Who is in control?

[Sydney Grew]

No one?

Sage Gateshead: Free Thinking Festival

Will this much vaunted "free thinking" be constructive or destructive? Will the distinction be drawn, even? And another point is that all thought is free. It is the expression thereof that is often not.

[Old Grumpy]

Sage Gateshead: Free Thinking Festival

Greatly looking forward to this (it's my local venue) - beginning tonight with In Tune

OG

[Sydney Grew]

The great philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, who died in 2002 at the age of 102, liked to remind his students that thinking never comes from nowhere: there is no zero-point of the mind, no intellectual garden of Eden. Those who fancy that they have escaped from prejudice (typically, in Gadamer’s opinion, the apostles of Western scientific enlightenment) are actually slaves, he thought, to the oldest prejudice of all: the prejudice against prejudice.

Thanks for the reference madam bb! The young Gadamer began his publication career by arguing that Plato's ethical writings did not 'express' doctrine but rather depended upon the 'play' of language among speakers in an ethical discourse community. This was the key idea of Plato's Dialectical Ethics, Gadamer's first book. Following the classical formula of seeing politics as the continuation of ethics, Gadamer's writings in the 1930s and 1940s concentrated on the Platonic idea of the state and argued two key points. First, the exiling of poets from the city was a way of banishing monologue and clearing the way for a dialogue as the language form appropriate to political discourse communities. Second, the Platonic state's defining task was the educational one of shaping the soul, and this could not be achieved monologically but rather had to take place as a dialogical play between the educator and the soul.

The mature philosophical hermeneutics of Truth and Method is a metaphor taken from the literary experience of constructing textual meaning out of the play of parts and whole. The philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer's early writings rests on a play between the ethical whole initially the Gestalt figure of the 'Platonic Socrates' but later the Platonic state and the individual soul in need of ethical guidance. There is no conflict between the early and the later hermeneutics, but the early hermeneutics retain a freshness of spirit and boldness of interpretation that is characteristic of the Weimar culture of Gadamer's Marburg youth. From beginning to end, Gadamer's early writings remind us that Plato's dialogues really do record the conversational essence of Western philosophy at its birth.

And we might add that in the strict sense it is possible for us who are undergoing the above-mentioned education to learn only that which we in some sense already know. So much for free thought! There is no invention; only revelation or disclosure.

[Sydney Grew]

Yes, jolly old Sartre averred in his Existentialism and Humanism that one's being-for-oneself uses despair to embrace freedom and take meaningful action in full acceptance of whatever consequences may arise as a result. And he described abandonment as the loneliness that atheists feel when they come to believe that there is no God to prescribe a way of life, no guidance for people on how to live; that we're abandoned in the sense of being alone in the universe and the arbiters of our own essence. How inconvenient it must be for atheists to realize that their "brains" will turn to dust and be swept up into the stars! Of course in truth it is all arsy-versy is it not . . .

[Pabmusic]

...And he described abandonment as the loneliness that atheists feel when they come to believe that there is no God to prescribe a way of life, no guidance for people on how to live; that we're abandoned in the sense of being alone in the universe and the arbiters of our own essence...

Oh dear, another person who is (presumably) not an atheist delighting in assuming how atheists might feel. Whether or not Sartre believed what you've said, it certainly seems that you accept it. But there is at least one recent study that suggests that believers experience a greater frequency of depression. I presume that you are subscribing to this view because this is how you might in fact feel.

...How inconvenient it must be for atheists to realize that their "brains" will turn to dust and be swept up into the stars! Of course in truth it is all arsy-versy is it not . . .

You seem to delight in placing the word brain in quotes, as if brains do not exist. Never mind. Let me assure you that the overwhelming probability of everything that is me ceasing with the death of my brain causes me no inconvenience at all. (I'm reminded of Mark Twain: "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”) I will live on (for a while) in the memories of those I influenced in my life, but eventually that will die out, too. As I have never been anything other than an atheist, I have never lived my life thinking there would be another. I think that encouraged me to make the most of the only life I have. I hope I have succeeded.

The fact that we are almost entirely made of stardust is rather wonderful. The irony is that the truly immortal part of us are the atoms that make up our bodies - they will survive, as they have done since they were first formed (mainly) in supervovae. Whether you choose to believe that or think it's all arsy-versy.

[eighthobstruction]

Yes, jolly old Sartre averred in his Existentialism and Humanism that one's being-for-oneself uses despair to embrace freedom and take meaningful action in full acceptance of whatever consequences may arise as a result. And he described abandonment as the loneliness that atheists feel when they come to believe that there is no God to prescribe a way of life, no guidance for people on how to live; that we're abandoned in the sense of being alone in the universe and the arbiters of our own essence. How inconvenient it must be for atheists to realize that their "brains" will turn to dust and be swept up into the stars! Of course in truth it is all arsy-versy is it not . . .

Yep, time find some fellowship in the pub....

[eighthobstruction]

Oh dear, another person who is (presumably) not an atheist delighting in assuming how atheists might feel. Whether or not Sartre believed what you've said, it certainly seems that you accept it. But there is at least one recent study that suggests that believers experience a greater frequency of depression. I presume that you are subscribing to this view because this is how you might in fact feel.



You seem to delight in placing the word brain in quotes, as if brains do not exist. Never mind. Let me assure you that the overwhelming probability of everything that is me ceasing with the death of my brain causes me no inconvenience at all. (I'm reminded of Mark Twain: "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”) I will live on (for a while) in the memories of those I influenced in my life, but eventually that will die out, too. As I have never been anything other than an atheist, I have never lived my life thinking there would be another. I think that encouraged me to make the most of the only life I have. I hope I have succeeded.

The fact that we are almost entirely made of stardust is rather wonderful. The irony is that the truly immortal part of us are the atoms that make up our bodies - they will survive, as they have done since they were first formed (mainly) in supervovae. Whether you choose to believe that or think it's all arsy-versy.

Yep, time to go down the pub and read the Guardian at a corner table....and think about my capacity....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q3VacEvh8M

[Padraig]

Welcome back to bb - I knew him well.
Haven't time to think just now having been shocked to find that I'm in imminent danger of being stabbed. Really though it's the indifference that wounds - you know what I mean bb - the sort of indifference that turns a blind eye to insult and ignorance and comes up with a joke.

[Sydney Grew]

BBC News reports this weekend that the US bugged Merkel's phone from 2002 until 2013, report claims . . .

I will be interested to see whether these creatures ever stop what they have been doing. It is in their nature to persist no matter what is it not. They are much more likely to pretend to stop but in fact keep on doing it, more and more secretly, and lying more and more. What do members think might induce them actually to stop - if anything?

[eighthobstruction]

Perhaps Merkel should start continuously playing a recording of Vivaldi....I know it always makes me want to put the receiver down.....

[eighthobstruction]

What happens at the end of the Ring....I never bothered waiting till the end....is it similar to Lord of the Rings....??

[Serial_Apologist]

What happens at the end of the Ring....I never bothered waiting till the end....is it similar to Lord of the Rings....??

I think someone pulls the plug...

[Padraig]

8ob, If you hear the ring, their equipment isn't working. They're spies!

[eighthobstruction]

EER musz-da-vad a curee laasd nyet....

[eighthobstruction]

8ob, If you hear the ring, their equipment isn't working. They're spies!

The postman always knocks twice....the spy is always listening....the winner of Bake off has always got a bun in the oven....the viola player -----------??