Protected: “To think freely”; on the significance of independent thought [Unfinished]

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Looking for Spinoza: Damasio’s exploration of feeling, and Spinoza

I’ve been casually delving into Damasio’s work: Looking for Spinoza. It’s a very interesting work; one thing is that it has those paragraph appraisals that most bestsellers have; but I find these days  that some of the people I actually recognise, or have read before; Langton’s Kantian Humility, for instance, has Strawson, Guyer and Lewis complimenting her. When you get one of the greatest living Kant scholars and two of the heavy hitting philosophers of the 20thC (one of which is also a Kant scholar); your career is set.

Anyway, enough about Kant. Damasio’s work, sofar, doesn’t seem to be a work of Spinoza scholarship, but it may as well be. Damasio has been praised by Scruton (an all round philosophy busybody, wrote a good book on sex), and Nadler, who is a pretty good Spinoza scholar.

Damasio is a neurologist, neuroscientist, and general science writer.  Damasio is also a profoundly insightful human being, something that doesn’t normally pair off well with people who work in cognitive science.

I tend to have little respect for cognitive science (due to Kantian prejudices); but Damasio is a man who may put my faith back. Damasio’s work is a dual narrative; a personal exploration of the man, Spinoza; and musings on his research on the brain which sheds light on what it means to experience emotions, to feel, and, how these things relate to Spinoza’s psychology of human flourishing.

I’ve picked up a few things off Damasio; firstly, Damasio makes a distinction between emotions and  feeling. Emotions are the physical phenomena that we talk of in the brain, and feeling is the mental state that we use our everyday language to refer to. So, emotions are like those electrical impulses and whatnot, feelings are things like anger, fear and so on.

This leads to a second observation; Damasio is already advancing an interesting theory of mind, where there is a supervenience relation between the mental and the physical. This may even lean towards (and possibly unintentionally) towards
Spinoza’s notion of mind; where it is the idea of the physical object.

Spinoza’s supervenience relata is something I wish I could say I understood. Spinoza talked of a higher order of things about the physical, that is, the mental and intellectual realm, and above that, is God, for God is the idea of ideas. Spinoza’s conception of mind is a little bit more complex than the one aspect I am pointing out; but all that aside, we may refer to this relation of mental to the physical as a dual aspect theory (my old Master refuses to call it ‘parallelism’).

One thing I found particularly interesting was Damasio’s interest in Spinoza, the man, rather than his philosophy work exclusively. Spinoza was a man of a quiet life; but attracted the most important men of his era to visit him in his lodging which was owned by an artisan. Spinoza lived, for his latter years, in the most humble of residences, yet, was graced by audiences by Leibniz (who you should know a little about), Harry Oldenberg, who was president of the Royal Society, and Christiaan Huygens; whom was not only a student of Descartes, but was key in advancing physics and astrophysics.

Spinoza was a man of a very difficult and complex origin; he was “Jewish and not”, “Dutch, but not quite”, and “Portugese but not really”. How multicultural is that! Spinoza is ethnically Portugese, from a Sephardic Jew background, but due to the inquisition, his parent generation was expelled because they refused to convert to Christianity; so the Sephardic Jews were based in the Netherlands, he was Dutch by virtue of his nationality, but not ethnicity, and Jewish by his culture. Spinoza’s life is characterised by three different identities; the ethnicity he never really came to know, the culture which came to excommunicate him, and the nationality which he came to participate, but also came to oppose him.

Spinoza’s life is characterised by many kinds of social expulsion; in virtue of being Jewish, his status of his parent generation was referred to as “marrano“, which I hear is a bad word, but its meaning changes, Spinoza’s Jewish community came to exclude him due to his conception of God, and the Dutch state authorities of the  time rejected his political writings because he supported freedom of expression, in terms of religious ‘heresy’ and critique of the state.

Spinoza’s three names, if you are interested are: Bento, Baruch, and Benedictus,  Portugese, Hebrew, and Latin, respectively; and they all mean the same cognate word, albeit with different cultural bearings; they all mean “blessed”.

From my own reading of Spinoza’s life; I’ve found a very rich intellectual background. Unlike Kant, who had a very very academic university background (quite boring and standard…); Spinoza had the standard Rabbinic education, reading the Talmund, Torah, and learning of Jewish Law; he also came to learn Latin; and read the ancient philosophers, which was somewhat more standard of the philosophy education of the time. What was somewhat nonstandard of the time, but standard of the great philosophers of the time (note the distinction I invoked); he read contemporary philosophers who were moving out of the university  syllabus of Aristotle and Aquinas, to Descartes, Hobbes, and so on. This was very nonstandard, but very important.

I think a Kant moral can be relevant here too, Kant’s biggest influence was Hume (which I am too quick to forget), Kant’s background that was standard of the time was an education in the metaphysical system of Leibniz and Wolff; a dogmatic rationalist system, if Kant were not to revolutionise rationalism by a reading of Empiricist Hume, and were he not to have come across the sentimentalist tradition of Britain (or in particular, Scotland); he would not have been the great philosopher he was. Today.

It seems very important for cross-fertilisation to occur. Descartes brought physics to philosophy, Spinoza brought geometric method to metaphysics, Kant brought British philosophy to what became the continental or post-Kantian tradition, and Damasio is bringing Neuroscience to philosophy of mind.

Michael

Why Aeneas left Dido

Aeneas lost his home, Pergamum; his wife, father, friends, and revered heroic leaders: Priam, Hector, Paris, among others; his land; his pride; his reptuation; his identity; and perhaps most importantly, his purpose for living.

Aeneas, who was a minor prince; had to take a much bigger role, once of which he was not initially willing or able to take; but he was able, and the crux that enabled his realisation of his destiny, was coming to accept the inevitable decree of the Gods; and, finding hope for the future; in seeing the list (in the underworld) of all those unborn Roman heroes who would come to be our historical greats; but a prospect of a renewal of the hope of his former Trojan nation.

Aeneas wanted his own life to end, wanted not to be the leader his soldiers saw him to be; and couldn’t face his own losses.

Aeneas, had an oppurtunity, a way out. After years of travelling, he came to land at Carthage. A wonderful place ruled by a most spectacular, beautiful and headstrong woman. Unusual today it is for a woman to rule, how much more unusual is it in the ancient times! It mattered not that she was female; for she was more able, competent, confident, charismatic, pious than many of her contemporaries and most worthy of being leader for those qualities.

The Queen of Carthage; Dido, was struck, by the decree of divinity, to be struck by Cupid’s arrow; which fills one with involuntary infatuation, lust, and incredible yearning for another; and that other was to be Aeneas. Aeneas too, was taken by this Dido; for who wouldn’t be; she was perfect in every way. Helen was known for her beauty and indeed she was significant (for many people, including children died either in her name, or for her name). But how belittling is it to define femininity or feminine identity in terms of merely beauty and consequent impact in virtue of such beauty. It makes the beautiful woman more objectified and empty, and those that decree different treatment be granted to her more objectified and empty; making them less human in so many ways.

Dido was a real woman; an ideal woman. She was a leader, she was troubled by her lonliness at rule; she was troubled by the wellbeing of her people, by her nation’s fate. She was a person of the communal interest; a great military and political figure for that. But perhaps Virgil’s treatment of femininity here fails; insofar as it was Dido who became ruled by her private desires, her personal yearning for Aeneas; but this did not conflict with her communal duties; for a marriage with Beloved Aeneas would ensure protection and good rule by men of worthy stock for the nation of Carthage. It wasn’t a terrible decision or idea if Aeneas stayed in Carthage with Dido; ruling together….not terrible for Dido.

Reality, however, hardly favours the deserving individual. The Gods would not allow such a marriage; the Gods would not allow the destiny of Aeneas to be denied. If Aeneas indeed stayed with Dido; he would have to give up his destiny as an even greater ruler of Latium. How tragic it is for Aeneas to once again give up his own personal desires, his own needs, his own wants, projects, goals, hopes, aspirations, and sense of worth; for his destiny.

Destiny is seen as the greater goal; so great as to give up love itself? This seems too cruel a reality. But you don’t need to believe in deities to realise this is the case in our world.

Aeneas had to find his destiny, and it wasn’t with Carthage. He had to leave his bride, Dido; who is so perfect a woman. Truly it is a great personal tragedy; adding to his own loss of his nation. But the mindset of Aeneas overlooked that as he embraced his destiny…

It seemed that this hope that he had, this belief in realising the future, in bringing the events that destiny decreed by means of his own hand; made him overcome the loss of his beloved father, and wonderful Dido. I am yet to understand how Aeneas  could truly overcome the loss of Dido.

After Dido realised that Aeneas would leave Carthage to fulfill his destiny, which didn’t involve a union with her; she put a bitter curse upon Aeneas and his progenitors, so that in the future; they will be cursed enemies (realised by the Hannibal’s campaign centuries later), and in doing so, in falling in love, secured the downfall of Carthage, and ultimately her own life, by suicide.

How tragic, for Dido, to lose her heart, and her nation.
How tragic for Aeneas to lose his love to gain greatness; Aeneas seemed to be content with realising his destiny.

For years I used to think how amazing Aeneas was to overcome his problems and realise and actualise a destiny, a brilliant future, from the ashes of his old home, he sowed the seeds of a great Empire. The attitude imbued by Anchises, Aeneas father, as they entered the underworld to see the catalogue of heroes; inspired me.

But now, I feel saddened by the loss of Dido. What would you do if you were presented with a Carthaginian archetype of perfection, but had to give it up for a only possible and uncertain Roman future?

Why must we give up the wonderful in order to pursue the great?

It is cruelty that the Gods must make this our destined path. It is a cruel God who allows the chance of happiness in opposition to the chance of greatness.

Destre

Protected: Living the dream…

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Feminine sexuality and Dido

I think the boys are letting me post a lot more these days because they are busy; and also because their reading of that boring Kant is sapping all their originality away.

Here is my thought: How do females embrace sexuality honestly?

My concern: Male-imposed ideals.

What candidates am I considering here?

1. Lesbian ideals – male defined? or self-defined?
2. Confabulation cases where genuine male-imposition of norms takes place
3. The moral motivation of sexual deliberation
4. ‘Casual’ homosexuality of females – to pander to males

How hard is it for females to be sexual? Is my question. I think a similar corollorary question is how can a male ideal towards more putative positive feminine idioms be accepted?

Michael and Sinistre have this view where they are not interested in feminine norms, but masculinity; and believe in the importance of a male attitudinal phenotype; however, their conceptions of masculinity hardly coalesce with putative notions of masculinity (Michael has a teddy bear – try editing that out, Michael!). Although, their far from revolutionary, or original. Take a look at Virgil’s Aeneid. I think a very interesting source of femininity is present. Namely, in the character of Dido; with the exception of her affliction from Cupid (which negatively affects the feminine attitudinal phenotype); she represents my ideal of what a woman should be; stoic in emotions, a leader, a strong ruler, diplomatic yet fierce, yet concerned for her citizens, a competent warrior, and, a Queen who (until the intervention of the cruel Gods) needed no King.  Dido is a wonderful feminine ideal. I think we should all be a little more like Dido…

I think Dido and Aeneas would have made a wonderful pair. Perhaps in another life they can…

Antisophie

Platitudes on Love (Armstrong)

The book I got recently; “Conditions of Love” is very well written; it’s good holiday reading, and possibly even philosophical! Here are some platitudes involved:

1. The evolutionary account of love (which is lacking)
2. A personal account of love (which contrasts to the evolutionary/macrolevel) fills in the gap
3. Socrates/Plato’s thoughts on Love (Symposium)
   1. Love is what we find in another that is missing in ourselves
   2. Love is an admiration of the qualities we admire
   3. If love of a person involves a love of their qualities, our love moves to higher orders of abstraction, from [Object of love] to [explanans of our love]; which, in turn, moves on to the [Explanans of [explanans of our love]]. This basically means that Love is a way to Platonic truth – towards the forms of virtue and the good.
4. Self deception in love
   1. It is highly detrimental to have a prior conception of our object of love; if we keep desiring for a particular ideal of a person (say, young, blonde, intelligent, wealthy, has all her teeth, likes World of Warcraft…) we are not only bound to never find them; but we also hinder our capability to be loving people, I’ll explain this a little more
   2. Key to being in love; is our own roles as a lover, we must be capable of loving another, caring for them, looking out for them, knowing their various idiosyncracies, being able to compromise, and readily accepting that both of you will be in some ways different. For; even if someone is largely similar to you that you love; you shall find that the differences (because there will be some) will seem HUGE!
   3. If; for example; you like Classical music (general); and your lover likes Baroque (a subset of [Classical - general]); it will be confabulated in a way that seems like some fundamental opposition!
   4. We have this inevitable need as adults to yearn for a kind of love that alludes to how we were loved as a child; an image of us being completely captured, nurtured, cared for, and sustained by another. That your whole being is subject to another’s will. This Isn’t Healthy! If we think about our sustainment as a child- the relationship between parent and child was only one-way; you, the child, may have felt completely sustained; but the parent, had other dimensions of their life; their possible partner, other children, careers, bills to pay etc…therefore
   5. Adult relationships, if they are to be genuine; have to acknowledge the multifaceted aspects of our lives; maybe you can’t see each other all the time; maybe you have a career; maybe you have other projects; maybe you have kids; maybe you have to care for other people; maybe you are very ill…adult life, and adult love is very difficult, and people shouldn’t fall into these cockaygne fantasies about love, iff they are to love at all.

It’s a very interesting book. It’s philosophical in the very normal use of the word, that’s no bad thing!

Michael

Confabulation, and the modernist ideals of art

I enter Destre’s study, during a fairly busy occaision; all of us are busy with other non-Areopagite projects; but I have a worry which I cannot ignore any longer…

As I enter the room, Destre is seemingly asleep by his desk; clearly, he has been working too much of late. We have all been behind, I would tell him to stop, or give it a break; but I too know how obligations push one past the call of duty. Alas; I shall wake him.

“Master Destre”, I cooed, gently. “Destre, I ask of your counsel.”

Destre slowly woke; realising where he was, and how he came to the position he was, his head dipped into his books, asleep, and in quite a bit of back pain (in virtue of the uncomfortable position). The first thing he checked was whether his coffee was still warm; then, he stared at me.

“What time is it, Magister?”, he asked. “It is 4am, Master”, I replied.

“My goodness!”, Destre blasted, perhaps too loud for 4am. “I only wanted to sleep until 1am. Anyhoo, what is your quandry or enquiry, tonight, Michael?”

“Master Destre”, the nouns came easy; now here was the hard part, I slowly took a breath to get ready to admit of my folly.

All too often you inform us about the imporance of art. The Arcadian ideal, the Ascetic impositions a man must make in order to be strong. I find these exceptionally difficult to maintain; furthermore, I fear this: I am lying to myself. About what? You might ask. I answer, You always teach us of the ideal of music being critical, challenging, and you always tell us to abstain from certain things insofar as they make us lazy, weak and take away our dedication to others. But I must admit, the feelings of my personal desires seem to take precedence, my own sense of pleasure is taking strength, my own desires, hopes, over that of the ideals of critical art, and the ideology of Areopagus.

If I am to elaborate, I shall say this: you teach us that art must challenge the norm, art must make us think, art must be ideological. But I find this; in actuality, too difficult to maintain. You want us to be Modernists, but I lean towards the Romantic at heart. All the music that is seemingly ideological that I do enjoy; I find that I enjoy them for emotional, and not intellectual reasons. I hide behind the modernist agenda, to justify my ‘political’/critical stance. I am lying to myself at most. My interests are far from political at times; they are, in fact, sentimental. I’m sorry. I cannot hold to your ideals easily, my preferences, my desires, move so far towards the individualistic, sentimental, lonely, and yearning temperament of harmony. I find comfort in music; not challenge. I am deceiving myself, through the reasons you justify on modernist grounds. I cannot maintain it; yet I know I must. There is too much pain to not have music that i beautiful, to not have music that comforts and gives us strength, to have music that expresses the temperament and desires that we all have. Your modernist Ideal cannot maintain. This is not a Kantian dispute, this is my challenge to you, Master Destre. I feel uncomfortable to challenge you, but I cannot fully hold to your strict Modernist ideal. There is just too much appeal to the comfort of music; to the sentimentality of music that reflects our own emotional nature. I do not listen for escape, however, I listen for expression. For expression of the already presiding tendencies within me. I shall leave you now Destre, and now you must continue with your task.

I left the room; Destre silent, his head gravitated to the window, the darkness, the opaque nothingness, the blackness outside his window, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the room, if his lamp were not to illuminate his study. Destre had to think hard. Perhaps he thought, something that we all think at some point:

These are all difficult issues.

Michael

The Enlightenment’s abandonment of telelogy?

I was reading an essay by Alasdair McIntyre; and he suggests that the failure of modern moral philosophy is that in the revolution of modern philosophy, philosophers have abandoned the traditional authority of philosophy (Aristotle) as well as his substantive content. This included the metaphysical notion of teleology.

McIntyre’s suggestion is that the Aristotelian ethical system suggests a ‘telos’ of a person, in ethical conduct insofar as we can appropriate a person-as-they-currently-are, and a person-as-they-could be, and further, a ‘person-who-has-achieved-their-telos’. To talk of telos is to refer to their inherent order, design, purpose, or nature. To talk of a good knife is to say it cuts well; likewise, to talk of a good person is to see if they actualise their imbued potential, at whatever the given task is; for example, a good woodsman is one who can cut trees with expertise and speed and precision.

According to McIntyre, the failure of enlightenment systems of morality (of which he refers to Hume, Smith, Diderot, Kant and Kierkegaard) is that they have lost the Aristotelian aspect of virtue and finding balance; in their excising of his metaphysics.

This seems to be a very alien critique of ethics. But I shall seriously consider it. I think McIntyre’s appropriation of enlightenment philosophy may be correct. Many in recent years have made an Aristotelian turn to ethics. I must keep the virtue route of ethics very much entertained in my mind.

Michael

Wikibooks!

I’ve just discovered wikibooks! This looks like an amazing prospect just for a bit of casual learning. It isn’t, however, a serious text nor should be be referenced, nor should one use this as a basis for some very strong conviction. It is, however, a way to learn about things one normally doesn’t look at, or know about, or to satisfy curiosity for a lay audience.

S

Harry Potter (and the importance of literature)

The Phenomenon of Harry Potter 

If there are a few words I love to use (Hypothetico-Deduction, Kant, sex, Kant, Rationalism, Psychology, Transcendental Idealism), one of those in the list must be social phenomenon. HARRY POTTER!!! In the words of our time, stfu OMGWTF N***a? It seems everyone my age (haha I’m not telling you that yet! - but you could work it out by hypothetico-deduction [haha that's two down]) is reading Harry Potter. I hardly follow ‘pop culture’ much, like Big Brother, the Charts, T4 or such like, but apparently Harry Potter is a really important event at the moment. Here is the phenomena as I see it:

 1. The Final Book of the series has been released

2. Harry Potter is a series of books operating within a framework of magic, semi-fantasy, and old-style Britishness (Romantic sentimentality? – We saw how this ended up *cough* 70 years ago)

3. Harry Potter is a popular series and product range

4. Harry Potter is primarily consumed by Books, and Film.

 Musings on Harry

I guess I am being rather fuddy duddy about it all. I attempted to read the Philosopher’s Stone once, by that, I mean, I found a copy one day and sat for 3 hours reading it. I must admit, it was fun to read, it is very readable, and it is a well-written piece of literature which has much appeal to children and adults alike. That said, I wouldn’t normally read it, nor would I want to. Because it is so well written, I read about half of the Philosopher’s Stone in one sitting, I’ve only done a book in one sitting once before, and that was when I had to read ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ (Wilde), but that was mainly because I had severe anxiety and I had to read it for a class (on Goffman; the lecture was on the ‘face’ in social interaction).

Why am I apprehensive about Harry Potter? Well, I must admit one thing, anything that makes people read more has to be good, and better Harry Potter than Mein Kampf (or Foucault – same diff). Because I saw Harry Potter being sold in a Corner Shop, once I was at a cash and carry, and they sold the book in BULK!!, they sell it in supermarkets! I mean, goodness, people don’t get culture from supermarkets, they get condoms, booze, vegetables and microwavable death meals; okay, so, maybe I’m not flexible about the book being sold in a wider range of places. I’m cool with a book being sold in a Co-op or Tesco. But, the KIND of books sold (this is more general than HP – and not necessarily inclusive of HP) in supermarkets and unconventional non-book stores are droll, populist literature, like celebrity biographies, pop psychology, or The God Delusion. I might seem like an atheist to you readers sometimes, but I cannot accept that Dawkins is being sold next to a 6-pint of milk! Maybe Hindu readers can find offense in that. I would rather supermarkets sell Holy Bibles than The God Delusion!

I mean, it’s not a bad thing to widen the range of supermarkets, I do not believe that at all, but if you want to diversify your range, do it well. If you want to sell more non-US/UK music, get in Finnish, Norweigian, South African or Jpop music rather than say, nose flautists of Peru; that is purporting an image of ‘world’ music as primitive, ‘world’ music isn’t even an approriate label. If you want to diversify, be representative. I wouldn’t like to think that the Atheist/Agnostic front is represented by Dawkins; why not say, Carl Sagan instead? Maybe I am being too apprehensive, I must admit, I suppose the fact that Dawkins is British has an impact on it being in a British supermarket.

What I really want to say is, yes, Harry Potter is important to people, and it’s great that children read something substantial. I am all for that. I hope adults after the age of 16 continue to read seriously after education. Reading is a great joy, one can enter fantastic, sensual, difficult, sentimental, challenging or just plain different worlds through reading. Art sometimes has the amazing impact of being so distinct from everyday life that we can experience the features of being human that we don’t always experience. To learn of the tender love between lovers, to know the pain of grief, the corruption of the powerful, the beauty of nature, the tenderness of men and the brutality of women (counterintuitive social images), the lives of those different from us, such as ethnic minorities, the disabled, those of sexual difference, and the mentally ill. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for that, and the import of literature has perhaps a greater impact on our practical knowledge than analytic philosophy does (I thank Martha Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge for that insight – it is a great book that anyone interested in philosophy and literature should buy). I want to emphasise that reading and entertaining one’s mind is so important in today’s age. A literate (and numerate) population is such a wonderful development of civilisation; no longer is it the elites who learn to read, but all (in principle).

So, what’s my beef? Okay, here it is:

Why don’t they sell a decent translation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in BOOKSTORES!!!!!!!!!! I went to some bookstores I frequented as a college pupil in Wimbledon; and they did NOT have the Meikeljohn translation, let alone the Kemp-Smith! I demand quality translations of the most important philosopher since Aristotle in my two-storey local Bookstore! I go to a philosophy section of a bookstore, and what do I see? ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE? THE ART OF WAR? MADNESS AND CIVILISATION? SIGMUND FREUD? By Jingo, this is NOT philosophy (the last one is debatable). If people can have that, and not the finer works of Hume, Mill, Descartes, Spinoza, or Quine and Dennett, what hope is there for an enlightenment world!

In redemption of Wimbledon, I say this, there is a fine, fine used bookstore, somewhat ironically opposite a club named ‘Edwards’ – which is like the cantina in Mos Eisley in Star Wars: A New Hope, because no where else will you find a hive with more scum and villany within it; just anecdotally, Sinistre told me there is a man who sits by the sinks of the toilet and offers to wash your hands, saying rhyming motifs such as ‘no soap, no hope’ (referring to pulling [temporary casual romantic contact with] a girl), or ‘no cologne, you go home alone’. Anyhoo, the bookshop. I found some AMAZING books there. Logic, metaphysics, classics, epistemology, religion, sociology, cultural studies, even books on EXEGESIS! I found some of the classic commentaries on Wittgenstein, Hume and Kant there (I couldn’t afford them all – as they were antiquarian/expensive copies).

In the words of a dear friend of mine. Rant over. I really should not be so casual in my writing. It is because Sinistre and Destre aren’t around much!