Philosophy V

What grade do you deserve in this class and why?

Did you read all 8 books in this class? Fully read? Skip read? Etc.

Stephen Hawking, THE UNIVERSE IN A NUTSHELL

Fully read. C'mon, it's a coffeetable book. Don't get me wrong, some of it is still spinning my head, but it's not up there with Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

Jorge Borges, LABYRINTHS

Fully read. Borges and Marquez are awesome. Even Borges's essays and parables were enjoyable.

Nietzsche, GENEALOGY OF MORALS

Little bit of skimming, little bit of reading the same page three times. Reading Nietzsche was like listening to a mad dog bark: it's hard to get past the noise and slobber to the actual meaning.

Daniel Dennett, DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA

What I've read, I read fully. I'm about three-quarters of the way through. I had to finally stop and start on my midterm. The bookmark is still in place, once this class is done I'll wrap it up.

Ken Wilber, ONE TASTE

Fully read, fully enjoyed. I grew up in the Seventies, did TM as a child, developed a love for the physical sciences and a leaning towards secular humanism. I'm still getting a handle on what Wilber's talking about, but I really like the concept of an integral self.

Paul Churchland, ENGINE OF REASON, SEAT OF THE SOUL

Fully read. Finished this one during the first week of jury duty. My computer background, and my girlfriend's interest in cognitive science (and her plans to get a doctorate in neuroscience) made it even better.

Peter Singer, ANIMAL LIBERATION

Skipped certain sections. Singer went in for a lot of "shock value" in some chapters. All I needed was his point--from there it was up to me to make up my mind.

Donald Palmer, LOOKING AT PHILOSOPHY

Fully read. I figured this was the bare minimum, so I got it out of the way first.

Name your "dead" philosopher website and give me the URL link so that I can review it.

"Muthig, unbekümmert, spöttisch, gewaltthätig - so will uns die Weisheit: sie ist ein Weib und liebt immer nur einen Kriegsmann."
--Thus Spake Zarathustra

Morality & Ascetic Ideals

On Friday, October 3, Wilber describes the KKK and Nazis as "a lower order of wholeness, and therefore less moral." I know that Nietzsche is often forgiven for motivating the Nazis, but I suspect he would have held that "magnificent blond beast avidly prowling round for spoil and victory" as far superior to the integral spirituality promoted by Wilber.

In paragraph 13 of his third essay, Nietzsche summarizes his viewpoint against Wilber--or at least Wilber's behavior:

"Allow me to present the real state of affairs in contrast to this: the ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instincts of a degenerating life which uses every means to maintain itself and struggles for its existence; it indicates a partial physiological inhibition and exhaustion against which the deepest instincts of life, which have remained intact, continually struggle with new methods and inventions."

Though I find some common ground in their points on religion, I doubt Friedrich would have been able to see past Wilber's meditation and shaved head. I'll save that for how Wilber would view Nietzsche.

"This is, of course, the standard critique of empiricism by hermeneutics, or the standard critique of Anglo-Saxon philosophy by Continental philosophy. The more I studied philosophers such as Heidegger, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Charles Taylor, Thomas Kuhn, Foucault, and a host of other interpretive philosophers, the more I became convinced that simple empirical knowing (the Left-Hand subject prehends a Right-Hand object) had to be supplemented by a four-quadrant analysis that gave equal emphasis to all four quadrants in the generation of immediate experience, and that the empiricists, by analyzing the picture only in its final stages, were missing several crucial ingredients."

--Do Critics Misrepresent My Position?
A Test Case from a Recent Academic Journal

"The first post-Cartesian, post-Enlightenment movement was the Romantic. It pointed out several important relationships that the supposedly autonomous rational ego was missing (or denying or repressing). The first ignored relationship was the fact that the ego-mind is inseparably connected to the feeling body (and through that, to nature at large). This was an attempt, in the Upper Left, to reconnect the rational ego with the vital, organic body. Nietzsche, Herder, Novalis, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Freud would all have something important to say about this inward dissociation that began to plague the Enlightenment-self (both in theory and in life). "

-- Sidebar E: The Genius Descartes Gets a Postmodern Drubbing, Part II
Integral Historiography in a Postmodern Age

"Okay, the first positive insight of the Romantics involved the necessity to heal this split between mind and feelings. The second important insight of the Romantics was that the individual subjectivity (the Upper Left) is not a disengaged, fully autonomous subject, but rather is set in extensive fields of cultural intersubjectivity (the Lower Left). This is most certainly true, and the Romantics, to their everlasting credit, were the first to really articulate this—Herder, Schiller, Rousseau, the Schlegels, Novalis, Coleridge, and crew. It was this emphasis on the cultural context—and hence on the importance of hermeneutics, of recognizing other cultures, of interpretation, and of background context—that made the Romantics the first real postmodernists. In fact, the Romantics were the first truly great green-meme theorists in history. Their lineage stretches to Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Heidegger, Derrida...."

-- Sidebar E: The Genius Descartes Gets a Postmodern Drubbing, Part III
Integral Historiography in a Postmodern Age

"Now, given that interpretations are built into history because they are built into the Kosmos at all levels, there are several ways to proceed. If you had to pick one insight that defines postmodernism, it is that we do not merely perceive the world, we interpret it (and therefore co-create it)--an insight that can be traced to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Heidegger, and down to today with Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and crew. Moreover, different people in different times and places have created different interpretations of the world--have created different worldviews. So, given that inescapable situation, how do we proceed? How do we proceed in science, in philosophy, in historiography, and so on? Given the multiple mess that is culture--given the rambunctious plurality of worldviews --how do we even begin to understand the Other(s)?"

-- Sidebar A: Who Ate Captain Cook? Part II
Integral Historiography in a Postmodern Age

Like all philosophers, Wilber places himself above those who came before him. While thinkers may acknowledge the deeds of the past (i.e., Socrates), they all see themselves as having a better, superior, way of thinking. So for Ken Wilber, it's okay to take up some of Nietzsche's ideas, like his attack against the church.

Against vegetarianism:

It is interesting that there are some nutrients that we can not easily gain from non-animal sources (certain B-complexes). This would seem to indicate a need for at least some meat consumption.
There is also the predator/prey relationship that occurs in nature. While there is an ethical argument against causing undue suffering and herding animals, nature does not exclude carnivorous behavior as a norm. Those who point out how "natural" vegatarianism is should look at what they're arguing against. If it's the factory farms, fine; but if it's the killing and eating of a different species, you don't get more natural than that. The only difference between herbivores and carnivores is the phylum of their consumption.

Books

"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"

"He did not want to compose another Quixote--which is easy--but the Quixote itself."

"The Garden of Forking Paths"

"I have some understanding of labyrinths: not for nothing am I the great grandson of that Ts'ui Pên who was governor of Yunnan and who renounced worldly power in order to write a novel..."

"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"

"I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia."

"The Library of Babel"

"There are five shelves for each of the hexagon's walls; each shelf contains thirty-five books of uniform format.."

Magic Realism

The presentation of fantastic events, occurences, situations, etc., in a realistic or matter of fact way.

In "The Circular Ruins" a magician dreams another being, and is in turn the creation of another being. A beautiful refutation of Berkeley.

"He walked into the shred of flame. But they did not bite into his flesh, they caressed and engulfed him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another."

"The Library of Babel"

"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite numbers of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings."

sensorimotor

emotional-sexual

magic

mythic

rational

vision-logic

psychic

subtle

causal

nondual

"The Circular Ruins"

"The Library of Babel"

Dennet made heavy use of the Library in Darwin's Dangerous Idea . He also proposed the Library of Mendel, and infinite collection of all possible genetic combinations.

Borges is presenting the search for the truth, for man's destiny. If all stories are possible, which one is right? Everything we've done in this class, or all the others, ties into our own personal searches. Some seek for support for our beliefs, some for new knowledge.

The closest connection that I think can be drawn from this story to any other work we looked is One Taste. The Libarians's search, and his description of the state of mind of the other Librarians is close to Wilber's outlook, or his presentation of how the search for spirituality is going.

Create a fictional story using all 8 authors from this term (Greene or Hawking, Dennett, Churchland, Palmer (particularly his use of certain philosophers), Nietzsche, Singer, Wilber, and Borges) as participants in the discussion. The subject is this: Can a sophisticated computer (hint: think A.I.) have moral rights similar to a human being? More precisely, can an artificially created intelligent device have the same moral rights that we grant to humans today?

   Paul Churchland was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude when Friedrich Nietzsche entered his office. Dr. Churchland looked up and said: "Did you see Jorge Luis on your way?"
   "Nein. Vorhölle war ein Weibchen. Ich erhielt in der Immigration gehaftet."
   "Y yo tambien." Jorge Luis Borges stepped past Nietzsche and made his way to the table in the middle of the room. Nietzsche sneared at his behavior. Churchland held up a restrainin hand before the dead German, and turned Nietzsche towards his chair.
   "¿Cuándo el otros llegarán?" Borges asked.
   "Soon. Those of us still living must travel a little more mundanely. But..." He stopped abruptly, as Stephen Hawking also strode in. "Stephen?" he asked with a note of surprise.
   "Plane crash," came the reply from Hawking, as the physicist went and took a seat between Nietzsche and Jorge Luis. Daniel Dennett arrived a few minutes later, nodded curtly to Churchland before taking his seat. He was followed shortly by Ken Wilber's spirit, and the more coporeal forms of Donald Palmer and Peter Singer. Once everyone was seated (except Wilber, who wasn't really there anyways), Palmer stood at the head of the table.
   "Hello again, all. As you know, I've been appointed ringleader. As you also know, the SDSC has teamed up with the NeuroSciences Institute, and is preparing to start research into Created Consciousness. UCSD has loaned us out as the Ethics Committee for the project."
   "Wenn es nicht menschlich ist, ist dieses Argument sinnlos."
   I think I'll call that the cyber pre/trans fallacy came as a wry emanation from Wilber's projection.
   Singer caught everyone's eye before speaking. "My concern is on the creation of a being that is totally dependent on us for survival. It may evolve into an independent, self-sustaining being, but even the animal we domesticated started out as viable creatures without our influence. I'm worried that we're making something that can't live without us."
   Churchalnd nodded. "I have no doubt that complex enough machine will attain some level of consciousness. It's arguable that the early devices Krichmar worked on were as conscious as insects. The only question in my mind is 'how conscious?' Once we get that settled, we can start making equivalencies to exisiting beings."
   "What level of thought do they think they're going to come up with, Donald? Are we talking Turing test, or are we talking poodle?" The room turned to look at Stephen Hawking, most of them never having heard his voice before.
   Palmer shrugged. "Limitless? With the synthetic neuron they've developed, there's no real limit. Flipping the switch may be the same as giving birth."
Dennett glanced at Borges. "Jorge, do you think this story is contained in the Library?"
   "No sé. Pero, tengo gusto del estilo de escritura." say Jorge Luis.
   What about the idea of turning it off? Wilber's form moved through his seat. Is it okay to hit the switch if we promised to turn it back on? Personally I think a conscious machine may be the greatest Witness possible, born into continuous consciousness.
   "Deseo saber qué dios soñará la máquina."
   "I'm pretty clueless," said Palmer. "This isn't a realm of historic thought; this is creation of thought. No offense Friedrich and Jorge, but if Socrates and Jesus had been real," everyone winces at this, "you two may not be here."