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coberst

<t>Do you know Dewey? I am a retired engineer with some formal education in philosophy that I gained over a period of time while engaged in my engineering career. I have, over the last thirty years, been actively engaged in reading a great deal of history, biography, philosophy and scienc...

coberst

Zapata;1199554 wrote: How refreshing and stimulating! Thank you.

You are welcome!

coberst

<t>What are we afraid of? Humans are pattern recognition creatures. We survive by the patterns of which we are conscious. Math is the science pattern; we use it constantly to explore the deepest core of natureâ€™s pattern. To be an enlightened citizen is to be a citizen who has rationally...

coberst

<t>Is basic consciousness in early animal forms? Antonio Damasio is a scientist who has set out to organize a scientific study of human consciousness. Damasio utilizes a rather unique method that involves careful observation of individuals who have been deprived of some aspects of conscio...

coberst

<t>How did they accomplish the rarest of military feats? The people, who made up Israel and considered for centuries to be non fighters, were surrounded on three sides and facing a far superior enemy â€œaccomplished the rarest of military featsâ€, they shattered the enemy forces â€œwithi...

coberst

<t>What value do we place on a childâ€™s time? Labor has been commodified in the American culture. I would guess that the average working person makes about $30 an hour. That would be $1200 per week and about $60,000 per year. The average big corporate CEO makes abo...

coberst

<t>Do we get a kick out of intrigue? Shakespeareâ€™s insight, as he proclaimed that life is a stage and we are the actors on that stage of life, leaves us pitiful, in nude exposure, of our self to our self, and places us in a position were we can no longer â€˜just pretendâ€™. Social theor...

coberst

<t>Why is Philosophy like General Motors? With the aid of new brain scan technology the amalgamation of scientific disciplines that make up what is commonly known as SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) has produced empirical evidence to support theories that challenges two millenni...

coberst

<t>What is important here is to see how the new theories of cognitive science open up new horizons of comprehension in matters of legal theory and practice. Winter has discovered the revolutionary nature of the theories of SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) and is applying those t...

coberst

<t>Are you a rules skeptic? Justice Scalia is an ardent defender of the virtue of legal rules. He says such rules reduce dramatically any uncertainty and indicate a level of justice by providing â€œa clear, previously enunciated rule that one can point to in explaining a decision.â€ ...

coberst

<r>Have you met Mr. Straw Man? Quickie from Wiki: â€œA straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the...

coberst

<t>Natural Science: Hegemony of the Right Angle Paradigm? If we watch carefully a group of carpenters building a house we can see that their building paradigm is the right angle and this constraint is standardized by the plumb-bob and the level. The building integrity is assured by the su...

coberst

<t>Where did love come from? Plato judged that the basis of love is centered upon the mutual struggle for truth. I claim that the emotion of love in humans is evolved from the mother infant relationship in early mammals. Occasionally when reading I run across a phrase or sente...

coberst

<t>Does meaning come before awareness? I imagine that somewhere way back in time sapiens came to a conclusion that was driven by their deep and strong urge to live forever. Because sapiens are aware of their mortality and because they are driven by this great urge to stay alive they creat...

coberst

<t>Why are aesthetics such a muddle? Aesthetics are such a muddle because this domain of knowledge, which we call aesthetics, contains a vast kinship of human meanings, attractions, appreciations, needs, qualities, ethics, beauty, art, etc. that can never be resolved into one set of consi...

coberst

<t>Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Freud and Darwin are frauds. God made me. You are driving too fast. When faced with these statements does it matter which of the three buttons â€˜accept, reject, or holdâ€™ that you push? Just what impact...

coberst

<t>Canâ€™t we just hold it? Accept or reject are not the only options one has. The most important and generally overlooked, especially by the young, is the option to â€˜holdâ€™. It appears to me that many young people consider that â€˜to be negative is to be coolâ€™. This lea...

coberst

<t>TruthBringer;1187769 wrote: I also believe that there are many people on this planet who desire one thing and one thing only. And it's a combination of peace and harmony. The very fact that we can't have those two things collectively on the planet right now is a great reason to experie...

coberst

<t>Do we live a â€œlie of characterâ€? Those who know say that Kierkegaard (circa 1840) was a psychoanalyst without fear of being laughed at because he knew that the scoffers are uninformed. Few sapiens have such courage born of self-confidence. The noted psychologist Mowrer said â€œFreu...

coberst

<t>Are we all â€œdittoheadsâ€ to some ideology? Wikipedia informs me that â€œdittoheadsâ€ are â€œfaithful listeners to The Rush Limbaugh Show. Limbaugh explains that these adoring fans are not necessarily those who agree with his views; â€œthey are people who love the show and what he's...

coberst

<t>OpenMind I am convinced that our civilization cannot endure for another 200 years if the citizens of the world do not quickly become significantly more intellectually sophisticated. Our great capacity for creating technology is not matched by our ability to create a moral u...

coberst

<t>How does one begin a disinterested intellectual life? While reading a book about the civil war between North and South Vietnam and the American involvement in that war on my back porch in Dallas in 1981, I was struck by the horrors committed by family members to one another. I could no...

coberst

<t>In the summer of 48 my older brother told me that if I wanted to play high school football I had to â€˜get readyâ€™. In his terms, â€˜getting readyâ€™ meant running to get in condition for the rigors of football practice. In the spring of 09 I want to begin the quest for wisdom. How d...

coberst

<t>Is there a path to wisdom? How can I know what I do not know? How can I trace that boundary between knowledge and ignorance? In the dialogue â€œApologyâ€ Plato writes about Socrates while in the dungeon just before drinking the hemlock that the citizens of Athens condemned ...

coberst

<t>Beauty and morality are species of values. George Santayana says that â€œall values must be ultimately intrinsicâ€. He adds that the good, i.e. that which is desired, is good because of its consequences. Aesthetics is about the perception of values. Aesthetic judgments â€...

coberst

<t>What value do you navigate by? It appears to me that we sapiens need a â€œNorth Starâ€ upon which to fix our voyage. We need a reference point upon which we can focus our attention when trying to determine what of value we can and should do in life. Religion, or God, serve...

coberst

I would say that apathy is an attitude that pervades ones character whereas disinterestedness is a selected focus of attention away from certain aspects of human desire for the purpose of narrowing and thus concentrating ones focus in a disciplined manner.

coberst

<t>Is disinterest like apathy? Says Goethe; â€œthe little that is done seems nothing when we look forward and see how much we have yet to doâ€. The challenge to criticism is disinterestedness! Why we can and should choose the path to DI (disinterestedness) is the discussion th...

coberst

<t>Wit is about many things but power may be its most important characteristic. I think that Jews and African Americans are successful wits in our society because wit provides them both an escape from the worldâ€™s discrimination and because it provides the witty with power that serves as a defense ...

coberst

<t>Is God a practical joker? But love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement.â€”Yeats The rose in the midst of the thorn and sex in the midst of the anus.--coberst One might think of God as a great practical joker. S/he creates a species that co...

coberst

<t>What is a Basic-Level Category? Consider the category hierarchies: {furniture--chairâ€”rocker} and {vehicle--carâ€”sedan}. The middle categories--chair and car--have been discovered to be â€œbasicâ€â€”they have a cognitive priority. â€œBasic-level categories are distinguished from sub...

coberst

<t>Can I Think of Me? In his book â€œThe Birth of Meaningâ€ Ernest Becker informs me that Kant informed the world two centuries ago that an infant â€œbecomes conscious of himself first as â€œmeâ€, and then only as an â€œIâ€â€¦It means, simply, that the child begins to establish himself...

coberst

<t>Snowfire;1182029 wrote: Theres room for us all. I've never seen anything Coberst has posted that would remotely constitute a banning. I understand very little of what he posts but I do give it a go sometimes. My only critisism is that I wish he revisit those threads and communicate bet...

coberst

<t>Lon I think that we chit-chat too much with one another when the time could be better spent in dialogue with the great minds through books. It appears to me that all of our new hand held gadgets take us into the wrong direction. We spend time in vacuous interaction that leads to nothin...

coberst

<t>How can we find that resonant synchronization? I am of the opinion that we all have a number of personal resonances (talents?) that if discovered give great emphasis to our lifeâ€™s satisfaction. Those individuals who discover and exploit such a personal resonance can find great self-s...

coberst

<t>How is body and mind one? â€œIt is our organic flesh and blood, our structural bones, the ancient rhythms of our internal organs, and the pulsating flow of our emotions that give us whatever meaning we can find and that shape our very thinking.â€ Our Western philosophical c...

coberst

<t>What would Socrates do? Socrates sought to save Athenian society by making it self-critical. Imagine that you and many other colorblind people live on this isolated island. All inhabitants are colorblind from birth and know nothing about color; there is no word for color in ...

coberst

<t>Isnâ€™t our financial crisis fair warning? To the self-actualizing self-learner who has studied briefly the high points in human history the prospect of ever comprehending the human condition seems overwhelming. Where to begin? Perhaps some comprehension as to why the ancients could on...

coberst

<t>I agree, however, in a form of government wherein the citizen is sovereign one must have a citizenry that comprehends the facts. What we have learned is that the facts are often distorted by the framing of the issue. I suspect that the definition of these terms is not what leads to the comprehens...

coberst

<t>Framing: Thug, Terrorist, Pirate, any Difference? I have been reading some articles about the problem of introducing to the public an idea about which they are unfamiliar. I think that one problem we have and one that political parties has mastered, as displayed in recent elections, is...

coberst

<t>Is Morality an Open and Closed Matter? I suspect most of us would agree that principles of morality can and do legitimately vary from one nation to another. Within a nation would we also agree that principles of morality can and do legitimately vary from one political party ...

coberst

<t>At least one subgroup of problems that is missing here and in our educational system is that of dialectical problems. I think that our first step is for a significant percentage of our population to become sufficiently intellectually sophisticated as to make many citizens capable of en...

coberst

<t>Letâ€™s examine some problems that are neither a puzzle nor a paradox. I suspect most, if not all, of the problems that face President Obama everyday are such problems. Such problems as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, toxic assets, big banksters, global climate change, drug war in Mexico,...

coberst

<t>Problem, Puzzle, and Paradox: Whatâ€™s Missing? Within the category â€œproblemâ€ there are at least two subcategories: â€œpuzzleâ€ and â€œparadoxâ€. Quickie from wiki: A problem is an obstacle which makes it difficult to achieve a desired goal, objective or pu...

coberst

<t>Are We Responsible Caretakers of this Planet? I am inclined to think that each human generation must consider itself as the steward of the earth and therefore must make available to the succeeding generations an inheritance undiminished to that received. In this context what...

coberst

<t>Can we learn to be critically self-conscious? In his book â€œThe Assault on Reasonâ€ Al Gore informs me that he concluded after talking to many candidates of both parties in the 2006 election cycle that they had spent two thirds of their campaign funds on thirty second TV ads. <b...

coberst

<t>Has natural selection been aborted? I would say that natural selection, i.e. evolution, has taken a dramatic turn since the birth of human consciousness. Natural selection produced the human species and the human species has derailed natural selection. World wide the species that survi...

coberst

<t>Dieting & Ideology: Delusional Duality? I suspect most of us have seen the NutriSystem commercial on TV many times. This is a â€œweight lossâ€ system said to â€œTransform Your Bodyâ€. It is touted to be a â€œhealthy, balanced weight loss system thatâ€™s easy and convenientâ€.<b...

coberst

<t>Scholars in the Tank Few top ranked scholars are going into government or academic professions; many are going into Think Tanks, which are supported by private interests that are guided often by ideological self-interest. â€œMore than 1,200 think tanks in the Uni...

coberst

<t>Rapunzel;1174655 wrote: Sorry So a lot happened between the fifth century BC and the gradual beginnings of catholicism, but none of it was paganism. I shall have to write Webster a nasty letter. Webster informs me that a pagan is a follower of a polytheisti...

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