What is the kindest thing we could do for humanity?

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Fools will continue to be fools., Inevitable behavior., Is it possible to be kind?, Preditors will continue to prey.

It is essential and probably inevitable that humans must consider themselves first in their development of a relationship with other people and the world. Some people as they reach adulthood begin to consider their responsibilities to others, and with modern media being available the ideas of the great philosophers such as David Hume and Adam Smith percolate through society and into their consciousness if not their behavior. That responsibility can and should permeate our democratic processes for bringing fully mature and caring people into positions of political power. After all, their responsibility is to the public and not to themselves. And yet we rarely see those virtues displayed in our public officials. About as close as we do see is the politicians doing what they can to be seen by voters as representing their voting constituency. That perpetuates the short-sighted response to problems after those problems have already become so odious that more than fifty percent of the populace feels it is suffering. The system is designed for pure self-serving selfishness at every level.

A person who lives by Love Your Life rule #134 “Work with the fixed past and the future inevitables.” need only see how the democratic process works and invest ahead of the wave of inevitable behavior and suffering because of the public’s aggregate short-sighted view. The question arises, “Is it immoral to take advantage of the inevitable foolish behavior of people?” I find odious the operation of gambling casinos because they are intentionally taking advantage of foolish behavior. But almost any occupation has an aspect that at some level seems to be taking advantage of people’s weaknesses. Cigarette and candy companies are examples of people purveying products that are linked to ill-health. By rule #134 that is the way the past worked and it appears inevitable that it will continue into the foreseeable future.

Given the probability that humanity will continue to operate on into the future the way it has in the past, “What is the kindest thing we could do for humanity?” Does pointing out what I just wrote above empower the public to correct their behavior or the opposite, does it empower those people who choose to prey upon human weakness?

Obviously, that idea potentially benefits both groups if the people of each group read and understood the idea. Without a doubt, the influence upon each group is minuscule.

The fools will continue to be fools and the predators will continue to prey. 

Clockwork Purple

Tags

A writer's group prompt, Clockwork purple, Intellectual evolution

Dudley’s bookstore writer’s group met on April 17, 2017 at Ahonu and Angeal Rose’s home. Usually, we do a random prompt from a random book. The book is chosen at random by one person, from it another person chooses unseen a random page number. Then an unseen line number is chosen by yet another person. After we have read that random prompt line aloud a timer is set to 45 minutes. Strange things soon come out of our fingers and when the timer rings we do five minutes of proofreading. With trepidation, we read aloud our desperate efforts.

Today there was a need to create a title for our coming book and we settled on – Clockwork Purple. Because of the need for an explanation for the strange title we chose “Clockwork Purple” for our prompt. Weird was in the air, prose was in our minds and the timer was set. … START!

---

Clockwork purple.

A blank of confusion has settled into my mind. “I have nothing to say!” Everyone agrees that my life is empty, meaningless and that my behavior is weird. Those strange words are not me, not the real me, and I am not a clockwork and I am not purple. Those are external fantasies imposed through words by other people’s expostulations vibrating in the air. That’s not the reality of who I am.

I’m just a person interested in solving problems that face me and especially those problems that confront all humanity. I prefer to ponder problems where I can contribute a meaningful new idea into the current of human understanding. That is, I seek to add something significant into the vastness of human wisdom.

There is an infinity of problems to be found and I do mean infinity in the mathematical sense of the word; the infinite vastness beyond the current human situation and comprehension. There is an infinity of undiscovered problems beyond those met by the hundred billion people who have lived on this Earth.

There are without doubt problems that could be discovered and revealed now with a simple declarative statement. Undoubtedly a sentence, a phrase, even a few words could be said at this moment that would change humanity forever. For example, a common simple phrase known now by nearly everyone was unknown by anyone two-hundred years ago. It changed the world. There are many other examples, but the phrase “survival of the fittest” has had a major impact on all humanity. That idea was obvious even to Adam Smith in his book Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, some eight decades before Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859, but Smith didn’t understand its broader applications and limited his idea to a “hidden hand” that brings about the survival of the fittest in business.  Darwin et al. expanded the concept to biologically adaptive things and not just to business. Darwin’s phrase had a much broader application and vastly greater impact than Smith’s.

There are in all likelihood many ideas and short sentences as powerful as “survival of the fittest” that could be stated right now by you; but they haven’t been said, at least not said in a way that reached the public and “went viral.” Those are the ideas I like to search for and the strange places I like to seek out and explore. It is a simple thing to be doing, and it seems like everyone is doing it every moment of their lives.

So … Why am I said to be weird? I dress in clothing that isn’t particularly different. I speak with common English words. My grammar is apparently understandable to the people I meet. From the feedback I get from others it appears the thoughts I express are generally understood. I try diligently to obey all laws and never lie. So, I ask again … Why am I considered weird?

The prompt – “Clockwork Purple” – is a simple English phrase. The word “purple” refers to a common color and is a common word. The word “clockwork” is a bit unusual, but it’s an easy compound of two very common words and is easily understood. In our writer’s group, the usage implies a clock in our background guiding the timing of our work and encouraging prompt productivity. And, the word “purple” is commonly associated with florid spontaneous writing. Thus, the title for our book “Clockwork Purple” is descriptive as well as colorful, and it implies the exploration of the outer realms of our present reality.

Our title, “Clockwork Purple,” implies weird, but it also implies prompt, important, colorful and royal.

Phishing for Phools by Akerlof and Shiller – book review

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American economics, Capitalism, Embezzlement, George A. Akerlof, Phishing for Phools, Robert J. Shiller

This must be a scholarly book if we accept that 75 pages of notes for 179 pages of text is a measure of scholarship. Phishing for Phools: The economics of manipulation & deception dives into the truths, half-truths, spins, embezzlements and bezzles that are embedded in the American economic system. That word bezzle was a new word for me. Apparently, it was made up by John Kenneth Galbraith and it means that a person in charge of something of value is illegally taking a portion for themselves but before it is known to be missing. The portion taken is defined as the bezzle. A legal owner of property may feel that it is behaving properly while their factor is bezzling a tiny portion.

This book is about the bezzling that is being perpetrated against us in our daily lives in what appear to be all of our commercial transactions. It covers many examples of how that is done in various situations such as the purchase of cars, houses, credit cards, phood, pharma, tobacco, alcohol, bankruptcy and more. This widespread “phishing” challenges the standard economic model that the free market will always lead to the greater good by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.”

The authors explain various questionable practices that take advantage of people’s informational and psychological weaknesses. They say that if a potential exists for some advantage to be taken and there is money to be made, then someone will step forward and supply that need, to create a “phishing equilibrium.” The implication is that the need is often fulfilled by the bezzle. What the capitalist system does well is to expose needs and provide a way to satisfy those needs for money. A little bezzle helps grease the gears of commerce. The authors call this conning of the public phishing for phools.

Apparently phishing for phools is the new paradigm for legitimate economic transactions?

Who to ask, “Should human self-actualization be a personal goal?”

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Humanities self-actualization, To whom should we turn too?, What should we do?

What should be the question to ask about the human species’ self-actualization? Is that a question that should be brought to the popular attention and voted upon, with one person having one vote? Thus the ideas of a sage such as Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, would be given an equal vote with a just-born baby? Or should the ancient sages be given no consideration whatsoever, because they are long dead and therefore have “no skin in the game”? Or, do the people of the future have even more rights because they will live their entire lives within the considerations that we bring forth? Or, should we ignore the question and let humanity muddle through and find its own way moment by moment?

A baby has no experience with even the basics of social responsibility. A child is interested in finding personal pleasure and avoiding pain. The adolescent in searching for a personal role in the society he’s immersed within. The adult becomes involved in his family’s well-being and promotes that even at the expense of expenditure of personal resources. With the mature personality, there is a concern for the health of their whole community, but even this is a promotion of local well-being. It isn’t until an individual is thinking in terms of humanity that their thoughts are much concerned with people beyond their personal relationships and for the people of the future.

From that perspective, it would appear that the ones with the most reasonable and responsible input to the question are the ones to whom we should turn for answers. Even the sages of history may not have considered a worldview beyond their cultural one, but they are at the cusp of these types of considerations. They would be in a mental and developmental position to explore beyond what they have experience with into the unknown of what would be best for humanity.

Charles Darwin made generalized explorations into these types of questions for living creatures, and that would include human animals. There would be some hesitation with his worldview as being too mechanistic for our grander social expectations and hopes. Darwin’s predecessor Adam Smith was concerned with future humanity and its economic well-being and chose to leave the daily decisions to the individual and his judgment of his needs balanced with his resources. In modern societies, there are many people who are not able to acquire sufficient resources to care for themselves and are taken care of with the collective resources of the state. Some would ask if they are not able to take care of themselves should they have control of the resources of those others who can take care of others and their own families? These are not easy questions but they must be answered or we will live with the alternatives, which usually leave many people withering away like Darwin’s unfit species.

To whom should we turn to for guidance for humanity’s future?

Alternatives to the Categorical Imperative

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Adam Smith, Alfred Wallance, Bhagavad Gita, Categorical imperative, Charles Darwin, Delphic Maxims, Herbert Spencer, How to live your life, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, Jesus, Karl Marx, Patrick Mathew, Socrates, The Eloquent Peasant, Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Franklin, Youi Berra

Here are some general statements suggesting to humans how they should conduct their lives, with comments on possible limitations:

Immanuel Kant — Categorical Imperative – “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” This is too generalized and how can one possibly know what every person’s situations are going to be?

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin — Declaration of Independence – “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It’s a good idea for everyone to grant those three options to every person they ever meet, except when that person makes it clear that if you do follow those suggestions they will use your good intentions to take those freedoms away from you and others.

Yogi Berra – “When you come to a fork in the road take it.” – When you must make a decision don’t vacillate needlessly.

Karl Marx –  “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The problem with this idea is that people feel their needs to consume goods more strongly than their desire to create them.

Jeremy Bentham — “The greatest good for the greatest number.” With that theory in practice, the living population drops by half with every application.

Bhagavad Gita — “Act without attachment to the result.” Interest in your actions and its results may bring pain, or it may bring pleasure, but attachment makes life interesting and worth living. You will gain freedom from these soon enough, that is, when you die, so why torture yourself with unnecessary restrictions?

Adam Smith — “He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” If everyone is free to choose what is in their self-interest with no limitations it will profit everyone, because prices of goods will be driven to their cost of getting them to the buyer. Unfortunately, everyone in the chain from to creator to buyer seeks a quick profit for his temporary possession of the goods.

Adam Smith, Patrick Mathew, Alfred Wallace, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer — “Survival of the fittest.” It took a century for this simple idea to move from Smith’s application to business to its application by Spencer into a good quote about living species.

Socrates – “Examine your life for the unexamined life is not worth living.” I would respond that an unlived life is not worth examining. If you have the time, do it all.

The Eloquent Peasant – 2040 BC – “Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you.” This ancient Golden Rule preceded the statement commonly attributed to Jesus by two thousand years.

Jesus – “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” This is the original English, King James Version, (KJV) of Matthew 7-12 and it is far more meaningful than the word “would” because that word limits a person to the level of their current state of maturity. Should in the context of the statement beckons a person to a higher level of maturity.

All 147 Delphic maxims – Some examples from the middle. – With comment.
31. “Shun every form of evil.” When you see something you shouldn’t do, don’t do it.
32. “Participate in events.” Life is made meaningful by participation in what’s available.
33. “Protect what’s valuable.” If something is worth having it’s worth protecting.
34. “Respect people’s stuff.” That rule applies to others’ stuff too.
35. “Respect people’s thoughts.” People have come to their own thoughts as you did.
36. “Keep religion personal.” Everyone has their own reasons for being.
37. “Do many kindnesses for friends.” Kindness improves everyone and everything.
38. “Prevent excess.” Any more than just right is too much, and more is even worse.

How to identify and avoid bad ideas.

Tags

Avoiding bad ideas, Spotting poor thinking habits

Everyone encounters a lot of bad ideas and a lot of good ones too, but how can you tell the difference? One thing that’s a giveaway to bad ideas and bad thinking habits in general is the frequent assertion of unverifiable truths. This occurs commonly with people who insist on talking long and breathlessly about batches of unrelated conclusions that are usually about things external to their personal experience. The ideas are typically emotion-laden with innuendos of intentional mind control by powerful unseen manipulators. This sounds like a definition of paranoia, but when it isn’t mixed with noticeable delusional behavior it wouldn’t be defined that way, but perhaps it could be called paranoid-light.

Today I encountered a book that had a title that seemed to promise a clearer understanding of evolution, and how the concept behind that process could be applied to all sorts of processes along with biological evolution. The idea of the evolution of business was an early example, and that struck me as strange because Darwin’s book on the evolution of species (1859) had the same basic idea as Adam Smith‘s book on evolution of business, but Smith’s was published in 1776. Charles Darwin was eighty-three years tardy, and this new book adds another hundred and fifty-six years to the slow thinking, or two hundred and thirty-nine years slow. If Smith had only written a single paragraph on living forms, or even a single word in just the right place based on his ideas of how business evolved, we would possibly be calling evolutionary theory Smithism, rather than Darwinism. Smith’s “Hidden Hand” guiding economic and living transactions, with the idea that  those that did well in those situations survived, is at root identical to Darwin’s “natural selection,” where living things most fitted to their local environment were the survivors.

I won’t bother with the title of the book I put down, because it would just cause argument, and what I want to suggest is for you, and me, to watch for unsubstantiated assertions, but even more importantly “unsubstantiatable assertions”. The idea is not to believe things that have no possibility of being shown to be founded in provable fact.

The philosopher of science Karl Popper applies the idea of potential falsifiability to scientific ideas, but I am thinking about that idea of falsifiability in ordinary life situations, and not scientific, requiring that high standard of your acquaintances. Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austro-British philosopher of empirical falsification and critical rationalism: In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. — Avoid people who talk nonsense.

 

 

Philosophers Squared Off In Quotations – Chronological Index of 148 Philosophers

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Chronological Index 148 Philosophers, Philosophers Squared

Philosophers Squared Off means to me — “To assume a fighting stance and be prepared to fight for a philosophical idea.” The quotes in each post are from the internet and can be sourced with a web search. Links here are for a search of Probaway philosophers squared off, and for reference here is Wikipedia’s long list of philosophers. Also, see the Index list below but in Alphabetical Order.

A Chronological List of Philosophers

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY ?

Imhotep (2650 – 2600 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Thales of Miletos (635 – 543 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Xenophanes (570 – 480 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Heraclitus Ephesus (535 – 475 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Parmenides (515 – 540 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Anaxagoras (510 – 428 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
7 Sages of Ancient Greece (500 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Pericles (495 – 429 BC)  — Wiki – Pic –
Zeno of Elea (490 – 430 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Empedocles (490 BC – 430 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Protagoras (c. 481 – 420 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Socrates (470 – 399 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Democritus (460 – 370 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Antisthenes (445 – 365) — Wiki – Pic –
Plato (427 – 347 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Diogenes of Sinope (412 – 323 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Theophrastus (372 – 287 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Epicurus (341 BC – 270 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Zeno of Citium (333 – 264 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Chrysippus (279 – 207 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Philo Judaeus (20 BC – 40 AD) — Wiki – Pic –
Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD) Wiki – Pic –
Plutarch of Chaeronia (45 – 120) — Wiki – Pic –
Epictetus (55 – 135 AD) — Wiki – Pic –
Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180) — Wiki – Pic –
Plotinus (204 – 270) — Wiki – Pic –
St. Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) — Wiki – Pic –
Hypatia of Alexandria (370 – 415) — Wiki – Pic –
St. Anselm (1034 – 1109) — Wiki – Pic –
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) — Wiki – Pic –
Duns Scotus (c. 1266 – 1308) — Wiki – Pic –
William of Occam (1285 – 1349) — Wiki, – Pic –
Cosimo de Medici (1389 – 1464) — Wiki – Pic –
Erasmus (1466 – 1536) — Wiki – Pic –
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) — Wiki – Pic –
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) — Wiki – Pic –
Thomas More (1478 – 1535) — Wiki – Pic –
Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592) — Wiki – Pic –
Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) — Wiki – Pic –
Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) — Wiki – Pic –
Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) — Wiki – Pic –
René Descartes (1596 – 1650) — Wiki – Pic –
Antoine Arnauld (1612 – 1694) — Wiki – Pic –
Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) — Wiki – Pic –
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) — Wiki – Pic –
John Locke (1632 – 1704) — Wiki – Pic –
Nicolas Malebranche (1638 – 1715) — Wiki – Pic –
Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) — Wiki – Pic –
Gottfried Leibniz (1646 – 1716) — Wiki – Pic –
George Berkeley (1685 – 1753) — Wiki – Pic –
Montesquieu (1689 – 1755) — Wiki – Pic –
Voltaire (1694 – 1778) — Wiki – Pic –
Thomas Reid (1710 – 1796) — Wiki – Pic –
David Hume (1711 – 1776) — Wiki – Pic –
Jean-Jac. Rousseau (1712 – 1778) — Wiki – Pic –
Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784) — Wiki – Pic –
Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) — Wiki – Pic –
Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) — Wiki – Pic –
Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809) — Wiki – Pic –
Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) — Wiki – Pic –
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797) — Wiki – Pic –
Friedrich Schiller (1759 – 1805) — Wiki – Pic –
Georg Hegel (1770 – 1831) — Wiki – Pic –
Friedrich Schelling (1775 – 1852) — Wiki – Pic –
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) — Wiki – Pic –
Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857) — Wiki – Pic –
John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) — Wiki – Pic –
Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) — Wiki – Pic –
Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) — Wiki – Pic –
Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) — Wiki – Pic –
Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895) — Wiki – Pic –
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 – 1913) — Wiki – Pic –
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) — Wiki – Pic –
Ernst Mach (1838 – 1916) — Wiki – Pic –
Henry Sidgwick (1838 – 1900) —
Franz Brentano (1838 – 1917) — Wiki – Pic –
Charles Peirce (1839 – 1914) — Wiki – Pic –
Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840 – 1914) — Wiki – Pic –
William James (1842 – 1910) — Wiki – Pic –
Ambrose Bierce (1843 – 1913) — Wiki – Pic –
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) — Wiki – Pic –
Gottlob Frege (1848 – 1925) — Wiki – Pic –
Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) — Wiki – Pic –
Ferdinand Saussure (1857 – 1913) — Wiki – Pic –
Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) — Wiki – Pic –
Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938) — Wiki – Pic –
Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941) — Wiki – Pic –
John Dewey (1859 – 1952) — Wiki – Pic –
Alfred N. Whitehead (1861 – 1947) — Wiki – Pic –
Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924) — Wiki – Pic –
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) — Wiki – Pic –
G. E. Moore (1873 – 1958) — Wiki – Pic –
Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) — Wiki – Pic –
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) — Wiki – Pic –
Moritz Schlick (1882 – 1936) — Wiki – Pic –
John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946) — Wiki – Pic –
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) — Wiki – Pic –
Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) — Wiki – Pic –
Rudolf Carnap (1891 – 1970) — Wiki – Pic –
Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) — Wiki – Pic –
Gilbert Ryle (1900 – 1976) — Wiki – Pic –
Alfred Tarski (1901 – 1983) — Wiki – Pic –
Karl Popper (1902 – 1994) — Wiki – Pic –
B. F. Skinner (1904 – 1990) — Wiki – Pic –
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) — Wiki – Pic –
Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982) — Wiki – Pic – Video –
Kurt Gödel (1906 – 1978) — Wiki – Pic –
Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) — Wiki – Pic –
Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) — Wiki – Pic –
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 – 1961) — Wiki – Pic –
W. V. O. Quine (1908 – 2000) — Wiki – Pic –
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 – 2009) — Wiki – Pic –
A. J. Ayer (1910 – 1989) — Wiki – Pic –
J. L. Austin (1911 – 1960) — Wiki – Pic –
Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) — Wiki – Pic –
Wilfrid Sellars (1912 – 1989) — Wiki – Pic –
Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) — Wiki – Pic –
Alan Watts (1915 – 1973) — Wiki – Pic –
Garrett Hardin (1915 – 2003) — Wiki – Pic –
Donald Davidson  (1917 – 2003) — Wiki – Pic –
Elizabeth Anscombe (1919 – 2001) — Wiki – Pic –
P.F. Strawson (1919 – 2006) — Wiki – Pic –
Thomas Kuhn (1922 – 1996) — Wiki – Pic –
Paul Feyerabend (1924 – 1994) — Wiki – Pic –
John Rawls (1921-2002) — Wiki – Pic –
Michael Dummett (1925 – 1911) — Wiki – Pic –
Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984) — Wiki – Pic –
Hilary Putnam (1926 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Noam Chomsky (1928 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Bernard Williams (1929 – 2003) — Wiki – Pic –
Jurgen Habermas (1929 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004) — Wiki – Pic –
John Searle (1932 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Charles Scamahorn (1935 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Saul Kripke (1940 – ) — Wiki – Pic — Wiki – Pic –
David Kellogg Lewis (1941 – 2001) — Wiki – Pic –
Daniel Dennett (1942 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Ray Kurzweil (1948 – ∞) — Wiki – Pic –
Christopher Hitchens (1949 – 2011) — Wiki – Pic –
Michael Sandel (1953 –  ) — Wiki – Pic –
James C. Collins (1958-   ) — Wiki – Pic –
Steven Pinker (1954 – )  — Wiki – Pic –
Alfred E. Newman (1953 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Jonathan Haidt (1963 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
David Chalmers (1966 – ) — Wiki – Pic –

This looks like a formidable list when considering studying the information, but it is so piddling when facing the possibilities. There have been in excess of one hundred billion people live, and every one of them had a philosophy.

. . .

Thank you Debbie, Carrie and Mike for your support.

. . .

Philosophers Squared Off In Quotations – Alphabetical Index of 148 Philosophers

Tags

148 Philosophers, Philosophers Squared

Philosophers Squared Off means to me — “To assume a fighting stance and be prepared to fight for a philosophical idea.” The quotes in each post are from the internet and can be sourced with a web search. Links here are for a search of Probaway philosophers squared off, and for reference here is Wikipedia’s long list of philosophers. Also, see the Index list below in Chronological Order.

An Alphabetic List of Philosophers

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY ?

Anaxagoras (510 – 428 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Elizabeth Anscombe (1919 – 2001) — Wiki – Pic –
St. Anselm (1034 – 1109) — Wiki – Pic –
Antisthenes (445 – 365) — Wiki – Pic –
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) — Wiki – Pic –
Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) — Wiki – Pic –
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Antoine Arnauld (1612 – 1694) — Wiki – Pic –
St. Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) — Wiki – Pic –
Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180) — Wiki – Pic –
J. L. Austin (1911 – 1960) — Wiki – Pic –
A. J. Ayer (1910 – 1989) — Wiki – Pic –

Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) — Wiki – Pic –
Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) — Wiki – Pic –
Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) — Wiki – Pic –
Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941) — Wiki – Pic –
George Berkeley (1685 – 1753) — Wiki – Pic –
Ambrose Bierce (1843 – 1913) — Wiki – Pic –
Franz Brentano (1838 – 1917) — Wiki – Pic –

Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) — Wiki – Pic –
Rudolf Carnap (1891 – 1970) — Wiki – Pic –
David Chalmers (1966 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Noam Chomsky (1928 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Chrysippus (279 – 207 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
James C. Collins (1958-   ) — Wiki – Pic –
Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857) — Wiki – Pic –
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) — Wiki – Pic –

Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) — Wiki – Pic –
Donald Davidson  (1917 – 2003) — Wiki – Pic –
Democritus (460 – 370 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Daniel Dennett (1942 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004) — Wiki – Pic –
René Descartes (1596 – 1650) — Wiki – Pic –
John Dewey (1859 – 1952) — Wiki – Pic –
Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784) — Wiki – Pic –
Diogenes of Sinope (412 – 323 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Michael Dummett (1925 – 2011) — Wiki – Pic –
Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) — Wiki – Pic –

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) — Wiki – Pic –
Empedocles (490 BC – 430 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895) — Wiki – Pic –
Epictetus (55 – 135 AD) — Wiki – Pic –
Epicurus (341 BC – 270 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Erasmus (1466 – 1536) — Wiki – Pic –

Paul Feyerabend (1924 – 1994) — Wiki – Pic –
Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984) — Wiki – Pic –
Gottlob Frege (1848 – 1925) — Wiki – Pic –
Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) — Wiki – Pic –

Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) — Wiki – Pic –
Kurt Gödel (1906 – 1978) — Wiki – Pic –

Jurgen Habermas (1929 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Jonathan Haidt (1963 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Garrett Hardin (1915 – 2003) — Wiki – Pic –
Georg Hegel (1770 – 1831) — Wiki – Pic –
Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) — Wiki – Pic –
Heraclitus Ephesus (535 – 475 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Christopher Hitchens (1949 – 2011) — Wiki – Pic –
Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) — Wiki – Pic –
David Hume (1711 – 1776) — Wiki – Pic –
Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938) — Wiki – Pic –
Hypatia of Alexandria (370 – 415) — Wiki – Pic –

Imhotep (2650 – 2600 BC) — Wiki – Pic –

William James (1842 – 1910) — Wiki – Pic –
Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) — Wiki – Pic –

Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) — Wiki – Pic –
John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946) — Wiki – Pic –
Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) — Wiki – Pic –
Saul Kripke (1940 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Thomas Kuhn (1922 – 1996) — Wiki – Pic –
Ray Kurzweil (1948 – ∞) — Wiki – Pic –

Gottfried Leibniz (1646 – 1716) — Wiki – Pic –
Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924) — Wiki – Pic –
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 – 2009) — Wiki – Pic –

David Kellogg Lewis (1941 – 2001) — Wiki – Pic –

John Locke (1632 – 1704) — Wiki – Pic –

Ernst Mach (1838 – 1916) — Wiki – Pic –
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) — Wiki – Pic –
Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840 – 1914) — Wiki – Pic –
Nicolas Malebranche (1638 – 1715) — Wiki – Pic –
Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) — Wiki – Pic –
Cosimo de Medici (1389 – 1464) — Wiki – Pic –
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 – 1961) — Wiki – Pic –
John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) — Wiki – Pic –
Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592) — Wiki – Pic –
Montesquieu (1689 – 1755) — Wiki – Pic –
G. E. Moore (1873 – 1958) — Wiki – Pic –
Thomas More (1478 – 1535) — Wiki – Pic –

Alfred E. Newman (1953 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) — Wiki – Pic –
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) — Wiki – Pic –

William of Occam (1285 – 1349) — Wiki, – Pic –

Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809) — Wiki – Pic –
Parmenides (515 – 540 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) — Wiki – Pic –
Charles Peirce (1839 – 1914) — Wiki – Pic –
Pericles (495 – 429 BC)  — Wiki – Pic –
Philo Judaeus (20 BC – 40 AD) — Wiki – Pic –
Steven Pinker (1954 – )  — Wiki – Pic –
Plato (427 – 347 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Plotinus (204 – 270) — Wiki – Pic –
Plutarch of Chaeronia (45 – 120) — Wiki – Pic –
Karl Popper (1902 – 1994) — Wiki – Pic –
Protagoras (c. 481 – 420 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Hilary Putnam (1926 – ) — Wiki – Pic –

W. V. O. Quine (1908 – 2000) — Wiki – Pic –

Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982) — Wiki – Pic – Video –
John Rawls (1921-2002) — Wiki – Pic –
Thomas Reid (1710 – 1796) — Wiki – Pic –
Jean-Jac. Rousseau (1712 – 1778) — Wiki – Pic –
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) — Wiki – Pic –
Gilbert Ryle (1900 – 1976) — Wiki – Pic –

Michael Sandel (1953 –  ) — Wiki – Pic –
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) — Wiki – Pic –
Ferdinand Saussure (1857 – 1913) — Wiki – Pic –
Charles Scamahorn (1935 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Friedrich Schelling (1775 – 1852) — Wiki – Pic –
Friedrich Schiller (1759 – 1805) — Wiki – Pic –
Moritz Schlick (1882 – 1936) — Wiki – Pic –
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) — Wiki – Pic –
Duns Scotus (c. 1266 – 1308) — Wiki – Pic –
Wilfrid Sellars (1912 – 1989) — Wiki – Pic –
Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD) Wiki – Pic –
7 Sages of Ancient Greece (500 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
John Searle (1932 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Henry Sidgwick (1838 – 1900) — Wiki – Pic –
B. F. Skinner (1904 – 1990) — Wiki – Pic –
Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) — Wiki – Pic –
Socrates (470 – 399 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) — Wiki – Pic –
P.F. Strawson (1919 – 2006) — Wiki – Pic –

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960 – ) — Wiki – Pic –
Alfred Tarski (1901 – 1983) — Wiki – Pic –
Thales of Miletos (635 – 543 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Theophrastus (372 – 287 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) — Wiki – Pic –
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) — Wiki – Pic –

Voltaire (1694 – 1778) — Wiki – Pic –
Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) — Wiki – Pic –

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 – 1913) — Wiki – Pic –
Alan Watts (1915 – 1973) — Wiki – Pic –
Alfred N. Whitehead (1861 – 1947) — Wiki – Pic –
Bernard Williams (1929 – 2003) — Wiki – Pic –
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) — Wiki – Pic –
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797) — Wiki – Pic –

Xenophanes (570 – 480 BC) — Wiki – Pic –

Zeno of Citium (333 – 264 BC) — Wiki – Pic –
Zeno of Elea (490 – 430 BC) — Wiki – Pic –

This looks like a formidable list when considering studying the information, but it is so piddling when facing the possibilities. There have been in excess of one hundred billion people live, and every one of them had a philosophy.

. . .

Thank you Debbie, Carrie and Mike for your support.

. . .

We need to maximize free speech and minimize suffering.

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Free speech must be both ways., Free Speech must be totally free!, The disadvanteges of free speech.

Free speech is essential for maintaining an effective relationship with reality. When free speech is limited by external forces, then communication is inhibited and what one person learns can not become known by another. In the world where there is competition for limited resources, and that is always the case, those with the most accurate information will be the most successful.

Your time and attention are your most precious resources, and if they are filled with degraded information compared to your competition you will eventually fail. In the long run those species that haven’t adapted well to their local situation will wither and go extinct, and the same holds true for social groups and the individuals who compose them.

Free speech, that is, free communication in all its forms, brings great benefits to the group, but there arises the problem of the competition intercepting your communications and using them for their advantage without sharing their information with you, and in so doing they gain a triple advantage. They benefit from your knowledge, and you do not benefit from theirs, and they can use their knowledge of your ignorance and distorted facts to their benefit. In 500 BCE Sun Tzu’s, Art of War, Chapter 13 deals with the problem of hidden knowledge, and hidden knowledge of what the enemy’s intended actions will be, and how to subvert their knowledge and thus control their general and his army’s behavior.

Let us return to daily social life and the problems of ordinary individuals within an existing legal system. In this situation free speech between the members of the society would promote a maximization of the group’s self-interest. It would promote the ideals of happy, healthy, wise and wealthy, because it would encourage each person to maximize their own self-interest, and as Adam Smith concluded in his book The Wealth of Nations, to maximize individual wealth maximizes the entire group’s wealth and even benefits the poorest members of the group. Smith was writing about economic gain, but the other three ideals function much the same way, and one person’s maximizing their happiness, healthiness, or wisdom improves the entire community. Free speech functions to clarify the reality of all of these ideas, and thus promotes the general well-being of the community and the world.

Another statement of universal ideals is in the US Declaration of Independence – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and here the same principles apply, where freedom of speech promotes these ideals by clarifying to everyone in the community just what is happening in their world, and thus it permits them to adapt their behavior to the best overall condition for everyone concerned.

Free speech benefits everyone because accurate information is essential to expose inaccurate information and this promotes adaptation to reality.

Exploring the idea of games for creating habits of kindness.

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Games for a new world order

Games are wonderful things. Usually we think of them as fun activities for children to distract them from annoying us adults. Of course they have benefits for the kids too, because they learn all sorts of useful skills, like getting along with other people with whom they are in conflict for the duration of the game. Some games create the need to understand the thoughts of other people; both your partners’ and your opponents’ thinking needs to be understood to play some games well. Games like American football require great assets of native physical ability, great mental knowledge, flexibility of thoughts, cultivated skills, and competitive spirit for each of the many positions. All of this is admirable for cultivating a culture of advancing economic growth, and it has served humanity well for developing those skills necessary to dominate nature and other people.

Humanity is now entering a new phase of what is being called the anthropocene era. It is a period of time in which humans are the dominant force in changing nature, and it will leave a record to be seen in future geographic strata. Humanity is moving from the role of dominating and using nature and its products to husbanding them. The whole world has become like a farm that must be maintained by man, rather than a wilderness upon which we prey like any other wild animal. If we are to create a human culture that is resonant with the role of balanced husbanding of the world, we need to raise our children and cultivate our adults into a new personality. We must create a new kind of common person set within a new kind of society. That may sound outrageous, but only because it is spoken of in clear terms, rather than in the style of political rhetorical spin to which the public has become accustomed. I see this as less manipulative of an individual’s life and rights, and more of a change of the rules of compensation for personal behavior. The idea is to reward people for taking the whole processes of society and the world into their monetary transactions, in such a way that those entities also benefit.

How might games, and business too, be structured to generate kindness and mutual growth as opposed to the current paradigm of maximizing personal profit? Nowadays, a business transaction is designed to maximize the profit of the various parties concerned, but the situation needs to be changed to one that includes maximizing the health and sustainability of those not directly involved in the transaction, and it must be something more than obeying socially imposed laws, with their enforcement and punishments of violators. How can the transactions of the world be conducted in such a way that those outside of a private transaction also benefit by the transaction? That would somehow have to include the maintenance of the world environment while enhancing their own. Adam Smith’s analysis of this problem suggested that each transaction that benefited both parties also benefited the whole society; it was called the hidden hand of commerce, and that has worked well enough for generating world wealth. The unfortunate side effect is that it has worked so well for promoting human wealth, and so poorly for maintaining the world’s ability to provide long-term largesse.

I don’t know how to generate a system that is more productive than the evolutionary business model where those who are best overall at producing good cheap goods succeed, and others fail. That idea was developed by Smith, but now that we are approaching the exhaustion of the resources to maintain that style of supplying goods to people, we need to consider a system that sustains rather than conquers. Perhaps that isn’t possible; perhaps it will always be the short-term winner who survives for ever and ever, always the winner of the current battle. It’s a tragedy of the commons writ large enough to cover the whole world.

To begin this process we need people raised from childhood with the practice of kindness as a virtue.