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Just Chat! / Is more technology the answer?

« on: 07/08/2009 13:08:04 »

Is more technology the answer?

Technology is a positive feed back system.  When the output of the system increases the system goes at a higher rate.  There is no equilibrium in a positive feedback system.  Capitalism is such a system.

In a negative feed back system when the output increases the system goes at a slower pace or turns off completely, like the thermostatically controlled home heating furnace.  Such a system seeks and maintains equilibrium.  Our body is such a system.

As our world population continues to increase we (humanity) face a big question:  How will we feed everybody?  Until lately, India thought that they had found the answer for creating cheap food for their hundreds of millions.

“Farmers in the state of Punjab abandoned traditional farming methods in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the national program called the "Green Revolution," backed by advisers from the U.S. and other countries.

Indian farmers started growing crops the American way — with chemicals, high-yield seeds and irrigation.

Since then, India has gone from importing grain like a beggar, to often exporting it.

But studies show the Green Revolution is heading for collapse.”

When he Green Revolution was launched 40 years ago framers began to grow only high-yield crops instead of their traditional crops. The new crops required more water than the old crops so that farmers were required to create new wells.  These new wells caused the ground water level to fall and the declining level caused the water to become more salty than before.  These new wells required better and more expensive pumps, which led to indebtedness by the farmers.

This led to a problem similar to the problem we in the US have recently experienced, i.e. India’s Wall Street equivalent grew fat and happy and farmers accumulated debts that they could not pay.  This created a financial “quicksand”.

The new crops demanded much more from the soil and the water wells pumped more salty water because of lowered ground water and the combination destroyed the soil.

During the good years the farmers increased their standard of living and built new homes for their families, thus adding more debt.

"It's like a disease that is catching on in the world," says Suba, "building a life that is like a house of cards."

"The state and farmers are now faced with a crisis…India's population is growing faster than any country on Earth, and domestic food production is vital.

But the commission's director, G.S. Kalkat, says Punjab's farmers are committing ecological and economic "suicide”… Kalkat says only one thing can save Punjab: India has to launch a brand new Green Revolution. But he says this one has to be sustainable.

The problem is, nobody has yet perfected a farming system that produces high yields, makes a good living for farm families, protects and enhances the environment — and still produces good, affordable food.”

India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102944731

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New Theories / Are Internet discussion forums the answer?

« on: 07/08/2009 13:07:05 »

If you had read the next paragraph you would see both Damsio and I are convinced that we think in images and not in words.

Duhhhh, which exactly proves my point; Consciousness came before words! Something tells me that you may have trouble understanding plain English sir!

Correct, consciousness comes before language.  My point is that if you had someone to read to you the complete OP you would have recognized this fact.

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New Theories / Are Internet discussion forums the answer?

« on: 06/08/2009 11:22:52 »

Are Internet discussion forums the answer?

Only for the curious with a lot of time on their hands.

When asked about the origin of consciousness it appears to be conventional wisdom to respond, “Language did it”.

I must respectfully disagree with this view. Consciousness came before language in my opinion. The very word "I" must have been one of the first words and it proves the presence of consciousness prior to it's invention.

If you had read the next paragraph you would see both Damsio and I are convinced that we think in images and not in words.

I am suggesting that the discussion forum is a vehicle that can be very useful if we were to use it in a more sophisticated manner than it is now used.  The forum does not have to be confined to idle chit chat.  If we were to begin to use it in a sophisticated manner we could attract sophisticated individuals or individuals who wished to grow into sophisticated thinkers.  It could grow to be a very important means for intellectual discourse.

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New Theories / Are Internet discussion forums the answer?

« on: 05/08/2009 18:52:49 »

Are Internet discussion forums the answer?

When asked about the origin of consciousness it appears to be conventional wisdom to respond, “Language did it”.

“I believe it is legitimate to take the phrase “I know” and deduce from it the presence of a nonverbal image of knowing centered on the self that precedes and motivates that verbal phrase…The idea that self and consciousness would emerge after language, and would be a direct construction of language, is not likely to be correct.”

Our sluggish ability to adapt quickly to changes in our environment severely endangers the longevity of the human species: it takes generations for new human science theories to migrate into mass common sense comprehension.

Internet discussion forums are the answer. 

What is the question?

How can we dramatically enhance the speed of the social osmosis of new human science theories?

Quotes from The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio

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Just Chat! / How does the infant enter our symbolic world?

« on: 04/08/2009 20:01:54 »

I don’t do bumper stickers.  I show just a hint of leg and if you want to go high and inside you must go to the books.

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Just Chat! / How does the infant enter our symbolic world?

« on: 04/08/2009 15:11:32 »

No offence, Cobert, but how about having a day off from 'the natural organismic propensity for a mysterious symbolic dictation' etc and posting a photo from your day ( http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=24173.0 )? Or, maybe you could show us a picture of your cat in a car ( http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=24436.0 )?

  What are you?  Some kind of pervert?

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Just Chat! / How does the infant enter our symbolic world?

« on: 04/08/2009 10:15:34 »

How does the infant enter our symbolic world?

Ernest Becker, Pulitzer Prize winner for his book The Denial of Death, makes the point that the humanization process is one wherein the individual exchanges the natural organismic propensity for a mysterious symbolic dictation.  The child in its very essential formative age is faced with denying that which ‘comes naturally’ for what are symbolic dictates that are far beyond its ability for comprehension.  The child’s formation of character is dictated by its need to be somebody in the symbolic world.

John Dewey learned long ago that “the child continually loses battles he does not understand…we earn our early self-esteem not actively but in large part passively, by having our action blocked and re-oriented to the parents pleasure.”

In the very essential formative years the child develops character traits that in many cases remain with that individual for the rest of their life.

What is character?  Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.

I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes.  These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves.  They are representations of our will.  They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting.  These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions. 

Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions.  We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits.  “Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction.”  “The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought.”  “Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness.”  “Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts.  It means will.”

Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.”

If I consult my inner self I cannot focus upon an attitude but can infer such an attitude based on behavior.  If I wish to become conscious of my intuition I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition.

When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitude”.  The son cannot change the attitude directly but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates.  This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified.  We can modify intuition only through habit directed by our will.

“Were it not for the continued operation of all habits in every act, no such thing as character would exist.  There would be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that, of isolated acts.  Character is the interpenetrating of habits.  If each habit in an insulated compartment and operated without affecting or being affected by others, character would not exist.  That is conduct would lack unity being only juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations.  But since environments overlap, since situations are continuous and those remote from one another contain like elements, a continuous modification of habits by one another is constantly going on.”

My understanding of character and the quotations concerning the nature of character are taken from Habits and Will by John Dewey

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Just Chat! / Where does reason come from?

« on: 03/08/2009 12:37:21 »

It appears that our ability to reason is a combination of conceptualization plus if-then inferences. I suspect both capabilities are part of the evolution of consciousness in creatures going back long before humans had evolved.

The symbolic logic you speak of is facilitated by preconceptual structures such as the container schema. We can see this in Venn diagrams.

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Just Chat! / Where does reason come from?

« on: 02/08/2009 20:35:05 »

Where does reason come from?

We rely on our unconscious to furnish the building blocks for comprehension of reality.  If we examine the cognitive sciences and the human sciences we see a constant emphasis about the unconscious.  It is through our conceptual systems, which are unconscious, that we make sense of our every day existence and our everyday metaphysics exists within our conceptual system.

All of our acts and thoughts are based upon philosophical assumptions.  Metaphysics is a fancy word for our concern about ‘what is real’.  For example, whenever we think or speak about responsibility we are assuming causality.  Without causality there is no responsibility.  The nature and status of the self is another speculation, and an important one, in most decisions we make daily.

It appears to me that cognitive science has two paradigms; symbolic manipulation, which is also called AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the second paradigm, which might be called ‘conceptual metaphor’, or it might be called ‘embodied mind’, or ‘embodied realism’.

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science), also known as embodied realism, has taken meaning “to be the central issue.  The central question, as we see it, is how linguistic expressions and the concepts they express can be meaningful”.

Objectivist philosophy has taken the following approach to this question:
“Linguistic expressions and the concepts they express are symbolic structures, meaningless in themselves, that get their meaning via direct, unmediated correlation with things and categories in the actual world (or possible worlds).”

This view of meaning says nothing about human beings, in fact this view finds that computers might well function as substitute human beings.  Embodied realism takes exception to this fundamental point of view.  Embodied realism attempts “to characterize meaning in terms of the nature and experience of the organisms doing the thinking”

Objectivism defines meaning as being independent of the experiences of thinking creatures whereas embodied realism “characterizes meaning in terms of embodiment”.

Let us imagine how human reason might have been born.  The question seeking an answer is: how can natural selection (evolution) account for human reason?

Somewhere back in time we must encounter the signs of reason within the capacity of our ancestors.  What is the essence of reason?  The necessary and sufficient conditions for reason are conceptual and inference ability; to ceptualize is to create neural structures that can be used to facilitate making if-then inferences.

Imagine an early water dwelling creature, which must survive utilizing only the ability to move in space and to discriminate light and shadow.  The sense of a shadow can indicate a friend or foe and can indicate eat or not eat.  Assume that this sensibility has a total range of two feet, i.e. a shadow within a radius of two feet of the creature can be detected.

A shadow comes within sensible range, the creature can ‘decide’ by the size of the shadow whether the shadow is friend or foe and as a possible lunch.  If the shadow is large the creature must ‘run’ if it is small the creature might ‘decide’ to pursue.

It seems obvious to me this simple creature must have the ability to reason in order to survive.  This creature must be capable of ascertaining friend/foe and eat/not eat.  It must also determine how to move based upon that conceptual structure.  It must be able to make inferences from these concepts, these neural structures of what is sensed, to survive.  This creature must have the capacity to perceive, conceive, infer, and move correctly in space in order to survive.

Quotes from Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind by George Lakoff
 and Mark Johnson

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Just Chat! / Why do we seek moral absolutes?

« on: 02/08/2009 11:24:31 »

The point of the OP s to focus attention upon our inclination to seek absolutes and that this inclination tends to lead us into catastrophes. 

We must learn how we think and why we do the things that we do so that our species may last a bit longer.  Our greatest problem is learning how to just get-along.  Our technology has placed extraordinary power into the hands of ordinary people and if we do not become more sophisticated we will destroy our species and perhaps all life on this planet.

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Just Chat! / Why do we seek moral absolutes?

« on: 01/08/2009 12:36:03 »

Why do we seek moral absolutes?

Let’s consider the moral argument that is often rendered to justify making abortion illegal. 

The argument goes something like this: murder (killing an innocent person) is morally and legally prohibited, the fetus is an innocent person, abortion kills the fetus, and therefore abortion is murder.

This argument turns on the premise that the fetus is a person.  The category person must be absolutely and universally understood and fixed to make this argument work.  The category (concept) person must be either value-neutral or it must be based upon some absolute value.  If such is not the case then each time we consider this matter, person can take on a different meaning.

If each “application of the concept determines its meaning, either (1) we would need a rule for applying the concept in various cases (and this would be the same as saying that the meaning of ‘person’ is fixed), or (2) we would be left with the possibility that different people might apply the concept differently.”

If the category person is a function of our personal value system then we can expect that our view of this matter would vary accordingly.  We might avoid this variability if the concept person is value neutral and thus does not depend upon our personal value system.  Another way is to claim that we all have access to some absolute or ultimate value that is binding upon each of us.

Without absolute truths we recognize that we must depend on the judgment of fallible, and frail creatures living within constantly evolving communities; non critical individuals who are forced to make decisions with little training or understanding of critical thinking skills within what are typically highly ambiguous situations.

“In sum, moral absolutism is motivated by a very widespread human longing for clarity, certainty, order, and constraint in a world that confronts us constantly with change, obscurity, doubt, contingency, and aggression.”

Quotes from Moral Imagination by Mark Johnson

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Just Chat! / Is imagination a ubiquitous creator in all thought?

« on: 27/07/2009 21:42:48 »

Is imagination a ubiquitous creator in all thought?

Our Sunday schools have taught us that morality is a rule-following activity.  Authority sets the rules and the people follow those rules.  The people follow those rules often because they are told that these rules have a universal quality.  To those who are guided strictly by religious beliefs these rules come from a supernatural power; to those who are not so inclined these rules come from a natural power.

Empirical research by cognitive scientists informs us that the objectivist philosophical traditions, which support such ideas, are erroneous.  This research, conducted with the help of new brain scan technologies, inform us that there is no mind/body dichotomy.  Our concepts and categories, plus our mode of cognitive reasoning about them, “are structured by various kinds of imaginative processes”.

The survival of the human species as well as all other animal species depends often upon quick action and correct action dictated by the circumstances.   This action depends upon the incorporation of energy with a sound comprehension of the circumstances.  This action is dependent upon good mental images.  We think, reason, and perceive based upon the images constructed by our imagination.

Our imagination is not only there constructing the images in accordance with our sensual inputs but is there remolding those images rapidly and accurately as they must be to help us recognize what form of action our survival demands.  Imagination is there in the initial conceptual images and throughout the cognitive process of creating new possibilities of action that may be require in rapid sequence for survival.

Consciousness, when it appeared on the evolutionary scene, represents the dawn of individual forethought. Consciousness is permeated with images constructed and continually updated with plans and actions.

Image is an often used word but it does have a more technical meaning that we must comprehend.  In cognitive science “image” means mental image, which is synonymous with mental image.  Current brain scan technology makes it possible for us to “see” these patterns of neural activity, which are called neural pattern or map.

There are both conscious and unconscious images, which can be visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and somatosensory.  Soma means body and includes touch, muscularly, temperature, pain, visceral, and vestibular.  “Thought is an acceptable word to denote such a flow of images.”

The process of making images is a non ending activity that “never stops while we are awake and it even continues during part of our sleep, when we dream…the images you and I see in our minds are not facsimiles of the particular object, but rather images of the interactions between each of us and an object which engaged our organisms, constructed in neural pattern form according to the organisms design…since you and I are similar enough biologically to construct a similar enough image of the same thing, we can accept without protest the conventional idea that we have formed the picture of some particular thing.  But we did not.”

“The contribution of language to the mind was, to say the least, astounding, but its contribution to core consciousness is nowhere to be found…Is it plausible to think that language utterances could be created in individuals who had no sense of self, other, and surroundings?” 

For the creationist it is possible to believe that human cognition functions fundamentally in word forms but for those who accept the commonly understood science of natural selection such an idea “does not compute”.

Quotes from The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio

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Just Chat! / What is the source of class distinction?

« on: 27/07/2009 12:10:28 »

Why are many forum members like untrained birddogs?  Because untrained birddogs and many forum members go chasing after the first rabbit that jumps up.  Unfortunatly I started this rabbit chase by responding to an earlier response.

Personally, I don't understand what you're getting at.

I went bird hunting (quail) with a friend who had paid big bucks to someone to train his birddog.  We started our hunt and the first rabbit that jumped up that "birddog" went tearing after that rabbit and just a few seconds later another jumped up and he went tearing after it.  Most responders go tearing after the first bit of non sense they see in the title or first sentence of an OP and like the untrained birddog they are never helpful in hunting that which was the intent of the hunt or OP.

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Just Chat! / What unites all of humanity?

« on: 26/07/2009 12:43:13 »

What unites all of humanity?

Our cognitive structure unites all of humanity.

What is our cognitive structure?

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) has developed empirical evidence to support a revolutionary new comprehension of human cognition.  These three major findings of a second generation of cognitive science are:
     
     The mind is inherently embodied.
     Thought is moistly unconscious.
     Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

Taken together, in a gestalt understanding of human cognition, “these three findings from the science of the mind are inconsistent with central parts of Western philosophy”.

Our comprehension of cognition is of fundamental importance to our comprehension of our self and of the world that we inhabit.  Our most basic beliefs are tied directly to our comprehension of human reason.  “Reason has been taken for over two millennia as the defining characteristic of human beings.  Reason includes not only our capacity for logical inference, but also our ability to conduct inquiry, to solve problems, to evaluate, to criticize, to deliberate about how we should act, and to reach an understanding of ourselves.”

The mind is inherently embodied

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body.  “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.”  It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals.  I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science.  Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason.  Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind. 

“These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects.  First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains.  Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real...That is to say that the sensorimotor system in the human body can perform the functions required to conceptualize and, infer from those conceptions, in a manner required by human cognition. The logical assumption is that these self same sensorimotor neural networks are the networks the body uses to conceptualize during cognition.”

Thought is mostly unconscious

In the 1970s a new body of empirical research began to introduce findings that questioned the traditional Anglo-American cognitive paradigm of AI (Artificial Intelligence), i.e. symbol manipulation. 

This research indicates that the neurological structures associated with sensorimotor activity are mapped directly to the higher cortical brain structures to form the foundation for subjective conceptualization in the human brain.  In other words, our abstract ideas are constructed with copies of sensorimotor neurological structures as a foundation.  “It is the rules of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought—and that may be a serious underestimate.”

Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical

Human reason is an extension of animal reason.  The sensorimotor system in the human body can perform the functions required to conceptualize and to infer, i.e. the system controlling bodily movements and perception are theorized to be the same that is used for reasoning and that much of what we thing comes from the unconscious.  That which comes from the unconscious has been conceptualized based upon our bodily interaction with the world.  We have an embodied mind and the failure to recognize that fact is the primary difference

We constantly make subjective judgments regarding abstract things, such as morality, difficulty, importance; we also have subjective experiences such as affection, desire, and achievement.

The manner in which we reason, and visualize about these matters comes from other domains of experience. “These other domains are mostly sensorimotor domains…as when we conceptualize understanding an idea (subjective experience) in terms of grasping an object (sensorimotor experience)…The cognitive mechanism for such conceptualizations is conceptual metaphor, which allows us to use the physical logic of grasping to reason about understanding.”

Metaphor is pervasive throughout thought and language.  Primary metaphors might properly be considered to be the fundamental building blocks for our thinking and our communication through language.

“The integrated theory –the four parts together—has an overwhelming implication: We acquire a large system of primary metaphors automatically and unconsciously simply by functioning in the most ordinary of ways in the everyday world from our earliest days…we all naturally think using hundreds of primary metaphors.”

In summation, we have many hundreds of primary metaphors, which together provide a rich inferential structure, imagery, and qualitative feel.  These primary metaphors permit our sensorimotor experiences to be used to create subjective experiences.  Thus abstract ideas are created that are grounded in everyday experiences.

In modern society new human science theories take generations to seep into the social consciousness.  However, new natural science theories are quickly accepted or rejected; when accepted they can immediately impact the world in which we live. 

Darwin informs us that the species that is unable to adapt adequately to the changing environment will quickly becomes toast. 

Can our civilization, with such a disparity of innovative conditioning, long survive? 

Quotes from Philosophy in the Flesh by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

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Just Chat! / Police and Professor: who had moral high ground?

« on: 25/07/2009 14:35:39 »

Police and Professor: who had moral high ground?

Can both simultaneously occupy the moral high ground?

The NYTimes published a news article that ignited “a national discussion about race and law enforcement unfolded after the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard’s prominent scholar of African-American history. Professor Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct July 16 at his home in Cambridge, Mass., as the police investigated a report of a possible break-in there. The charge was later dropped, and the Cambridge Police Department said the incident was “regrettable and unfortunate.”  President Obama said the police officer had acted stupidly.

Are experiences, meaning, and comprehension pertinent to the facts?

Did the police officer and the professor “see” the same thing?

The police officer saw himself once again going into a dangerous situation in order to preserve law and order; in this dangerous situation he saw a potentially dangerous black man giving him a hard time just like so many others have done.

The well respected university professor saw a police officer harassing him because he is a black man; just as many police officers constantly harass him and all black men because almost all Irish police officers harbor racial hatred for all African Americans.

I claim that both the policeman and the professor had made moral decisions of the highest meaning.  Both made decisions affecting the interrelationships of the community in its widest variables.
 
The Scientific Method seeks to bracket [fence out] meaningfulness.  The scientific method hates bias and bias is one form of meaning.  Bias causes the individual to often distort “truth”.  In the lab bias is the enemy, i.e. meaning is the enemy.

Religion seeks to bracket the word “morality”, i.e. to create a fence protecting the “word” from outside influence.  Religion seeks to bracket human critical thought.  I was raised as a Catholic and went to Catholic schools and was taught by nuns.  I learned quickly that to “entertain” impure thoughts (thoughts about sex) or questions about my religion were sinful and had to be confessed to a priest in the confessional.

What is meaning?

Meaning is not a thing: meaning is a creatures’ association with an object.

Meaning and epistemology (what can we know and how can we know it) go together like a “horse and carriage”.  Epistemology is about comprehension and comprehension is about meaning.

Comprehension can be usefully thought of as being hierarchical and formed like a pyramid.  At the base is awareness followed by consciousness.  Awareness is the beginning of comprehension; it begins with preconceptual and unconscious happenings in our brain.  Consciousness adds to awareness the focus of our attention on this object that results from awareness.  We are aware of much and we are conscious of little.  When I walk in the woods I am aware of much and become quickly terrified by the consciousness of a shape that makes me think bear.

Knowing follows consciousness on this pyramid.  Knowing is followed by understanding.   Understanding is at the pinnacle of the pyramid of comprehension.

Meaning follows comprehension side by side.  Meaning begins with awareness and grows with consciousness and knowing.  At the pinnacle of the pyramid is the creation of new meaning through the process of our understanding, which organizes into a gestalt that which is known.  The understanding at the pinnacle of comprehension is that rare moment of eureka when all becomes clear after a great struggle to understand a complex matter.  Understanding is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle where our knowledge are the pieces of the puzzle.

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Just Chat! / What is the source of class distinction?

« on: 24/07/2009 13:44:35 »

Why are many forum members like untrained birddogs?  Because untrained birddogs and many forum members go chasing after the first rabbit that jumps up.  Unfortunatly I started this rabbit chase by responding to an earlier response.

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Just Chat! / Can we survive Global Capitalism?

« on: 24/07/2009 13:39:35 »

Now, back to the OP.

A recession in American capitalism is two quarters when the GDP is negative.  Generally speaking tomorrow's GDP must be greater than yesterday's GDP or the system dies.  When GDP goes up the rate of planet consumption goes up; the stored resources of the planet then go down.

The logic of global capitalism leads to the consumption of the planet.

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Just Chat! / Are most decisions moral decisions?

« on: 23/07/2009 20:29:37 »

Where, in American culture, is the domain of knowledge that we would identify as morality studied and taught?

I suspect that if we do not quickly develop a science of morality that will make it possible for us to live together on this planet in a more harmonious manner our technology will help us to destroy the species and perhaps the planet soon.

It seems to me that we have given the subject matter of morality primarily over to religion.  It also seems to me that if we ask the question ‘why do humans treat one another so terribly?’ we will find the answer in this moral aspect of human culture.

The ‘man of maxims’ “is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality—without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human.” George Eliot The Mill on the Floss

I agree to the point of saying that we have moral instincts, i.e. we have moral emotions.  Without these moral emotions we could not function as social creatures.  These moral emotions are an act of evolution.  I would ague that the instinct for grooming that we see in monkeys is one example of this moral emotion.

We can no longer leave this important matter in the hands of the Sunday-school. Morality must become a top priority for scientific study.

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Just Chat! / Are most decisions moral decisions?

« on: 23/07/2009 12:05:34 »

Are most decisions moral decisions?

In an attempt to comprehend the nature of ethics/morality one will find a forest of writings but essentially each person must build his or her own model of what ethics/morality means. Somewhere along the way toward becoming an enlightened person regarding this matter we all must settle on that which makes sense for us. That does not mean that we remain static about the matter but it means that we settle on some model that is our personal guide until we decide to change it.

I cannot remember where I read it but is resonates for me; ‘all decisions, wherein there is a choice, are moral decisions’. One may find quibbles to get around this message but the essence of the matter is that for a person seeking to be moral, all judgments from which decisions are derived warrant careful consideration.

Our community and our family mold our moral sense as we grow up. But at some point we must remold that model to fit our adult self. I am an American and my sense of ethics/morality was codified by the Declaration and the Constitution as I grew up and it is what determines, to a large extent, my adult sense in this matter.

The Declaration declares ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, all men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights’. The Constitution sets forth a listing of the rights of all citizens that are to be protected by law. These declarations are part of my heritage and are what I accept as the foundation of my sense of morality.

It appears that the two concepts ‘right’ and ‘good’ form the foundation of any moral system. The ‘good’ is ‘rational desire’ and the ‘right’ has varying meanings. The status of the right seems to be the important variable that determines what one’s ethical/moral model becomes.

I call my model of morality as being a closed system as opposed to an open system. I call my system a closed system because ‘right’ is clearly defined in the Declaration and the Constitution as being prior to the good. That which is right has a fence around it with a big “No Trespassing” sign and is closed to usurpation by the good. A different system could be called an open system when there is no closed area representing rights but that the right is considered as being that which maximizes the good.

I suspect that often we do not have the knowledge and understanding to determine at the time we make our decisions which matters might be immoral, or amoral, as opposed to moral. I think that a moral person needs to have that consideration constantly in mind and thus to form habits that help to keep us on track even though we often act unconsciously. It is all a part of developing character I guess.

This is not to say that we must become fanatical about it.  Is flossing a moral act?  If I floss or do not floss, does it, in some minute way, affect others?  I think so.  Is watering my lawn a matter for moral consideration?  It might be.

Questions for discussion

Would you say that an act can be a moral or immoral without our being conscious of the matter?  Can a sociopath perform an immoral act?

Where do these two concepts, right and good, fit into your model of morality and or ethics? I use the term ethics/morality to mean that the two terms are the same for me.

Assume that some young person reads my OP and is inspired by it to study what morality is all about. Then that person goes on to read a response and s/he sees that the responder ridiculed the OP. This then deflates the idea to study morality. Can the ridicule be considered to have been an amoral act?

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Just Chat! / Can we survive Global Capitalism?

« on: 22/07/2009 21:30:02 »

Coberst, have you been into a school recently. Modern schooling in Britain has Infants learning about childrens rights and pupils of all ages becoming global ambassadors. All schools in Britain are now required to have a link with a school in another country and community cohesion is a top priority in education policy. Sustainable schools are following an 8 doorways path which includes global citizenship. We are not going to hell in a hand cart. Not if I have anything to do with it.

I know only about American educational systems.  My last formal education was in 1971.  However I have 5 children and 7 grandchildren so I have knowledge of current conditions.

If I am correct all civilization is headed for the abyss.  We have created a technology that places extrordinary power into the hands of ordinary people.  These people lack the intellectual sophistication to mange such a situation.