The Philosophy Thread

[Louanne Learning]

Because I would postulate that every rational person seeks truth

I'm not sure that truth is limited to rationality. I believe that emotions can be true, too.

f one's beliefs include the miraculous or supernatural, then that influences what that person regards as true

This gets into the notion of subjective truth - and I've stated before - for me, subjective truth is truth, since it is true to the holder of it.

and for that person science would simply be a case of over-reliance on objective facts

But, you know, scientists don't use the word "truth" for their conclusions - the most they will say is "this is the best explanation for the evidence."

I would postulate a 3d, middle-path, that regards all attempts to intellectually define truth, with or without science or other logic, as being inherently futile and ultimately irrelevant.

We all live with our truths, and they are the guidelines to our decisions, so they are hardly irrelevant.

 

[GrahamLewis]

We all live with our truths, and they are the guidelines to our decisions, so they are hardly irrelevant.

I'm not saying our truths are irrelevant, I'm saying that intellectual requirements imposed on our truths can never be the sole grounds for supporting them. At some point everyone makes a leap of faith in deciding what to accept as their individual truth.

 

[GrahamLewis]

I'm not saying our truths are irrelevant, I'm saying that intellectual requirements imposed on our truths can never be the sole grounds for supporting them. At some point everyone makes a leap of faith in deciding what to accept as their individual truth.

If I may be indulged to quote some lower-case "scripture" here that underlies my personal truth, in chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching (which, I suggest falls on the philosophy side of the science/philosophy/religion divide), Lao-Tsu is said to have written, "Give up learning and put an end to your troubles. Is there a difference between yes and no? Is there a difference between good and evil? Must I fear what others fear? What nonsense!" (Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English translation).

In her own translation of the same, the contemporary author Ursula K. Le Guin observes that these words "configure chaos, confusion, a 'bewilderness' in which the mind wanders without certainties, desolate, silent, awkward. But in that milky, dim strangeness lies the way. It can't be found in the superficial order imposed by positive and negative opinions, the good/bad, yes/no moralizing that denies fear and ignores mystery."

But of course, Lao-Tsu concludes the Tao Te Ching by reminding the reader that words and argument are essentially irrelevant, that "truthful words are not beautiful/Beautiful words are not truthful." (Ch. 20). So please forgive this late-night meandering and opinionating on my part (it's 3 a.m. and I awoke with this stuff in my mind.)

 

[Louanne Learning]

chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching

I've read some of the Tao, as well, and in ch. 21, following ch. 20, there's some lovely poetry which gets into the nature of the Tao (and the difficulty of understanding it). Something about reaching for the intangible?

The grandest forms of active force
From Tao come, their only source.
Who can of Tao the nature tell?
Our sight it flies, our touch as well.
Eluding sight, eluding touch,
The forms of things all in it crouch;
Eluding touch, eluding sight,
There are their semblances, all right.
Profound it is, dark and obscure;
Things' essences all there endure.
Those essences the truth enfold
Of what, when seen, shall then be told.
Now it is so; 'twas so of old.
Its name—what passes not away;
So, in their beautiful array,
Things form and never know decay.

James Legge translation

 

[JLT]

But, you know, scientists don't use the word "truth" for their conclusions - the most they will say is "this is the best explanation for the evidence."

Exactly right. And that's the essence of scientific process. It's a method of examination, not a system of beliefs. And its fundamental premise is that ideas and concepts are always subject to refutation, and always must be so.

Which hearkens to Richard Feynman's famous quote "I'd rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."

 

[Louanne Learning]

I’ve been home from Ireland for a week and I am still processing the reaction I felt standing at the tip of St. Finian’s Bay. There was no civilization there. My first attention went to the grey clouds hovering over what seemed like endless ocean, beyond the bay, as if hinting at eternity, drawing me out on the water. Long, white waves washed up on the beach, a beach studded with craggy, black rocks, like they had pushed up from the underworld. Treeless land, rising up from a foundation of layers of sturdy rock, stretched out and up, as far as I could see, hugging the bay, and spoke of permanence and un-shake-ability. I seemed so small, in the bigness. The whole picture gave me a sense of spirituality. And the air, the air, buffeted by wind, was very important. It all had the feeling of “good.”

I had never been there before, but I felt connected.

How do we explain our connection to place?

 

[GrahamLewis]

I’ve been home from Ireland for a week and I am still processing the reaction I felt standing at the tip of St. Finian’s Bay. There was no civilization there. My first attention went to the grey clouds hovering over what seemed like endless ocean, beyond the bay, as if hinting at eternity, drawing me out on the water. Long, white waves washed up on the beach, a beach studded with craggy, black rocks, like they had pushed up from the underworld. Treeless land, rising up from a foundation of layers of sturdy rock, stretched out and up, as far as I could see, hugging the bay, and spoke of permanence and un-shake-ability. I seemed so small, in the bigness. The whole picture gave me a sense of spirituality. And the air, the air, buffeted by wind, was very important. It all had the feeling of “good.”

I had never been there before, but I felt connected.

How do we explain our connection to place?

Beautifully written. I would suggest the answer to your question is in the description -- something so basic and unfettered and devoid of human intervention, existence beneath the facade we paint over it. I feel that I could have been there, too.

 

[Louanne Learning]

something so basic and unfettered and devoid of human intervention

Yes, this is part of it. I felt like I was standing in a timeless place.

 

[Louanne Learning]

What is the more powerful force - hate or love?

 

[JLT]

What is the more powerful force - hate or love?

I think that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have said love, because love can drive out hate, while hate cannot drive out love, just as light can drive out darkness, while darkness can never drive out light.

But love burns slowly, and needs time to develop, while hate flashes up and destroys instantly.

In the long run, I think, love has the power to build things that last and contribute to civilization, while hate can only damage what love has created... it has no power to contribute good things to humanity. Hate has never plowed a field or fed a child or cured a disease.

So we can measure the power of each force by determining to what extent each one has prevailed over the millennia. It seems to me that, since civilization seems to have developed over the years despite regressions like wars or pogroms, love seems to be in the lead, at least for the moment.

This discussion evokes Edwin Markham's poem:

“He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!”

When I first encountered this poem in a school class, the teacher asked us whether the "heretic, rebel, a thing to flout" referred to the narrator or the subject of the poem. That sparked a lively debate, although upon reflection it doesn't really seem to matter.

 

[Louanne Learning]

“He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!”

This seems aligned with some of my early thoughts as I was considering the question I asked. I thought - it often is a matter of proximity. Love works really well in the close-up, but hate can destroy from afar - even whole societies, especially when it's fomented by the political system.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Love works really well in the close-up, but hate can destroy from afar

Another thought - love requires vulnerability, and hate comes from a place of defensiveness. So this speaks to the question - what speaks most loudly to our basic instincts?

 

[JLT]

Yes, hate does come from a place of defensiveness, as James Baldwin pointed out in one of his most famous quotes:

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."

And while looking this quote up, I found another one of his that seems germane to this conversation:

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.”

 

[Stuart Dren]

At the same time, hatred and wrath have their place, as does defensiveness. I don't think they are strictly failings of the human condition.

 

[Louanne Learning]

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."

Good quote. That's what they say - that anger/hate masks pain. But of course anger and hate are two different things. Anger by itself often does not lead to action, but hate often does. I think, too, that anger might be more rational than hate?

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.”

I like this, too, because it requires that you look outside of yourself.

 

[Louanne Learning]

At the same time, hatred and wrath have their place, as does defensiveness. I don't think they are strictly failings of the human condition.

Well, I guess the simple fact that they exist demonstrates that they had evolutionary advantage for the human species. But our instincts are not always applied in reasonable ways. Sometimes, people imagine a threat that is not really there, especially when they are whipped up into a frenzy - the instinct to fear difference is exploited by powerful people - and then minorities are targeted.

As for me, I do think hate is a failing when it is directed to whole groups of people.

 

[Stuart Dren]

Well, I guess the simple fact that they exist demonstrates that they had evolutionary advantage for the human species. But our instincts are not always applied in reasonable ways. Sometimes, people imagine a threat that is not really there, especially when they are whipped up into a frenzy - the instinct to fear difference is exploited by powerful people - and then minorities are targeted.

Yeah in the context of unfounded prejudice I agree that kind of hate is from ignorance, knowing malice or a mix of both.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I'm thinking ... can hate ever be constructive - or is it always destructive?

 

[Louanne Learning]

I'm thinking ... can hate ever be constructive - or is it always destructive?

I think it is always destructive. Hate can never be part of a good solution to any problem. Hate is based on ignorance.

I think it is an old instinct to fear the unknown gone haywire, sort of like how the flight-or-fight response gone haywire causes so much illness today.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Should nature - like rivers, lakes and mountains - be granted legal rights?

On 26 February 2019, a lake became human. For years, Lake Erie – the southernmost of the Great Lakes – has been in ecological crisis. Invasive species are rampant. Biodiversity is crashing. Each summer, blue-green algae blooms in volumes visible from space, creating toxic “dead zones”; the algae is nourished by fertiliser and slurry pollution from surrounding farms. In August 2014, phosphorus run-off so fouled Erie that the city of Toledo, at the lake’s western tip in Ohio, lost drinking water for three days in the hottest part of the year.

Appalled by the lake’s degradation, and exhausted by state and federal failures to improve Erie’s health, in December 2018 Toledo residents drew up an extraordinary document: an emergency “bill of rights” for Lake Erie. At the bill’s heart was a radical proposition: that the “Lake Erie ecosystem” should be granted legal personhood, and accorded the consequent rights in law – including the right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve”.

Should this tree have the same rights as you?

Around the world, a movement is gaining momentum that grants legal rights to natural phenomena, including rivers, lakes and mountains. Robert Macfarlane investigates the rise of the new animism

www.theguardian.com