The ramblings of an Eternal Student of Life     
. . . still studying and learning how to be grateful and make the best of it
 
 
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Personal Reflections ... Philosophy ...

Not long ago, the NY Times published an opinion piece in its “Stone” column, entitled “Should Work Be Passion, Or Duty?” The Stone is where the Times puts its deeper and more philosophic pieces about modern social issues. Since this article was written by a Professor of Philosophy, it seems to have landed in the right place. With regard to the meaning of work, Professor DeBrabander concludes in favor of duty over passion. In a nutshell, imagining that your career is your highest calling and the primary mission defining your life is highly over-rated, even though the notion remains quite popular amidst the better educated and more professional members of the American workforce.

DeBrabander notes the irony that people in this category usually do quite well financially, and thus should have more capacity for leisure relative to others in the workforce. And yet, many professionals work much longer hours than the average warehouse order picker or sewer pipe repair technician. Why might that be true? Because the American professional class sees their careers as the core source of meaning in their lives, perhaps the defining aspect of who they are and why they exist. And recent surveys show that young Millennial workers coming out of college have the same attitude, despite the old fogies who see them as slackers.

So let me admit – I once had the same feelings. I once dreamed of doing great and world-changing things, and I was ready to work tirelessly for it, sacrificing my leisure time and my relationships for the sake of the “cause”. Well, after college, I found out that I was not going to be employed in some great cause. I wasn’t even going to be admitted to the “American elite”, the group selected to help run the top  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 9:01 pm       No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment
 
 
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Brain / Mind ... Philosophy ...

The Nautilus web site is usually a good place to find deep and interesting thinkers at work. I came across a recent Nautilus post by Brian Gallagher regarding free will, where Mr. Gallagher wonders if neuroscience can help us to understand it. Free will is a very confounding topic that elicits a wide variety of opinion as to what it is, and even whether it exists or not. To what degree is “free will” a useful and accurate concept, given the realities of our bodies, brains and minds?

So, can neuroscience help us to get a better handle on free will? To date, there have been a variety of studies identifying brain structural features and flaws that affect mental states and human behavior. There is even evidence that brain lesions in various brain regions can predispose people to criminal behavior. Researchers found that crime-related lesions all fall within a unique, functionally connected brain network that is thought to be involved in moral decision making. A 2016 research paper noted that people who have behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia “develop immoral behaviors as a result of their disease despite the ability to explicitly state that their behavior is wrong.”

OK, but these situations are exceptional, and sometimes it’s the exceptions that prove the rule. So what is the rule? When our neural wiring isn’t out of whack, is our will “free”? Can neuroscience answer that? Well, not yet, but stay tuned. Mr. Gallagher tells us about a group of neuroscientists and philosophers who recently announced that they’ve received $7 million to study and define the nature of free will and whether humans have it, or to what degree they do.  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 9:11 pm       No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment
 
 
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Philosophy ... Science ... Society ...

HERE IS A MAKE-BELIEVE STORY THAT I MADE UP TO HELP A NON-MATHEMATICALLY INCLINED FRIEND OF MINE TO GRASP WHAT HEISENBERG‘s UNCERTAINTY MEANS IN THE QUANTUM WORLD — SORT-OF, ANYWAY . . .

Imagine meeting a person from a different, far away place – and in that different, far away place, people get first names and last names, just like us

BUT – each person from this far away place gets a set of multiple first names, and multiple last names; E.g., the person can be [George, Martin, Louis, Roger] + [Smith, Edwards, Ortiz, Russo]. Also, every second or so, the combination changes, more or less randomly. We can’t know why right now — maybe it’s because their brains evolved differently than ours, maybe it’s because of cultural differences, could be a lot of things. But for now, we just need to accept that there’s something different about  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 7:23 am       No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment
 
 
Saturday, June 16, 2018
Nature ... Philosophy ... Science ...

I recently read an article in Scientific American about a research project meant to measure the bite pressure of various crocodile species. The author (Dr. Gregory Erickson) was himself the researcher, and thus spoke from personal experience. He started his article with a description of how he would approach crocodiles (both in captivity and in the wild), so as to shove into their mouths a wired-up tube designed to measure pressure.

Obviously, this was not an easy form of research !! In fact, it sounded absolutely harrowing — sneak up on the croc from behind, goad it with the tube, then get the thing to attack the tube with its hideous teeth and crushing jaw (and not attack you!). Turns out that certain crocs can bite down with a pressure approaching 3,800 pounds per square inch — i.e., the pressure that you would get by putting a Chevy Impala on a platform, and holding it up with a 1 inch square piece of metal (or whatever else could withstand such pressures).

That got me to ponder some of my philosophic assumptions about the nature of the universe, and especially this tiny but interesting little quadrant of it called planet earth, with all of its living things. Crocs are incredibly powerful and dangerous predator animals. It’s kind of hard to find any sense of natural beauty in such a ferocious and aggressive creature (although some people can). And if you believe that a sentient and almighty God created the universe according to a positive, life-affirming theme, or even if you believe in some sort of rational order or “way” to the world despite lack of a deity, it’s kind of hard to  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 8:25 am       No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment
 
 
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Philosophy ... Science ...

Between any two pure states there exists a reversible transformation. If one requires the transformation from the last axiom to be continuous, one separates quantum theory from the classical probabilistic one.

This is an interesting quote from an article about “Quantum Theory and Beyond”, and is found on the arXiv repository. “Continuous transformation” may seem like trivia to most people, but a big question about the universe and reality lies behind it. And that question is this: is reality discreet, digital and mosaic-like, as quantum physics implies (recall that the “quantum” in quantum physics is a set fixed unit of transaction, no lower value is possible)? Or is reality continuous — which requires infinity, given that you need an infinity of numbers to properly describe any variable in the state of a continuous system, and the number of different possible states of that system are also infinite.

So, is there infinity in the world? Does physics require or at least hint at the presence of infinity? Recall that I had previously discussed whether reality is ultimately cubist or continuous, about 11 years ago. If physics does require infinity (e.g., the inflation paradigm in cosmology has certain versions that require “eternal inflation” with an infinite number of universes), that could have some interesting metaphysical and even spiritual implications.

Or, by contrast, is the world just some arrangement of building blocks which you can’t break into, mosaic chips that you cannot see inside, cannot know what goes on within (sort of like a black hole), there cannot be any interact with smaller chips of the basic mosaic piece? Black holes suggest that this might be true (i.e., the theoretically infinite “singularity” within the black hole is completely cloaked from the universe, and might as well be thought to not exist, just as the “inner divisions” of a quanta are ultimately irrelevant). If so, then perhaps the boffins will eventually be the masters of the universe, since there is ultimately a limited number of things to know — perhaps that number is still quite staggering, but in theory anyway, it might ultimately be investigated and somehow understood. If that is true, this would be the end of metaphysics.  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 5:08 pm       Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Philosophy ... Science ...

In my recent blog essay on “Meaning and the Universe“, I concluded that the ultimate meaning of the Universe and the ultimate reason why it exists is “relationship”. I didn’t elaborate on precisely what I meant by “relationship”, or why I thought that it might be the ultimate and most fundamental character of the Universe. My friend Mary wrote a response asking that I elaborate on this. She said that she generally favors the idea and noted that most scientists don’t seem particularly interested in pondering the nature of relationship within the workings of the physical world. Mary noted perhaps one exception, the 20th Century Jesuit biologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Bottom line, Mary asked for “further elaboration of [my] tho’t on this topic”.

OK, Mary, thanks for asking!! I can’t say that I’ve fully thought this out and that I am ready to write and defend a thesis on it. But your question did inspire me to do some more work on what has basically been just a rough, intuitive notion rattling around in the back of my head, something that seems to have developed over time from the various readings and study efforts that I have invested into scientific and philosophic topics. Footnote, I’m going to try to discuss “relationship” without mentioning the word “love”, even though there is a strong and obvious link between the two. Many people equate love and relationship, and “love makes the world go round”, so doesn’t that prove it? Well, maybe it does in one sense, but I’d like to take a more generalized, abstracted and careful look at the notion of relationship and how it relates to “being, in general”. But by the same token, I don’t want to get bogged down in the swamp of relational ontology and Martin Heidegger’s turgid discussions of “being” and “dasein”.

Actually, I can’t pin the “relationship notion” on any one topic or any particular set of facts or ideas from science. Roughly speaking, it seems to be the one thing that survives after applying the acid wash of critical philosophical reasoning and empirical scientific study to the “longings within” that we conscious creatures often have, longings for meaning and purpose in an existential sense. I.e., it seems to me to be the one thing that survives after you apply the standard atheist/positivist toolkit to debunk religious miracles, historical myths regarding  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 8:47 pm       Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Philosophy ... Science ... Spirituality ...

Long, long ago, humans trying to find their meaning in the greater order of things could take comfort in the Church-approved notion that the earth was the center of the cosmos. Copernicus and Galileo finally saw through that bit of wishful thinking, but for a few more centuries, the universe still seemed like a relatively cozy place. Only around 80 or 90 years ago did cosmologists figure out that the universe was vastly larger than anything we had previously imagined. The thousands of stars visible in the night sky turned out to only be a fraction of those in our Milky Way galaxy, and our Milky Way turned out to be but one of over one hundred-billion galaxies. And yet, at the same time, the universe turned out to be incredibly empty. All of the amazing things like stars and planets and galaxies were separated by huge, incomprehensible distances.

Our mythological sense of time turned out to be way off the mark too. The Bible deals in hundreds and thousands of years, but the universe turns out to be around 14 billion years old. Human-kind, and even the most elementary forms of life on earth, have occupied but a tiny fraction of that.

So, does the vastness of the cosmos prove that humans are basically meaningless on a universal scale, and that universe is obviously absent of an involved, intelligent and caring creator?

Many modern cosmologists embrace or are generally sympathetic with this viewpoint. For instance, physicist Steven Weinberg  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 1:11 pm       Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Nature ... Philosophy ... Photo ...

Here is some trailside philosophy that I came across yesterday (Memorial Day) during a hike along the Long Path in Harriman State Park (NY). If I had a marker or a paintbrush, I would have put an addendum below this thought. One word . . . “yet”. Actually, ZXZ’s thought is rather profound . . . i.e., the reality of ourselves is in our stories, in our journeys, in movement. We do not exist as something still, something static, as say a glass of water or a rock can. Without movement, without life, we are just carbon-based flesh with a few other chemicals thrown in. If we really “are”, then we’re here, not there . . . not yet. But like that caterpillar on the tree, we’re moving towards “there”, and in that movement, in that journey, we take on our identities and our reality.

The second pic shows some guys beating the heat yesterday at Lake Skannatati. We do stuff like jumping into lakes on hot afternoons. That’s why we’re here, that’s why we are.

◊   posted by Jim G @ 2:56 pm       Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Monday, February 16, 2015
Philosophy ... Religion ...

I was listening to the local NPR station one evening and they were playing an interview with the author of a children’s book called “Tuck Everlasting”. The author’s name is Natalie Babbitt, and the book tells a story about a family (the Tucks) living way out in the middle of some forest. In their travels, they came across a spring of water one day, and took a few drinks from it. It turned out that this particular springwater has the power to make you immortal. They came across the spring a long, long time ago, and by all rights they should all be dead by the time of the story. But they (and their horse, which also took a few sips) hadn’t aged a day. And it don’t look like they are going to.

In the story, a little girl from a local village decides one day to take a hike in the woods, and happens across the same spring. She’s thirsty and is about to drink up, when someone in the Tuck family comes across her and yells out “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” He runs toward her and leaps and tackles her in slo-mo, just as she raises her cupped hands to her lips. Well, maybe not (this book was written in 1975, before everything had to be a violent action-adventure in the Terminator style); but they still dissuaded her from taking that fateful sip.

There’s a lot more to the plot, but the leitmotif of Tuck Everlasting is about whether anyone should really want to live forever. Babbitt doesn’t think so, and thus  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 10:33 pm       Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
◊  God 2.0
Philosophy ... Religion ... Spirituality ...

I’ve talked here before about the “New Atheism” movement, a rather interesting social development over the past decade or so. Citing progress in particle physics and cosmology in crafting a “theory of everything” (based on vacuum energy, superstring/M-theory, inflationary cosmology, and the resultant multi-verse process), along with continuing scientific and philosophical work on the deep nature of human consciousness, a handful of philosophers and scientists have propounded a new synthesis by which science explains it all; there is no further need to appeal to ideas about “God” or any other mysterious phenomenon or force in the universe. Perhaps the most famous proponents of this movement are philosopher Daniel Dennett and biologist Richard Dawkins. But many people say there are “four horsemen” of this new view: Dennett, Dawkins, the now deceased writer Christopher Hitchens, and neuroscientist Sam Harris. Their overall synthesis boils down to a mix of 1.) physical monist philosophy, in which all things are either known or will eventually be known through empirical science and rational analysis; and 2.) secular humanism, the notion that human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or a God.

I just put the New Atheism’s ideas in a positive fashion, i.e. emphasizing what they appear to be arguing FOR. But they are probably better defined by what they argue AGAINST: i.e., classical theistic, God-based religions. According to Wikipedia, the New Atheists believe that religion should not simply be tolerated as an alternate if inferior point of view, but should be aggressively countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises. The famous biologist E.O. Wilson recently said that “the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths.”

The New Atheism thus takes the secular humanist agenda to the next level, by asserting that humanity will achieve the highest levels of humanism and  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 2:45 pm       Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment
 
 
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