coberst

Coberst says that you are a heckler. Heckle--to harasses and try to disconcert with questions, challenges, or gibes, i.e to badger. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged How does one discuss grafitti? Do you ever question the grafitti that makes up the responses? Are not moderators here for a purrpose beyond supporting friends? Have you any interest in creating a more intellectual forum?

padren Are you a moderator?

Vision: the creative apprehension of reality Wilhelm Worringer author of Abstraction and Empathy informs me that “Aesthetic enjoyment is objectified self-enjoyment”. Aesthetics is that which is pleasing in appearance, i.e. that which we find to be attractive. What do we do when we objectify self-enjoyment? A quick answer might be that we make self-enjoyment into an object. When we speak of “object” we generally must speak also of “subject”. We might say that the subject is the “knower” and the object is that which is “known”. “The study of art is an indispensable part of the study of man.” “Our experiences and ideas tend to be common but not deep, or deep but not common. We have neglected the gift of comprehending things through our senses.” Our penchant for the facts (what can be counted or measured for distance, speed, time, or weight) has left us with a paucity of ideas for dealing with images and the meaning of those images; “we seek refuge in the more familiar medium of words…The inborn capacity to understand through the eyes has been put to sleep and must be reawakened…This limitation, however, applies not only to art, but to any object of experience” Words can and must wait until our minds distill the categories of living that are revealed to us through our body in the process of experience. “Language cannot do the job directly it has no direct avenue for sensory contact with reality; it serves only to name what we have seen or heard or thought.” “Unchecked self-analysis can be harmful, but so can the artificial primitiveness of the person who refuses to understand how and why he works. Modern man can, and therefore must, live with unprecedented self-awareness.” Many decades ago I asked a professor philosophy ‘what is philosophy about’; he replied that it is about radically critical self-consciousness. Gestalt psychology has a kinship with art. Gestalt is a common German noun for shape or form derived mainly from experiments in sensory perception. “Artistic vision of reality was needed to remind scientists that most natural phenomena are not described adequately if they are analyzed piece by piece. That a whole cannot be attained by the accretion of isolated parts was not something the artist had to be told.” “Far from being a mechanical recording of sensory elements, vision proved to be a truly creative apprehension of reality—imaginative, inventive, shrewd, and beautiful…The mind always functions as a whole…all perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention.” Gestalt experiments made it clear that an examination of reality requires interplay between the object and the nature of the observing subject. The objective element in experience justifies the distinguishing between what is an adequate and an inadequate conception of reality. Adequate conceptions must contain a common core of truth that will permit the art to be potentially relevant to all individuals. Quotes from Art and Visual Perception by Rudolf Arnheim, Professor Emeritus of Psychological of Art at Harvard University. His books include Film as Art 1957, Visual Thinking 1969, The Dynamics of Architectural Form 1977, and The Split and the Structure: Twenty Eight Essays” 1996.

Are you the chief heckler here?

Can we create a New Age of Enlightenment? If one half of one percent of the population acquires the hobby that I call the ‘intellectual life’ such a group could be the foundation for a new Age of Enlightenment. The original Age of Enlightenment occurred in Europe during the eighteenth century. “The men [in the 18th century the enlightened were still only half enlightened] of the Enlightenment united on a vastly ambitious program, a program of secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom, above all, freedom in its many forms—freedom from arbitrary power, freedom of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to realize one’s talents, freedom of aesthetic response, freedom, in a word, of moral man to make his own way in the world.” It appears to me that following the completion of our schooling the normal inclination is to pack up our yearbook and our intellect into a large trunk and store it in the attic. Occasionally one might go up to the attic and reminisce about the old days. What I propose is that following the end of our school days we begin a gradual process of self-actualizing self-learning. This period of our life is generally filled with our duties to family and career so that not a great deal of time is available for extraneous matters. However, time is always available for important things and the important thing is to ‘keep curiosity alive’. I suspect that if one does not engage in non job related intellectual efforts for the twenty years between the end of schooling and mid-life that the curiosity with which we started life will have dried up and blown away. What are non job related intellectual activities? Such activities are what I consider to be intellectualism. Intellectualism is active engagement with ‘disinterested knowledge’. There is in industry the concept of ‘applied research’, which is research looking for a good way to build a new mouse trap; there is also a concept called ‘pure research’, which is a search for truth that may or may not lead to an enhancement of the ‘bottom line’. Interested knowledge is knowledge we acquire because there is money in it. Disinterested knowledge is that knowledge we seek because we care about understanding something even though there is no money in it. The goal of intellectual life is similar to the goal of the artist "the artist chooses the media and the goal of every artist is to become fluent enough with the media to transcend it. At some point you pass from playing the piano to playing music." I think it is possible for a significant portion of the population of every nation to become intellectuals. What do you think? Quotes from The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism by Peter Gay

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. The three major findings of cognitive science are: The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. “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.” All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps. Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories. Quotes from Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson

Tradition of Change: an oxymoron? Thales, who lived around 625 BC, is called the ‘first philosopher and the first scientist’. He is considered to be the first thinker to propose a single universal principle of the material universe, “a unique substratum that, itself unchanging, underlay all change.” When we think about this problem of comprehending change we recognize that there must exist something that is essential to change that remains unchanged. When we look around us we are struck with the fact that things constantly change. Thales is said to have asked the important question does everything change or is there something that remains unchanged? If there is not something that remains unchanged then how can we recognize anything as being what it was before change? We recognize continuity as well as change. Even when we recognize that something changed appearance we are confident that something remains of the original source. Is there one primordial thing that never changes? The questions and answers developed by Thales are extremely important because for the first time we observe a human not resorting to animistic (attribution of conscious life to objects) answers for that which is observed. He did not settle for the answer “I do not understand so it must be just the nature of the gods made it happen”. He also followed a new human inclination to believe that the mind is capable of comprehending what happens in the world. Philosophy was born. If we added to traditional thinking the abstract idea of change our world becomes tremendously complex. The way we manage the complexity is that we create; we create by introducing generalizations plus other abstractions. Absent the concept of change we humans need deal only with the here and the now. We can include the past and the future but only in that they are an extension of the here and the now. Since the past and future are extensions they must be a unity like the present, the past and future can be only what now is, they can be nothing else. Thinking, that excludes change, eliminates a great deal of complexity. It simplifies greatly our task of thinking, because we need deal only with concrete things; we need to deal with only what we sense here and now. Some call this a traditional mode of thinking. It exemplifies the thinking of primitive humanity up to the Greek period that began around 500 BC. It is, I think, a good way to comprehend what myth is all about. Philosopher, tycoon, philanthropist, author, and international political activist George Soros says in his book “The Age of Fallibility” that “Once it comes to generalizations, the more general they are, the more they simplify matters. This world is best conceived as a general equation in which the present is represented by one set of constants. Change the constants and the same equation will apply to all past and future situations…I shall call this the critical mode of thinking.” Soros identifies the traditional mode of thinking with an ‘organic society’. He further identifies the critical mode of thinking with the ‘open society’. Each society must find a means to deal with factors that do not conform to the will of the members of that society. In a traditional society, even though it focuses primarily on phenomena that are generally static, nature can be obdurate. In the traditional mode of thinking the central tenet is that things are as they have always been and the future will be likewise—thus they cannot be any other way. The status quo is fate and all we need do is learn that fate and to organize our lives in accordance. In such a world logic and argumentation has no place because there exists no alternatives. When we examine the nature of epistemology--what can we know and how can we know it--in such a mode of thinking we quickly illuminate the advantages and drawbacks. In a traditional society there is no bifurcation between thought and concrete reality. There exists only the objective relationship between knower and known. The validity of traditional truth is unquestioned; there can be no distinction between ideas and reality. Where a thing exists we give it a name. Without a name a thing does not exist. Only where abstraction exists do we give non-objects a name. In our modern reality we label many non-concrete things and thus arises the separation of reality and thoughts. The way things appear is the way things are; the traditional mode of thinking can penetrate no deeper. The traditional mode of thinking does not explain the world by cause and effect but everything performs in accordance with its nature. Because there is no distinction between the natural and supernatural and between reality and thought there arise no contradictions. The spirit of the tree is as real as the branch of the tree; past, present, and future melt into one time. Thinking fails to distinguish between thought and reality, truth and falsehood, social and naturals laws. Such is the world of traditional thought and the world of mythological thought. The traditional mode is very flexible as long as no alternatives are voiced, any new thing quickly becomes the traditional and as long as such a situation meets the needs of the people such a situation will continue to prevail. To comprehend the traditional mode we must hold in abeyance our ingrained habits of thought, especially our abstract concept of the individual. In a changeless society all is the Whole, the individual does not exist. The individual is an abstraction that does not exist whereas the Whole, which is in reality an abstraction, exists as a concrete concept for traditional thought. The unity expressed by the Whole is the unity much like an organism. The individuals in this society are like the organs of a creature; they cannot last if separated from the Whole. Society determines which function the individual plays in the society. The term “organic society” is used often to label this form of culture. When all is peaceful with no significant voices placing forth an alternative then this organic society exists in peace. In this organic society a human slave is no different from any other chattel. In a feudal society the land is more important than the landlord who derives his privileges from the fact that he holds the land.

I claim that we humans created this dichotomy when we discovered that we are mortal. We could not accept this fact without great anxiety and thus created soul as a means for an after life and thus immortality.

Mind/Body dichotomy: Our great nemeses? Theology and philosophy are guardians of the human urge to separate itself as much as possible from its animal heritage and to move closer toward being god-like. The overt effort of theology is to accentuate the misconceived mind/body dichotomy while the covert effort of philosophy is to accentuate this same mind/body dichotomy. Theology does this legitimately because it believes that humans are both body and soul. The body is what we must put-up-with for our short stay on earth while the soul will last through eternity in an environment determined by our brief stay on earth. I claim that philosophy does this illegitimately because it vainly wishes to be respected in the manner like mathematics or physics. Philosophy wants to use word symbols to describe truth in much the same way as math uses their particular symbols of equality, greater than, minus, plus, differential, exponential, etc. It appears to me that analytic philosophy is being challenged by SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) Philosophy in the Flesh 1999, by Lakoff and Johnson ; by meaning philosophy The Meaning of the Body 2007, by Johnson; by visual art Art and Visual Perception 1954, by Arnheim.

National governments in the West have advanced from Monarchies to Republics. Societies have moved from rule by a monarchy aided by the aristocracy, to rule by a plutocracy subject only to ratification by the citizens of the republic. It seems that, like the poor, we constantly have with us a privileged class. Is it possible to organize a well functioning democracy that does not support a privileged class? Let me give you my definition of privileged class. Fifteen years ago there was a humorous saying about George Bush the elder, which went something like this, “George Bush was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple”. My definition of a privileged individual is one who was born on “third base”. Evidently many assume that the privileged classes are those who have higher IQs or some kind of natural endowment. I do not consider this to be privilege. The privileged are those who, by birth, are endowed with great wealth thereby being placed into a position of power and prestige without any meritorious effort on their part. Can a democratic society function effectively if no individuals are allowed to inherit great wealth?

“The capitulation of Western man to his technology, with its crescendo of specialized demands has always appeared to many observers of our world as a kind of enslavement.” No more are intellectuals focused upon the nature of man in society. Intellectuals have become non intellectual specialists—hired guns of CA (Corporate America)—Vulcan Vulcanization—the process of treating crude or synthetic material chemically to give it useful properties. All thought is saturated with egocentric and sociocentric presuppositions. That is, all thought contains highly motivating bias centered in the self or in ideologies such as political, religious, and economic theories. Some individuals are conscious of these internal forces but most people are not. Those individuals who are conscious of these biases within their thinking can try to rid their judgments of that influence. Those who are not conscious, or little conscious of such bias, are bound to display a significant degree of irrational tendencies in their judgments. “Can the intellectual, who is supposed to have a special and perhaps professional concern with truth, escape from or rise above the partiality and distortions of ideology?” Our culture has tended to channel intellectuals, or perhaps more properly those who function as intellectuals, into academic professions. Gramsci makes the accurate distinction that all men and women “are intellectuals…but all do not have the function of intellectuals in society”. An intellectual might be properly defined as those who are primarily or professionally concerned with matters of the mind and the imagination but who are socially non-attached. “The intellectual is thought of not as someone who displays great mental or imaginative ability but as someone who applies those abilities in more general areas such as religion, philosophy and social and political issues. It is the involvement in general and controversy outside of a specialization that is considered as the hallmark of an intellectual; it is a matter of choice of self definition, choice is supreme here.” Even anti-ideological is ideological. If partisanship can be defended servility cannot; many have allowed themselves to become the tools of others. We have moved into an age when the university is no longer an ivory tower and knowledge is king but knowledge has become a commodity and educators have become instruments of power; the university has become a privately owned think-tank. “A profound change in the intellectual community itself is inherent in this development. The largely humanist-oriented, occasionally ideological minded intellectual dissenter , who saw his role largely in terms of proffering social critiques, is rapidly being displaced either by experts and specialist, who become involved in special government undertakings, or by generalist-integrators, who become house-ideologues for those in power, providing overall intellectual integration for disparate actions.” The subordination to power is not just at the individual level but also at the institutional level. Government funds are made available to universities and colleges not for use as they deem fit but for specific government needs. Private industry plays even a larger role in providing funds for educational institutions to perform management and business study. Private industry is not inclined ‘to waste’ money on activities that do not contribute to the bottom line. ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune.’ Each intellectual is spouting a different ideology, how does the individual choose what ideology? Trotsky once said “only a participant can be a profound spectator”. Is detachment then a virtue? To suggest that intellectuals rise above ideology is impractical. Explicit commitment is preferable to bogus neutrality. But truth is an indispensable touchstone. Quotes and ideas from “Knowledge and Belief in Politics” Bhikhu Parekh

No. Intellect is what a person is born with. I am encouraging the viewer to develop intellectual sophistication, which is within the reach of every person.

Take your pick!

Hey! Get an Intellectual Hobby My experience leads me to conclude that there is a world of difference in picking up a fragment of knowledge here and there versus seeking knowledge for an answer to a question of significance. There is a world of difference between taking a stroll in the woods on occasion versus climbing a mountain because you wish to understand what climbing a mountain is about or perhaps you want to understand what it means to accomplish a feat of significance only because you want it and not because there is ‘money in it’. I think that every adult needs to experience the act of intellectual understanding; an act that Carl Sagan describes as “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.” This quotation of Carl Rogers might illuminate my meaning: I want to talk about learning. But not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!" When we undertake such a journey of discovery we need reliable sources of information. We need information that we can build a strong foundation for understanding. Where do we find such reliable information? We find it in the library or through Google on the Internet or combinations thereof. I have a ‘Friends of the Library’ card from a college near me. This card allows me, for a yearly fee of $25, to borrow any book in that gigantic library. Experts in every domain of knowledge have written books just especially for laypersons like you and I. I often recommend to others that they get an intellectual hobby. The following is the essence of my message. Hobbies are ways in which many individuals express their individuality. Those matters that excite an individual’s interest and curiosity are those very things that allow the individual to acquire self-understanding and understanding of the world. Interests define individuality and help to provide meaning to life. We all look for some ideology, hobby, philosophy or religion to provide meaning to life. Not many of us have discovered our full potentialities or have fully explored in depth those we have discovered. Self-development and self-expression are relatively new ideas in human history. The arts are one means for this self-expression. The artist may find drawing or constructing sculptures as a means for self-discovery. The self-learner may find essay writing of equal importance. I recommend that each person who does not presently have some similar type of hobby develop the hobby of an intellectual life. We could add to our regular routine the development of an invigorating intellectual life wherein we sought disinterested knowledge; knowledge that is not for the purpose of some immediate need but something that stirs our curiosity, which we seek to understand for the simple reason that we feel a need to understand a particular domain of knowledge.

What is the American frame of mind? I would say that a culture consists of the complex of ideas that a group of people hold dear. One can speak of the culture of a small group or of a very large group. In the United States our culture is determined to a large extent by how we hold "these truths to be self-evident"; we are held together by ideas perhaps more than other societies. Next, religion plays a great role, and in our case it is the mixture of Protestantism, Judaism, and Catholicism. Following this is our infatuation with capitalism; following that is our narcissistic view of our uniqueness and greatness. Our culture is a general attitude toward our self and toward the world based upon these four ideologies. To what powers have wo/men given allegiance in order to solve the paradoxes of life? To what or to whom have each of us given our uncritical allegiance? “Into what hero-system do I fit the expression of my talent”? What or whom has become my fetish-god? It is possible for the adult to choose which power s/he will serve; however, to do so, when the choice is contrary to one that has resulted from the family and community clan, is an extremely unusual and heroic act. “The great tragedy of our lives is that the major question of our existence is never put by us--it is put by personal and social impulses for us.” Very few of us discover our authentic talent—if it is ever found it is generally found accidentally through plain fate by us in our social milieu as we tap...tap...tap our blind way through life. From a personal point of view our principal task is to somehow find our way out of the fate that we stumbled into and to grow out of our idol worship and fetishism and to expand our horizons, allegiances, and to drop our mere preoccupations. We need to free our self from the opinions of others. “Since aggression is a reaction to frustration, by remaining tightly bound to the success of our social world we increase our aggressiveness, life invariable frustrates us.” Disinterested knowledge is the energy bunny. It generates the energy for exploration and for overcoming some of the inhibitions conscious reason places on the unconscious. Studying disinterested knowledge is like taking off a month every year to visit a strange new land. Curiosity is reinvigorated and new meaning is created.[/b Knowledge is like a jigsaw puzzle. We have created many puzzles in coping with reality and when we received a new piece (knowledge) that does not fit our present puzzles we forgetaboutit. However, if through disinterested knowledge we have created new puzzles we might find a place for this new fragment of knowledge to fit; thereby this fragment becomes our new knowledge. Our mind is constantly working for us and when we do not give it a worthwhile project, i.e. a new puzzle, it will just waste away in boredom or worry. In America one might best see this attitude manifested by this frame of mind “I’ve Upped My Income; Now Up Yours”; a manifestation of this attitude may be seen in concrete form by the fact that 45 million citizens are without proper health care. Do you think that the attitude “I’ve Upped My Income, Now Up Yours” is an American frame of mind? Quotes from The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man by Ernest Becker