Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Good and Evil 2 -Are they absolutes?
We live in an era when there is no generally accepted idea of what is good and what is evil. Some would say the distinction is absolute: Good is always good, evil is always evil. So says the current Pope. In fact, however; when we look at planetary behavior the matter is starkly different and entirely relative. Good and evil are relative and agreement depends on one’s point of view.
Different religions, different tribes, different parties, different nations will disagree. One says killing oneself is evil, another will say “it all depends”, another will say suicide is the only response one can make to one’s shameful deeds. Result? The debate rages within a society to no conclusion. The issue of abortion likewise. The goodness of badness of sexual behaviors are widely varied depending on the point of view of the persons behaving. Our society largely honors those who struggled against laws of racial oppression. Fifty years ago laws of racial oppression were largely accepted as good.
Why is it that we find it so difficult to come to agreement in these latter days? A hundred years ago one would have completely disagreed with me, finding in American society widespread agreement about suicide, and sexual matters. For most the answers were found in the Bible and in common law. Today both are challenged. So what can we learn from our own rational tradition? In Chapter 6 of Leviathan, (April 1651 -355 years ago) Thos Hobbes offers this analysis of good and evil:
“But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire,
that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of the man, where there is no Commonwealth; or, in a Commonwealth, from the person that representeth it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up and make his sentence the rule thereof.”
Thus doth Master Hobbes endorse the reality I have found in my modest experience, to wit; that good and evil are relative concepts notwithstanding the efforts of Pope Benedict XVI, would be tyrants like the current President of Iran, or ideologues like Revs Dobson or Falwell all of whom wish to impose their point of view and their will upon a fractious community. Yes, as the god Hephaestus has said in these pages, it is tough to form a community without a commonly accepted ethos vis a vis good and evil. Tyrants try to impose. In democracies an ethos emerges from debate, debates sometimes debased by demagogues, of course.
But all agreement about accepted ethos concerning good and evil begins with an accepted cosmology within the community. In the case of Judeo Christian communities that ethos has traditionally come from the Biblical stories of creation. Because said stories can no longer be taken in the literal sense the ethos emergent from the stories has broken down. Thus a new ethos will emerge only when we come to accept a new cosmology. My candidate for that new cosmology -and I can see only one candidate for the future and for this planet - is the new universe story revealed by science in the last century or what I like to call StarStuff - see earlier postings.
Different religions, different tribes, different parties, different nations will disagree. One says killing oneself is evil, another will say “it all depends”, another will say suicide is the only response one can make to one’s shameful deeds. Result? The debate rages within a society to no conclusion. The issue of abortion likewise. The goodness of badness of sexual behaviors are widely varied depending on the point of view of the persons behaving. Our society largely honors those who struggled against laws of racial oppression. Fifty years ago laws of racial oppression were largely accepted as good.
Why is it that we find it so difficult to come to agreement in these latter days? A hundred years ago one would have completely disagreed with me, finding in American society widespread agreement about suicide, and sexual matters. For most the answers were found in the Bible and in common law. Today both are challenged. So what can we learn from our own rational tradition? In Chapter 6 of Leviathan, (April 1651 -355 years ago) Thos Hobbes offers this analysis of good and evil:
“But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire,
that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of the man, where there is no Commonwealth; or, in a Commonwealth, from the person that representeth it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up and make his sentence the rule thereof.”
Thus doth Master Hobbes endorse the reality I have found in my modest experience, to wit; that good and evil are relative concepts notwithstanding the efforts of Pope Benedict XVI, would be tyrants like the current President of Iran, or ideologues like Revs Dobson or Falwell all of whom wish to impose their point of view and their will upon a fractious community. Yes, as the god Hephaestus has said in these pages, it is tough to form a community without a commonly accepted ethos vis a vis good and evil. Tyrants try to impose. In democracies an ethos emerges from debate, debates sometimes debased by demagogues, of course.
But all agreement about accepted ethos concerning good and evil begins with an accepted cosmology within the community. In the case of Judeo Christian communities that ethos has traditionally come from the Biblical stories of creation. Because said stories can no longer be taken in the literal sense the ethos emergent from the stories has broken down. Thus a new ethos will emerge only when we come to accept a new cosmology. My candidate for that new cosmology -and I can see only one candidate for the future and for this planet - is the new universe story revealed by science in the last century or what I like to call StarStuff - see earlier postings.
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Master Wally deserves congratulations for courageously confronting the very big question of the nature of good and evil and the problems of reconciling the myriad individual notions of good and evil and the needs of what Master Hobbes calls "the Commonwealth." Not an easy matter! If one allows each individual freely to follow his personal ethos without regard to its effects on others with different moral codes, then the net result will eventually be, says Hobbes, in his memorable phrase, a war of each against all, for in his view the root of all notions of good and evil is at base the desire for survival. Master Hobbes' solution for the Commonwealth, as described in the last sentence quoted above, is that men who disagree about the common rule for good and evil will have either to live by the rule prescribed by "the representative of the Commonwealth" or to agree to accept a rule arrived at by an "arbitrator or judge" chosen with the consent of the governed, so to speak. The latter is nearer the ideal enshrined in the Constitution of the USA by its "Founding Fathers", e.g. rules of good and evil as described by the laws of the land and the decisions of the Supreme Court. The key concept here is the consent of the disagreeing citizens of the Commonwealth with different religions, philosophies, ethnic identities,and so on to abide by the rules arrived at by the "arbitrator or judge". Aye, there's the rub, at least in the USA of the 21st century with its bitter cultural divisions and fractious and litigious populace, a situation much more complex than that faced by the Founding Fathers when writing the Constitution.
In my view, Master Wally is correct that the job would be much easier if the majority of the citizens of the Commonwealth subscribed to a common "ethos and cosmology", in his terms, and Master Wally's candidate of choice is, naturally, the Story of StarStuff, which is appealing in lots of ways. But, and there's always a but, how does the diverse, divided, and contentious fractionated populace of our Commonwealth get converted to this view instead of the religious outlook of their choice(s)? Will followers of the so-called revealed religions with their various versions of paradise and eternal life for the faithful readily subscribe to the universe of the StarStuff cosmos, which now appears headed for a cold, dark, dead endpoint with its highly entropic energy uniformly and diffusely dispersed? This is the future resulting from a spacetime that is ever expanding, and at an accelerating rate to boot, as is now the growing concensus of the current cosmological faithful. How does Master Wally propose to spread that gospel? What comfort there for the followers of religions which promise eternal life in a better world? As I recall, perhaps erroneously (how can that be the case for a god?),Master Hobbes regretfully came to see the necessity of a rather authoritarian state, rather like the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, to prevent the war of each against all.
What say you to these problems, Master Wally?
His divine majesty,
Hephaestus
In my view, Master Wally is correct that the job would be much easier if the majority of the citizens of the Commonwealth subscribed to a common "ethos and cosmology", in his terms, and Master Wally's candidate of choice is, naturally, the Story of StarStuff, which is appealing in lots of ways. But, and there's always a but, how does the diverse, divided, and contentious fractionated populace of our Commonwealth get converted to this view instead of the religious outlook of their choice(s)? Will followers of the so-called revealed religions with their various versions of paradise and eternal life for the faithful readily subscribe to the universe of the StarStuff cosmos, which now appears headed for a cold, dark, dead endpoint with its highly entropic energy uniformly and diffusely dispersed? This is the future resulting from a spacetime that is ever expanding, and at an accelerating rate to boot, as is now the growing concensus of the current cosmological faithful. How does Master Wally propose to spread that gospel? What comfort there for the followers of religions which promise eternal life in a better world? As I recall, perhaps erroneously (how can that be the case for a god?),Master Hobbes regretfully came to see the necessity of a rather authoritarian state, rather like the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, to prevent the war of each against all.
What say you to these problems, Master Wally?
His divine majesty,
Hephaestus
# posted by 
: 8:58 PM
: 8:58 PM
On Good and Evil, StarStuff, and the Philosophy of Ayn Rand
Dear Wally,
Although you probably do not realize it, there is much in common between with your approach to good and evil, with its need for a “common ethos and cosmology”, and the approach to good and evil of Ayn Rand:
Atlas Shrugged “argued that reason’s abandonment by individuals and cultures was the source of all evil. But it argued, too, that evil was ultimately impotent if left unsupported by the good, and that the good, properly defined, could succeed in the world, if armed with the proper philosophy—that, in that sense, we do live in a ‘benevolent universe’.”
So, perhaps, you can see some similarities there. But, you may well ask, “What is a ‘proper philosophy’ in Ayn Rand’s view?” It can be simply explained as follows, based on one axiom and several “fundamental facts about man’s nature.”
The axiom: “Man exists and must survive as man.”
The “fundamental facts”:
“Man is a living being”
“His only means of survival is reason:
“The exercise of reason is a matter of free choice.”
All of these rest on the existence on an “objective world” (i.e., a realist metaphysics) and the ability of reason to know this world (i.e., a rationalist epistemology). [Probably, you would not find that inconsistent with the Story of StarStuff.”]
These “fundamental facts” and the axiom, and their metaphysical and epistemological foundation, are at the base of Ayn Rand’s philosophical system, which she calls Objectivism:
“The world is there, it exists, it is ‘objective.’ It is not created by man’s mind, but is there to be seen, to be discovered by the mind…Knowledge of it is possible to man and is acquired through the fullest objective use of reason operating on the material provided by the senses.”
{The quotations and paraphrase above is from On Ayn Rand by Allan Gotthelf, Wadsworth Philosophers Series (Wadsworth, 2000) and is elaborated in detail in The Fountainhead and, most especially, in Atlas Shrugged. The philosophical system includes also aesthetics, ethics, and politics, as well as metaphysics and epistemology.}
Now, while you may see with surprise that your view of the cosmos and that of Ayn Rand are not too dissimilar, as least as far as I have explained it. I expect that your motives in creating the Story of StarStuff and Ayn Rand’s in writing her novels are also rather similar. You both wish to save humanity from coming to grief through a bad understanding of the real nature of man and his place in the cosmos by means of opening their eyes. There is, then, a cautionary tale here for the Prophet of StarStuff.
Ayn Rand was essentially drummed out of the ranks of the nascent conservative movement in the 50’s and early 60’s by William F. Buckley, Jr., Whittaker Chambers, and others writing in National Review and elsewhere. Why?: because she was an unabashed atheist. Secondarily, because the fervor of of her followers (including a young Alan Greenspan) seemed to have a whiff of the cult about it. This made Mr. Buckley and others nervous, for they were trying to dissociate themselves from lunatics such as the John Birch Society in order to attract a more mainstream following. They were successful. They got rid of Ms. Rand from the ranks of approved conservatism, but they did not get rid of Ms. Rand: her books still sell vast numbers of copies each year.
As a final point in the tutorial on Ayn Rand, I leave you with an interesting quotation from Florence King, a long-time columnist in National Review:
“One of the bones I have always picked with conservatism is its total rejection of Ayn Rand because of her atheism. To me, there is much more to conservatism than religion, so I cherish a passage from The Fountainhead that speaks to one such issue. Everyone who shares my revulsion against the touchy-feely, emotion-drenched, low-class, womanish mush that America calls ‘compassion will appreciate Rand’s description of Howard Roark’s office:
He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office one had to be competent. There were no alternatives, no mitigating considerations. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his employer’s benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office.
[Florence King, Stet, Damnit! , The Misanthrope’s Corner, 1991 to 2002 , National Review Books (2002)]
Well, Wally, if you take a tough-minded approach and rigorously follow the consequences of The Story of StarStuff and your ideas about good and evil to their logical conclusion, you may end up at a place not far from Ayn Rand’s, with all its implications from the cautionary tale above. (Substitute “progressive” for “conservative” and the characteristics of Howard Roark plus the disdain for mush-headed compassion of Florence King for the issue of atheism, and you will see what I mean.) If, however, you wimp out and take the tender-minded mystico-spiritual pantheistic view, you may end up as a bush-league Buddhist. I, myself prefer Ayn Rand, warts and all, to the Dalai Lama. How about you?
Your phriend in philosophical pholderol,
DOW
Dear Wally,
Although you probably do not realize it, there is much in common between with your approach to good and evil, with its need for a “common ethos and cosmology”, and the approach to good and evil of Ayn Rand:
Atlas Shrugged “argued that reason’s abandonment by individuals and cultures was the source of all evil. But it argued, too, that evil was ultimately impotent if left unsupported by the good, and that the good, properly defined, could succeed in the world, if armed with the proper philosophy—that, in that sense, we do live in a ‘benevolent universe’.”
So, perhaps, you can see some similarities there. But, you may well ask, “What is a ‘proper philosophy’ in Ayn Rand’s view?” It can be simply explained as follows, based on one axiom and several “fundamental facts about man’s nature.”
The axiom: “Man exists and must survive as man.”
The “fundamental facts”:
“Man is a living being”
“His only means of survival is reason:
“The exercise of reason is a matter of free choice.”
All of these rest on the existence on an “objective world” (i.e., a realist metaphysics) and the ability of reason to know this world (i.e., a rationalist epistemology). [Probably, you would not find that inconsistent with the Story of StarStuff.”]
These “fundamental facts” and the axiom, and their metaphysical and epistemological foundation, are at the base of Ayn Rand’s philosophical system, which she calls Objectivism:
“The world is there, it exists, it is ‘objective.’ It is not created by man’s mind, but is there to be seen, to be discovered by the mind…Knowledge of it is possible to man and is acquired through the fullest objective use of reason operating on the material provided by the senses.”
{The quotations and paraphrase above is from On Ayn Rand by Allan Gotthelf, Wadsworth Philosophers Series (Wadsworth, 2000) and is elaborated in detail in The Fountainhead and, most especially, in Atlas Shrugged. The philosophical system includes also aesthetics, ethics, and politics, as well as metaphysics and epistemology.}
Now, while you may see with surprise that your view of the cosmos and that of Ayn Rand are not too dissimilar, as least as far as I have explained it. I expect that your motives in creating the Story of StarStuff and Ayn Rand’s in writing her novels are also rather similar. You both wish to save humanity from coming to grief through a bad understanding of the real nature of man and his place in the cosmos by means of opening their eyes. There is, then, a cautionary tale here for the Prophet of StarStuff.
Ayn Rand was essentially drummed out of the ranks of the nascent conservative movement in the 50’s and early 60’s by William F. Buckley, Jr., Whittaker Chambers, and others writing in National Review and elsewhere. Why?: because she was an unabashed atheist. Secondarily, because the fervor of of her followers (including a young Alan Greenspan) seemed to have a whiff of the cult about it. This made Mr. Buckley and others nervous, for they were trying to dissociate themselves from lunatics such as the John Birch Society in order to attract a more mainstream following. They were successful. They got rid of Ms. Rand from the ranks of approved conservatism, but they did not get rid of Ms. Rand: her books still sell vast numbers of copies each year.
As a final point in the tutorial on Ayn Rand, I leave you with an interesting quotation from Florence King, a long-time columnist in National Review:
“One of the bones I have always picked with conservatism is its total rejection of Ayn Rand because of her atheism. To me, there is much more to conservatism than religion, so I cherish a passage from The Fountainhead that speaks to one such issue. Everyone who shares my revulsion against the touchy-feely, emotion-drenched, low-class, womanish mush that America calls ‘compassion will appreciate Rand’s description of Howard Roark’s office:
He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office one had to be competent. There were no alternatives, no mitigating considerations. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his employer’s benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office.
[Florence King, Stet, Damnit! , The Misanthrope’s Corner, 1991 to 2002 , National Review Books (2002)]
Well, Wally, if you take a tough-minded approach and rigorously follow the consequences of The Story of StarStuff and your ideas about good and evil to their logical conclusion, you may end up at a place not far from Ayn Rand’s, with all its implications from the cautionary tale above. (Substitute “progressive” for “conservative” and the characteristics of Howard Roark plus the disdain for mush-headed compassion of Florence King for the issue of atheism, and you will see what I mean.) If, however, you wimp out and take the tender-minded mystico-spiritual pantheistic view, you may end up as a bush-league Buddhist. I, myself prefer Ayn Rand, warts and all, to the Dalai Lama. How about you?
Your phriend in philosophical pholderol,
DOW
# posted by : 5:44 PM
: 5:44 PM
Wally Weet, Ayn Rand, and the Dalai Lama: An Addendum.
In the comment above, I challenged Wally to follow his “Story of StarStuff” to its logical and philosophical conclusions. After all he is claiming to use a story of the cosmos, the world, and the descent of man based purely on the findings of science to generate an ethos containing spiritual and ethical values. Clearly, he must add certain aspects, including values, to his kit of tools, because unless Wally is the greatest philosopher of this age, he will not be able to generate these things from the purely, more-or-less agreed upon “truths” arising from scientific theory and experiment. No one else has yet done this, so chances are good Wally must flesh out his philosophy if he is going to succeed. In the last paragraph of my comment, I suggested the two extremes of the course his “common ethos and cosmology” might take: the tough-minded approach, as exemplified by Ayn Rand and the tender-minded, as exemplified by the Dalai Lama. You might suppose that tough- and tender-minded was just a rhetorical turn on my part, but I must give full credit to William James for this dichotomy. So, I would like to expand a wee bit upon this. Let me begin by quoting James: “Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.” I will leave it to the gentle reader to assign the present activity to one of those categories. James also said that “The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a clash of human temperaments,” and proceeded to assign some philosophical traits to two extreme types of temperaments in order to clarify his discussion. You no doubt have guessed the two types. Here are James’ set of traits associated with each:
A. The Tender-Minded B.The Tough-Minded
A.Rationalistic (going by ‘principles’) B.Empiricist (going by ‘facts’)
A.Intellectualistic B.Sensationalistic
A.Idealistic B.Materialistic
A.Optimistic B.Pessimistic
A.Religious B.Irreligious
A.Free-willist B.Fatalistic
A.Monistic B.Pluralistic
A.Dogmatical B.Skeptical
Recall that some of these terms are used in their philosophical sense. For example, Plato’s is an idealistic philosophy while that of Aristotle is more of a materialistic philosophy. Thus, the sensationalistic temperament tends to seek the truth from sense-data, i.e. sensations, whereas the intellectualistic temperament tends to seek truth from introspection. You can see from this list of traits that the assignment of Ayn Rand to the tough-minded temperament is not a perfect fit: she is rationalistic (a true follower of Aristotelian logic), free-willist, and most assuredly dogmatical, but you could hardly call her temperament tender-minded. The Dalai Lama fits pretty well into the tender-minded category, however.
Lest you think this discussion is tangential to the argument between Wally and Hephaestus/DOW on the subject of StarStuff and good and evil, let me quote further from William James:
“Each of you probably knows some well-marked example of each type, and you know what each example thinks of the example on the other side of the line. They have a low opinion of each other. Their antagonism, whenever as individuals their temperaments have been intense, has formed in all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of the time. It forms a part of the philosophic atmosphere today. The tough think of the tender as sentimentalists and soft-heads. The tender feel the tough to be unrefined, callous, or brutal. Their mutual reaction is very much like that that takes place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population like that of Cripple Creek. Each type believes the other to be inferior to itself; but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the other it has a dash of fear.”
{Quotations from a single-volume selection from “The Works of William James”, containing two books, “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking” and “The Meaning of Truth: a Sequel to ‘Pragmatism’”, together with an Introduction by A.J. Ayer; Harvard University Press (1975)}
I hope that by threatening to keep on quoting from various philosophers, that Wally will give in and spell out in full what his ethics are and how they can be derived from, or at least inspired by, a completely scientific story consisting of cosmology, geology, and evolutionary biology.
As a fringe benefit, I hope to inspire you to check out the works of both Ayn Rand and William James. Some think that William is the best writer in the James family, hands down, and remember that this family also contained his brother Henry.
Keep the phaith,
DOW
In the comment above, I challenged Wally to follow his “Story of StarStuff” to its logical and philosophical conclusions. After all he is claiming to use a story of the cosmos, the world, and the descent of man based purely on the findings of science to generate an ethos containing spiritual and ethical values. Clearly, he must add certain aspects, including values, to his kit of tools, because unless Wally is the greatest philosopher of this age, he will not be able to generate these things from the purely, more-or-less agreed upon “truths” arising from scientific theory and experiment. No one else has yet done this, so chances are good Wally must flesh out his philosophy if he is going to succeed. In the last paragraph of my comment, I suggested the two extremes of the course his “common ethos and cosmology” might take: the tough-minded approach, as exemplified by Ayn Rand and the tender-minded, as exemplified by the Dalai Lama. You might suppose that tough- and tender-minded was just a rhetorical turn on my part, but I must give full credit to William James for this dichotomy. So, I would like to expand a wee bit upon this. Let me begin by quoting James: “Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.” I will leave it to the gentle reader to assign the present activity to one of those categories. James also said that “The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a clash of human temperaments,” and proceeded to assign some philosophical traits to two extreme types of temperaments in order to clarify his discussion. You no doubt have guessed the two types. Here are James’ set of traits associated with each:
A. The Tender-Minded B.The Tough-Minded
A.Rationalistic (going by ‘principles’) B.Empiricist (going by ‘facts’)
A.Intellectualistic B.Sensationalistic
A.Idealistic B.Materialistic
A.Optimistic B.Pessimistic
A.Religious B.Irreligious
A.Free-willist B.Fatalistic
A.Monistic B.Pluralistic
A.Dogmatical B.Skeptical
Recall that some of these terms are used in their philosophical sense. For example, Plato’s is an idealistic philosophy while that of Aristotle is more of a materialistic philosophy. Thus, the sensationalistic temperament tends to seek the truth from sense-data, i.e. sensations, whereas the intellectualistic temperament tends to seek truth from introspection. You can see from this list of traits that the assignment of Ayn Rand to the tough-minded temperament is not a perfect fit: she is rationalistic (a true follower of Aristotelian logic), free-willist, and most assuredly dogmatical, but you could hardly call her temperament tender-minded. The Dalai Lama fits pretty well into the tender-minded category, however.
Lest you think this discussion is tangential to the argument between Wally and Hephaestus/DOW on the subject of StarStuff and good and evil, let me quote further from William James:
“Each of you probably knows some well-marked example of each type, and you know what each example thinks of the example on the other side of the line. They have a low opinion of each other. Their antagonism, whenever as individuals their temperaments have been intense, has formed in all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of the time. It forms a part of the philosophic atmosphere today. The tough think of the tender as sentimentalists and soft-heads. The tender feel the tough to be unrefined, callous, or brutal. Their mutual reaction is very much like that that takes place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population like that of Cripple Creek. Each type believes the other to be inferior to itself; but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the other it has a dash of fear.”
{Quotations from a single-volume selection from “The Works of William James”, containing two books, “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking” and “The Meaning of Truth: a Sequel to ‘Pragmatism’”, together with an Introduction by A.J. Ayer; Harvard University Press (1975)}
I hope that by threatening to keep on quoting from various philosophers, that Wally will give in and spell out in full what his ethics are and how they can be derived from, or at least inspired by, a completely scientific story consisting of cosmology, geology, and evolutionary biology.
As a fringe benefit, I hope to inspire you to check out the works of both Ayn Rand and William James. Some think that William is the best writer in the James family, hands down, and remember that this family also contained his brother Henry.
Keep the phaith,
DOW
# posted by : 3:38 PM
: 3:38 PM
Dear Dow,
You have laid out a tough minded challenge in your comments above everything from Rand to the James Brothers to the National Review to Whittaker Chambers egad! No softy you. Even the Dalai Lama and Buddha taste the venom of your pen.
Well, I haven't read Rand. I will shortly approaching her novels with an open mind and I shall post my response to her work on this blog keeping in mind I'm dealing with really tough minded guys here.
If I get right down to the bone of this discussion, it seems to have something to do with the ethical consequences of StarStuff. (do I detect a negative attitude on your part toward StarStuff -the universe story- and its impact on humanity? ...a prejudice? ...an attitude that it must be softy stuff? StarMush? I must be wrong.)
Anyway, you've challenged me to post the ethos and consequent ethics I imagine will emerge from the impact of the new universe story on human kind.
I'll do that, but first I've posted two preliminary essays that must precede a discussion of the ethics in question. Question One: Where'd we come from, and question two, who are we.
I'll follow these in a couple days with a discussion of our purpose on this planet, the ethos that will engender, and the consequent ethics for a future humanity.
Not a bad agenda is it? Tune in, Pal.
Post a Comment
You have laid out a tough minded challenge in your comments above everything from Rand to the James Brothers to the National Review to Whittaker Chambers egad! No softy you. Even the Dalai Lama and Buddha taste the venom of your pen.
Well, I haven't read Rand. I will shortly approaching her novels with an open mind and I shall post my response to her work on this blog keeping in mind I'm dealing with really tough minded guys here.
If I get right down to the bone of this discussion, it seems to have something to do with the ethical consequences of StarStuff. (do I detect a negative attitude on your part toward StarStuff -the universe story- and its impact on humanity? ...a prejudice? ...an attitude that it must be softy stuff? StarMush? I must be wrong.)
Anyway, you've challenged me to post the ethos and consequent ethics I imagine will emerge from the impact of the new universe story on human kind.
I'll do that, but first I've posted two preliminary essays that must precede a discussion of the ethics in question. Question One: Where'd we come from, and question two, who are we.
I'll follow these in a couple days with a discussion of our purpose on this planet, the ethos that will engender, and the consequent ethics for a future humanity.
Not a bad agenda is it? Tune in, Pal.
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