Food for thought (Philosophy)

Real philosophers and their ideas, as they appeared through the centuries, and then my humble commentary after each one.

 

Blanshard, Brand (1892-1987)

 

There are, Blanshard said, genuine necessary connections in the world. A naturalist in ethics, Blandshard held that ‘to call an experience intrinsically good is to say that it is fulfilling and satisfying’. Since he granted ‘that the word “good” has in addition an aura of emotional and associate meaning’, he could ‘keep emotive meaning and also keep it in its place’. A naturalist in religion too, he took ‘the service of reason’ as his religion. ‘That service calls for the use of one’s reason to embrace as much as one can of the reason implicit in the universe, and in its use at the same time to define and harmonize the ends of practical life.’ Blanchards personal demeanor was one of extraordinary graciousness. 

 

(Interpretation)

 

Why are there these ‘necessary connections in the world’ that are intrinsically good. Why when we see worth in an ‘experience intrinsically good’ is it fulfilling and satisfying and does that necessary connection we recognized point even farther beyond toward the possibility of knowing in existence something that is transcendently intrinsically ‘good’ by the neccesary chain of connections This good also has an aura of emotional and associative meaning, as he said, that he could keep, but keep in its place, grounding foundationally emotional meaning as a direct attachment and connection to the ‘intrinsically good’ which makes me ask why are we meant to examine good by our emotional experiences.

 

Questions of life’s meaning arise related to his philosophy. What really might this life be all about given our emotional attachments in discovering intrinsic value to our experiences that we now know. Can we believe in experiences not merely for their temporal sake, but originating beyond that for a far greater purpose. Like can we believe that the source of those experiences transcends us, has a source,  goes beyond our view of our self as mortal, with such experience even having intelligibly at its source. This source then is not us and the interpretation we give reality alone is not the only relative or meaningful one in the universe, or beyond it perhaps, where fundamentally, foundationally might there exist an architect or further truth.

 

With Blanshard being a naturalist in religion the service of reason was his religion. By using reason he implicitly embraced the open ended possibilities of the universe with open mindedness. This might or might not involve him being open to God in some form. He sought to make practical life more harmonies and was also an extraordinarily thankful and appreciative person.

 

 

boat, Neurath’s

 

‘We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from the best components.’ His pragmatism encompasses the social sciences and extends to society and politics: knowledge and life are built without foundations.

 

(Interpretation)

 

We start this life from wherever we’re born, whoever we’re born to. Whatever hardships there are that effect us, whatever time period we’re in, whatever religions dominates the territory we’re in, all matters for our weak foundational underpinnings. The culture, the economy we’re in, our education, all shapes how far out in the open sea we are, and how far from dry-dock, revealing are incompleteness to knowing ourselves, our purpose, us not having the remotest idea what we’re were meant to do, while also not at all aware of what we’re ‘really’ a part of.

 

Our inability to fathom completely knowledge's reach, even with the best of educations, puts all of us on the open sea. We never just know the nature of who we are and what we’re a part of here. I doubt we will ever finally figure out for our self an even slight resemblance of the person we really are now in this life however self-evaluating of our self we are be it we’re forty-seven, my age, or we live to be ninety-nine.

 

We never truly get what this earth in the sky is all about unless we accept nursery rhymes. Many of us do accept ancient story’s absolutely in one form or another as final authorities.

 

We are like sailors regardless of our opinions and beliefs. We can be blown over on our ship by a breeze or a wave as we fumble to maintain ourselves in accordance with mental and physical and spiritual processes. This is the uncertain reality we’re a part of now which is also wonderful really if pure potential and open possibilities intrigue us as journeyers before the open ended unknown. Maybe one day we will find ourselves in dry dock but the people lost at sea need understanding, not arbitrary judgment, for their confused thought. 

 

 

Bolzano, Bernard (1781-1848)

 

Bolzano developed a special logico-ontological atomism directed against radical skepticism and subjectivism.  The objectivity of knowledge had to be secured by the existence of non-linguistic entities (ideas, propositions, and truths) independent of human beings and prior to cognition. His major work contains various contributions to logic and semantics concerning the relations of compatibility , derivability, and consequence, the deduction theorem, and the logic of classes, entailment and probability.

 

(Interpretation)

 

‘Non linguistic entities’ ‘prior to cognition’ existing prior to us people as ‘ideas, propositions and truths’ this fascinates me as I wonder where ideas, propositions and truths come from.  In philosophy ‘objectivity’ is the concept of truth independent from individual subjectivity (bias caused by one's perception, emotions, or imagination.) Objectivity then is how things really are regardless of opinion.

 

According to Bolzano knowledge had to be secured as being real and not merely created or imagined linguistically by us. This knowledge itself he found was independent of human beings and existed prior to cognition, before our thoughts could instead create this knowledge, recognizing it, organizing it, or before our thinking processes could at work interact with this knowledge in any way making it what it is. So Ideas, propositions and truth, he is saying, predated our humanity and was prior to us at work regardless if linguistically we were here to describe this knowledge. Yet why would this knowledge exist so suited for our discovery.

 

He also talks about the relations of compatibility and so by association how this knowledge seems to be suited for us, being possibly made in order to create derivability and consequence, and curiously all this has an unusual probability factor that we’d come to know it. The question is if knowledge transcends us in this way, while it is meant for us, what are its real origins beyond us.

 

Boyle, Robert (1627-91)

 

Boyle is well known as a scientist but underrated as a philosopher. He was interestingly, lengthily, and with more philosophical sophistication then the admiring Locke a commentator on topics such as atheism, atomism, epistemology, God’s existence, miracles, natural laws, qualities, and scientific method. Emphasizing experience over theory Boyle refused to construct global theories. Boyle’s universe involved God at every stage as creator, designer, sustainer, and frequent intervener. For example, God ’almost every moment in the day’ works ‘Physical Miracles’ by forming ‘Animals of such a Compounded nature, as the... Laws of matter and motion, would not without a peculiar interposition of God, be able to produce.’ None the less, in science appeal to God was inappropriate: all ‘intelligible’ explanations must be in the terms of minute corpuscles of matter and their motion.

 

(Interpretation)

 

Part of capturing the genius of being alive, in this ingenious mysterious physical world, is articulating the full gravity of the mystery so as to pay it its do reverence. Boyel’s universe involved a recognition of there being a God that he knew exists behind the mystery of life. I too have this recognition of God, though without being a scientist or philosopher. Overarching all our lives is a reality that is very seismic, with understated potentiality; a vastness feebly underestimated no matter how high we set our sights on the sublime. A  grander picture and perspective then we can see and presently gauge operates in our world and beyond that in all likelihood. Story’s about Noah's Ark and the parting of the Red Sea myths, told as miracles, performed by God, for God are perhaps seen merely as human beings needing to find the miraculous, when we’re already staring it in the face, because our minds are dulled, uninspired, unfocused, unreceptive to the miracles of far greater immensity in the physical world and the motion of celestial body’s.

 

‘God almost every moment in the day’ works ‘Physical Miracles’ according to Boyle, ‘by forming ‘Animals of such a Compounded nature, as the....Laws of matter and motion, would not without a peculiar interposition of God, be able to produce.’

 

Miracles are abundant and operate plainly in sight, for instance the brilliant life in the worlds great oceans, or in our human experience of being conscious searching persons. Miracles exist in our time here and now and also potentially after our deaths.

 

With science he says that all ‘intelligible’ explanations must be in terms of minute corpuscles of matter and their motion. Boyle was both a scientist and a believer there exists a God and felt no pressure to bend his loyalty to one side or the other.

 

Boethius, Anucius Manllus Severinus (480-526)

 

Roman patrician, Master of the Offices under the Italian king Theodoric, later accused of treason and magic, imprisoned at Pavia, tortured and executed; an early eminence in the tradition of Latin philosophy stretching forward to Kant. Besides commentaries on Cicero, Porphyry, and Aristotle, essays on logic, and short treatises on the Trinity, we still have from him textbooks on his quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music, intended for his own darkening times but destined to serve all the Latin Middle Ages. In prison he wrote the incomparable Consolation of Philosophy, which contains a famous definition of eternity as ‘perfect possession all at the same time of endless life.’

 

(Interpretation)

 

‘Perfect possession all at the same time of endless life.’ If Heaven exists, and many people believe Heaven is as real as the earth is, how will that perfect possession of time, ‘perfect possession all at the same time of endless life,’  and maybe a full recognition of all that is good all at once, a mindboggling scenario,  be there experienced. How is it to be decided by God what to really present to us in endless life if it is true that He so loves us enough to open the door forward into this place of His great love for us.

 

Sight, sound, taste, feeling, our hearing, might be the senses we know now, but what happens if when what freely is given to us appears very differently to us. What will the endless creative love of an eternally creative and limitlessly loving Being be like, if that is Gods true character and nature like people come to understand in faith is real. How might we experience our future in a place not of thorns, thistles, snakes, wars, viruses, pathogens, chance, ferocious wind storms, famines, and the angry distorted perceptions that mankind has while struggling irrationally in the world. Heaven would deny evil entry and secure all peace, clarity, and direction of mind.

 

Beyond all this what if the divine skies we will in the future float upon is terrain that encompasses brilliant vistas and incomparable settings. Places of extreme peace, tranquility and intense beauty, of creative interest, unfolding, along with a kind of hope accompanied by indescribable joy, peace, Holiness, that now, as things are, we fail to, and fear now to, even dare hope might exist. Now our efforts at envisioning a place of that kind of good are blocked instinctively to comprehending what real good awaits us in ‘endless life.’

 

 

 

Bohr, Niels (1885-1962)

 

Danish physicist and Nobel prize-winner. (1922) Bohr made important contributions to atomic theory and nuclear physics and, indirectly, influenced the rise of molecular biology. Much to his surprise he found that his early belief that experience is basically ambiguous was supported by ‘hard and solid’ scientific evidence: concepts firmly grounded in facts divide into mutually exclusive or ‘complementary’ groups all of which are needed for stating what we know, though the use of any particular group rules out the use of the rest. According to Bohr different cultures, different concepts or attitudes within a particular culture (truth and clarity, love and justice), and different methodological approaches (mechanism and teleology in the life sciences) are related in a similar way. Bohr believed that the problems created by the paradoxical status of human beings—they are part of the world and yet put themselves outside of it when claiming to possess knowledge—are resolved by using complementary descriptions instead of single ‘objective’ frame.

 

(Interpretation)

 

He is saying experience is open to more then one interpretation and can have different meanings is really what Bohr meant by saying ‘experience is basically ambiguous.’ His theory was supported by hard scientific evidence. A concept, (which is an abstract idea or a general notion,) can be firmly grounded in fact but divide into exclusive (excluding or not admitting other things) or complementary groups. Concepts are needed for stating what we know, though the use of any one concept by any particular group can rule out the use of the rest.

 

According to Bohr different cultures have different concepts or attitudes within them. Those concepts and attitudes are things like appreciations of truth, clarity, love and justice. I think he’s saying that all over the earth we in different cultures can deal in different truths, clarify reality differently, pursue love in unique ways, form different ideas of pursuing and creating justice etc..

 

Bohr seems to believe that in different cultures we pursue ideas common to us all, but in often different ways, which creates a paradoxical (seemingly absurd or self contradictory) status of human beings. We’re all part of the same world pursuing basic ideas but all claiming, each of us, that our ideas are perfect and the only legitimate approach to the truth.

 

I think Bohr believed that the problems created by the paradoxical status of human beings—they are part of the world and yet put themselves outside of it when claiming to possess knowledge—are resolved by using complementary descriptions instead of a single ‘objective’ frame. Which is to say instead of saying that we alone only know truth, absurdly in the only demonstrable and legitimate way, we look for our complementary descriptions so we look for ideas that are producing the same truth, clarity, love, justice etc.. That’s my interpretation anyway. lol It’s probably not right.

 

Bergson, Henri-Lois (1859-1941) 

 

French philosopher of Anglo-Polish extraction who worked mainly at the College de France in Paris. Bergson is famous for two main doctrines while later in life Bergson turned his attention to morality. He claimed that universal benevolence could never be achieved by starting with group loyalties and making the groups ever wider. Group loyalty always required a contrasting out group, and could be transcended only by a qualitative leap of the sort taken by mystics in their love of all mankind.

 

(Interpretation)

 

I absolutely believe in this sound reasoning of Bergson. Universal benevolence (The quality of being well meaning, having kindness) can not be achieved for instance by Christian missionaries seeking to convert the world by that approach alone being used. It might be a good approach to teach people about Jesus Christ, I think so personally.  Yet seeking to convert others is also taking group loyalties and trying to make the group ever wider which regularly creates an ‘out group.’ That out group, seen from the group loyalty, then often loses value if one doesn’t love humanity universally. Like for instance when dealing with an atheist dictator ruling over an oppressed nation, or where there is another religion in a country, in these circumstances others are seen as the out group. So often enough they don’t conform to the Christian group and become the out group and therefore they aren’t seen with well meaning or genuine kindness. That is what unfortunately realistically occurs in imperfect people and so the outsiders miss out on receiving real benevolence. To transcend the problem is not to demand simple group loyalty, or sameness of belief, in order to be accepted, but to love everyone, all of mankind, universally, like in how the mystics showed in their love of all mankind. People by the mystics example are loved regardless if those other groups of humanity are of the mystics own group.

 

Wherever people are they are dealing with ideas and they are loved in spite of them in my opinion. Whether or not a person has the ideas of another man of opinion, as we all tend to dabble in opinions and truth claims, is irrelevant. A belief, as it seems to a man, is a belief that he has it all sorted out in this world. Competing ideas in human cultures are irrelevant to his surety he knows what constitutes the truth. What’s fundamentally important is wherever we are, whatever condition of thought we’re in, is that ultimately we’re loved, whether we know it or not, and not cast away or forgotten by our merciful God.

 

The Christianity I accept loves everyone no matter what the persons ideology is. A misuse of Christianity, in my strong opinion, is denying for instance gays and lesbians their own friendly places of worship to experience friendship with God. Another error in religion is in suggesting women should have less authority then men in the church. The God I believe in accepts all people with equality and not through an outdated ancient standard where men are distinctively the true authorities. In the case of gays and lesbians to suggest to them that for thousands of years of human history there hasn’t been the same normal kinds of attractions that they know now as normal and common to the human nature and experience is terribly unreasonable.

 

Jesus Himself spoke no condemning or unloving words towards any such people.  People in this world are often facing great hardship in their lives wherever they live in the world, and it could be anywhere. The language of God for humanity is love for all people wherever they are in this world.