I'm generaly more sympathetic to China than most western thinking. I found this snipet in the WSJ.
Often, Western critics and their Chinese respondents seem to be seeing entirely different things in the same events. Western accounts of the fracas surrounding the Olympic torch relay tend to emphasize the demands of pro-Tibet protesters, and have pointed to accusations of heavy-handedness by the blue-and-white-clad Chinese security guards accompanying the torch.
For Chinese, the image that lingers from the Paris protests is of a slight, wheelchair-bound woman clasping the Olympic torch to her body as a man wearing a Tibetan-flag bandana tries to pull it away from her.
Since then, the woman, a 28-year-old fencer named Jin Jing, has become a household name and media star, an icon for those who see China as a nation beset by unfair attacks.
The Socrates paradoxes on ethics (commented a few months back) still ring true to me.
"To go the distance, there almost has to be a mental separation between the regular season and the playoffs." (Mark Messier) Mentally, players must make the shift that the playoffs are a new season and the only thing that matters is what they control -- their preparation for the next game. And, this includes getting up for each of those games, one at a time.
Ébauche: L’existence de Dieu dans les Méditations.
La preuve de l’existence de Dieu tourne surtout autour du concept de l’infini. C’est une preuve ridicule qui va comme suit : je suis un être fini et imparfait. En tant que tel, je suis limité dans mon pouvoir d’imagination. Notament, je ne peux m’imaginer ce qui est plus parfait que moi, ceci étant hors de mes capacités. L’idée d’infini, dans sa plénitude, je ne peux me la représenter. Pourtant, elle m’est en quelque sorte proposé et présenté à mon esprit. Logiquement, il s’impose que je suppose l’existence d’un autre être que le mien qui lui serait parfait et conséquement pourrait se représenter l’idée de l’infini. C’est lui seul qui peut engendrer l’idée de l’infini à mon esprit. Dieu par définition, est un être parfait. S’il y a un être plus parfait que Dieu, alors Dieu est imparfait et conséquement c’est cet autre être qui est Dieu. Donc Dieu est parfait et doit être la source de mon idée de l’infini. Dieu existe donc.
S’il est parfait, il n’est pas trompeur car s’il était trompeur, il ne serait pas parfait. Donc, tout ce dont j’ai une idée claire et distincte peut être considéré comme connaissance vrai. Dieu est le garant du principe de la vérité claire et distincte cartésien.
La place de Dieu est donc fondamentale au projet fondationel de Descartes. Qu’est ce qui existe ? Qu’est ce qui m’assure que la connaissance que j’ai des choses est une connaissance vraie ? Précisément, ce sont les connaissances claires et distinctes qui doivent être tenu pour étant, et Dieu est le garant de la validité de la clarté et distincté de la perception de cet être.
Dieu agi en tant que deuxième principe premier de l’être. C’est la dimension onto-théologique de la métaphysique cartésienne. Elle est un contrepoint objectif à la subjectivisante dimension du cogito cartésien, qui établit comme principe premier de l’être la pensé, ou plus précisément le constat effectuel d’une pensé. Cette dernière dimension a une portée beaucoup moins large que l’onto-théologie. Chez Descartes, l’ontologie du cogito est très limité : je suis, et je suis un être pensant. C’est peut être dû à cette pauvreté et cette impasse au doute systématique que Descartes se penche vers une alternative plus traditionnelle, celle de l’onto-théologie. Dieu est garant de toutes les sciences (vraies) alors que le cogito n’arrivait pas même à se dépasser. Pourtant, c’est au passage des méditations 2 et 3 que s’effecute la preuve de Dieu, et celui découle en quelque sorte du cogito. C’est la certitude de notre pensé qui vient justifié la déduction de l’existence de Dieu – si je n’avais pas la certidue d’être, et d’être de façon imparfaite, l’idée de Dieu n’aurait pu être dérivée.
Ce va et viens entre Dieu et la subjectivité profonde mais inféconde du cogito n’est pas étrangé à la métaphysique. Descartes, peut être mieux que les autres auteurs avant lui, a bien saisi la dimension subjective. Le problème métaphysique s’articule autour de ces deux dimensions nécessairement.
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Plan :
- Argument pour l’existence de Dieu – l’infini + autre chose ? lien avec le cogito.
- Le rôle de la preuce de l’existence de Dieu pour le projet de DesC
- Contre-arguments ??
- Évaluation.
I have been asked before what philosophy was. Often times, I don't not know what to answer. I could answer what philosophers do today. Although problematic in its own right, this appears easier to explain. Today, philosophers are sometimes hard to differentiate from scientists and "physicists" (what I call a physicist is someone who develops a theory about a part of nature [physis] - he can be a biologist, a sociologist, or string theory scientist). If anything, we can differentiate a philosopher in a lot of domains by their method: while a scientist will no doubt have resort to experiments and factual interpretations, a philosopher usually hovers slightly above that discourse. A philosopher is a specialist of "conceptual" problems (things that don't quite add up in the physicist's book that need clearing out conceptually).
But there remains an activity that is foncièrement philosophical. I name metaphysics. Metaphysics is often adequated to ontology - the science of being ("science" is not to be understood in the sense of "experimental science" but in the sense of research, knowledge). Being as being itself - not that book on the table, or that idea I have, but being in itself. This is in line with the conception of ancient philosophers which eventually came to bare the name of metaphysics (the history of the name is itself very interesting...). But of course, there is also an epistemic dimension which is also introspective, and that has it's roots within each one of us. (...)
For this reason, the structure of the metaphysical problem is recursive. This is fundamental. It also comes an unquenchable human thirst for knowledge, for understanding "how" and "what", as Aristotle noted.
Let's have an example to illustrate those properties.
Dan is a physicist. 1. Dan entertains a thought about a flower. Dan wonders how that flower is possible. Dan develops Botanics. 2. Dan then entartains a thought about Botanics. How can he be developing a theory about a flower? Dan therefore reflects about his own thought about that flower. Dan comes up with a theory of psychology to explain his thought about the flower and how he came to perceive it through his brain and senses and make a theory about it. 3. Dan entertains a thought about his theory of psychology and his the validity of his understanding of it. He wonders how it is possible to develop a theory of psychology in the first place. Dan therefore develops epistemology. 4. Dan is now confounded. Dan wonders if he can withdraw himself from the system to observe himself objectivily in thinking about the flower, about Botanics, about psychology and about epistemology. Dan develops metaphysics.
Even though further cycles are possible, metaphysics is seen here as an endpoint: it encompasses the whole reflexion. In a way, you cannot surpass metaphysics because if you do, you are still within the metaphysical reflection (this is why many philosophers have called metaphysics "the science of all other sciences", "philosophie première", etc). However, it is wrong to see it as a reductionist basis upon which all other sciences would attack themselves - like logic wanted to be at the beginning of last century. It is not the case unless you are aristotelician and reject the subjective turn all metaphysical enquiries have taken after Descartes. Rather, metaphysics is necessary to any and all activity of reason.
Now, an external objective observer may want to interject and say "look, what you have described is really simple; I can draw the structure of your above reasoning on a piece of paper which will explain exhaustively and precisely what you are describing". However, as can be clearly seen, this additional step taken by the objective observer is just another recursion into our development and is still calling on another level of discourse.
This has lead to different answers by different people who have encountered this problem. There is the sceptical, the mystical, the nihilist or the realist position. Balkin says that there is nothing "mystical" about self-reference. His answer is the ambiguity principle: we inscribe ourselves within one point of the reflective process and must go along with the best available explanation of what we are looking it. Similarly, I think it was Leibniz who said that questions must stop somewhere. In both cases, the remark that we must stand somewhere and satisfy ourselves with what we have. But their two views are diverging in their conception of knowledge: to Balkin, it is soft, almost rortian in nature. To Leibniz, some knowledge is eternal and unperishable ("true in all worlds").
Balkin rejects any strong postulate of being, of true being. Leibniz on the other hand is amongst the "proper metaphysicians" - those who believe that truth and being exist. They could answer to Balkin's position that it is contradictory: there is something that exists, even if it was only your negation that existed. This strikes me as an eristical argument. Thankfully, that seems to be the position of my teacher Obadachian (it is always more interesting to be confronted to the opposite opinion). I will listen to him and hopefully he can "show me the way" (there is something undeniably esoteric and initiatic about the metaphysical problem - we see this in ancient times and also from modern philosophers who remind us metaphysics must begin with oneself). However, even tho Obadachian thinks he can "one up" the realists (or however you want to call those who reject the reality of being), I feel like another realist can be lurking around just waiting to one up him in turn: this follows from the recursive nature of the problem.
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Is this problem a "western" problem? We see it in Parmenide, and right up to our modern times. But is it something that is contingent to our culture? I believe not. To the core of the problem is an emotion, an étonnement. This étonnement goes like this: "OMFG there is something!" The greeks spoke of this emotion as being the reason for philosophy. Kant said that this emotion is a human trait (throwing himself in yet another recursive counterpoint) and that all before him just couldn't resolve the issue. He then undertook to resolve the issue aporectically.
Yet this problematic may only be novel in it's attempt to solve it: through Science. This étonnement howerver, I believe, is encountered in many other cultures which have however give to it "religious" answers. I am thinking of buddhism and zenism particularly. The theology of christianism however was dogmatic and artistotelician in nature. Buddhism is more akin to greek scepticism: suspension of judgement and abandonment.
The bridge between east and west is a common root. It simply took different roads.
Sketch of an article.
Historical perspecitve (Plato/Aristotle, Leibniz. The possibility that the same problem reiterates itself every century, but in what way exactly)
A modern example: Balkin (Physicist = meme theory, his metaphysical positioning = ambiguity)
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A solution: what can we do? Can Godel's theorem tell us something. But this "something" is some being in itself. Can we transcend this? What about lvls? Grounds of comparison? Can we augment Balkin's theory?
Analysis of Aristotle's lieu. A close look at Balkin's take, the physicist's take, the mystic's take, the sceptic/nihilist's take. Any other lieus? Can we transcent lieus?
The doom of Étonnement. Sombrance dans l'irrationalité. Explication du romantisme.
The following is about Ayn Rand, a 20th century philosopher:
She believed that individuals must choose their values and actions solely by reason, and that "Man — every man — is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others." According to Rand, the individual "must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life." (Wikipedia)
My intuition is that we must work on a view of ethics that negates this form of judgment. There is no abstract ethical reality in the form she is tacitly suggesting.
To me, there are only hypothetical imperatives. Moreover, two fundamental questions must be posed: Cui bono? Who is the client and the benefiter of our calculations. Secondly, what is the objective. There are ethical relations between countries, there are ethical relations between individuals and there are ethical relations between any defined organizations that interact with other entities. This is a view that breaks down all a priori conception of morality and loosens all parameters (no longer the individual must exist for it's own sake).
Like Hume, I also operate a difference between the individual and the group. The relation between the individual and himself is not an ethical matter. This rules out much of Virtue ethics as it is defined around the individual. Questions of the good life are not ethical (on this topic however, I do not deny that there is a human nature and that certain actions are more conductive to well being than others).
My vision of breaking down the ethical discourse goes through a greater employment of concepts in economics, engineering (as it pertains to theories about goals and problem solving), Games theory, etc. There is no more in ethical problems that those sciences can assert.
What about Rorty's possible objection that there is no absolute economic theory but that it is a product of our culture. Does this pose me the problem that I have posed to Ayn Rand at the beginning? My answer is not clear, but would actually go along Rorty's. It would be a matter of clarifying rather than refuting. I do believe that Rorty's objection are very worthy but are expression concerning one level of existence (there is no ontological differences between the different "levels of existence". It is a resort of our discourse, of what we say about things: they are levels of intentionality in as far as we can say something about what we say.) . He does agree that his position is circular - that his own theory is susceptible to criticism by itself. He does say that the best he can do is view the world (and criticize it) through his own western or Rortian conception. My position would be very similar. We can't substract ourselves from ourselves. But my vision of ethics still breaks down the old categories and still refutes Ayn Rand.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119684183248514189.html?mod=world_news_whats_news
Overall, there has been a steady decline in violence in Iraq in recent months, including dips in roadside bombs, other attacks and in both U.S. and Iraqi casualties. The U.S. is pressing Iraqi leaders to take advantage of the improved security to make the political reforms needed to stabilize the fledgling democracy.
We had two discussions in which points of contentions were met. The first was about the role of savings in an economy,and how that capital was eventually spent as investment or consumption. The second was about natural selection as opposed to artificial selection. I believe that the difference between nominal and "real" differences can shed some light on the differences we had. What remains obscure can be cleared by the introduction of the notion of grounds of comparison which is called tertium comparationis in latin.
[...]
I might subscribe to the following two thesis:
A) The socratic thesis that no one does what they consider the wrong or the evil intentionally;
B) That in any violent conflict, there is no clean side and it is futile to find out who commited the intitial sin.
These two thesis discredit a very large portion of the analysis and political discourses that one encounter reading papers, articles from pundits and journalists or reading communications coming directly from a political unit - in as far as they intend to picture reality, that is in as far as they want to stay in the discourse of the "is", as opposed to the one built around "ought". (Of course most pundits want to construct "ought" propositions, but something must be said about the truth, and I haven't made up my made yet about the Naturalistic Fallacy.)
I think that there is an important psychological component explaining why people violate those doctrines: the "home team" intentional object.
When you attribute the intentionality of "home team" to a side, you come to perceive actions coming from it as more favorable than if they would come from the "away team", even if the objective content of the actions are the same.
Consider these two examples concerning the Red Mosque attack in Islamabad in the summer of 2007. Imran Khan, leader of the Justice Party said:
Benazir has made enemies for herself in this respect also. She alone among Pakistan's political party leaders has given public support to the massacre of women and children that Musharraf caused when he ordered his troops to attack the Red Mosque in Islamabad.
On the other hand, let's reconstruct what Benazir could have said of the Red Mosque events:
An important islamic cell terrorizing the population has been taken out. The armed militants inside the mosque are responsible for the deaths of civilians in the assault as they were given multiple occasions to release them. If the civilians chose to stay, then they did so knowing full well the dangers involved.
Both descriptions refer to the same events, but the mode of presentation is different (see my essay on Frege's Sens and Denotation). Attributing intent to rational agents is never easy, and seems to depend on the "home team / away team" psychological filter in this case.
[This is a sketch]
I was listening to "The Ethicist", a podcast from the New York Time I downloaded because the title was intriguing. The format of the program is well known: people write letters to the "ethicist" and he responds to them publicly in the podcast.
The ethicist offers ethical judgements on precise, practical problems people write about. For example, "Mike" said he learned her last roomate was a prostitute and was sometimes paying the rant with the money. One day, he offered back the money in disdain.
There is a quote from George Bernard Shaw, the socialist Irish playwriter: "the notion that you can earmark certain coins as tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition". None of us is just a few transactions away from dubious money, the ethicist says. It doens't claim some coin are not tainted, just that it is unpractical to determine which are. But it's not all that helpful to Mike because he has very good reasons to believe this money was tainted.
Nevertheless, the Ethicist says Mike should only be concerned with his roomate's peronsal qualities as opposed to her occupation. This poses the question what is the criteria for a quality to be personal and also why he should not be concerned with her occupation. Why should he not? This could be defended from a consequentialist position: fingerpointing is costly and distracts from fruitful interactions; or, from a deontological position: you should try to help other people, but respecting others comes first and this includes the choices they make.
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Chantale said:
OK, major grammar problem:There ARE a lot of misconceptions.l'accord, l'accord, l'accord.Be good! OXO read more
on Is the surge working?
on Metaphysics for newbs