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Daryl Bambic

Dualism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - 0 views

  • what is the relationship between mental properties and physical properties?
  • consciousness
  • Materialist views say that, despite appearances to the contrary, mental states are just physical states.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Behaviourism
  • unctionalism,
  • mind-brain identity theory
  • omputational theory of mind
  • nature of mind and consciousness
  • ndirectly modify behaviour
  • ealist views say that physical states are really mental.
  • empirical
  • product of our collective experience
  • Dualist views
  • the mental and the physical are both real and neither can be assimilated to the other.
  • ato's Phae
  • rue substances are not physical bodies, which are ephemeral, but the eternal Forms
  • bodies are imperfect copies
  • Plato's dualism is not, therefore, simply a doctrine in the philosophy of mind, but an integral part of his whole metaphysics.
  • Aristotle did not believe in Platonic Forms, existing independently of their instances. Aristotelian forms (the capital ‘F’ has disappeared with their standing as autonomous entities) are the natures and properties of things and exist embodied in those things.
  • Aristotle t
  • particular soul exists as the organizing principle in a particular parcel of matter.
  • Descartes
  • mechanist about the properties of matter.
  • The main uncertainty that faced Descartes
  • but how two things so different as thought and extension could interact at all.
Daryl Bambic

On the Role of Censorship | The Book of Life - 0 views

  • In a democratic, market-oriented society, public culture is hugely important. It guides our collective ideas about what is admirable or shocking, what counts as normal or weird.
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      The Sophists would have made this point.
  • occasionally as a sincere attempt to organise the world for human flourishing.
  • We believe in censorship
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  • ensorship looks small-minded,
  • enemy of a hard-won freedom
  • book burning,
  • intolerance
  • he censorship of Diderot’s Encyclopedia
  • ban on D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
  • In the history of censorship, it always seems as if it is something of real value – profound, earnest and true – that is condemned and someone vile, corrupt and absurd who is trying to do the censoring.
  • real threat nowadays
  • we will drown in chaos
  • unable to concentrate on what is genuinely important and good.
  • key argument of those who attack ‘censorship’ today is to claim that we all need to hear all the messages all the time. But do we?
Daryl Bambic

Mutable Morality, Not Subjective Morality. Moral Pluralism, Not Moral Relativism. - 0 views

  • ointing out but wrongly calling “subjectivity”.To say that not only do moralities change but that they should and that even good moralities may not be permanently and at all times good is not to say that morality is subjective
  • Morality, even if mutable, need not be just a matter of arbitrary feelings or tastes that admit of no argument for persuading those who happen to feel differently.
  • good moral judgments
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  • some important extent context
  • dependent.
  • change with different circumstances.  
  • valid measures of human flourishing.
  • broadly definable human goods
  • ntellectual power,
  • ocial organization and cohesion, artistic prowess, physical health, athletic prowess, aesthetic sensitivity and complexity, technological capability, technological achievement, emotional satisfaction, pleasure, political efficiency, virtues,
  • moral pluralism, not relativism.
  • Moral pluralism acknowledges that differing moralities, which in particulars may formally contradict each other, can each be ethically approvable given variations in circumstances or given their respective abilities to meet certain thresholds of valuable contribution to life.
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Moral pluralism allows for cross cultural (different) standards of morality.
  • Moral relativism would allow for no cross-cultural assessments but would say that the only standard a morality has or needs is the endorsement of a particular individual or culture
  • ocial scientist’s perspecti
  • hilosophical,
  • hat values are best and what moral codes best realize them.
  • onstitute human flourishing and happiness.
  • if we have enough historical understandin
  • Old Testament morality
  • as in its own time the best and most progressive advance for the people who adopted it
  • ays it failed a
  • dismiss the Old Testament as irrelevant to a contemporary context.
  • t is also wholly unpersuasive to claim, as some try, that God’s values have always been the same even as he has given his people moral codes that fit their times or their understanding at each of their stages
Daryl Bambic

Komar and Melamid: The Artists and the Project - 0 views

  • In an age where opinion polls and market research invade almost every aspect of our "democratic/consumer" society (with the notable exception of art), Komar and Melamid's project poses relevant questions that an art-interested public, and society in general often fail to ask: What would art look like if it were to please the greatest number of people? Or conversely: What kind of culture is produced by a society that lives and governs itself by opinion polls?
  • discover what a true "people's art"
Daryl Bambic

The Art Instinct - The Frontal Cortex - 0 views

  • What began with a few horses on the walls of a French cave has blossomed into a human obsession
  • desire for beauty is firmly grounded in evolution, a side effect of the struggle to survive and reproduce
  • sate a biological drive
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  • scientific response to the idea that art is a “social construction,” driven by the fads of society
  • he basic layout was identical. In each case, people craved a painting that featured a large body of blue water, some open grass, a human figure and a few animals.
  • hard-wired preferences, which developed when we were Pleistocene hunter-gatherers roaming the African savannah. The landscapes we find most beautiful are simply those from which we evolved.
  • Such unpleasant works of art are inspired, Dutton says, by a “blank-slate view of culture,” which assumes that the mind can learn to appreciate just about anything.
  • explaining kitsch.
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      This is the contrary opinion to the one that Denis Dutton is proposing about 'art as a biological instinct'.
Daryl Bambic

The Internet Classics Archive | Symposium by Plato - 14 views

    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Context: The group is deciding how they will drink given the excessive partying from the previous night.
    • Nick Adoranti
       
      Hiya
    • Eric Bensoussan
       
      Im surprised that philosophers drank so much
    • hebaali1998
       
      How can you have a philosophical conversation while being intoxicated? 
  • entirely has this great deity been neglected." Now in this Phaedrus seems to me to be quite right, and therefore I want to offer him a contribution; also I think that at the present moment we who are here assembled cannot do better than honour the. god Love
  • Let Phaedrus begin the praise of Love,
  • ...100 more annotations...
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      The dinner party decides they are going to take turn giving speeches in praise of Love.
  • Love is the eldest and noblest and mightiest of the gods; and the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life, and of happiness after death.
  • Phaedrus
  • encouragement which all the world gives to the lover;
  • Such is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed the lover, according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world.
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      We have a custom of forgiving unreasonable behaviour when people are in love.
  • Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Basically, he said that people who love for physical attraction and evil and vulgar because their love is cheap and disappear when youth's beauty fades.
  • Pausanias
  • Eryximachus
  • rightly distinguished two kinds of love
  • harmony is composed of differing notes
  • harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and harmony,
  • Aristophanes
  • Mankind; he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love
  • original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word "Androgynous
  • sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;
  • will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us happy and blessed.
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Love is about finding our true nature in another and in so doing, becoming whole.
  • Agathon
  • ut I would rather praise the god first, and then speak of his gifts; this is always the right way of praising everything.
  • flexibility and symmetry of form
  • beauty of the god
  • virtue I have now to speak: his greatest glory is that he can neither do nor suffer wrong to or from any god or any man
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Love cannot be forced as it is an act of freedom.
  • ll men in all things serve him of their own free will, and where there is voluntary agreement
  • courage and justice and temperance I have spoken, but I have yet to speak of his wisdom-
  • for I do not praise in that way; no, indeed, I cannot. But if you like to here the truth about love, I am ready to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself ridiculous by entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus, whether you would like, to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and in any order which may happen to come into my mind at the time. Will that be agreeable to you?
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Socrates here says that he cannot praise Love the way Phaedrus does (because he said it all and laid all manner of claims of Love). 
  • Socrates then proceeded as follows:-
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      An example of the famous Socratic method is about to unfold...
  • Is Love of something or of nothing?
  • The inference that he who desires something is in want of something, and that he who desires nothing is in want of nothing, is in my judgment,
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Socrates gets Agathon to agree with his claim that we desire that which we don't possess OR that which we are not.
  • nd yet, added Socrates, if a man being strong desired to be strong, or being swift desired to be swift, or being healthy desired to be healthy, in that case he might be thought to desire something which he already has or is. I give the example in order that we may avoid misconception. For the possessors of these qualities, Agathon, must be supposed to have their respective advantages at the time, whether they choose or not; and who can desire that which he has? Therefore when a person says, I am well and wish to be well, or I am rich and wish to be rich, and I desire simply to have what I have-to him we shall reply: "You, my friend, having wealth and health and strength, want to have the continuance of them; for at this moment, whether you choose or no, you have them. And when you say, I desire that which I have and nothing else, is not your meaning that you want to have what you now have in the future?
  • Then he and every one who desires, desires that which he has not already, and which is future and not present, and which he has not, and is not, and of which he is in want;
  • First, is not love of something, and of something too which is wanting to a man
  • Love is the love of beauty and not of deformity
  • Then Love wants and has not beauty?
  • Is not the good also the beautiful?
  • Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?
  • Diotima of Mantineia
  • Love was neither fair nor good.
  • is love then evil and foul?
  • must that be foul which is not fair?
  • And is that which is not wise, ignoran
  • a mean between wisdom and ignorance?
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Diotima shows Socrates that there is a mid point between extremes; she avoids the 'either-or' trap.
  • ou also deny the divinity of Love.
  • What then is Love?" I asked; "Is he mortal?
  • he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two." "What is he, Diotima?" "He is a great spirit (daimon),
  • e interprets," she replied, "between gods and men
  • For God mingles not with man; but through Love
  • god Poros or Plenty
  • son of Metis or Discretion
  • Poverty,
  • always poor
  • nything but tender and fai
  • rough and squalid
  • no shoes, nor a house to dwell in;
  • is always in distress.
  • But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth;
  • he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this
  • god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already;
  • neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want."
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      He who is neither 'good nor wise' is satisfied with himself because he does not desire that which he is not aware that he lacks.
  • ho then, Diotima," I said, "are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?" "A child may answer that question," she replied; "they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them.
  • what is the use of him to men?
  • of the beautiful. But some one will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima?-or rather let me put the question more dearly, and ask: When a man loves the beautiful, what does he desire?
  • hat the beautiful may be h
  • rther questio
  • Let me put the word 'good' in the place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more: If he who loves good, what is it then that he loves?
  • And what does he gain who possesses the good
  • generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good?" "That is most true."
  • "Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further," she said, "what is the manner of the pursuit? what are they doing who show all this eagerness and heat which is called love? and what is the object which they have in view?
  • hat all men are bringing to the birth in their bodies and in their souls.
  • onception and generation are an immortal principle in the mortal creature, and in the inharmonious they can never be.
  • The love of generation and of birth in beauty."
  • mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and immortality
  • love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: Wherefore love is of immortality."
  • hy should animals have these passionate feeling
  • Marvel not," she said, "if you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have several times acknowledged; for here again, and on the same principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old.
  • Marvel not then at the love which all men have of their offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality."
  • even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal.
  • will preserve their memory and giving them the blessedness and immortality
  • But souls which are pregnant-for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions?-wisdom and virtue in general.
  • oets and all artists
  • temperance and justice
  • he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only-out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is and the same!
  • become a lover of all beautiful form
  • beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form.
  • birth thoughts
  • mprove the youn
  • beauty of institutions and laws,
  • and that the beauty of them all is of one famil
  • ersonal beauty is a trifle;
  • sciences, tha
  • who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession,
  • oward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty
  • everlasting,
  • rowing and decaying, or waxing and waning; s
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      At the end of life, the one who has pursued beauty will perceive its true eternal nature.
  • not fair in one point of view and foul in another
  • ut beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change,
  • begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end.
  • And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      The true order of discovering love and beauty; first of the body and the individual and then ascending upwards to the idea of absolute beauty itself.
  • beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?"
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind.
  • nature of Love first
  • Whether love is the love of something or of nothing?
  • whether Love desires that of which love is.
Daryl Bambic

The Psychology and Philosophy of Wonder | Outre monde - 1 views

  • By drawing us out of ourselves, wonder does make us feel small and insignificant, but it also gives us right perspective by reconnecting us with something much greater and vaster and higher and better than our daily struggles. Wonder is the ultimate homecoming, returning us to the world that we came from and were in danger of losing.
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      Does this sound like the world of Forms?
  • Socratic wonder is not so much wonder in the sense of awe, but, as hinted by Aristotle, wonder in the sense of puzzlement or perplexity: wonder that arises from contradictions in thought and language, and gives rise to a desire to resolve or at least understand these contradictions.
  • Socrates himself only turned to philosophy after being puzzled by the Delphic Oracle, which, though he believed himself to be ignorant, pronounced him to be the wisest of all men.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.”
  • Wonder is a universal experience, found also in children and perhaps even in higher-order primates and other animals
  • of wonder share a concern for what is in some sense beyond us, or beyond our grasp.
  • and the end of wonder is wisdom, which is the state of perpetual wonder.
    • Daryl Bambic
       
      The most lovely definition of wisdom I have seen: a perpetual state of wonder.
Daryl Bambic

Philosophy of Love [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] - 0 views

shared by Daryl Bambic on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • the contemplation of beauty in itself.
  • eros is that ideal beauty,
  • interchangeable across people and things, ideas, and art:
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Physical desire, they note, is held in common with the animal kingdom. Hence, it is of a lower order of reaction and stimulus than a rationally induced love-
  • fondness and appreciation of the other
  • friendship, but also loyalties to family and polis-one's political community, job, or discipline.
  • uggesting that the proper basis for philia is objective: those who share our dispositions, who bear no grudges, who seek what we do, who are temperate, and just, who admire us appropriately as we admire them, and so on.
  • Friendships of a lesser quality may also be based on the pleasure or utility that is derived from another's company.
  • The first condition for the highest form of Aristotelian love is that a man loves himself.
  • reflection of his pursuit of the noble and virtuous, which culminate in the pursuit of the reflective life
  • Agape refers to the paternal love
  • brotherly love for all humanity.
  • logic of mutual reciprocity
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