOOK</h3>
<br />
If you are thoroughly conversant with strategy, you will recognize the enemy's intentions and thus have many opportunities to win. See through the enemy's spirit so that you grasp his strategy and perceive his quality and his strong and weak points to defeat him. This is because, if you attack quickly and thoughtlessly without knowing the enemy's spirit, your rhythm will become deranged and you will not be able to win. If you advance too slowly, you will not be able to take advantage of the enemy's disorder, the opportunity to win will escape, and you will not be able to finish the fight quickly.<br />
<br />
The important thing in strategy is to suppress the enemy's useful actions but allow his useless actions. It is bad to be led about by the enemy. You must always be able to lead the enemy about and make him obey your spirit. Attack in an unsuspecting manner, knowing his meter and modulation and the appropriate timing. Knowing the times means seeing right into things. You must force the enemy into inconvenient situations. Attack where his spirit is lax, throw him into confusion, irritate and terrify him.<br />
<br />
Examine your environment. You must make the best of the situation.<br />
<br />
When you and the enemy are contending with the same spirit, and the issue cannot be decided. Abandon this spirit by changing our mind and applying a suitable technique according to his condition.<br />
<br />
In single combat, if the enemy takes up a rear or side attitude of the long sword so that you cannot see his intention, make a feint attack, and the enemy will show his long sword, thinking he sees your spirit.<br />
<br />
In single combat, you can win by relaxing your body and spirit and then, catching on to the moment the enemy relaxes, attack strongly and quickly, forestalling him. What is know as getting someone drunk is similar to this. You can also infect the enemy with a bored, careless, or weak spirit. When your opponent is hurrying recklessly, you must act contrarily and keep calm. You must not be influenced by the opponent.<br />
<br />
In large-scale strategy it is important to cause loss of balance. Observing the enemy's spirit, we can make him think, "Here? There? Like that? Like this? Slow? Fast?". Victory is certain when the enemy is caught up in a rhythm which confuses his spirit. In single combat, we can confuse the enemy by attacking with varied techniques when the chance arises. Feint a thrust or cut, or make the enemy think you are going to close with him, and when he is confused you can easily win.<br />
<br />
Fright often occurs, caused by the unexpected. In large-scale strategy you can frighten the enemy not just by what you present to their eyes, but by shouting, making a small force seem large, or by threatening them from the flank without warning. These things all frighten. You can win by making best use of the enemy's frightened rhythm. In single combat, also, you must use the advantage of taking the enemy unawares by frightening him with your body, long sword, or voice, to defeat him.<br />
<br />
It is difficult to move strong things by pushing directly, so you should injure the corners". In single combat, it is easy to win once the enemy collapses. This happens when you injure the corners of his body, and thus weaken him.<br />
<br />
If you once make an attack and fail, there is little chance of success if you use the same approach again. If you attempt a technique which you have previously tried unsuccessfully and fail yet again, then you must change your attacking method. If the enemy thinks of the mountains, attack like the sea; and if he thinks of the sea, attack like the mountains.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
THE WIND BOOK</h3>
<br />
Perception and sight are the two methods of seeing. Perception consists of concentrating strongly on the enemy's spirit, observing the condition of the battlefield, fixing the gaze strongly, seeing the progress of the fight and the changes of advantages. This is the sure way to win.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
THE EMPTINESS BOOK</h3>
<br />
By Emptiness I mean that which has no beginning and no end. Attaining this principle means not attaining the principle. The Way of strategy is the Way of nature. When you appreciate the power of nature, knowing the rhythm of any situation, you will be able to hit the enemy naturally and strike naturally. All this is the Way of the Emptiness. There is no timing in the Emptiness.<br />
<br />
There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. You win battles with the timing in the Emptiness born of the timing of cunning by knowing the enemies' timing, and thus using a timing which the enemy does not expect. We shout during the fight to get into rhythm.<br />
<br />
When the enemy attacks and you also decide to attack, hit with your body, and hit with your spirit, and hit from the Emptiness with your hands, accelerating strongly. This is the No Design, No Conception cut. This is the most important method of hitting.<br />
<br />
In the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded and your self is free, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true Emptiness.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The Way of Walking Alone</h3>
<br />
Musashi, a week before he died in 1645, wrote this short summary of his way. It was largely composed on the occasion of Musashi giving away his possessions in preparation for death, and was dedicated to his favorite disciple, Terao Magonojo, who took them to heart.<br />
<br />
1. Accept everything just the way it is<br />
2. Do not seek pleasure for its own sake<br />
3. Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling<br />
4. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world<br />
5. Be detached from desire your whole life long<br />
6. Do not regret what you have done<br />
7. Never be jealous<br />
8. Never let yourself be saddened by a separation<br />
9. Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself or others<br />
10. Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love<br />
11. In all things have no preferences<br />
12. Be indifferent to where you live<br />
13. Do not pursue the taste of good food<br />
14. Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need<br />
15. Do not act following customary beliefs<br />
16. Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful<br />
17. Do not fear death<br />
18. Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age<br />
19. Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help<br />
20. You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honour<br />
21. Never stray from the Way</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-29909324501499856712015-04-08T16:19:00.001+02:002015-04-10T10:27:12.662+02:00Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Way of the Samurai is in the death of his ego, so he selflessly lives a life that embraces death with honor. So deals with the transcendental area including both life and death. If man considers himself dead, he will live his life in complete peace.</blockquote>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Accepting Death is the only way to be free</h3>
<br />
The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one's aim is to die a dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one's aim. We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one's aim is a dog's death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai. If by setting one's heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Be always prepared, you may not have time</h3>
<br />
Although all things are not to be judged in this manner, I mention it in the investigation of the Way of the Samurai. When the time comes, there is no moment for reasoning. And if you have not done your inquiring beforehand , there is most often shame. Reading books and listening to people's talk are for the purpose of prior resolution. Above all, the Way of the Samurai should be in being aware that you do not know what is going to happen next, and in querying every item day and night. Victory and defeat are matters of the temporary force of circumstances.<br />
<br />
A person who knows but a little will put on an air of knowledge. This is a matter of inexperience. When someone knows something well, it will not be seen in his manner.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Live in the moment and free your mind from anything else.</h3>
<br />
There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
A Samurai's Vows</h3>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Never be outdone in the Way of the Samurai.</li>
<li>To be of good use to the master.</li>
<li>To be filial toward my parents.</li>
<li>To manifest great compassion, and to act for the sake of Man.</li>
</ol>
</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-15857780269815456122015-03-19T16:46:00.003+02:002015-03-27T22:11:55.008+02:00Principia Ethica by Moore<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer. </blockquote>
<span style="line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">All ethical questions fall under one or other of three classes:</span><br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>What is good?</li>
<li><span style="line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">What things are good in themselves or has an intrinsic value?</span></li>
<li>What kind of actions ought we to perform or what is the right action to do? (Practical Ethics)</li>
</ol>
<div>
Moore argues that a great part of the vast disagreements prevalent in Ethics is to be attributed to failure in analysis and in differentiation between the 3 questions. Unless we know what good means, unless we know what is meant by that notion in itself, as distinct from what is meant by any other notion:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>We shall not be able to tell when we are dealing with Good and when we are dealing with something else, which is perhaps like it in some aspects, but not the same. </li>
<li>We can never know on what evidence an ethical proposition rests. We cannot favor one judgment that this or that is good, or be against another judgment that this or that is bad.</li>
</ol>
By the use of conceptions which involve both that of intrinsic value and that of causal relation, as if they involved intrinsic value only, philosophers found in answering questions 2 and 3, an adequate definition of Ethics and not that they are defined by the fact that they predicate a single unique objective concept. This what Moore calls the "<u>Naturalistic Fallacy</u>", i.e equating a property with a thing that has a relation to this property, ex. this property possess the thing (Good possess pleasure so Good is pleasure) or equating a means with a property as an end (an action which is a means to pleasure is Good so Good is pleasure). Accordingly we face two problems with Philosophers' ethical systems:</div>
<div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Confusing Question 1 with Question 2 in which the casual relation is "Possession"</li>
<li>Confusing Question 1 with Question 3 in which the causal relation is "Means"</li>
</ol>
<div>
<div>
The source of this confusion, is that <u>Good is undefinabl</u>e. Good is a simple notion, just as yellow is a simple notion; that it isn't composed of any parts, which we can substitute for it in our minds when we are thinking of it because they are the ultimate terms of reference to which whatever is capable of definition must be defined, there is no relevant evidence whatsoever which can be cited from any other truth, except themselves alone. Therefore, we cannot define "Good" by explaining it in other words; we can only point to an action or a thing and say "That is good." It can only be shown. We can only show a sighted person a piece of yellow paper and say "That is yellow." So just as you cannot explain "what yellow is" to anyone who does not already know what a color is, you cannot also explain what good is. So Good is self-evident. By saying that a proposition is self-evident, we mean emphatically that it is appearing so to us, is not the reason why it is true: for we mean that <u>it has absolutely no reason</u>. </div>
<div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Consider yellow, for example. We may try to define it, by describing its physical equivalent; we may state what kind of light-vibrations must stimulate the normal eye, in order that we may perceive it. But a moment’s reflection is sufficient to show that those light-vibrations are not themselves what we mean by yellow. They are not what we perceive. The most we can be entitled to say of those vibrations is that they are what corresponds in space to the yellow which we actually perceive.</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<div>
There must be an indefinite number of such undefinable terms; since we cannot define anything except by an analysis, which when carried as far as it will go, refers us to something, which is simply different from anything else, and which by that ultimate difference explains the peculiarity of the whole which we are defining: for every whole contains some parts which are common to other wholes also.</div>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Every one does in fact understand the question "Is this good"? When he thinks of it, his state of mind is different from what it would be, were he asked Is this pleasant, or desired, or approved? It has a distinct meaning for him, even though he may not recognize in what respect it is distinct.</blockquote>
Moore proposes a method to know what degree of value a thing has in itself, that we should see it as if it existed in <u>absolute isolation</u>, stripped of all its usual accompaniments.<br />
<div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<br /></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The First Problem (Equating a property with a thing that possesses this property)</h3>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
One philosopher, for instance, will affirm that good is pleasure so we need to choose actions which maximize our pleasure. Another may say that good is that which is desired so we need to choose actions which fulfill our desires; and each of these will argue eagerly to prove that the other is wrong with no result because if good is defined as something else, it becomes pragmatic in nature or more specifically relativistic. Then it is impossible either to prove that any other definition is wrong or even to deny such definition. If we were bound to hold that everything which was yellow, meant exactly the same thing as yellow, we should find that we had to hold that a yellow piece of paper is exactly the same thing as a lemon or any yellow thing you like. <u>We could prove any number of absurdities</u>.</div>
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He then discusses a few concepts that show the mistakes of the philosophers whose ethical statements fall in the category of the first problem.</div>
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Organic Unity</h3>
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It has just been said that what has intrinsic value is the existence of the whole, and that this includes the existence of the part; and from this it would seem a natural inference that the existence of the part has intrinsic value. But the inference would be as false as if we were to conclude that, because the number of two stones was two, each of the stones was also two or in reverse all the parts of a picture may be meaningless unless they are put together thus making the whole meaningful. We may admit, indeed, that when a particular thing is a part of a whole, it does possess a predicate which it would not otherwise possess, that it is a part of the whole. Thus, to take a typical example, if an arm to be cut off from the human body, we still call it an arm. Yet an arm, when it is a part of the body, undoubtedly differs from a dead arm. So in considering the different degrees in which things themselves possess a property, we have to take account of the fact that <u>a whole may possess it in a degree different from that which is obtained by summing the degrees in which its parts possess it</u>. This what Moore calls the principle of <u>Organic Unity</u>.</div>
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I'll give an example related to Theodicy; courage and compassion seem to involve essentially a cognition of something evil or ugly. In the case of courage, the object of the cognition may be any kind of evil; in the case of compassion, the proper object is pain. These virtues involve a hatred of what is evil or ugly and if so, there are admirable things, which may be lost, if there were no cognition of evil. Once we recognize the principle of organic unities, any objection to this conclusion, founded on the supposed fact that the other elements of such states have no value in themselves, must disappear. It might be the case that the existence of evil was necessary, not merely as a means, but analytically, to the existence of the greatest good. But we have no reason to think that this is the case in any instance. So the right action entailing the suppression of some evil impulse, is necessary to explain the plausibility of the view that virtue consists in the control of passion by reason.<br />
Accordingly, the truth seems to be that, whenever a strong moral emotion is excited by the idea of rightness, this emotion is accompanied by a vague cognition of the kind of evils usually suppressed or avoided by the actions which most frequently occur to us as instances of duty; and that the emotion is directed towards this evil quality. We may conclude that <u>a specific moral emotion owes almost all of its intrinsic value to the fact that it includes a cognition of evils accompanied by a hatred of them</u>. </div>
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The Open Question Argument</h3>
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For it is the business of Ethics, I must insist, not only to obtain true results, but also to find valid reasons for them. The direct object of Ethics is knowledge and not practice; and any one who uses the naturalistic fallacy has certainly not fulfilled this first object, however correct his practical principles may be.</div>
</blockquote>
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Moore proposed a test to see whether goodness is identical to X. He called it The Open Question Argument which depends on our common sense and that Good is self-evident.</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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X is not identical to goodness if the question, “Is X good?” is open. </div>
</blockquote>
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Applying it in a few examples:</div>
<ol>
<li>The question, “Is pleasure good?” is open and meaningful. It makes sense to wonder about this.</li>
<li>The question, “Is pleasure pleasure?” seems settled and pointless. It doesn't make sense to wonder about this; the answer is trivially “yes.”</li>
</ol>
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The Second Problem (Equating a property with a thing that is a means to this property)</h3>
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It is plain, that any answer to the third question is capable of proof or disproof, the kind which is capable of exact definition. Such evidence must contain propositions of two kinds only: it must consist of truths with regard to the results of the action in question of causal truths, and universal ethical truths of our self-evident class, but philosophers have always missed the first part. </div>
<div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>The existence of the <u>means has no intrinsic value</u>; and its utter annihilation would leave the value of that which it is now necessary to secure entirely unchanged.</li>
<li>Whatever definition we reach through this notion, will always be false because we <u>limit the scope of "Goodness" to conduct only</u>. Good conduct is a complex notion: all conduct is not good; for some is certainly bad and some may be indifferent. On the other hand, other things, beside conduct, may be good; and if they are so, then, good denotes some property, that is common to them and to conduct; and if we examine good conduct alone of all good things, then we shall be in danger of mistaking a property which is not shared by those other things for the property that defines "Good". So we will always have a wrong definition.</li>
<li><div>
It is wrong to even claim that we can judge a thing to be good as a means is universally true, because:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>An action may be said to be impossible solely because the idea of doing it does not occur to us. In this sense, then, the alternatives which do actually occur to a man would be the only <u>possible alternatives</u>; and the best of these would be the best possible action under the circumstances.</li>
<li>We are making a judgment with regard to its causal relations: we judge both that it will have a particular kind of effect, and that that effect will be good in itself. We cannot even discover hypothetical laws of the form. Exactly this action will always, under <u>these conditions</u>, produce exactly that effect. </li>
<li>We require to know that a given action will produce a certain effect, under whatever circumstances it occurs. But this is certainly impossible. It is certain that in <u>different circumstances</u> the same action may produce effects that are utterly different in all respects upon which the value of the effects depends.</li>
<li>Hence we can never be entitled to more than a <u>generalization</u>—to a proposition of the form. This result generally follows this kind of action; and even this generalization will only be true, if the circumstances under which the action occurs are generally the same. This is in fact the case, to a great extent, within any one particular age and state of society. However, when we take other ages into account, in many of the most important cases, the normal circumstances of a given kind of action will be so different that the generalization which is true for one will not be true for another. </li>
<li>We require to know not only that one good effect will be produced, but that, among all subsequent events affected by the action in question, the balance of good will be greater than if any other possible action had been performed. In this respect, ethical judgments about the effects of an action involve a difficulty and a complication far greater than that involved in the establishment of scientific laws. For the later we need only to consider a single effect; for the former it is essential to consider not only this, but the effects of that effect, and so on as far as our view throughout an <u>infinite future</u>.</li>
<li>There is certainly no more than a <u>probability</u> that what is better in regard to its immediate effects will also be better on the whole. An ethical law has the nature not of a scientific law but of a scientific prediction: and the later is always merely probable, although the probability may be very great.</li>
<li>Since it is impossible to establish that any kind of action will produce a better total result than its alternative in all cases, it follows that in some cases the <u>neglect</u> of an established rule will probably be the best course of action possible.</li>
<li>Virtues are habitual dispositions to perform actions which are duties, or which would be duties if a volition were sufficient on the part of most men to ensure their performance. And duties are a particular class of those actions, of which the performance has, at least generally, better total results than the omission. They are, that is to say, actions generally good as means: but not all such actions are duties; the name is confined to that particular class which is often difficult to perform because there are strong temptations to the contrary. We must be able to prove that the disposition or action in question is generally better as a means than any alternatives possible and likely to occur; and this we shall only be able to prove for particular states of society: what is a <u>virtue or a duty</u> in one state of society may not be so in another.</li>
</ol>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
It follows that universal propositions of which duty is predicate, so far from being self-evident, always require a proof, which it is beyond our present means of knowledge ever to give. </div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Judgments of intrinsic value have this superiority over judgments of means that, if once true, they are always true; whereas what is a means to a good effect in one case, will not be so in another.</blockquote>
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Types of Ethical Theories</h3>
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Moore distinguishes between theories which consider goodness to consist in relation to something which exists here and now, from those which do not. According to the former (Naturalistic Ethics), Ethics is an empirical or positive science: its conclusions could be all established by means of empirical observation and induction. But this is not the case with (Metaphysical Ethics).</div>
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Naturalistic Ethics</h3>
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This system substitutes for "good" a single property of a natural object or of a collection of natural objects; and in thus replacing Ethics by one of the natural sciences. In general the science thus substituted is one of the sciences specially concerned with man, owing to the general mistake of regarding the matter of Ethics as confined to human conduct. For example, Psychology has been the science substituted as by Mill's Utilitarianism. Moore doesn't deny that good is a property of certain natural objects but he says that good itself is not a natural property. It will always remain pertinent to ask, whether a feeling itself is good; and if so, then good cannot itself be identical with any feeling. Unlike pleasure for example, "do you feel pleasure?", this is the difference between a noun and an adjective.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Well, my test for these too also concerns their existence in time. Can we imagine good as existing by itself in time, and not merely as a property of some natural object? </blockquote>
He examines one of the most famous of ethical maxims, which recommends a life according to nature, i.e what we ought to do is live naturally. That was the principle of the Stoic Ethics and also reappears in Rousseau. By applying the Open Question test, it is always an open question whether anything that is natural is good, so they aren't the same. For example are we advised to imitate savages and beasts or that we should <span style="line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">take a lesson from a cow?</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
That which reasoning would fairly lead a man to choose, cannot be had by creatures that don't reason.</blockquote>
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Evolutionary Ethics</h3>
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These teachings maintain that, we ought to move in the direction of evolution merely because it is the direction of evolution. This is a classical ("is - ought" Problem by Hume), where "All items of knowledge are either based on logic or on observation (matters of fact expressed in "is" statements), then "ought" statements (matters of value) do not seem to be known in either of these two ways, we can't deduce "ought" statements from "is" statements. So morality doesn't have any objective standard.<br />
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It was very natural to suppose that evolution meant evolution from what was lower into what was higher. But this opens the door for arguments like the following one:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>We had shown a tendency to survive the lower, such as the North American Indians. We can kill them more easily than they can kill us. </li>
<li>What we think higher may in fact be lower; let's assume an alteration in the environment (the gradual cooling of the earth, for example), may be then a quite different species from man, a species which we think infinitely lower, might survive us. </li>
<li>The judgment that evolution has been a progress is itself an independent ethical judgment; so we cannot use it as a datum from which to infer details. It can only rest on a belief that somehow the good simply means the side on which Nature is working, which is naturalistic fallacy.</li>
</ol>
<div>
So we can't even say that evolution is good or even a progress. In viewing that pleasure is the sole good, and that to consider the direction of evolution is by far the best criterion of the way in which we shall get most of it, Herbert Spencer commits three naturalistic fallacies: </div>
<div>
<div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Equating good with pleasure.</li>
<li>Equating good with whatever in the direction of evolution. For example higher or evolved with better. </li>
<li>Equating good with the acts conducive to life, in self or others, and bad with those which directly or indirectly tend towards death.</li>
</ol>
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Utilitarianism</h3>
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John Stuart Mill holds that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end. The fallacy in this step is so obvious. The desirable means simply what ought to be desired. Desirable does necessarily mean what it is good to desire; it is no longer plausible to say that our only test of that, is what is actually desired. Mill tells us that we ought to desire something (an ethical proposition), because we actually do desire it; and that is not an ethical proposition at all; it is a mere tautology. If desirable is to be identical with good, then it must bear one sense; and if it is to be identical with desired, then it must bear quite another sense.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The whole object of Mill’s book is to help us to discover what we ought to do; but in fact, by attempting to define the meaning of this ought, he has completely debarred himself from ever fulfilling that object: he has confined himself to telling us what we do do. </blockquote>
<div>
Mill’s view that some pleasures are superior to others in quality, brings out the fact that if you say pleasure, you must mean the one thing common to all different pleasures, which may exist in different degrees, but which cannot differ in kind. If as Mill claims that the kind of pleasure is to be taken into account, then you are no longer holding that pleasure alone is good as an end, since you imply that something else, something which is not present in all pleasures, is also good as an end. </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The illustration I have given from colour expresses this point in its most acute form. It is plain that if you say Colour alone is good as an end, then you can give no possible reason for preferring one colour to another. Your only standard of good and bad will then be colour; and since red and blue both conform equally to this, the only standard, you can have no other whereby to judge whether red is better than blue. It is true that you cannot have colour unless you also have one or all of the particular colours: they, therefore, if colour is the end, will all be good as means, but none of them can be better than another even as a means, far less can any one of them be regarded as an end in itself. </blockquote>
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Hedonism</h3>
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Then he criticizes another doctrine of Hedonism, which is Egoism, by pointing out that the Universal Good can't be private nor just belong to me. The only reason I can have for aiming at my own good, is that I should have something, which, if I have it, others cannot have. But if it is good absolutely that I should have it, then everyone else has as much reason for aiming at my having it, as I have myself, this leads to Altruism and not Egoism. Not all what I desire is Universal Good. A single man’s happiness should be the sole good, and also that everybody’s happiness should be the sole good, is a contradiction which cannot be solved by the assumption that the same conduct will secure both: it would be equally contradictory, however certain we were that that assumption was justified.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Everything must be either a part of universal good or else not good at all; there is no third alternative conception good for me.</blockquote>
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Metaphysical Ethics</h3>
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is quite certain that two natural objects may exist; but it is equally certain that two itself does not exist and never can. Two and two are four. But that does not mean that either two or four exists. Yet it certainly means something.</blockquote>
<div>
These systems of Ethics are characterized by the fact that they describe the Supreme Good in metaphysical terms; i.e in terms of something which they hold to exist, but not in Nature, in a super-sensible reality or an eternal reality like Kant's Kingdom of Ends. The connection of goodness with will according to Kant's Categorical Imperative, is that "what is good is always also willed in a certain way", and that "what is willed in a certain way is always also good." Every truth must mean somehow that something exists; and unlike the empiricists, they recognize some truths mean that something exists not here and now but in an eternal reality. On the same principle, since good is a predicate which neither does nor can exist, they are bound to suppose that what it means to "belong to the real world", is that goodness is transcended or absorbed in reality.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div>
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The problems with these systems are:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>They do not recognize that the question "What is good?" is a different one from the question "What is willed?" in a certain way.</li>
<li>Metaphysics may have an impact on practical Ethics—on the question "What ought we to do?"— it may be able to tell us what the future effects of our action will be: what it cannot tell us is whether those effects are good or bad in themselves. Because they don't answer the question "What is good in itself?"<div>
</div>
</li>
<li>If it is true that the sole reality is an eternal, immutable Absolute, then it follows that no actions of ours can have any real effect, and hence that no practical proposition can be true. </li>
<li>If what is willed in a certain way was always good, then the fact that a thing willed in this certain way, would be a criterion of its goodness. But we must in the first place be able to show that certain things have the property Good, and that the same things also have the other property that they are willed in a certain way. And secondly we must be able to show this in a very large number of instances, if we are to be entitled to claim that these two properties always accompany one another: even when this is shown, it would still be doubtful whether the inference from a general case to a fact would be valid, and it is almost certain that this doubtful principle would be useless. </li>
<li>The supposition that when I say, "You ought to do this," I must mean "You are commanded to do this."</li>
</ol>
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Beauty</h3>
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In the last chapter, he discusses the idea of the appreciation of beauty, he says that by seeing the beauty of a thing we commonly mean the having an emotion towards its beautiful qualities; whereas in the seeing of its beautiful qualities we mean the actual cognition or consciousness of any or all of an object’s beautiful qualities. In anything which is thought beautiful by any considerable number of persons, there is probably some beautiful quality; and differences of opinions seem to be far more often due to exclusive attention to different qualities in the same object, than to the error of supposing a quality that is ugly to be really beautiful. When an object, which some think beautiful, is denied to be so by others, the truth is usually that it lacks some beautiful quality or is deformed by some ugly one, which engage the exclusive attention of the critics.</div>
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Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8576706537428990740.post-52364469527618713072015-03-17T22:46:00.002+02:002015-03-21T08:13:55.758+02:00Notes on Secular Ethics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Logical positivist philosopher A. J. Ayer stated in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) that moral judgments are pure expressions of feeling. They are unverifiable and cannot be true or false. Also Hume's fork, the idea that all items of knowledge are either based on logic and definitions, or else on observation, makes morals unknowable. If the is–ought problem holds, then "ought" statements do not seem to be known in either of these two ways, and it would seem that there can be no absolute moral knowledge.<br />
<br />
To act on reason alone, gives justification to both Kant’s Morals and Nietzsche’s ethics. Both are totally opposite to each other. In his legendary Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein Argued that All propositions are of equal value from our point of view. Anything transcendental can’t be said because there is no perspective external to the world from which we can talk about the world or its contents generally. For Wittgenstein, ethical `propositions' are absolute judgments of value of the form, ethics pervades all of life; Thus, we cannot talk about ethics since logical language can only reflect the world, any discussion of the mystical that which lies outside of the metaphysical subject's world, is meaningless. Actions are not good or bad because of their consequences, but because of the overall attitude toward life that they embody.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world.</blockquote>
Rousseau says we need an absolute principle (God) to make our ethics absolute:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Reason alone is not a sufficient foundation for virtue; what solid ground can be found? Virtue we are told is love of order. But can this love prevail over my love for my own well-being, and ought it so to prevail? Their so-called principle is in truth a mere playing with words; for I also say that vice is love of order, differently understood. Wherever there is feeling and intelligence, there is some sort of moral order. The difference is this: the good man orders his life with regard to all men; the wicked orders it for self alone. The latter centres all things round himself; the other measures his radius and remains on the circumference. Thus his place depends on the common center, which is God, and on all the concentric circles which are His creatures. If there is no God, the wicked is right and the good man is nothing but a fool”.</blockquote>
Yet they are self-evident. Even studies show that babies are capable of ethical judgment, so how is this possible?<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
God is the Source of Morals</h3>
<br />
Religious people claim that God has favored us with faculties above all other beings.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“What being here below, except man, can observe others, measure, calculate, forecast their motions, their effects, and unite, so to speak, the feeling of a common existence with that of his individual existence? What is there so absurd in the thought that all things are made for me, when I alone can relate all things to myself? The more I consider thought and the nature of the human mind, the more likeness I find between the arguments of the materialists and those of the deaf man. Indeed, they are deaf to the inner voice which cries aloud to them, in a tone which can hardly be mistaken.”</blockquote>
Among those faculties, the natural law which is prescribed to us by the Creator in the constitution of the nature with which he has endowed us. It has the form of instinct and emotion thus it isn't controlled by us.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The morality of our actions consists entirely in the judgments we ourselves form with regard to them. If good is good, it must be good in the depth of our heart as well as in our actions; There is therefore at the bottom of our hearts an innate principle of justice and virtue, by which, in spite of our maxims, we judge our own actions or those of others to be good or evil; and it is this principle that I call conscience.”</blockquote>
In this article we will try to investigate if it is possible of moral judgment to exist without God’s influence?<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Evolutionary Ethics</h3>
Some evolutionary biologists believe that morality is a natural phenomenon that evolves by natural selection. In this case, morality is defined as the set of relative social practices that promote the survival and successful reproduction of the species, or even multiple cooperating species.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Descriptive evolutionary ethics is empirical research into moral attitudes and beliefs (humans) or moral behavior (animals) in an evolutionary framework. The underline principle that guides evolution is self-preservation (survival and reproduction). According to the theory of evolution, every living organism formed meaningful associations between stimuli (visual, taste) and their effects (dangerous, poisonous) because such associations are vital to survive and reproduce. For Example, in the Paleolithic environment of our ancestors, incest led to the very real problem of genetic mutations from close inbreeding.<br />
<br />
A key issue of has been how altruistic feelings, behaviors and selfless acts could have evolved when the process of natural selection is based on the multiplication over time only of those genes that adapt better to changes in the environment of the species. As Rousseau puts it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Self-interest, so they say, induces each of us to agree for the common good. But how is it that the good man consents to this to his own hurt? Does a man go to death from self-interest? No doubt each man acts for his own good, but if there is no such thing as moral good to be taken into consideration, self-interest will only enable you to account for the deeds of the wicked; possibly you will not attempt to do more”</blockquote>
That led to expansion of the previous principle to include: theories of reciprocal altruism (both direct and indirect, and on a society-wide scale), “Kin Selection”, which is the evolutionary strategy that favors the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction or the survival of a more general group, not restricted to relatives, known as “Group Selection”. It is obvious that more is to be gained by cooperating with others than by acts of isolated egoism. One man with a rock cannot kill a buffalo for dinner. But a group of men or women, with lots of rocks, can drive the beast off a cliff and - even after dividing the meat up among them - will still have more to eat than they would have had without cooperation. As human beings, we are social animals. Our sociality is the result of evolution, not choice. Natural selection has equipped us with nervous systems which are peculiarly sensitive to the emotional status of our fellows. It is in our nature to seek happiness for our fellows at the same time as we seek it for ourselves. Our happiness is greater when it is shared.<br />
<br />
Now we are able to explain the emergence of a few moral virtues in the name of “Group Selection” as:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. We have evolved a deep sense of empathy and sympathy for others as we imagine ourselves in their position and what a situation would feel like if it were to happen to us. This foundation underlies such moral virtues as kindness and mercy.</li>
<li>Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism, in which “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.” This eventually evolved into genuine feelings of right and wrong over fair and unfair exchanges leading to ideals of justice and rights.</li>
<li>In-group/loyalty, related to our long history as a tribal species able to form shifting coalitions. We evolved the propensity to form within-group amity for our fellow tribesmen and between-group enmity for anyone in another group. This foundation creates within a tribe a “band-of-brothers” effect and underlies such virtues as patriotism and self-sacrifice.</li>
<li>Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. We evolved a natural tendency to defer to authority, show deference to leaders and experts, and follow the rules and dictates given by those above us in social rank. This foundation underlies such virtues as leadership, fellowship and respect for traditions and authority.</li>
<li>Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. We evolved emotions to direct us toward the clean and away from the dirty.</li>
</ol>
But also we face problems like<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>It allows for propositions of the following kind: The human species can survive more efficiently, if we let severely physically and mentally handicapped infants and children die. Therefore: we ought to let severely physically and mentally handicapped infants die or Eugenics which is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics), and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics) like what Nazism did or the acceptability of the use of human embryos for stem cell research.</li>
<li>It doesn't explain virtues which have nothing to do with survival of a living organism or his group, like beauty and the feeling of transcendence, mainly the Aesthetic judgment.</li>
<li>It doesn't explain acts of altruism done by a living organism outside of his group.</li>
<li>There is no meaning for the phrase "moral ought", If I'm strong and able to survive better by abusing the weaklings of the group, why I'm ought to follow ethics proposed by the group to shackle me? There are no valid reasons for me to follow them. Each should create his own morals <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">(Nietzsche) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">which leads to Ethical Relativism. Without an ontological absolute grounding (a God for example), morals become pragmatic in nature leading to subjective reasoning instead of an objective one.</span></span></li>
<li> Moore’s Open Question Argument (Good is undefinable, can only be shown and neither described nor deduced)</li>
</ol>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The "Open Question" Test</h3>
<br />
British philosopher Moore (Principia Ethica) demonstrated that all systems of naturalistic ethics, including evolutionary ethics, are flawed.<br />
<br />
The property of 'goodness' cannot be defined because it is simple and has no parts. It is one of those innumerable objects of thought which are the ultimate terms of reference to which whatever is capable of definition must be defined. That there must be an indefinite number of such terms is obvious, on reflection; since we cannot define anything except by an analysis, which, when carried as far as it will go, refers us to something, which is simply different from anything else, and which by that ultimate difference explains the peculiarity of the whole which we are defining: for every whole contains some parts which are common to other wholes also. There is, therefore, no intrinsic difficulty in the contention that good denotes a simple and indefinable quality. There are many other instances of such qualities.<br />
<br />
Any attempt to define “goodness” (X is good if it has property Y) will simply shift the problem (Why is Y-ness good in the first place?). Therefore, we cannot define "good" by explaining it in other words, we can only point to an action or a thing and say "That is good." It can only be shown. Similarly, we cannot describe to a blind person exactly what yellow is. We can only show a sighted person a piece of yellow paper or a yellow scrap of cloth and say "That is yellow."<br />
<br />
Yet a mistake of this simple kind has commonly been made about good. It may be true that all things which are good are also something else, just as it is true that all things which are yellow produce a certain kind of vibration in the light. Consider yellow, for example. We may try to define it, by describing its physical equivalent; we may state what kind of light-vibrations must stimulate the normal eye, in order that we may perceive it. But a moment’s reflection is sufficient to show that those light-vibrations are not themselves what we mean by yellow. They are not what we perceive. The most we can be entitled to say of those vibrations is that they are what corresponds in space to the yellow which we actually perceive.<br />
<br />
A test of whether goodness is identical to X:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
X is not identical to goodness if the question, “Is X good?” is open.</blockquote>
Applying it in a few examples:<br />
<ol>
<li>The question, “Is pleasure after all good?” is open and meaningful. It makes sense to wonder about this.</li>
<li>The question, “Is pleasure pleasure?” seems settled and pointless. It doesn’t make sense to wonder about this; the answer is trivially “yes.”</li>
</ol>
So all of the complex candidates will fail the test, but not all of the simple candidates will fail.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
And it is a fact, that Ethics aims at discovering what are those other properties belonging to all things which are good. But far too many philosophers have thought that when they named those other properties they were actually defining “good”; that these properties, in fact, were simply not other, but absolutely and entirely the same with goodness. This view Moore calls the naturalistic fallacy.<br />
<br />
Moore pointed out that the view that "we ought to move in the direction of evolution simply because it is the direction of evolution" was invalid because it was an example of the naturalistic fallacy, that is the fallacy of defining 'the good' by reference to some other thing, and in this case we define Good by the direction of Evolution, but isn’t proved that Evolution is good in the first place.<br />
<br />
Because of his hostility to ethical naturalism Moore denies that ethical knowledge is a matter of empirical inquiry. But he is equally hostile to Kant's rationalist thesis that fundamental ethical truths are truths of reason. Instead he holds that ethical knowledge rests on a capacity for an intuitive grasp of fundamental ethical truths for which we can give no reason since there is no reason to be given.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
As a result of the previous, Group Selection, became more abstract to include all humans with the addition of a goal ensuring their welfare. Also the study of Normative evolutionary ethics flourished which aims at answering the previous question by defining which acts are right or wrong, and which things are good or bad in an evolutionary context. It is not merely describing, but it is prescribing goals, values and obligations. For example eugenics is a form of normative evolutionary ethics, because it defines what is "good" on the basis of genetics and the theory of evolution.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Humanist ethics</h3>
<br />
They are a set of universal morals based on the commonality of human nature, and that knowledge of right and wrong is based on our best understanding of our individual and joint interests. The humanist ethics goal is a search for viable individual, social and political principles of conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility, ultimately eliminating human suffering. Humanism affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. So ethics become a law whose purpose is “the flourishing of conscious creatures".<br />
<br />
So a pair of scissors that cannot easily cut through paper can legitimately be called "bad" since it cannot fulfill its purpose effectively. Likewise, if a person is understood as having a particular purpose, then behavior can be evaluated as good or bad in reference to that purpose. In plainer words, a person is acting "good" when that person fulfills that person's purpose.<br />
<br />
This Humanists solution to the Evolutionary ethics problems, resulted in the following:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>The First problem was solved.</li>
<li>The Second problem remains in-explainable.</li>
<li>The Third problem remains in-explainable.</li>
<li>Problem four was partially solved by putting morals it in the form of law applied on all society’s inhabitants. People will fear punishment by law of the society, instead of believing in an absolute good. so "moral ought" is equated with "following the law". The law is the new absolute source of value (God). But as a result, the problem was just moved to higher level, instead of each man creating his own morals, now we have each society to create its own morals according to its culture, which eventually leads back to Ethical Relativism. Without an ontological absolute grounding (a God for example), morals become pragmatic in nature leading to subjective reasoning instead of an objective one.</li>
<li>Problem five remains valid.</li>
</ol>
</div>
Ali Redahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15778992914963868212noreply@blogger.com0