A Tribe For Philosophy's topics - tribe.net

What is Enlightenment?

2008-04-06T00:24:59Z

Enlightenment is the bliss of knowing where you are coming from and where you are going to and why. You are coming from and going to infinite perfection. Enlightenment is understanding that your purpose is to give and receive unending fulfillment. Enlightenment is also understanding that how this is accomplished cannot be reasoned because the means of accomplishing this feat is to abandon reason. To be filled one must first become empty. It can only be said that you cast away your oneness (this is where you give and this is where the illusion begins). Because this is just an illusion, being in this imperfect state cannot last forever. The result is that when it ends, you awaken to the joy and peace of your unchanged infinite perfection (this is where you receive and this is where the illusion ends). This cycle is infinite.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 18 replies

EGO

2008-03-28T00:50:20Z

...just thought i would express some thoughts on the subject.

what is ego?

in short, everything i perceive my self to be, everything i am not. my self-image or persona. who i 'think' i am. more specifically, the feeling of 'i am this' or 'i am that.' is it necessary? why is it here? how does it arise? i notice that when a thought arises, i can either see it for what it is
(if i am present enough,) or i can identify is as 'my' thought and from there the feeling of 'me' is derived. the thought creates the thinker. then there is this other side to the ego, the more real side that arises from any sense of personal doer-ship.

for example last night as i was finishing writing some very 'spiritual' and impersonal things i asked a friend to tell me what they thought and immediately the feeling of pride came over me. it was then i realized that ego was operating in full effect, regardless of the words written. 'look how smart i am' is what it was saying. the feeling of inadequacy followed with a twist of contempt for ego. then i realized that this took place naturally and almost without any control on my part, so i felt compassion and forgiveness for myself as i let all go.

also i think most of the feelings we have are natural reactions to life in general. but only through ego and its attachment to them do we feel good or bad as they are perceived. otherwise they are just flowing forms of energy. my solution to this, if i had to have one, is to love ego. love it unconditionally and understand that it is here for a purpose and it will dissolve when its function is finished. it's not about getting rid of ego altogether, it is very much a part of human nature. i feel it is more about recognizing and acknowledging all aspects of ourselves for what they are. through love and compassion ego can recede naturally. if we resist and reject it, it will keep coming back for more, until we learn the lesson it has to teach.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 7 replies

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN?

2008-03-24T18:18:47Z

The universe is intent on dumping S*#t on you constantly?

You don't know what to do for your child that you feel you have failed miserably?

How to deal with an incurable illness that is slowly killing you?

When the pain is too much to bare?

When you can't see a way out?

And no matter what your spiritual beliefs are you can't seem to find the answers or peace?

What do you DO?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 12 replies

Thinking

2008-03-19T01:27:20Z

What IS thinking?

What DOES thinking do?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 6 replies

How to punish without isolating

2008-03-10T19:12:16Z

It seems to me one of the more perplexing problems of our times is how to punish people for behavior that hurts others or society as a whole without isolated that person which may result in further bad behavior and further isolation possibly self-imposed isolation. This is happening in the context where justice favors some and in cases protects certain people from any sort of punishment. Many people would say the injustice causes quite a bit of bad behavior. I certainly agree with that but some people would still be bad if that were resolved…albeit not as many. And the problem would still exist.

In my experience, most people change their behavior as a result of feeling isolated, while others will allow their pride and other things to get in the way of changing their behavior. It seems the danger of disengaging a person or country for that matter can be dangerous. But I can’t see around it.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 15 replies

Question

2008-02-07T23:24:00Z

Greetings,
I had a question on my mind, I answered it for my self, but I was hoping to know other peoples opinion.
Is realizing same as understanding? does understanding come before realizing or the opposites? is there any thing at all like that, meaning realization and understanding?.

Thank you for your response

Faisal

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 1 reply

DO we NEED a self-image? what for?

2008-01-05T13:54:32Z

discuss. WHY do we need a self image, and can we live without one? why is it necessary or not necessary, im thinking its just a load or marketing shite myself, but just thought of it, anyone got any thoughts?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 20 replies

Philosophy Classes

2007-11-08T21:00:35Z

Anyone else feel that they're a bit limited to being eurocentric?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 14 replies

Dissonance Theory

2007-11-02T18:21:39Z

I wrote a story that was turned into a screenplay
for the apple insomnia festival
below is a link to the video
and the original story
i would like it if you guys saw both
and told me what you thought about them

edcommunity.apple.com/insomni...item.php

blog.myspace.com/index.cfm

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

Long Beach Philosophy Meetup Group

2007-10-22T02:35:49Z

The Long Beach Philosophy Meetup Group
Meet other local amateur Philosophers to discuss the world and what we know about it.
Location: Long Beach, CA 90807US

Mailing List Address: philosophy-250@meetup.com

Friday Nov 2

7:00 PM
Our next Meetup:
The Long Beach Philosophy November Meetup
Edit this Meetup
The Long Beach Philosophy Meetup meets once a month to discuss topics in philosophy. Generally, the focus will be Western philosophy, but all points of view are welcome.

Feel free to initiate a topic with the group by e-mail or show up at the meeting with a topic in mind. When possible, we will select topics for discussion at the preceding meeting. Read more
When?
Friday, Nov 2, 2007, 7:00 PM
Where?
The Mirage Coffee House
539 E. Bixby Rd
Long Beach, CA 90807
(562) 424-4774

RSVP l
Only 20 members (including guests) can RSVP 'Yes' or 'Maybe' for this Meetup. There's still room for 17 more.

Who?
3 members have said Yes

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

Meaning of life

2007-07-27T17:03:00Z

I'm not sure this is entirely appropriate for this forum, but I feel like asking; What's the point? What does your life mean to you? I really don't see any real purpose to my life; In 100 years, my name will be all but forgotten. In 500 years, any real impact I had on the world will probably not be noticed anymore. These are not large numbers; in a cosmological sense this is less than a blink of an eye.....so I can't live my life to leave a legacy. I'm not passionate about anything; there isn't something that makes me "jump out of the bed and want to seize the day". I can't bring myself to care enough to try to live my life as a contribution. I'm in my third year of college, and I'm starting to wonder...Why am I here?....Why am I working so hard?......I'm not lazy; I just don't want my efforts to be wasted.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 23 replies

companionship

2007-07-10T16:29:16Z

this is a rather cynical or pessimistic question to pose... but what is the point of having companions? i see that they are meant to share common ground, interests, ideas.. love and affection. but what if we have a hard time trusting people to the point that we'd rather not waste the time, energy, or emotion on setting ourselves up for another disappointment? what if we feel so isolated, so far removed, that we prefer our own company to the company of others? what if our outer worlds pale in comparison to our inner worlds, and we'd much rather frolic in our gardens than get tangled in the weeds?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 16 replies

The Living Matrix (cognitive coordinants for wholistic thinking)

2007-06-30T18:45:43Z

By Piankhy Thompson

Part of what a cosmology of Togetherness in a healthy culture does is coordinate and integrate problems and areas of life, in such a way as to avoid the typical result of trying to understand issues and solve problems in isolation, which is of course just the creation of other problems in other areas of life not considered when “solving” (and usually only temporarily) the original problem. Cultures all over the world which are or have been relatively more healthy than the dominant culture today have all had some more or less developed variants of the kind of integral categorical understanding I am describing below though they often differ from it and from each other in important details. What I have worked out and try to share in what follows amounts to an up-dated, individual and personal version of what I suppose to be part the “perennial cosmology” of us human beings, conceived and articulated in a way that is appropriate to the practice of Healthy Culture in our own time.

The Living Matrix is, among other things a set of cognitive coordinates in terms of which Togetherness and Living Wholeness can be understood and so enabled. The Coordinates can be usefully introduced in two parts. First is the 7-fold Static Matrix which takes its nature from the 7 directions of orientation ( 1-north, 2-east, 3-south, 4-west, 5-up, 6-down, and 7-center) and which constitutes the coordination of the Integral (as center) with the Indefinite, Finite, Definite, Transdefinite of the “horizontal plain” ( also called the “nexus”, and corresponding to "north, south, east, and west"), with the Subjective and the Objective on the “vertical” axis (corresponding to "up and down").

I am mapping these categories of cognitive orientation onto the familiar categories of spatial orientation because, among other things, this serves to show the analogously paradoxical nature of the 7 categories. The existence of the "Indefinite", for example, implies that of the "Finite" and the "Definite" and the "Transdefinite", in the same way that the existence of North implies and involves that of East, South, and West. And just as with a Compass, finding north implies that the compass itself is relatively vertical (and so brings in that dimension and its relative up and down), so the existence of the Indefinite also implies the existence of the “vertical” axis of Subject and Object. As in the case of spatial (we will ignore the idea of “true north" for the moment), the implications here are perfectly mutual and correlative; Indefinite is not absolutely Indefinite any more than north is more than relatively north in practice…

To demonstrate these categories and to illustrate their inherent co-implication I ask the reader to imagine the following:

Imagine (or remember) seeing a friend approach you from a far distance, on the beach say. In the beginning the person is too far away to even be sure that it is a living being, they are a mere point or dot on the horizon that may or may not be moving toward you at all. This is the relatively Indefinite aspect of your experience of them. It is an aspect of experience generally, one from which the intuition of abstraction and its schematic content of mathematics both derive. The Infinite, for example, as a point on the horizon as well as a theoretical and mathematical concept is essentially Indefinite. Counting itself is an inherently indefinite process which abstracts and dissociates the qualitative, existential and other aspects of the thing counted. When we deal with the Indefinite we are generally dealing with the “Itness" of Being.

[It is worth noting parenthetically here that, although it is essentially only one variation on the theme of "General Matrix Dysmutuality" or "General Cognitive Disorientation" (that is, only one way of "getting Lost" cognitively and morally), the dissociation and privileging of "Itness" and abstraction over the other categories in our time is a symptom of our sick culture which is involved in our excessively anesthetic "Life-Styles". Anesthesia often numbs and represses our full experience of self, other and world, in a way allows for the tyranny of abstraction and the various forms of coercion, callousness, and direct and indirect exploitation, repression fear, and violence that come this. But more on this topic in another post]

Continuing with our beach encounter; as the point in the distance gets closer, we begin to distinguish it from various things; a living thing rather than a piece for wind blown debris, a human being rather than a dog, a woman lets say rather than a man etc…With each distinction we Limit the thing; its becomes less indefinite and less abstract and more Finite and so qualitative. Sooner or later, you recognize that your friend Susan is running towards you very happily in a striking sea-green bathing suit that sets off her skin it such a way that…With all of this we enter the essentially Finite aspect of reality, the qualitative, image and memory based “morphic field” which is part of the substance of the way things are. This Finite aspect of the world one could also describe as the “Thatness” of Being.

Now suppose Susan has reached you now, she has given you a hug, you have sat down together and you are exchanging words; news of how things have been since you last saw each other how things are now etc…Already your knowledge of Susan is becoming more Definite (relatively speaking) than before and you are acquiring relatively Definite knowledge of each other. This Definite aspect of reality is more essentially existential and less essentially “aesthetic” than the Finite aspect and certainly much less abstract than the Indefinite aspect of reality with which we began. This relatively Definite aspect of reality one can describe as the “Thisness" of Being.

It is now necessary that you and Susan approach (and even transcend) the deepest level of Intimacy, (or relatively Definite knowledge) of each other. I will leave it to you to insert the details regarding how this came about, or how long it took, or even what it means exactly (accept to suggest that the example will be more credible if—assuming you are imagining something sexual--that you imagine Tantric or Daoist form of sexuality) and rejoin you again on the beach where you gazing into her eyes, or perhaps even at the back of her neck as she sleeps, and that at some moment you experience the point at which definite knowledge leads into Transdefinite Mystery; the point at which you know her so well that you realize you don't know her at all, and that you yourself, who you presumably know even better, are just as much--and even more--of a mystery, and that Definite Knowledge (which is only relatively definite anyway) itself does not diminish Mystery, or Enigma but ultimately reveals it more clearly. This inherently enigmatic, mystical and Transdefinite aspect of reality can be described as the “Whatness" of the Being.

Now in all of this story both the Objective, outer world, and the inner, Subjective one, have been involved from the beginning and the whole experience not only presupposes them both but presupposes the essential Integrity (“Togetherness”) of them both. For Being is itself this very Togetherness, the Togetherness of subject and object. And while it is true that the subjective memory of some woman other than Susan might have, at a certain distance, imposed itself on the person coming toward you, this does not imply some inherent dichotomy of inner image and outer reality, so much as illustrate their paradoxical togetherness in the Living process of Distinction (the Finite Process) within the 10-fold Living (rather than 7-fold static) Matrix itself. But to understand this we must introduce the other 3 aspects of that Living Matrix. We will return to the Beach after we have done so.

The 7-fold Integral Matrix I have described so far (named for its center) is, as I’ve implied, only a model of Static wholeness and not the Living Wholeness that actually pertains. A Living Matrix requires that we transcend our static and perfect cognitive “sphere” (and so also our exclusively spatial analogy) and
integrate “apart-ness” or the “dis-integral” (or “non-being) as a paradoxically included 8th element in our Matrix. Simultaneously we then also imply a 9th element as the “Living Integral” (as opposed to the 7th “static integral”) that reconciles and integrates the Paradoxical Togetherness of Apart-ness (8) with Togetherness (7) because it is itself this Paradoxical Togetherness. And for such a reconciling factor to be a truly dynamic and Living integral, it must be such as leads towards, rather than away from the necessary 10th element of the Living Matrix. This 10th element, which cannot really be named, described, understood, or situated in any particular way vis-à-vis the rest of the Living Matrix, I never-the-less, I call “Freedom” and consider to be in some sense almost the Final Cause of the Living Matrix as a whole as well as both a part of it some how also beyond it.

To return now to the beach: It is the dance, Living Integral; the living paradoxical interaction of the integral and the Disintegral (of Togetherness and Apart-ness) that accounts for the possibility of “mistaking” Susan for someone else. In one sense, such a “mistake” is only a part of necessary process by which the relatively indefinite becomes the relatively Finite. In another sense as we have seen, Susan is only “relatively” Susan at anyway, either subjectively or objectively. In the circumstance that you should hold to your “mistaken” identification when “outside”/objective voices say otherwise, there is always both agreement (in this case that someone is there, and perhaps that that someone is female) as well as disagreement (what the females name and social identity are) in the situation. (By the same token, even subjective/objective agreement--and so “fact”--is not absolute, since you and another will still disagree in many ways—and probably in many ways unknown to yourselves-- about the details of this “Susan” that you agree is “Susan”). It is the constant togetherness of this agreement and disagreement that confirms both the paradoxical existence and validity of the subjective and the objective worlds in themselves, (as Being). But essential to this is also the involvement of Non-being mediated by in the paradoxical togetherness/apart-ness of the Living Integral.

And this is not quite the whole of it. The Living Integral makes the matrix dance, and so allows our story of the Beach to happen or even be imagined, at all. In a way, the Living Integral Is the Soul of the living Matrix which is Life, Experience, Reality itself, and yet our Life-Logic of paradoxical Togetherness implies something further still. It Implies something Beyond both the Static and the Dancing Integral; beyond Togetherness; and Apart-ness, and the living Dance between them. I call this necessary thing, which both is and is not an aspect of the Living Matrix; which both is and is not The Living Matrix itself, Freedom. Nor do I want to qualify this Freedom as either Living or Static or in any other way since it is primarily neither Finite nor Indefinite; neither "Freedom from", nor "Freedom to" nor even "Freedom of". There is nothing much to say about such Freedom. If the Living Integral is the Soul of the Living Matrix, then Freedom is its Spirit. It is that which inspires the Dance; that which gives it direction that which... more I will not say now because Logic, even Life-Logic, fails me at this point...

Altogether then, the Living Matrix has Ten aspects, expressed in their more abstract form (there are many less abstract correspondences) as the Indefinite, (“itness”, the abstract) the Finite (“thatness”, the qualitative), the Definite (“Thisness”, the "existential"), the Transdefinite (“Whatness” the "mystical"), the Subjective (“Insideness” the "Psychological"), the Objective (“Outsideness” the "physical"), the Integral (“Togetherness”, Being) , the Disintegral (“Apart-ness”, Non-Being), the Living Integral ("Life", Becoming) and Freedom .

It will be seen in other posts (and in practice should you choose to come and participate) the Part the Living Matrix plays in the choreography of the Life-Dance and in the practice of Healthy Culture Generally.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

creating a questioning interactive art project on my tribe page

2007-04-30T11:43:38Z

I am creating a questioning art project on my tribe page
an interactive art project
where I make an piece of art and then post a question
and the comments inspire the next piece of art and question

comments greatly inspire the projects direction
so please hop on over to my tribe page
and see if this art project will provide anything of value to you

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

Right and Wrong

2007-03-19T03:34:09Z

Is there truly right and wrong? Or is it all just in the eye of the beholder..... What is your opinion? I am one who believes it all depends on who you ask what right and wrong is. I believe that everyone has a different view just as everyone has a different view of the world. If you were to kill a known murderer would that be right or wrong? What is considered right and wrong in our world today is what society makes it out to be. If we lived under Hitler he would say that it is "right" to kill all Jewish people and the followers would listen and take that to heart, while as today we believe that to be "wrong". What made it right to the people then but wrong now?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 49 replies

A refutation of free will

2007-03-03T22:02:05Z

http://www.qwantz.com/index.pl?comic=30

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 1 reply

SCOTUS OR OCKHAM?

2007-02-02T19:57:44Z

Do you agree with Duns Scotus that the existence of God can be known through natural knowledge (aka, 'revelation or theology' in Medieval Europe) or with William of Ockham who said that God can only be know through faith?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 28 replies

You are God

2007-01-07T19:43:12Z

Note to self:

You are god. This may seem very egotistical, but actually it becomes clear that it’s just the opposite as you come to understand the next statement.

You are alone. This does not mean that you loose your family, friends and loved ones that gave you so much comfort throughout your life; it just means that they were never separate from you to begin with. They are within you.

Your mind creates the world around you. When you die you do not dissolve back into the world around you but instead the world dissolves back into your mind.

When you come into this world you have departed from reality into a world of illusion. You have departed from the real and eternal into the unreal and temporary. This is a paradox because you never really left in the first place. There is no reason for this journey because by its very nature something that is untrue is also unreasonable and so it is that there can be no answer to the question why. It is simply natural that you are not perfect in this world and that you grow old and die. These are the characteristics of that which is not true.

Your higher self (God) is no more concerned about this process than you are concerned about falling asleep at night or expelling a breath. In fact, this process is the breath of life itself and eternal awakening.

With love,

You

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 1 reply

What is the difference between "immoral" and "amoral"

2006-12-10T16:27:58Z

. . . or are the two semantically equivalent?

I am aware that in popular usage the word "amoral" generally connotes a much more cold-blooded attitude towards ethics. Beyond that, though, can anyone come up with a clear method for defining an act or person as "immoral" vs. "amoral"?

One possibility I can come up with is that an immoral person will transgress against a moral system in a specific way while accepting the overall validity of the system and considering their actions to be "wrong." An immoral person, on the other hand, rejects the validity of the moral system and refuses to label their actions as "right" or "wrong."

Thoughts?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 3 replies

Existence

2006-10-25T10:05:08Z

Can we say anything at all about it? Do we have to take it as a given, or can it be a legitimate "object" rational inquiry? (And do these questions even make sense?)

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 7 replies

Squashed Philosophers

2006-10-25T03:25:45Z

I just saw this web site and thought someone here might also like it:

http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 2 replies

Anybody read Erwin Schrodinger's "My View of the World"?

2006-09-29T01:18:21Z

This thin volumn, published in 1961 contains two never before published essays. The first, "Seek for the Road" of 1925 and the other, "What Is Real" of 1960.

In the latter, the Nobel Prize winner in physics casts doubt on the existence of a "real external world". If I read him correctly, he says George Berkeley and David Hume got it right.

If I'm wrong, I hope somebody out there can set me straight.

Thanks

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

Catastrophic philosophy

2006-09-26T13:59:02Z

Hi Philosophers, I am working on some ideas about whether philosophy can address cataclysmic events and have writted the following proposal for a practical philosophy conference in Seville this spring. I would appreciate any comments or reactions or ideas to this proposal. Thanks.

On the possibility of Catastrophic Philosophy: Personal reflections on Katrina

In a time when each day brings news of another major natural disaster around the globe, I am asking the question as to whether, out of the classroom, the library or the parlor, philosophy can be of any relevance in the midst of the ruins and the mess of destroyed lives. Many people consider philosophy an interesting contemplative diversion for people who have intellectual pretensions. Can philosophy be more than this? Can it practically aid in the working through process and if so, when and in what way? These are some of the questions I wish to address in this presentation.

I have been living this question for the past three months since my life was shattered by the worst natural disaster to hit the United States: the hurricane known as Katrina. I lived and ran a school in New Orleans and overnight my entire life changed; there was no going home. In this presentation I wish to illustrate and amplify some of the important writings on philosophy and disaster through my own experiences and those of the networks of people I followed closely in their recovery process.

I will be looking first at Theodor Adorno’s critique of reason in Negative Dialectics where he says, “Our metaphysical faculty is paralyzed because actual events have shattered the basis on which speculative metaphysical thought could be reconciled with experience.” Next I will take up Maurice Blachot’s The Writing of the Disaster and show how, for both philosophers, there is a termination point of rational thinking beyond which one can only suggest a new form of philosophy. What is this new form? I will ask the participants for their ideas of what this might entail along with sharing some ideas of my own.

Adorno, Blanchot, Frankl, Sartre have written about the psychological effects of the Holocaust and suggested ways that a robust and practical philosophy may mean the difference between living onward in integrity or perishing, literally or through living as an empty shell devoid of meaning and purpose. This form of philosophy can not claim to totalize, integrate or rationalize the experience. I have felt this first hand in the absurdities generated by the media spin about Katrina and New Orleans and how very irrelevant it all is to the people struggling there.

The people there and among the vast diaspora, of which I am a part, need to feel hope, not so much in a collective vision, but in the restorative capacities of their own processes. We have all been comparing our reactions and trying to normalize them, fearing that we might stay too depressed for too long, that our sleep continues to be disturbed beyond the point it should, that our panic attacks are not diminishing. The challenge of a practical philosophy is to provide a common grounding and yet not standardize or normalize. Catastrophic philosophy might be veiwed as a sort of windowless monad of an unfolding process.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 12 replies

Religion and politics

2006-09-17T00:05:50Z

It's a popular position to say that religion and politics shouldn't be mixed. But in what ways are religion and politics similar? Both have adherents that tenaciously embrace beliefs they can't prove to be true. Both involve world views that guide the lives of their adherents. Both incorporate underlying value systems. Both create rules of behavior. Both have led to wars over whose belief system is best.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 26 replies

SelfAwareness*~--ThinkingRevolution--;;Listening;;

2006-09-16T03:20:05Z

http://sitepalace.com/StevenMannettetje/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/selfawarenessthinkingrevolutionlistening-
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/realize2actualize/

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 1 reply

Argument

2006-08-02T22:27:49Z

I am having an argument on a political thread, the argument goes as follows:

"Sami supports Hizballah, hizballah is a terrorist organization, therefore Sami supports terrorists."

Is this logically correct?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 5 replies

Wittgenstein

2006-07-25T20:33:01Z

Any Wittgenstein freaks here? I read ten books by Wittgenstein, and still haven't fully grasped his arguments, but hope that I have joined "the league of the raised eyebrow"...

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 18 replies

Stoicism.

2006-05-22T18:53:49Z

The likes of Marcus Aurelius,Seneca,and Epictetus comes to mind.

What do you think of Stoicism?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

The refutation of Emanuel Kant's view of cause and effect in human understanding

2006-05-05T20:14:27Z

"Emanuel Kant once decreed that human understanding was such that we necessarily saw the world in terms of cause and effect..." The man on the street still does, but how do today's scientists understand this relation?

Jerome

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 3 replies

What is "faith"?

2006-04-19T08:13:23Z

What is "faith", and is faith in something inevitable? Does everybody have faith in something?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 102 replies

Revolution

2006-01-21T21:53:03Z

prisons -- issues -- political prisoner home page
--political prisoner listing -- David Gilbert --
SDS/WUO

SDS/WUO: Students for a Democratic Society and the
Weather Underground
David Gilbert
These essays were originally written for ONWARD
newspaper (Spring and Summer 2001), a journal of
anarchist news, opinion, theory, and strategy of today
(www.onwardnewspaper.org). They have been slightly
revised.

"We are neither terrorists nor criminals. It is
precisely because of our love of life, because we
revel in the human spirit, that we became freedom
fighters against this racist and deadly imperialist
system."
From David's court statement
September 13, 1982 after his arrest.

In 1965, David Gilbert was the founding chairman of
the Vietnam Committee and a founding member of the SDS
chapter at Columbia University, New York City. In
1967, he wrote the first national SDS pamphlet on
"U.S. Imperialism." He participated in the Columbia
strike of 1968 and later joined the underground
resistance as a member of the Weather Underground
(WUO) in 1970. He is doing a life sentence after being
busted for his support role in an expropriation by a
unit of the Black Liberation Army in the 1981 "Brinks
case".
Introduction
We study the past to draw lessons to help us liberate
the future. Today's young activists are to be
commended for showing much more interest than my 1960s
generation did in learning from earlier movements.
Still, I want to alert you to two characteristic
errors in such study.

1) In looking at victorious revolutions in other
countries, we mechanically applied lessons from far
more advanced levels to our own embryonic stage.

2) In looking at past U.S. struggles, we saw errors as
mainly the result of wrong ideas in the heads of the
leaders of the day. Thus, we implicitly flattered
ourselves as outstanding individuals who would
naturally be more principled and intelligent. This
approach way underestimates the material forces --
such as the depth of white supremacy or the repressive
powers of the state -- that produce repeated errors.

This brief two-part history is neither detailed nor
definitive. It is written by a participant and
partisan, with the goal of contributing to today's
struggles.

Students for a Democratic Society
The U.S. was rocked by widespread and tumultuous
protests in the 1960s. SDS was the organization at the
hearts of the radical movement among predominantly
white college students. It drew special vitality from
its close relationship to the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the mainly Black
youthful and militant civil rights group doing the
most courageous field work in the South. SDS also
became the spearhead for what became a massive
movement against the war in Vietnam by organizing the
first national demonstration against it on 4/17/65.
Back then, it was unheard of to challenge "our"
government's "foreign policy," so just to call for
such a protest was radical, and the turnout of 20,000
people was very impressive. The work for that march
also led to a defining break from SDS's parent
organization, the League for Industrial Democracy,
when we defied their orders to exclude Communists.

SDS, founded in 1960, received its early definition
from The Port Huron Statement of 1962. The core
concept was participatory democracy: beyond electing
leaders, people need to directly participate in
discussing and determining the decisions that affect
their lives, including in the economic sphere. The
compelling issues were the Civil rights movement and
peace (opposing the cold war and nuclear bombs). The
defining early work of SDS, along with its alliance
with SNCC, was the Economic Research and Action
Project (ERAP). Students went to live in poor
communities to "build an interracial movement of the
poor." While organizing success was limited, the
experience was profound.

SDS hummed with a youthful vibrancy. Most of us
rejected both red-baiting and the Soviet model of
"socialism." Both red (communist) and black
(anarchist) flags flew at our conventions. And we
tried to apply participatory democracy to our own
organization, with mixed results. The challenge to
hierarchy felt liberating, even if often chaotic and
inefficient. But there was a real problem of "the
tyranny of structurelessness," where decisions are
made in an informal and thereby unaccountable way.

The escalations of the war in Vietnam and SNCC's
dramatic advance, in the summer of 1966, from civil
rights to Black power posed new challenges and led to
some tension between the old guard, steeped in ERAP,
and newly activated student militants. SDS wasn't
prepared for how the anti-war movement would mushroom,
but did provide a radical and militant presence within
the much broader coalition. SDS still naively defined
the system as "corporate liberalism" as we grappled to
put together our anti-racism and anti-war impetus with
an economic critique.

The impact when the Black Panther Party burst onto the
national scene in the fall of 1966 was electric. Their
armed self-defense of their community from police
brutality and their community self-help programs (free
breakfast for schoolchildren, free clinics, free
schools) provided a living example of revolutionary
nationalism and self-determination for oppressed
people. Several other revolutionary nationalist
groups, all drawing on the teachings of Malcolm X,
emerged in this period. At the same time, the first
photos were published of Vietnamese children burned by
U.S. napalm bombs -- which drove us crazy about
stopping the war. SDS slogan became "from protest to
resistance," with a focus on draft resistance.

Meanwhile, the inspiration of the civil rights
movement, the key and assertive work of women in it,
and the problems of sexism within the left, all led to
a re-birth of women's liberation. An early example was
SDS's first ever all women's workshop at our 6/67
national convention. The air crackled with the energy
and creativity the women generated. But their report
to the plenary got a raucous reception -- including
catcalls and paper airplanes -- from many SDS men.
Given there had been little history of struggle, it
isn't surprising that men were still very sexist, but
such blatant hostility was shocking for an
organization that prided itself on always siding with
the oppressed. That debacle was an example of the
problems that pushed many women to leave the "left"
and contributed to an unfortunate tension between
anti-imperialism and feminism, which weakened both.
Many principled women -- strengthened by the often
unsung examples and leadership of women of color --
continued to struggle on both fronts, but it took an
Amazonian effort to do so.

A high tide of struggle crested in 1968, with the
Vietnamese's powerful Tet offensive and over 100
ghetto uprisings in the U.S. after Martin Luther King,
Jr., was assassinated. These events inspired SDS-led
student strikes that shut down scores of colleges. We
began to name and analyze the system as "imperialism."
Che Guevara's slogan of "2, 3, many Vietnams" pointed
to how such a colossus could be overextended and
eventually defeated. The Black rebellion was
accompanied by militant upsurges of Native Americans,
Chicanos, Puerto Ricans and Asians in the U.S.

The government's response was a vicious campaign of
disruption and violence, called COINTELPRO for
counterinsurgency program (See Agents of Repression by
Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall). More than 30
Panthers were killed in 1968-71, and over 1,000 were
jailed. Many other groups and activists were attacked
as well. While that level of repression generally
wasn't used against whites, we did experience
harassment, arrests and the threat of a wartime draft.
More importantly, we identified with the Panthers and
had vowed to stand by them. As rapidly as the movement
had grown, we were still a small minority in white
America. We had started out thinking all that was
needed was to "shake the moral conscience of America."
We now found ourselves confronting the most powerful
government in world history.

Under this tremendous pressure, SDS split apart along
the basic fault-line of the U.S. bedrock of white
supremacy: between the desire for a potential majority
base among white Americans and the exigent need for
militant solidarity with Black and other third world
struggles. One side (invoking a Eurocentric Marxism)
said that revolution was about the working class, and
used that as a left cover for retreat from fighting
alongside Vietnam and the Panthers, claiming "all
nationalism is reactionary." The other side (inspired
by Marxist-led third world struggles) rightly saw
solidarity with national liberation as a priority for
any revolutionary movement worthy of that name.
However, we wrongly abandoned efforts to organize
significant numbers of white people, which also
limited our base for anti-racist activism.

While the split moved along the horns of a real
dilemma, there was a chance -- although it certainly
would have been difficult to achieve -- for a larger
and more working class movement base without pandering
to racist trade union traditions. That strategy would
have entailed reaching the growing youth rebellion
with anti-imperialist politics, as well as allying
with the emerging women's movement.

We were too overwhelmed by the stark life-and-death
challenges, combined with our own inexperience and
weaknesses, to implement such a strategy in practice.
SDS splintered apart in 1969-70. One result was a
series of formations that more or less reproduced the
traditional white left opportunism toward the white
working class. Another result was the Weather
Underground Organization, an unprecedented, if
seriously flawed group that carried out six years of
armed actions in solidarity with national liberation
struggles.

Weather Underground Organization
In a society where every single movie and TV program
showed that the FBI "always got their man," the
Weather Underground eluded capture and sustained armed
action for six years. In white supremacist Amerika
where historically just about every promising radical
movement among whites (populism, women's suffrage,
trade unionism) slid into compromising with racism,
the WUO was known, at least at it's best, for
solidarity with national liberation. In a world where
"legitimate" governments bombed villages and
assassinated activists but decried any armed
resistance as "terrorist," the WUO carried out more
than 20 bombings against government and corporate
violence without killing anyone or so much as
scratching a civilian.

The springboard for these advances was the historical
context. The 60s and 70s were unprecedented in world
history for the number of revolutions in a short time,
as national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and
Latin America overthrew colonialism and
neocolonialism; it was also a high tide of Black and
other third world struggles within the U.S. These
events spurred growing radicalism among white people.
The WUO was not formed as a narrow conspiracy but
instead was a focal point within a much broader surge
of anti-war militancy, as thousands of military
buildings and Bank of America branches were burned to
the ground and as hundreds of thousands of people
joined demonstrations that broke government windows,
disrupted meetings of bigwigs and resisted arrest.

Weather's exciting breakthroughs coexisted with costly
mistakes. The earliest and most visible came during
the first six months (late 69 to early 70), while we
were still aboveground; our sickening and inexcusable
glorification of violence, which grievously
contradicted the humanist basis for our politics and
militancy. We thereby handed effective ammunition to
all who wanted to discredit our priority on third
world struggles and our move toward armed struggle
(AS). To this day, almost all "history" about the WUO
makes the mania of those six months the whole story,
without looking at our correcting of that error and
the ensuing six years of solid and humane
anti-imperialist action.

In my opinion, the basis for our early aberration was
in the life-and-death crisis that split apart SDS. We
were white middle class kids who -- witnessing
saturation bombings of Vietnam and the murder of the
Black Panthers we admired -- felt compelled to make
the leap into AS. Instead of admitting our fear and
inexperience and developing a suitable transitional
strategy, we psyched ourselves up by glorifying
violence and with macho challenges about individual
courage. This frenzy was accompanied by basic related
errors: 1) Sectarianism -- a scathing contempt for all
who wouldn't directly assist AS (the sectarianism was
mutual as most of the white left vehemently sought to
discredit AS) 2) Militarism -- making the military
deeds and daring of the group all important rather
than the political principles and the need to build a
movement on all levels.

Early Weather's grave sins of commission were
glaringly visible. The opposite movement sins of
omission, that usually aren't even noticed, can be
even more lethal. The terrible passivity of most of
the white left to the early attacks on the Panthers
gave the government a signal that it would not face
widespread political costs for proceeding with its
full-fledged COINTELPRO campaign, which killed scores
and jailed thousands of Black, Native and Latino
activists.

Weather's militarism culminated in 3/6/70 when a
frantic bomb-making effort, including anti-personnel
weapons, resulted in an accidental explosion in a
safehouse (known as the Townhouse explosion) that
killed three of our own beautiful, young comrades.
This tragedy set off intense internal struggle that
resulted in a qualitative change to a more integrated
use of AS to help mobilize and radicalize a potential
mass base among white youth. Just two months later,
young people poured into the streets over a million
strong in angry response to the state's killing of
four anti-war protesters at Kent State University, and
student strikes occurred on nearly 1,000 campuses
across the U.S. At the same time, the dire need for
anti-racist leadership was painfully revealed by the
failure to respond in a similar way when the police
killed two Black students at Jackson State.

The WUO's recovery from militarism didn't magically
put everything into perfect balance. While seeing a
potential base in youth culture was right, we quickly
repeated traditional missteps based in white
supremacy. For example: 1) Our dearth of material aid
for Black, Latino and Native armed groups (even
underground, whites had much greater access to
resources and faced much less danger of random police
harassment); 2) To appeal to white youth, we endorsed
"soft drugs" (pot and LSD), with little appreciation
of drugs as a form of chemical warfare against the
ghettos and barrios; 3) We failed to respond to the
Panther 21's very constructive criticism of our
initial backsliding on drugs and militancy; 4) There
were subsequent moments of awful inaction, such as
during the Native American occupation and government
siege of Wounded Knee in 1973.

Not surprisingly, our other major internal weaknesses
were based in sexism, heterosexism and class. Women's
participation and percentage of leadership were very
strong, but in practice, a woman had to be part of a
heterosexual couple to be a top leader. We had little
program around women's liberation, and we failed to
make a serious effort for the needed alliance between
anti-imperialism and feminism. Internal struggle on
sexism was very inadequate, which dovetailed with a
defacto homophobic culture. While many lesbian and gay
comrades felt the strength to come out while
underground, there wasn't real space for an affirming
L/G culture; out L/Gs didn't make it to leadership
positions; and we had no political program around L/G
issues. Similarly, our middle class background meant
we did a poor job at outreach to more working class
sectors of youth.

There were related problems in our internal life. We
embraced the theory of democratic-centralism; but in
practice, the organization was very hierarchical.
Leadership tended to become manipulative and
commandist, while cadre tended to curry favor with
leadership. Criticism/self-criticism was used to
compete and maneuver for power rather than to build
people. While a strong organization was key to
survival (and lone fugitives had a much harder time),
that reality made social ostracism a potent bludgeon
against political dissent. As far as I know, there is
still no clear-cut successful model for combining the
two critical needs of a fully democratic internal
process and of tight discipline for fighting a
ruthless state.

To me, a crucial lesson is that activists must
consciously grapple with the powerful pull of ego that
can lead us to put our own position and leadership
above advancing the interest and power of the
oppressed. Organizationally, we need to strive to live
our political ideals -- anti-racism, feminism,
democracy, humanism -- in our personal relationships.

Despite these serious weaknesses, six years of
impressive successes resulted from what was right
about anti-imperialism. Contrary to the spy movie
mystifications that are all about sophisticated
techniques and technology, our survival underground
was based on popular support from radical youth and
the anti-war movement. That was the key to solving
needs such as ID, money and safehouses. There were
moments when the FBI hunt was breathing down our neck,
but popular support meant that information was kept
from the state and instead flowed to the guerrillas.

Our stage of struggle was "armed propaganda," with no
illusion of yet contending for military power.
Instead, the purposes of actions were to: 1) draw off
some of the repressive heat concentrated on Black,
Native and Latino movements, 2) create a leading
political example of white solidarity with national
liberation, 3) educate about key political issues, 4)
identify the institutions most responsible for
oppression, and 5) encourage others to intensify
activism despite state repression. We also provided
examples of non-armed struggle (i.e. spray painting),
pursued dialogue with the aboveground movement by
writing to and reading responses in radical
newspapers, and even developed our own underground
print shop. We wrote and published the book Prairie
Fire, a well-developed statement of the politics of
revolutionary anti-imperialism.

The WUO's more than 20 bombings included the U.S.
Capitol Building after the U.S. expanded the war in
Indochina by invading Laos in Febuary 1971; the NY
State prison headquarters after the 9/71 massacre at
Attica; and Kennecott Copper Company on the
anniversary of the bloody 1973 coup against democracy
in Chile. Every action was accompanied by a
well-reasoned communiqué articulating the political
issues. While there are no 100% guarantees, we placed
the highest priority on avoiding civilian casualties,
and fortunately succeeded.

The FBI never broke the WUO, but in 1976-77 we
imploded from our own weaknesses. The downfall came
from drifting back into the traditional failures of
the white left, with the politics of the
"multinational working class," and a plan to surface
from the underground to be central to "leading" the
"whole U.S. revolution." These positions negated the
independent and leading role of people of color within
the U.S. and at the same time undercut autonomous
women's formations. When those forces sharply
criticized us, we -- with our vitality sapped by the
lack of internal democracy -- couldn't deal with it
and instead split apart amid harsh recriminations.

The WUO was born in the era of the breathtaking rise
of national liberation, in opposition to the U.S.
foundation of white supremacy and on the heels of
exciting movement victories met by fierce government
repression. Our demise was also rooted in heavy
historical realities: 1) COINTELPRO (along with
internal weaknesses) had decimated the Black, Native
and Latino leadership that had inspired progressive
motion among whites; 2) our strongest base, the
anti-war movement, shrank drastically after the U.S.'s
1973 withdrawal from Vietnam; 3) we didn't realize
that we hadn't done nearly enough to develop anti-war
consciousness into a deeper anti-racism and
anti-imperialism.

In learning from history, we need to break from the
mainstream culture that defines people as either
purely "good guys" or purely "bad guys," which can
lead to the self-delusion that getting certain basics
down guarantees that everything else we do is right.
The WUO made giant errors along with trailblazing
advances. Hopefully both are rich in lessons for a new
generation of activists.

Note: These essays, plus introductory notes and
timeline, can be ordered as a pamphlet from AK Press
(pamphlet published by AG Press).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

prisons -- issues -- political prisoner home page --
political prisoner listing -- David Gilbert

This page is maintained by the Prison Activist
Resource Center.

August 2, 2003

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

Invitation to Join a couple of other tribes

2006-01-02T06:06:01Z

Hi Gang,
I have started two new tribes that reflect particular ways philosophy can be of practical application outside of the academy: philosophical counseling and philosophical cafe. I'm sorry that I don't know how to create a hyperlink to them here but they can be found by putting in the words in a search for tribes. I have been involved in applying philosophy to people's daily problems for about ten years now and find it a great alternative to the psychological models. Philo-cafes are also wonderful ways of gathering to discuss philosophical issues in a public space. Hope to meet you in the tribes.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 1 reply

todays musings

2005-11-23T17:48:31Z

Invisible Ink

Life is pain; it’s tattooed on our faces.
Our eyes reflect its brilliant clarity.
We think our thoughts and tell our story.
We tattoo them on our bodies so that others can see what we hide from ourselves.

We fill our lives with symbols.
We dream they are more than just rendered illusion.
Infused with meaning that seems so powerful.
Are they truth’s which are lies unexposed?
Only you know.
Only a fool hides from themselves.

When you carve into the skin of your existence, burning sigils of power
They mark you for life; they mark you with the truth of who you are.
Be it a falsity, or the wisdom as yet unknown,
They know even what you cannot admit.

The reality of your life is indelibly imprinted upon you,
Your attempt to be a person of honor, of worth and of justice.
People can glimpse these wretched and beautiful marks,
glowing from your human skin, tattooed in the blood of your intentions.

To live is to be colored and stained.
To tattoo yourself with each choice you make.
You are the artist.

Will you invest your life’s ink with love and sweat and meaning?
Or shallowness, apathy and denial?

Our lives are marked, needled in painful lines of mortal ink.
There, to behold in the mirrors reflection.
Can you see your tattoos?
See them for what they really are?

Or are they all just invisible ink?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 2 replies

Does anyone....

2005-06-05T03:40:26Z

...actually agree or like anyone else in this tribe ? That sounds snarky, I know. I don't really mean it to be. I get the impression that the way things are suppose to work here, or at least have evolved to, is that we are to debate whatever assertion is put forth, regardless of it's content, until someone get slammed in a personal snide manner.

While this is rather fitting, since that is how it was done when the Masters of the philosophy game were pontificating, I get the impression that no one here wishes to expand with various viewpoints. It appears that none wish to hear, but to escalate and be heard.

An aside note....don't slam me because of this post. I was just really thrilled to find this tribe and am a bit confused as to it's disconnect between mission statement and execution.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 1 reply

Suicidology tribe

2005-06-04T23:44:45Z

I've started a fairly self-explanatory tribe called "suicidology" for any who may be interested.
I myself am particularly interested in the philosophical implications of suicide.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 17 replies

Can we handle the truth?

2005-06-02T15:26:30Z

Here's an ongoing philosophical debate that I doubt not will go on for as long as mankind continues to ponder the inner workings of the universe: Truth. What is truth? How do you define truth? Is there really an ultimate truth, or is truth simply something that is perceived?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 30 replies

NYC Metaphysics

2005-04-20T00:09:19Z

Hi, I'm trying to start a network of psychics, philosphers and new agers in the NYC area. Also people with interests in theoretical physics, reality, dimensions, or just odd concepts are more then welcome. I would also like to invite skeptics and ill mannered loudmouths.

I'm starting it as a tribe here but if it gets sucessful we will have meetings and live discussions. The link for the tribe is http://nycnmetaphysics.tribe.net

Please also keep in mind that this tribe is open to anyone, not just people from NYC. Thanks for your time.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

On Flew's "Theology and Falsification"

2005-04-04T06:27:49Z

Famous atheist philosopher (though he's a deist now) Antrony Flew published a short essay which is one of the most famous essays in skeptical literature. It's the basis for the oft made claim that religion is unfalsifiable. I believe that his essay is based on an error, so I wanted to post his essay, to be followed by my critique.

Theology and Falsification

By Antony Flew
New Essays in Philosophical Theology
1955

Let us begin with a parable. It is a parable developed from a tale told by John Wisdom in his haunting and revelatory article 'Gods'.[1] Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they, set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not he seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

In this parable we can see how what starts as an assertion that something exists or that there is some analogy between certain complexes of phenomena, may be reduced step by step to an altogether different status, to an expression perhaps of a 'picture preference'.[2] The Sceptic says there is no gardener. The Believer says there is a gardener (but invisible, etc.) One man talks about sexual behaviour. Another man prefers to talk of Aphrodite (but knows that there is not really a superhuman person additional to, and somehow responsible for, all sexual phenomena).[3] The process of qualification may be checked at any point before the original assertion is completely withdrawn and something of that first assertion will remain (Tautology). Mr. Wells's invisible man could not, admittedly, be seen, but in all other respects he was a man like the rest of us. But though the process of qualification may be, and of course usually is, checked in time, it is not always judiciously so halted. Someone may dissipate his assertion completely without noticing that he has done so. A fine brash hypothesis may thus be killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications.

And in this, it seems to me, lies the peculiar danger, the endemic evil, of theological utterance. Take such utterances as "God has a plan," "God created the world," "God loves us as a father loves his children." They look at first sight very much like assertions, vast cosmological assertions. Of course, this is no sure sign that they either are, or are intended to be assertions. But let us confine ourselves to the cases where those who utter such sentences intend them to express assertions. (Merely remarking parenthetically, that those who intend or interpret such utterances as crypto-commands, expressions of wishes, disguised ejaculations, concealed ethics, or as anything else but assertions, are unlikely to succeed in making them either properly orthodox or practically effective.)

Now to assert that such and such is the case is necessarily equivalent to denying that such and such is not the case.[4] Suppose then that we are in doubt as to what someone who gives vent to an utterance is asserting, or suppose that, more radically, we are sceptical as to whether he is really asserting anything at all, one way of trying to understand (or perhaps it will be to expose) his utterance is to attempt to find what he would regard as counting against, or as being incompatible with, its truth. For if the utterance is indeed an assertion, it will necessarily be equivalent to a denial of the negation of that assertion.[5] And anything which would count against the assertion, or which would induce the speaker to withdraw it and to admit that it had been mistaken, must be part of (or the whole of) the meaning of the negation of that assertion. And to know the meaning of the negation of an assertion, is near as makes no matter, to know the meaning of that assertion. And if there is nothing which a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either; and so it is not really an assertion. When the Sceptic in the parable asked the Believer, "just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?" he was suggesting that the Believer's earlier statement had been so eroded by qualification that it was no longer an assertion at all.

Now it often seems to people who are not religious as if there was no conceivable event or series of events the occurrence of which would be admitted by sophisticated religious people to be a sufficient reason for conceding "There wasn't a God after all" or "God does not really love us then." Someone tells us that God loves us as a father loves his children. We are reassured. But then we see a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat. His earthly father is driven frantic in his efforts to help, but his Heavenly Father reveals no obvious sign of concern. Some qualification is made -- God's love is "not a merely human love" or it is "an inscrutable love," perhaps -- and we realise that such sufferings are quite compatible with the truth of the assertion that "God loves us as a father (but, of course, ...)." We are reassured again. But then perhaps we ask: what is this assurance of God's (appropriately qualified) love worth, what is this apparent guarantee really a guarantee against? Just what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) to entitle us to say "God does not love us" or even "God does not exist"? I therefore put to the succeeding symposiasts the simple central questions, "What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of, God?"
--------
A Critique, by Ron Morales

In this essay Flew relies on an incorrect understanding of what falsification is. Take this comment in particular:

"Now it often seems to people who are not religious as if there was no conceivable event or series of events the occurrence of which would be admitted by sophisticated religious people to be a sufficient reason for conceding "There wasn't a God after all" or "God does not really love us then."

But that has nothing to do with falsifiability. What will convince a believer regarding the truth of a proposition is distinct from whether the proposition is in fact falsifiable. For example, though some believers would never reject their belief in the face of any evidence as Flew suggested, there are in fact some people who do lose faith in God as a result of tragedy. But that doesn't entail that belief in God is falsifiable for some and unfalsifiable for others. A scientist could put forward a very falsifiable hypothesis and yet never believe any evidence that falsified his cherished hypothesis. The proposition that the earth was the center of the solar system and that the earth was flat were very falsifiable hypotheses (and of course were in fact falsified) regardless of the fact that some people continued to believe in them after there was very good public evidence that they were falsified.

Falsifiability is objective, not subjective. A hypothesis is falsifiable if there are observable conditions which could obtain which contradict the predictions of the hypothesis, regardless of whether anyone chose to believe those observations.

So is belief in God falsifiable? That depends on the nature of the belief in God. Beliefs in God are usually part of a larger theology, some parts of which are often clearly falsifiable. For example, Christian theology is not only dependent on the existence of God but also on the historicity of Christ, not to mention Christianity's belief in the resurrection of Christ. The historicity of Christ is in fact falsifiable, namely by demonstrating that there probably was no Christ (say documents are discovered tied to the original apostles showing that they made him up to justify some heretical theology they were pushing). As to the resurrection, it could be shown historically that Christ's body was in fact disposed of somewhere else and some good evidence is found showing that some discovered remains are in fact those of Jesus of Nazareth. Even if many Christians refused to believe that evidence (just like many refused to believe in a heliocentric solar system even after it was proven), it would still objectively falsify the life (vis a vis the former hypothetical) and/or resurrection (vis a vis the latter hypothetical) of Christ, making Christian theology in fact falsifiable. Another part of Christian theology is the idea that prayer is efficacious. Not that prayer always is answered in the way we want it to be answered, but at least in the sense that prayer has at least some positive effects, as opposed to being completely useless. We test the efficaciousness of pharmaceuticals all the time with double blind tests. If double blind tests show that prayer has no statistically significant effects, then prayer is in fact useless, contrary to the claims of Christian theology.

Even if someone had a barebones belief in God, the foundation of that belief could be falsifiable. For example, suppose someone believed that there must be a God who created life because they don't believe that any nonsentient processes or mechanisms could have created life. If, however, it was demonstrated that nonsentient forces could in fact have created life, then the foundation of that individual's belief in a god would then be falsified, regardless if he chose to believe that evidence or not.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

Bertrand Russell

2005-02-17T14:31:59Z

Anybody else a big fan of Bertrand Russell? What's your favorite book by Russell? I liked "Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits," "Has Man a Future?", "In Praise of Idleness", etc., etc.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 3 replies

The value of a world view

2005-02-01T01:35:02Z

What value is there to having a world view? Philosophy can help one develop a comprehensive, coherent world view, but is that necessary for the good life? In contrast would be just having a mostly disconnected set of beliefs and tackling issues one at a time, rather than having a comprehensive world view (e.g. secular humanist, Marxist, naturalist, religious, etc.) into which one can process information and generate judgments.

One value of a comprehensive world view is that it can help you be more consistent. If I deal with issues ad hoc and one at a time, I run more of a risk of taking positions that may ultimately contradict each other since if I haven't done the work to make sure my views fit a comprehensive, consistent picture. An example may be a moral issue. If I don't have a comprehensive philosophical moral world view (e.g. like utilitarianism), I might end up taking a position on a moral issue that I discover later contradicts another more important moral principle that I hold to be true.

There might be some cognitive economic advantages to having a world view as well. Rather than starting from philosophical scratch every time one comes across a new issue, having a world view allows one to generate positions on various issues based upon the already accepted premises of the world view.

Of course, having a world view doesn't necessitate that one be absolutist about it. One can always hold one's world view to be only contingently true until better evidence comes around, or an alternative world view which better explains the available data and what you believe to be true. Of course, getting too comfortable in a world view may inspire someone to reject out of hand evidence or interpretations of evidence that don't fit their world view. But that's a potential problem with any theory. The history of science is replete with cases of evidence being rejected because it didn't fit a prevailing scientific hypothesis, theory or research program, until the weight of the evidence grew so much that a "paradigm shift" occured and the old hypothesis was discarded in favor of a new explanatory hypothesis which better explained the totality of data. The key thing is to have the intellectual integrity to be open to alternative explanatory hypotheses/world views.

So are there other good things about having a world view? Are there other worries which mitigate its value?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 1 reply

For genius only

2005-01-30T20:42:30Z

Why did you click this?
oh well.. might as well enjoy it...

Join this Tribe:
http://greatmuseums.tribe.net
oohlala
and let yourself go...
You know you want to...

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 3 replies

why?

2005-01-29T04:34:21Z

umpf. why?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 13 replies

philosophy

2004-12-31T17:09:08Z

I'm not sure if this falls under philosophy or not, but I think i'm becoming more of a man's man every aging year. I'm still not into sports, but many of the ideals I used to have are now falling away and I'm becoming more and more content with the idea that I'm just another dumb animal.

Sometimes I think I'm losing my morality and ethics. Before I used to think about sharpening my mind with conversations on tribe.net, but now I think more about what to say and who to say it to so that I can get laid.

Anybody else get these kind of doldrums? Does it even matter? Can I actually expect a serious repsonse from internet people?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 1 reply

Word association

2004-12-31T02:43:02Z

I'm bored. Lets try some word association.

Money

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 25 replies

Astral Projection, Meditation, Alchemy, Gnosis, etc.

2004-11-08T19:17:05Z

Free courses: http://mysticweb.org :)

Peace,
Denny

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

Colors

2004-08-21T06:07:54Z

I am interested in interpretation of color and, if, in fact, it does exist. I know the color something appears changes drastically depending on the amount of light present. Any thoughts, ideas regarding the nature and existence of color?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 6 replies

Daniel Dennet

2004-08-14T00:38:54Z

Anyone ever read Dan Dennet's work? Thoughts on it?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

Natural Peace

2004-08-14T00:34:33Z

It's certainly good to see that there are people in the world who still have a mind for philosophy. It's hard to find people out there who can ask the Questions That Can't Be Answered, much less discuss them. I had a bit of a revelation a few days, and I thought I might put it out for all of you to read. I'd certainly like to see what you all think.

Living in the foothills of the Appalacians, the terrain around my home consists mainly of rolling hills, many of which are still covered with forests. Having seen these hills everyday of my life, I barely took the time to look at them. Yet, when my eyes fell on one of those hills one morning on my way to work, I noticed something I hadn't taken note of before. The trees covering that hill seemed to contour with the hill, making a seemingly smooth line where green met blue. Not one single tree on that hill, or any one of the miles of hills I've seen, stood taller than any other. And the reason is perfectly logical; should one of those trees stand taller than another, it's canopy would block the sun from it's companions, and it would take nutrients from the soil that are needed for the smaller trees around it. The result would most certainly be death. But because all of the trees stand the same heighth, all of the trees occupying the hill thrive, and form a seamless beauty only nature could create.

Peace, perfection and beauty; yet poised on the brink of destruction.

Brevity isn't one of my strong points, so I'll leave it to all of you to discuss at your leisure.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 12 replies

Mating, Memes, and Mind

2004-08-14T00:15:39Z

I have been enjoying reading some of the threads here and frankly that are cropping up in various tribes I a member of with respect to whether or not two (or more) people of differing characteristics (these vary) can successfully build a relationship.

Whew, who knew?

The synchronous parallelism of it suggests to me there really is something in the Spring water. Got it, Rite?

But it also is something I find interesting as an anthropological and memetic analysis of human practice.

Can individuals of differing philosophical bias build a happy, working, and productive life together?

Now switch the conditions.

Can individuals of differing psychology/physiology build a happy, working, and productive life together?

I can answer simply yes.

And

No, well maybe too.

Is it not entirely obvious in this exercise that the conditions are subjective to the individuals involved?

Everybody brings their baggage to forming a relationship but also that baggage can clash or synchronize, this is a great part of the social chemistry of bonding.

Chemistry can be how individuals care about the same things or it can be because they care about (BUT APPRECIATE) opposite things and are able to expand one another's comprehension, opening their respective hearts. There is no hard rule here but there is some common study of the mating habits of the simian Homosapien.

Genetic studies show a "tendency" to be attracted to those with similar (physiological) characteristics. (Please read tendency as what it means, not as an absolute.) Second, people build a standard of familiarity out of experience more than some organized genetic blueprint. That is why cultural identification can change so fast from generation to generation now with modern media exposure.

If two people have a personalized psychosocial chemistry they will bond beyond stereotype and across all barriers, enduring the stresses that afflict them as a force drawing them closer, if they lack that "chemistry" due to whatever reasons the tribulations will likely cause them to part company.

But can love that is not there be nurtured? Or canlove that is there due o chemistry, but neglected be lost?

Of course.

If people want domestic tranquility and no challenge at home then they are already setting themselves up for a Stepford Wife/Husband and are uninterested in debate. It has more to do with what makes the parties to the relationship feel rewarded by continuing the relationship.

I started this thread because I would love people to contribute their personal "formula" for happiness, their personal memes. I would also like to say upfront this is not a right/wrong type exercise. Two individuals who are separately perfectly 'correct' in their respective views of the world could be perfectly wrong together.

I also think people can change their Mind. I think we assume cultural memes that contribute to building a model in our minds that is not an entirely conscious exercise and by taking the time to write out one's expectations (of themselves not only others) they might come to a realization that helps reformulate their assimilated memes.

I think memes go into the building of mating strategies and precognitive standards for choice when mating and the subject in general while at first reminding me a lot of Dear Abbey actually is important for serious investigation as to developing a taxonomy of personality types.

I know this has already been done but those screening tests are somewhat vacuous I find and anyway I am interested in seeing how many personality types emerge and then comparing these to causal success and failure rates for the mixed matchings.

For example someone offered: "is it possible for a philosopher and a non-philosopher to have a happy relationship together?"

Why does the interest have to be the same?

Second is the problem perhaps not philosophy in the broad sense but specific to the positions upheld?

I do think there is such a thing as personal chemistry and I would like some feedback on this aspect folks because I also see that some people let their heads get in the way of their hearts, though more often than not people let their hearts' tell their heads what to do, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death.

When it works they are happy and when it doesn't they are miserable. Come on and approach this as fun and perhaps we can all learn something about one another as we learn about ourselves.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 2 replies

utilitarianism

2004-08-07T01:42:47Z

what do people here think of utilitarianism as a moral code. also with reference to act utilitarianism and strong/weak rule utilitarianism. Do you think inputs and variables are a significant downside to utilitarianism as well as subjective happy/good factor. and finally how do you think it stacks up against other moral codes?

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 1 reply

Theory on balance and well being

2004-07-09T13:04:38Z

This is an ethical post, perhaps even a little spiritual in some ways. It's a very small part of a theory to which I've come regarding mental and emotional balance and well being. For this post I've left out all of the "what if"s, "however"s, and the "although in this particular circumstance"s. Keep this in mind as you read through.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Feel free to disagree, so long as you have something worthwhile to contribute.

I believe that the human entity consists of three distinct parts: mind, body, and spirit (mind and spirit, or soul, often argued as inseparable or as one in the same, but I choose to separate them: raw thought vs. raw emotion).

Let me toss a quote at you from a man who lived in Athens over 2500 years ago that simply states, "A man who knows what is right will do what is right." The end argument is that a man who knows what is right but doesn't do what is right can never be truly happy. The man who said this was Socrates. For brief history, a friend of Socrates, Chaerephon, once asked the Oracle at Delphi if Socrates was the wisest of men. The oracle is reported to have told him that Socrates was indeed the wisest. When Socrates heard this, he was was astounded. He spent weeks trying to disprove this by speaking with those who were considered to be "wise men", but was ultimately unsuccessful in disproving the Oracle.

Socrates was considered to be a gadfly because he essentially spurred th youth of Athens to form their own opinions, live their life they way they want to live it, and to not be afraid to question authority figures. Needless to say, he was tried and found guilty by those in power, and was ultimately sentenced to his choice of either death or exile from Athens. Socrates chose death.

Digression concluded, take a simple lie. This small example is in regards to people who don't lie for pleasure or psychological dysfunction, and of course we also need to leave lying to preserve someone's feelings and such out of this equation lest this entry crash the server. I'm talking about the outright lie of a mentally and morally stable human being. If one knows that lying is morally wrong but lies anyway they are not necessarily unhappy. But the more often these types of contradictions occur inside oneself, the more prone to sadness one becomes. In our society the mind has been taught that lying is wrong and the soul inherently knows that lying is wrong. If the body lies anyway, it throws the three parts out of alignment to some greater or lesser degree. The more out of alignment these three parts are, the less balance you essentially have in yourself.

In essence you are drawing yourself further and further away from what makes you you. People who give up on finding their ideal self, or who never cared about the ideal self (due to greed, ignorance, apathy, general lack of sanity, life altering past experiences, etc.), at some point will slip into some form of depression by this alone. Of course I realize this isn't the only cause of depression, and keep in mind that I've simplified my argument for the sake of brevity; there are an infinite number of variables that can get thrown into the mix.

A lot of people, including myself, believe that one of the most important aspects of life is to continue to change and grow as a person, to try to become closer to your ideal self: follow your soul closely on a parallel road, and follow your heart (that is actually your mind compounded with your emotional ego). Here it is not so much in the sense of vice, but of circumstance, and I believe that everything happens for a reason, which is a theory that I needn't bore you with today.

If you know yourself, your circumstances and your faults, you can begin the process of fixing these things. The process is long and usually involves a lot of writing them down, their possible causes, and linking them all together in some fashion. I know that's vague, but I'm not here to give that kind of advice. This process is easier for some than others due to their life's circumstances and the complexity/multitude thereof, genetic makeup, and so forth.

Let me be clear that I don't believe that a human being can fully reach this state of ideal self in such a short lifetime, but the closer we can become the more whole we will be.

I'm not claiming that I have the secret to happiness here, but a few years ago I certainly proved this overall theory for myself. It won't, by itself, make a person go from depressed to happy, but if this helps one person, it was worth it to write it down. It's just a simple concept blown up into a lot of words.

As stated simply by Chuang Tzu, "Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness."

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 20 replies

Aesthetics or the Philosophy of Art

2004-06-25T16:48:11Z

Why do we become emotionally attached to fictional characters when we know that they are fictional?
Why to we return to horror movies when they produce fear and disgust in us, by definition?

There are a gazillion interesting questions in the Philosophy of Art...anyone interested in discussing anything along these lines...?

A few authors who have written lots on the subject are Levinson, Carroll, Lopes, Currie, and there are many more...

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 11 replies

non-existence

2004-05-24T08:31:38Z

Non-existence is like a married bachelor.

Have at it.

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 7 replies

The philosopher

2004-05-15T14:10:28Z

"All are lunatics, he/she who can analyse his/her delusion is called a philosopher."-Ambriose Bierce(1842-1914)

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 11 replies

Books for sale

2004-05-14T03:33:48Z

Hiya,

I have the following books available... please message me if you are interested.

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers 4th ed.
by Joseph Gibaldi
Paperback
List Price: $13.50
Selling for: $2

Republic
by Plato, translation by Robin Waterfield
Paperback
List Price: $7.95
Selling for: $2

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies

cynicism

2004-04-23T03:42:44Z

"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism, by those who don't have it"-A wise man

posted in A Tribe For Philosophy - 0 replies