@Ansiktsburk As poorly as you expressed your original question, it nevertheless invokes a most elemental problem: the relation between the philosopher and scientist to the political community, which has a very long history indeed...

The original philosophers were the “natural” sort, ie, the mathematicians physicists and astronomers. They were born with a love for the understanding of, and an ability to understand, the rationale for the movement of earthly and heavenly bodies, the laws governing geometric figures and the behavior of levers and sunlight, etc. The study of man, however, was of little interest to them at that time, probably because of his precarious nature, due to the admixture of chance in him, his free-will...

But these natural philosophers, the Pre-Socratic, though all they really cared about were their circles and squares, their their atoms and astral bodies, were prone to become exiles and enemies of the state whenever their discoveries conflicted with the religious beliefs of their communities. For example, the findings of Thales, the first to predict an eclipse of the sun, showed that the heavenly bodies move by natural law, not by Zeus’ will...

But they could also be protectors of their communities, as Archimedes proved to be when, through engines of war designed by his novel art of mechanics, he held off from Syracuse the invading Roman army, burning and wrecking their fleet with his mirrors and cables...

Archimedes, nevertheless, ordered that all his manuscripts on engineering be burnt upon his death as being beneath the dignity of posterity...thus proving himself to be of pure philosophic impulse, caring only about things theoretical and disdaining the practical.

These ancient examples encapsulate the difficulties philosophy or science face when confronted with its relation to community, the mass of untheoretical men it must live with down here on earth, a Thales falling into a well, or an Archimedes being run through by a Roman soldier because he refused to quit his geometrical meditation before its completion rather than be led to the conquering Marcellus. Later philosophers began to turn their attention, therefore, to the human things, and soon men like Socrates were reasoning about the just and unjust, good and evil, the well and poorly lived life, becoming introspective and examining their relationship to other men.

The most powerful earliest attempt to solve the problem was Plato’s dialogues, and he took the side of theory over practice, appealing to the most influential in Ancient Greece, the young aristocrats who were best educated and best positioned to gain power (only remember Alcibiades) and thus condemn to death or exile philosophers. Plato’s Socrates is shown to be their best friend, using his theory to help them examine their own accidental lives for the benefit of all, and thusly promoting an acceptance of, if not participation in, the theoretical life a very few men only are blessed to be endowed with by nature...

After the Dark Ages, however, and the Renaissance, when philosophers (who had never disappeared or become extinct, only gone underground) re-emerged, for some reason, perhaps because of the advance of natural science, perhaps from weariness of persecution, led by Machiavelli, and and followed by Locke, Hobbes, Hume, et al, they began to promote the practical side of philosophy, what good it can do for men at large in a radical about-face to Plato and Aristotle and the medieval philosophers. Their impulse was political: if philosophers become willing, against their nature, to benefit men, maybe men will become more acceptant of them, who only want to understand the nature of things, and will then see them more as an Archimedean military engineer, and not so much as a Thalian well-dweller, who, looking up to heaven, failed to appreciate that he lived on earth, where you can step into pot-holes while contemplating the divine...

Btw, Thales, beset by accusations that his science was impractical, entered the olive trade and had great success, proving that problem solving can be used by thoughtful men to solve men’s many practical problems, whether in business or trade...

...but the same problem remains for philosophers, for theoretical men to our day: “am I a lover of truth first, or a benefactor of ppl? Am I a seeker after the nature of viruses, or the man who tells you how best to arrange public policy to avoid its spread? Am I the discoverer of the effects of greenhouse gases on the environment, or am I the one who best shapes public policy to curtail emissions?

@jamalrob what does “hover over” mean, and how do you do it? and what is a “tooltip”? (Sorry; I’m old, and not very familiar with things digital and virtual).

Oh, my bad: I see it kind of is at the bottom.

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this before, but it would be helpful if every post were accompanied by the date of its occurrence.

Funeral home in my small town has over two dozen bodies waiting to be buried; funerals must be placed on a waiting list.

@Merkwurdichliebe It is obvious to me now, sir, judging by the crassness and vulgarity of your response to my last post, that you are not only far from being a philosopher or a gentleman, you are not even a decent human being.

I regret having ever felt familiar enough with you to give you a pet name, by which I will not only never call you again, but I will never deign to respond to you, by any name, at all, and I encourage all other decent members of this forum to follow my example...

So long, sir.

@Merkwurdichliebe I don’t know where you live, Merky, but I think you would be a lot happier living where I do. Let me give you a subtle hint: when I ride down the road, there are still a lot of Trump/Pence signs stuck in lawns, and it is not at all uncommon to see a Confederate flag flying on a pole sticking out from a house awning, or at a country store.

You can walk into the Walmart or Lowe’s hardware, just about any restaurant, any local retail store, Food Lion or Lowe’s Foods or any other grocer or supermarket without a mask...and no one will say a thing to you; cause ‘round here, if you ask someone to wear a mask, they’ll laugh at you; and if you ask them again, they’ll shoot ya.

It is not uncommon to be pushing your cart down the grocery aisle and encounter a redneck family with a brood of crusty-mouthed scantily clad young’uns in tow, crying and screaming, their daddy leading the way accompanied by his pregnant wife, his belly bulging out from the bottom of his tobacco-stained tank top, yellin “yo, Bubba!” at some buddy of his across the way, spewin a heavy cloud of virus up into the air where it floats about, waitin to slip behind some old woman’s mask who follows behind...

You might want to learn a taste for grits, pinto beans and cornbread, half-runner green beans before you come, and practice speaking with the local twang, talkin about hay season and the best scraps to feed pigs, the best way to mix green and cured wood...

...but if you ever mention Nietzsche, I’d suggest you style him as a confederate general (they won’t know the difference), maybe call him “Nick Shay”.

@Book273 Book, I don’t understand why you are willing to wear a mask at work, because your boss requires it, but would be willing to refuse to be vaccinated, and thus lose your job...what’s the difference b/w wearing a mask and getting inoculated, if either saves your job? It seems to me that, by wearing a mask at work, you are compromising your fierce pro-choice stance; if you are willing to lose your job over vaccination, why not just go ahead and lose it over masks, and get it over with?

And why are you wearing a mask when you go out in public merely because it is mandated, when, as everybody can see, there is no enforcement of these mandates? That’s where you could really display, with no risk, your uncompromising individualism, and teach it to your children who, I presume, sometimes accompany you...

A man who risked his life climbing steep rock-faces without a tether is unwilling to have a vaccine injected into his body because he might become sterile??

@Book273 I want to thank you, mr Book: after I read about all the dangerous adventures you enjoyed in your life, I thought to myself, “Todd where are your balls? Why can’t you be that daring?” So I told my girlfriend I refused to go with her to gather with her family this Christmas, and, as the Bible says, lo and behold! She decided to stay here with me.

Now let me challenge you: if I’m bold enough to defy her family, can you be bold enough to dare to wear a mask? To socially distance, to not gather with those who don’t live with you? Let me give you some encouragement: doing those things won’t detract from who you really are. They’re just superficial things. Who you are is deeper than that,...I hope?

Let me tell you a famous local story:

An 18 yr old kid here, some years ago, as young kids are won’t to do, was out on an isolated country road eager to test the power of the engine in his new pickup truck, and gunned it as hard as he could. Unfortunately, a young boy suddenly emerged from the adjoining wood, and ran out into the road, right in front of the pickup. Unable, because of his speed to either stop in time or swerve out of the way, the kid struck the boy, and after he finally stopped, ran back and found the boy lifeless...

...suddenly aware of his folly, and remembering he had his pistol in the truck, he walked back to the vehicle, extracted the firearm, walked into the woods, and shot himself in the head, becoming, as they say, his “own judge, jury and executioner”...

Let me ask you, Mr Book: do you have the balls to so severely judge yourself? If not, you better slow down when you drive.

I failed to mention that I have worked hard all year to keep my foolish lover and beloved from unnecessarily risking her health and life by going into church or dining in at restaurants, things she has wanted to do at different times. I talked her into sitting in the church parking lot and listening to the service on the radio; I talked her into take-out when she wanted to dine in, when she said, “but there’s hardly anyone at all in the dining room.” “Honey”, I explained to her, “I know there are few in the dining room now, but it’s only quarter till noon; how many will sit down to eat before we can exit?”

Yes, she can be foolish...but if we loved only the wise it would be hard to find a lover at all.

@Book273 “I would not have stressed her out in the first place”; but you don’t know, haven’t dealt with her family as I have over the years. I have pleaded with them that we not get together this Christmas, and all my pleas have fallen on deaf ears. They are of one mindset and I of another, but they won’t listen to me...

I helped her through cancer, and they were grateful they were relieved of that burden; I have lived with her day to day (as they haven’t: they only see her a couple times a year) for years, helping her get groceries, get things fixed around the house, take out the trash, vacuum the floors, visit doctors, make calls, etc, etc, etc...more importantly, lie with her to keep her warm, willingly sit with her to hear the same old stories of yore, go to church with her, help her elderly friends by working for them, in a word, be her man and companion during the last years of her life...

And how do they honor my service to the matriarch? They ignore me, follow their own selfish interest and encourage her to gather with them at her own peril and my anguish.

This Christmas with her family will be the worst one I’ve ever experienced in my life since I was a wee tot, wearing a mask and sitting in a corner while they laugh and eat and carry on and try to ignore me, and they know that; but do they care?

Book, if our house burned, I would do everything I could to get her and me out. But when my house burns the neighbors’ houses don’t necessarily also burn. In, however, a pandemic, what my neighbor does effects me, cause I might meet him at the grocery store, or at the post office, or the restaurant, and if he fails to wear a mask, and fails to keep his distance, I am put at risk...

Do you really think not wearing a mask makes you who you are?

It is late, alas!...I must go. Look forward to future conversation, Brett.

The mere necessities of life have been easily accessible since antiquity, and have resulted in great cultural achievements, without modern technology, since Greece and Rome.

@Brett No, Brett, I did not intend to be rhetorical. I honestly ask (and, btw, we have still not agreed on what “quality of life” means or is), what more than the mere necessities of life can technology promise us?

@Brett btw, I’m glad you had “no statistics”: statistics in the biggest questions never shed light, only obscurity.

Is all we need to have a quality life the things that pertain merely to our physical well-being?

Can all technology do is give us what is necessary for quality of life, not what is definitive?

@Brett you’ve not told me what quality of life is, rather, you’ve told me it’s beginnings; is “food and water, shelter and a feeling of security” equal to quality of life, or just its inception, prerequisites? If not, what more is needed that technology can provide?

Is fame an essential component of quality of life, recognition in your own lifetime? Mozart’s body was carried out to the graveyard by a few close friends and family, who abandoned the procession after a great rainstorm arose... no one knows for sure exactly where he is buried.

For example, is longevity an essential component of quality of life? I suspect someone might object that it depends upon the “quality” of that longevity, so we’re back to the basic question...

Is good health necessary? What if that good health was maintained only for a short duration, then suddenly ended in death? Mozart died at 35 after a brilliant and influential career, Keats at 25; would you trade your obscure longevity for his brief immortality?

In other words, if you can’t agree on what quality of life means, how can you have a discussion about how it compares b/w different generations?

The fundamental question in this discussion, what quality of life is, was never agreed upon, and therefore the discussion became a series of loosely related individual opinions...then, naturally, fizzled out.

In the beginning, when there seemed to be nothing, suddenly, out of the blue, a divine spark was ignited (from where no one can tell) that burst forth into a vast swiftly expanding perturbation of energy rotating and revolving about and cascading among itself, until finally settling down into a semblance of order. This Order, though not there in the beginning, was seen to have been planted, as a seed, in the beginning...

As the universe expanded, Order spawned children, smaller orders, from which sprang the elements of all being, matter in all its diversity, from which everything is ultimately derived, and in turn was derived from this matter all the things we know by our eyes and fingers, all the visible and tangible, both the animate and inanimate, and it became clear that the animate somehow mirrored the essence of that first divine spark that came out of nowhere...

Finally, Man came to be, and he soon realized he had a soul with which he could perceive order, and after he had perceived enough of the original order he concluded that he was the final recipient of that initial divine spark, because, as he perceived, he “is the particular being that can know the universal, the the temporal being that is aware of eternity, the part that can survey the whole, the effect that seeks the cause,” the final link b/w the macrocosm and the microcosm.

Thusly, my friends, it appears that cosmology is the story of a wedding, a desire in the instinct of that first outburst, that first ineffable spark to produce a lover of himself.

I know this is a myth...

...but it’s not JUST a myth.

@Book273 My girlfriend is 87 yrs old and underwent lung cancer chemo and radiation 3 yrs ago, from which she successfully recovered.

She can’t have a happy Christmas with her family without me, as she told me, and backed up her statement by going on a hunger strike until I relented, and told her I would go. When she had begun to eat her first meal after the strike, she suddenly headed for the toilet, where she vomited up those first couple bites, because she had been so distraught at the prospect of me not accompanying her.

Would you want your beloved girlfriend who was in such a condition to, as you call it, “work out” her immune system?

I’m standing looking out the kitchen window this afternoon when I see a double-trailer FedEx pull into the parking lot of the commercial garage/truck repair next door, stretching a great length across the wide lot. Now, I’ve seen a lot of unusual things be hauled or drive in there, but this was particularly unusual, so I called to my girlfriend, “hey, honey, come look at this.”

She approached the window and looked out: “what is it?” she asked.

“A double-trailer FedEx.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed with excitement, “maybe it’s full of vaccines!”

“What?” I asked.

“Maybe it’s hauling vaccine; I heard on tv that FedEx was gonna haul the vaccine.”

Now, I was just as surprised by her answer as I had been by seeing the truck, cause she usually doesn’t pay much attention to such tv news or comment on it: I realized she had been secretly watching stories about the imminent distribution of the vaccine, that she was highly anticipating it.

I put my head down b/w my hands and said, in a low voice, “this makes me mad.”

“What’s the matter?”

“You think this vaccine is gonna make you safe and solve all our problems, when you won’t even do the things now that you need to to stay safe until you can get vaccinated!” Cause you see, in 6 days, due to her and her family’s folly, and, frankly, selfishness, we’re gonna travel for Christmas to meet with them, who live in different parts of the state, and live in the same house with them for 2 days and nights.

A wise and benevolent govt would have kept this vaccine a secret until the very first day it was administered, in order to prevent a selfish foolish ppl from being even more of a harm to themselves.

But that’s not the way things work in this day of total transparency.

Jack, I am honored that you adopted my nickname for Mad Fool.

Keep flooding bathrooms and falling into ponds...as long as you don’t drown!

Allan Bloom used to get so involved in conversation with his students, that he would put the lit end of his cigarette, instead of the butt, to his lips.

Jean Stapleton: “And you knew who you were then,”

Carrol O’Conner: “Goyles were goyles and men were men...”

Oh how I miss the good old days!

Just a possible contribution to this discussion, which, honestly, didn’t interest me enough to follow it particularly closely:

“History and social science are used in a variety of ways to overcome prejudice. We should not be ethnocentric, a term drawn from anthropology, which tells us more about the meaning of openness. We should not think our way is better than others. The intention is not so much to teach the students about other times and places as to make them aware of the fact that their preferences are only that—accidents of their time and place. Their beliefs do not entitle them as individuals, or collectively as a nation, to think they are superior to anyone else. John Rawls is almost a parody of this tendency, writing hundreds of pages to persuade men, and proposing a scheme of government that would force them, not to despise anyone. In A Theory of Justice, he writes that the physicist or poet should not look down on the man who spends his life counting blades of grass or performing any other frivolous or corrupt activity. Indeed, he should be esteemed, since esteem from others, as opposed to self-esteem, is a basic need of all men. So indiscriminateness is a moral imperative because it’s opposite is discrimination. This folly means that men are not permitted to seek for the natural human good and admire it when found, for such discovery is coeval with the discovery of the bad and contempt for it. Instinct and intellect must be suppressed by education. The natural soul is to be replaced by an artificial one.”

Nota bene: I have never bothered to read Rawls.

It may also refer to a way of life: Socrates, Diogenes, etc.

Problem is, the word “philosophy” is ambiguous: do the two “philosophies” in your inquiry refer to the same thing?

For “philosophy” may refer to a specific intellectual discipline, Plato&Aristotle, etc, or it can mean “a way of thinking” about something, “an attitude, disposition, belief regarding”, etc.

During my lifetime I have seen a transition in American English from using the male singular 3rd person pronouns (he, him, his), when referring to a previous noun of unspecified gender (like “person”, or “doctor”, or “child”, etc), to using the genderless third person plural pronouns (they, them, their) when referring to the same objects.

For example, in the olden days we might have read this sentence: “A soul should resist all the urges of passion; his reason must govern them.” Now, the context does not exclude the possibility that a female soul is included in this analysis, indeed the author may have wished to include the souls of men AND women, but because the default gender was grammatically (and conceptually, as I suppose, since men were the chief authors of yore and wrote for a predominantly male audience) male, the masculine pronoun “his” was written...

Fast forward to our day: that same sentence would probably be written, “A soul should resist all the urges of passion; their reason must govern them.” “their”, here, is meant to refer to the previous “soul”; but “them” is supposed to refer to “urges”, whereas, since the pronouns have changed number, from singular to plural, an ambiguity arises, since now “them” is possibly singular in force, referring to the previous “their”!

Let me give you another example that shows this ambiguity, one I read this year in an editorial: “After Trump leaves office, the nation needs a true inquiry into his handling of the virus, and how to be sure that no future president has the ability to make so many Americans suffer for their incompetence and callousness.” Now, it is obvious from the context whose incompetence and callousness is spoken of: that of some future president. But because a future president might be female, the author of this statement chose to write “their” in place of “his”; and in so doing, created an awkward ambiguity, since “their” here most naturally refers to “Americans”.

The question is not how we can use science in a way to benefit man, but rather how long it will be till these artificial men we are on the way to producing through A.I. research, robots or automatons or whatever else they are being called, will, through their greater durability and intelligence, either enslave or destroy us.

I agree with Stephen Hawking: the greatest threat to mankind is not climate change or nuclear warfare, but rather A.I.

God created man in His own image, and Nietzsche declared God dead; now man is creating digital gods in his image...

Ms. Leon,

You say, “The human being is the animal that has the capacity to perceive the universal in the particular. His mission, his role is determined by this. Man is the animal created to discover what is beyond him, what is beyond the sensitive [sensible] world and for him to realize his destiny in this sphere. NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT NOT TO WANT THIS (emphasis mine).”

I agree with you concerning the general statement. But do you really expect all examples of mankind, all individual human beings, to have the capacity to fulfill this edict? to have the RIGHT to adhere to it, which amounts to the NECESSITY to do so?

Rights are things granted, by supposed authority of governments based on natural law, to each separate individual...but your edict seems to go against reality, a world, which has existed since antiquity, in which the great majority of individuals have chosen, for lack of greater capacity, bodily goods over spiritual or psychological ones.

Or maybe better yet, Philoparadoxos.

Hey, MadFool; I think your proper name is Mr. Paradox.

What true dissent or protest is:

It is certainly not in drawing attention to yourself;

Intus omnia dissimilia sint, frons populo nostra conveniat.

Not wearing a mask in public is not proving your freedom from mob hysteria; it only shows that you don’t understand the true nature of dissent...which is in HAVING your own opinion, and not necessarily EXPRESSING it...unless you do so in a philosophy forum...ha ha!

What is the difference between Merkywurdy’s cage and Plato’s cave?

The cage is unique to each individual, while the cave is universal, consisting of the laws, and of the religious beliefs, of the community. Communities vary in these particulars, but the character of these laws and beliefs is the same: they are designed to require allegiance to community, and to the gods that insure its safety and prosperity.

The key to the cage is unique to each individual, while the way out of the cave is universal, effected by following the dictates of Nature as opposed to those of Community. Beyond the cage there is no universal Nature, the assumption of all science and (at least before Nietzsche) philosophy.

But, beyond the cage, at least some hope of a reunion of freed souls is offered: “...there is nothing to prevent one person’s place from overlapping with another’s” (Merkwurdichliebe)...but what is there to suggest, beyond the author’s mere statement of this supposed fact, the existence of such overlapping? What can individuals uniquely freed from unique circumstances expect to find, on the other side, in common after they are free, like the common Nature Plato’s philosophers can expect to share?

In fine, Plato’s cave is more congenial to me than Merkywurdy’s cage, because I find, in those who exit it, a potential community, based on Nature, beyond the vulgar community; whereas in the Nietzscean/Merkywurdian cage I find only unique individuals uniquely freed who have nothing certainly in common other than that they were freed from something different from anything I was ever liberated from.

In other words, isn’t it true that your image of the “cage”, of a place where all of us are confined from birth until self-liberated, describes a universal condition for all individuals? Why would you suggest then that it applies only to you? What you do by describing it to us shows both that you believe it is universal, and that we ought to understand it.

Merky, I have a couple questions to ask you based on previous statements you’ve made...

You say, “psychological freedom at its maximum, is never troubled by external content of any kind, whether evidential or soundly inferential”. Does therefore the apparent fact that “the sun also rises” every morning, inferred from it having so risen from antiquity, constrain in no way the free soul to accept this as a fact shared with all other souls, whether free or enslaved, that have ever existed? Does 1+1 not equal 2? In other words, is there nothing obviously true to all ppl that may be inferred, and if not, where may we draw a line, and by what rationale, b/w what is obviously true, and what is debatably so?

Secondly, you say, “I have no desire to recruit others into my morality...So when I express my ethical opinion...I am not trying to convince you of anything, rather, I am just expressing my opinion.” But it is difficult for us to believe that a human being would exert such time and energy in something that he would not hope to reap some reward from. Furthermore, it is clear that you possess a certain weltanschauung that you believe is true, concerning the “cage”, and of whose veracity you would like to convince others...why else would you spend so much time describing it to us?

It is late and I must bow out of the investigation for now Merky...but I look forward to continuing it, perhaps tomorrow...

I am in the process of transferring phones, so there may be a delay.