Read the rest of this cogent review.Freedom is a no-brainer
Modern science has made great strides in knowledge of the brain. But our brains are not us.
If you knew everything about how the human brain works, would you know everything about humanity? A growing number of scientists nowadays say Yes, including Susan Greenfield in her recent book, ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century. However, I find her attempt to prove that we are our brains less than convincing.
The author is no scientific lightweight. As director of the Royal Institution and professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, Baroness Susan Greenfield is one of the world’s best-known scientists. She is even known in the Antipodes as an honorary Australian of the year.
Greenfield writes with mastery about the history and breadth of brain exploration. Her explanations of recent breakthroughs such as the interplay of multiple brain regions in every brain function and of the key role that lower, sub-cortical, regions of the brain exercise in higher brain function, are superb. She is also refreshingly frank about the current limitations of research and the daunting complexity of the task that scientists face.
She is particularly good when she describes how experience changes our brains and about the impact of powerful sensory experiences. Her warnings about how the brain changes because of contemporary teenage lifestyles are sobering: an inability for reflective thought, attention and learning problems caused by a screen culture, addictions, cultures of passivity and hedonism "obliterating the individual", and the virtually irreversible modifications wrought by cannabis usage.
The discussion is grounded squarely on recent research and is aligned with landmark texts of popular sociology like Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death and Oliver James’s Affluenza.
But ultimately ID is disappointing. Greenfield thinks that neuroscience is on track to answer the big questions of How can I be happy? and What is the meaning of life? But instead of simplistic analogies and rambling ruminations on the effects of environment on personality there is a need for a reasoned understanding of personhood and human nature. Although many philosophies are arcane constructions of the mind, lack common sense, seem out of date, or are just bluntly contradictory there is at least one philosophy which she could have relied upon, one which fulfills the five requisites for being compatible with science.
> Both must be concerned with existent reality.
> Both must seek truth and subscribe to the objectivity of that truth. Philosophical and scientific truth cannot be in contradiction.
> Both must uphold the reliability of sense evidence and admit no other forms of data.
> Both must use reason to explore sense evidence.
> Both must accept the causality evident in the world around us.These common sense tests effectively rule out many philosophies -- but not all. Aristotle laid the foundations for the development of modern science with his insistence on factual knowledge and empirical investigation. It is to Aristotle, too, that we must turn for a compatible philosophy.
Let us examine three key areas in which contemporary neuroscience could make good use of Aristotle’s insights.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Andrew Mullins - Freedom Is a No-Brainer
PBS - Battle for the Bible
I learned a lot watching this on Sunday, and here is some of the info from the show. Let's sum it up by saying that the Church wasn't fond of the translation ideas -- sort of makes the priests non-essential.
The Bible is a key document of Western Civilization -- it should be required that all of us who pretend to be educated should read the Bible and know its history, from the Council of Rome in 382 to the King James version most Protestants grew up with.
Secrets of the Dead - Battle for the BibleToday, speakers of English take for granted many phrases from the King James Bible -- from "let there be light" to the word "scapegoat" -- that were the work of an intrepid 16th-century translator who met not with acclaim but with years of exile, and eventually lost his life.
A statue of Martin Luther, the Protestant leader.
But this translator, William Tyndale -- who was burned at the stake on October 6, 1536 -- was no lone renegade. Rather, he was a pivotal transitional figure, his work a step toward bringing direct experience of the Bible to a reading public.
The film BATTLE FOR THE BIBLE explores the lives and lasting influence of three major figures in the translation and propagation of the English Bible: the 14th-century theologian, politician, and reformer John Wycliffe; Tyndale; and Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII and advisor to the king through the period that saw the split with Rome and the creation of the Anglican Church.
The translation of the Bible into the vulgar -- the language of everyday people -- was a key element in the series of reforms within the Catholic Church that eventually resulted in what we know as the Protestant Reformation.
In the 14th century, the Roman Catholic Church was Western Europe's undisputed religious authority; and its central rituals -- the Mass and Communion -- the only legitimate pathway to salvation. The pope and the clergy held enormous power, and secular authorities looked to the Church for legitimation. Key to the Church's power was the fact that its rituals were conducted in Latin, a language inaccessible to the uneducated faithful. The public was completely dependent on the priesthood for access to salvation -- only through mysterious rituals conducted in an unfamiliar tongue could they conduct their spiritual lives.
John Wycliffe, born around 1320, was a prominent theologian at Oxford University and a leading ecclesiastical politician in the dark period of English history following the decimation of Europe's population by the Black Plague. He became convinced through his own scholarship that Scripture itself, rather than the Mass, should be seen as the source of Christian authority.
Wycliffe's notion that the Bible should be translated into the common tongue for the edification of all believers was a radical innovation, and one that spawned a movement. Working outside of the Church, translators eventually produced perhaps hundreds of so-called "Wycliffe Bibles," translated and hand-copied from the Latin. It is not clear that Wycliffe himself produced any translations into English, so they are more properly known as "Wycliffite" Bibles.
With or without Wycliffe's active involvement, the English Bible became part of an underground movement that became known as Lollardy and continued to spread after Wycliffe's death in 1384. It worried Church authorities enough that by 1407 the English translation was denounced as unauthorized, and translating or using translated Bibles was defined as heresy -- a crime for which the punishment was death by burning. In 1415 Wycliffe himself was denounced, posthumously, as a heretic. His body was exhumed and burned in 1428. Wycliffite Bibles, even after the ban, were produced in great numbers, and the 250 or so that now remain are the largest surviving body of medieval English texts. But the time was not yet right for the Bible to exist publicly in the common tongue.
Over the next century, however, life in England and in Europe would change radically. As the Renaissance got under way on the Continent, scholars began to rediscover Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of Scripture, and their work would spark a new series of translations even as the propagation of the printing press made possible the mass-production of books.
William Tyndale translated the Bible while in exile.
Perhaps the most influential publication of the early 16th century was the Dutch theologian Desiderius Erasmus's 1515 edition of the Greek New Testament, which included a new Latin translation. The translation -- which was printed and circulated widely among educated Christians across Europe -- made possible Martin Luther's 1522 publication of a new translation into German, which became perhaps the key text in the Reformation.
In England, William Tyndale, who was Luther's contemporary, set about creating an authoritative English translation of the Bible from the original texts. Tyndale worked in a harsher political environment than Luther faced on the Continent (the German authorities did not censure the reformers, while Tyndale clashed with and was reprimanded by English Catholic leaders) and eventually left England for Europe, most likely Germany, in 1524 in order to continue his work.
The version of the Bible that Tyndale completed in exile became one of the most influential works of literature in the English language, full of phrases that entered the popular lexicon and defined what we know as the voice of the scriptures. His translation was at once a major work of creative poetry and a radical reinterpretation of the sacred texts, challenging by interpretation the authority of the Catholic hierarchy, redefining "priests" as "elders" and the "Church" as a "congregation."
In 1526 Tyndale published his New Testament in a portable edition. First published in Cologne and Worms, and eventually smuggled into England in large numbers from Antwerp (where Tyndale found refuge during the late 1520s), it became a best-seller, popularized by itinerant preachers who recited Tyndale's words despite the fact that they risked burning at the stake.
In 1535, the authorities finally caught up with Tyndale; he was imprisoned for more than a year in Brussels before being burned at the stake (given his popularity, he was mercifully strangled before the flames were lit). His words had taken root in England, but it would take a political upheaval to bring the Bible to the English people.
Puritans who were not satisfied with the Anglican Church left England and settled in the American colonies, bringing with them the King James version of the Bible.
Ironically enough, that transformation came even as Tyndale languished in prison. In 1534, Henry VIII, without male heirs and unable to obtain a divorce from the pope so as to marry again, finally resorted to the bold step of assuming control of the English Church. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, became the architect of the new church doctrine - and, heavily influenced by Luther, he envisioned a very different English Church, which would include some of the ideas pioneered by the German Reformation.
For Cranmer, distribution of an English Bible was key to establishing a reformist church in his country. He issued an English Bible, printed in Antwerp -- though known popularly as the "Matthew Bible," it combined Tyndale's New Testament with elements of an Old Testament translation done by Myles Coverdale -- and followed that with an official English Bible and, under Edward VI's reign, an English liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer.
The birth of the English church was not easy. A period of religious conflict ensued, and the church that began to emerge, though it included English-language texts, preserved the hierarchy of the Catholic Church -- it remained an episcopal church, administered by bishops.
In fact, Catholics came back to power under Edward's sister Mary, and in 1556, Cranmer, like Tyndale before him, was burned at the stake. But as England swung between Catholicism and Anglicanism, the idea of a Bible in the common tongue had taken hold. It flourished in multiple versions. The Geneva Bible (the choice of the growing Puritan movement, which sought a return to a purist, poor church modeled after that of the time of Christ), the Doway Catholic English Bible, and the official Anglican Bishop's Bible fought for the minds and spirits of English citizens.
King James of Scotland, who came to power in 1603, called the Hampton Court Conference in order to work out a compromise with English Puritans and to unite the feuding religious factions. The outcome was the commissioning of a new authorized version of the Bible (published in 1611) that would satisfy all parties; the version became known as the King James Bible. Much of the language used hearkens back to Tyndale's translation. This new Bible made Tyndale's words central to Protestantism in the English-speaking world thereafter.
Those Puritans who were not satisfied with the compromise (they accepted the new translation, but could not accept the structure of the Anglican Church) left England, settling in the American colonies but bringing with them the King James version of the Bible. Its language -- and with it the words and ideas of Wycliffe, Tyndale, Cranmer, and the other pioneering translators of Scripture -- would be woven into the fabric of the new nation.
Examine the Clues and Evidence
Monday, October 27, 2008
Christopher Hitchens - The GOP Ticket's Appalling Contempt for Knowledge and Learning
Sarah Palin's War on Science
The GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning.
Posted Monday, Oct. 27, 2008, at 11:43 AM ET
In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."
It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research.
In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory. The cost is almost trivial compared with the importance of understanding this species, and I dare say the project will yield results in the measurement of other animal populations as well, but all McCain could do was be flippant and say that he wondered whether it was a "paternity" or "criminal" issue that the Fish and Wildlife Service was investigating. (Perhaps those really are the only things that he associates in his mind with DNA.)
With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of McCain. We never get a chance to ask her in detail about these things, but she is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in the innocent disguise of "teaching the argument," as if there was an argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now. This would make DNA or any other kind of research pointless, whether conducted in Paris or not. Projects such as sequencing the DNA of the flu virus, the better to inoculate against it, would not need to be funded. We could all expire happily in the name of God. Gov. Palin also says that she doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming; again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us.
Videos taken in the Assembly of God church in Wasilla, Alaska, which she used to attend, show her nodding as a preacher says that Alaska will be "one of the refuge states in the Last Days." For the uninitiated, this is a reference to a crackpot belief, widely held among those who brood on the "End Times," that some parts of the world will end at different times from others, and Alaska will be a big draw as the heavens darken on account of its wide open spaces. An article by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times gives further gruesome details of the extreme Pentecostalism with which Palin has been associated in the past (perhaps moderating herself, at least in public, as a political career became more attractive). High points, also available on YouTube, show her being "anointed" by an African bishop who claims to cast out witches. The term used in the trade for this hysterical superstitious nonsense is "spiritual warfare," in which true Christian soldiers are trained to fight demons. Palin has spoken at "spiritual warfare" events as recently as June. And only last week the chiller from Wasilla spoke of "prayer warriors" in a radio interview with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who said that he and his lovely wife, Shirley, had convened a prayer meeting to beseech that "God's perfect will be done on Nov. 4."
This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.
Buddhist Geeks Episode 94: Horizontal and Vertical Enlightenment
Episode 94: Horizontal and Vertical Enlightenment
Related Links:
Philosopher and long-time Buddhist practitioner, Ken Wilber, continues his discussion of the meditative terrain and of his spiritual philosophy in general. He finishes off his discussion of the meditative maps with an exploration of what it actual takes--both in terms of time and effort--to master these various stages of consciousness.
He also explains the difference between what he is now calling "horizontal enlightenment" (which is basically everything we've explored up to this point) and "vertical enlightenment" which encompasses other areas of human development that can't been developed while on the cushion. According to him the traditional notion of Buddhist enlightenment isn't he be-all-end-all of human development.
Finally, if you're interested in learning more about Ken's most recent work, and how it's being applied in the world visit the newly launched site, www.IntegralLife.com
This is part 2 of a two-part series. Listen to part 1, The Meditative Maps: Happy Mornings and Dark Nights.
Time - Is the Dalai Lama About to Give Up On China?
Is the Dalai Lama About to Give Up On China?
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama greets a crowd in Dharmsala, India, on Oct. 25Ashwini Bhatia / AP
Has the Dalai Lama really given up on hope that China might some day come around and agree to his proposal for some sort of (very) limited autonomy for his homeland, Tibet? That's what the 73-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader appeared to indicate during an Oct. 25 speech in his exile home of Dharamsala in northern India. "I have been sincerely pursuing the middle way approach in dealing with China for a long time now but there hasn't been any positive response from the Chinese side," he was quoted as saying. "As far as I'm concerned I have given up." That was, as an Associated Press report on the speech noted —almost with shock — "an unusually blunt" statement from a man whose well-known global public image revolves around preaching the compromise and non-violence that are central tenets of Buddhism.But it appears that after decades of fruitless negotiations with Beijing as part of an attempt to gain some concessions for his homeland, the 15th Dalai Lama may have finally reached the end of his tether. "Mr. Patience has run out of patience," says Robbie Barnett, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University in New York City. "It's really very serious indeed and a major disappointment, though not so much of a surprise. The Chinese must have know this was coming — some of the responsible officials in fact must be very pleased that they have managed to provoke this reaction. Now they can say that it was the other side that broke off negotiations, and claim the moral high ground."
The eighth round of talks between Beijing officials and the Dalai Lama's representatives was scheduled for late October. It's not clear how the statements by the Dalai Lama will affect them. On the day after the speech, the Tibetan leader's spokesman Tenzin Taklha told reporters that the talks were set to go forward as scheduled, stressing the need to "keep the door to dialog open." Taklha also confirmed that the Dalai Lama had called a consultative meeting of exiled Tibetans for mid-November at which the group's approach to achieving their goal of a freer Tibet would be completely examined from the ground up. He said "everything will be on the table" for reconsideration except the fundamental principle of non-violence.
In March, anti-Chinese riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa did turn violent, leading to scores of fatalities on both sides. Chinese authorities swiftly sealed off Tibet and rounded up hundreds of suspects, some of whom reportedly remain in jail nearly eight months later. With access to the region still almost completely blocked, there have been only intermittent reports of further protests and alleged abuses and human rights violations by Chinese security forces attempting to quash the simmering dissent. Resentment against Beijing has exploded sporadically among the roughly six million Tibetans living in the mountainous region ever since troops of the People's Liberation Army invaded in 1951.
The Dalai Lama fled his homeland for exile in India in 1951, and has since become a familiar, maroon-robed presence on the world stage in a tireless, peripatetic campaign to win his homeland some degree of autonomy and preserve Tibet's traditional culture. This year he has found himself in an increasingly impossible situation since the riots in March, analysts and academics say. Younger and more radical forces among the some 100,000-strong exile community in India have increasingly called for a tougher stance against Beijing, particularly as reports of alleged further abuse, including arrests and shootings of demonstrating monks, have grown.
Sources familiar with the Tibetan stance say they have dropped almost all preconditions in talks with the Chinese and were seeking only a meeting between the spiritual leader and Chinese president Hu Jintao. But rather than soften their position, Chinese officials seemed to grow more aggressive since the middle of this year, most recently stating in July that the talks were not about the future of Tibet but about arrangements for the Dalai Lama's own future, including when he might be allowed to return to China. "That's exactly what caused the collapse of talks all the way back in 1985," says Barnett. "They must have known what would happen if they humiliated him that way again." Once they had returned to that phraseology, Barnett says the Dalai Lama had almost no choice but to repudiate them. Considering everything, he says, "the only real surprise is that it took so long."
TED Talks - Jared Diamond: Why societies collapse
Why do societies fail? With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond talks about the signs that collapse is near, and how -- if we see it in time -- we can prevent it.A globally renowned scholar and author, Jared Diamond finds answers to the massive "Why?"s in so-vast-you-don't-notice patterns in history. His bestselling and Pulitzer-winning book Guns, Germs and Steel looks at the reasons history turned out the way it did -- why European societies conquered the rest of the world instead of the other way around. His latest book, Collapse, asks nearly the opposite: Why do some civilizations fail?
An ecologist, evolutionary biologist and professor of geography and physiology at UCLA, Diamond takes an approach that goes beyond culture and into the impact it has on the environment. As Malcolm Gladwell observes, "Diamond's distinction between social and biological survival is a critical one, because too often we blur the two." Diamond's ability to tackle daunting questions (and pose unsettling answers) in a straightforward voice may be reason enough to share his optimism that recognizing a problem paves the way for solving it.Educators' tip: The website for PBS's mini-series Guns, Germs and Steel offers many resources for further study.
Spirituality Protects Against Depression Better Than Church Attendance
Another blow for organized religion (which has withstood a couple of thousand years of blows, so one should not expect that it will fall any time soon), this time in research showing that spirituality is more powerful than going to church in warding off depression.
To be fair, the outcome shows that "religious well-being" is correlated with lower rates of depression, which does not in any way preclude church attendance.
From Science Daily:
Spirituality Protects Against Depression Better Than Church Attendance
ScienceDaily (Oct. 23, 2008) — Those who worship a higher power often do so in different ways. Whether they are active in their religious community, or prefer to simply pray or meditate, new research out of Temple University suggests that a person's religiousness – also called religiosity – can offer insight into their risk for depression.
Lead researcher Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., characterized the religiosity of 918 study participants in terms of three domains of religiosity: religious service attendance, which refers to being involved with a church; religious well-being, which refers to the quality of a person's relationship with a higher power; and existential well-being, which refers to a person's sense of meaning and their purpose in life.In a study published on-line this month in Psychological Medicine, Maselko and fellow researchers compared each domain of religiosity to their risk of depression, and were surprised to find that the group with higher levels of religious well-being were 1.5 times more likely to have had depression than those with lower levels of religious well-being.
Maselko theorizes this is because people with depression tend to use religion as a coping mechanism. As a result, they're more closely relating to God and praying more.
Researchers also found that those who attended religious services were 30 percent less likely to have had depression in their lifetime, and those who had high levels of existential well-being were 70 percent less likely to have had depression than those who had low levels of existential well-being.
Maselko says involvement in the church provides the opportunity for community interaction, which could help forge attachments to others, an important factor in preventing depression. She added that those with higher levels of existential-well being have a strong sense of their place in the world.
"People with high levels of existential well-being tend to have a good base, which makes them very centered emotionally," said Maselko. "People who don't have those things are at greater risk for depression, and those same people might also turn to religion to cope."
Maselko admits that researchers have yet to determine which comes first: depression or being religious, but is currently investigating the time sequence of this over people's lives to figure out the answer.
"For doctors, psychiatrists and counselors, it's hard to disentangle these elements when treating mental illness," she said. "You can't just ask a patient if they go to church to gauge their spirituality or coping behaviors. There are other components to consider when treating patients, and its important information for doctors to have."
Other authors on this study are Stephen Gilman, Sc.D., and Stephen Buka, Sc.D., from the department of Public Health at Harvard University and Brown University Medical School. This research was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health and by the Jack Shand Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
Adapted from materials provided by Temple University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Alice Ramos - Hunger for Beauty
Here is one key quote with which I agree completely:
Although it is difficult to explain, there is a relationship between beauty and the mind; one of the features of the beautiful is clarity, light, or luminosity, and of course the mind seeks light, it seeks clarity, and when the mind reaches that clarity it experiences the joy of understanding. That’s why, I think, when we go to certain museums or concert halls we experience a kind of “high,” in the sense that we seem to be living at an optimal state, a state in harmony with our nature as intellectual beings. True art, the beauty it manifests, creates within us a kind of equilibrium whereby we are, so to speak, renewed. Hence, the importance of beauty and the arts for work–they energize and inspire us.Here, then in the interview with Alice Ramos.
Go read the whole interview.Hunger for beauty
Enough of 'art for art's sake'. Let's have some art for the sake of humanity, truth and goodness.
The great literary artist Dostoevsky once wrote that beauty would save the world. That may be truer than ever today, says philosophy professor Alice Ramos, because, while many people have given up on truth and goodness, they remain fascinated by beauty, even if it is only the cosmetic attractiveness of movie stars. This means, she told an audience in Rome, “that beauty may be a privileged route to both the true and the good, and thus that art could be of singular importance in helping the modern world”. In this interview with MercatorNet, Professor Ramos explains how art lost its classical relationship with the true and the good, and how important it is for artists to make those connections again.
*****
MercatorNet: You are a philosopher with a deep interest in aesthetics. Forgive me for sounding like a philistine, but aesthetics is one of those rarified fields which puts my head in a spin. What is it all about?
Alice Ramos: The word aesthetics comes from the Greek aisthesis which means sensation, perception. Aesthetics as a philosophy refers to sensible knowledge and the perception of the beautiful. It has as its object the study of beauty and especially the study of art. In classical and medieval thought aesthetics was not an independent discipline but rather formed part of metaphysics, the philosophy that deals with all of reality, with being. Philosophers were interested in beauty as an aspect or property of reality; they were also interested in art, especially the production of art. This is clear for example in Aristotle’s Poetics, which is undoubtedly the most influential work on art. Both Aristotle and Plato recognized the influence of the arts on a person’s moral character.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn thought that in our time beauty would be called to soar to the place once occupied by truth and goodness and thereby 'complete the work of all three'. Aesthetics as an autonomous philosophical discipline is actually a product of modern thought. The German philosopher Baumgarten in his work entitled Aesthetics, which dates from 1750, is the first one to use the term aesthetics to refer to a specific body of knowledge which attempts to give an account of the perception of the beautiful. There are also other German philosophers whose influence has been remarkable in the field of aesthetics: Kant’s work on the aesthetic judgment, and Hegel’s lectures on philosophy of art. In postmodern times we have almost witnessed the demise of aesthetics, the death of art and of beauty, but at present there is a renewed interest in aesthetics. Beginning in the early 1970s the humanities in particular were being studied under the lens of deconstructionist, psychoanalytical, and political theories and were as a result being emptied of beauty.
Judging from the number of conferences and publications on beauty and aesthetics in the last ten years, I think we’re witnessing a renaissance of beauty in academic circles. Perhaps the waning interest in truth propositions and in moral rules has given rise to the hunger for beauty. Perhaps, too, through aesthetics and a reflection on the beautiful we may find a new route toward the recovery of truth and morality. Alexander Solzhenitsyn thought that in our time beauty would be called to soar to the place once occupied by truth and goodness and thereby “complete the work of all three.”
MercatorNet: I can see the need for truth and for morality. But we can live without beauty and art, can't we? Plenty of people seem happy with a diet of American Idol and reruns of The Simpsons.
Alice Ramos: I would say that we really can’t live without beauty, that just as the human person by nature desires to know, to attain truth, the human person also desires the beautiful. A perennial thinker such as Thomas Aquinas speaks of beauty as principally pertaining to the life of the mind, to understanding or contemplative activity. Just as knowing the truth brings us joy, so do we take delight in the contemplation of the beautiful. Who has not experienced more than just a sensible delight in seeing the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo, or the magnificent sculptures of Rodin, or in hearing Andrea Bocelli sing sacred arias? True art speaks not only to the senses but also to the mind; it elevates us in such a way that we transcend corporeal existence, or that through the sensible–the exquisiteness of the colors or the sounds–an intelligible or spiritual realm is unveiled to us such that we acquire a new access to the truth of things and of our very selves.
Unfortunately, in our culture we seem to be fixated on a superficial beauty, on sensible beauty, on cosmetic beauty. Although it is difficult to explain, there is a relationship between beauty and the mind; one of the features of the beautiful is clarity, light, or luminosity, and of course the mind seeks light, it seeks clarity, and when the mind reaches that clarity it experiences the joy of understanding. That’s why, I think, when we go to certain museums or concert halls we experience a kind of “high,” in the sense that we seem to be living at an optimal state, a state in harmony with our nature as intellectual beings. True art, the beauty it manifests, creates within us a kind of equilibrium whereby we are, so to speak, renewed. Hence, the importance of beauty and the arts for work–they energize and inspire us.
Unfortunately, in our culture we seem to be fixated on a superficial beauty, on sensible beauty, on cosmetic beauty. There is a veritable cult of beauty as evidenced by “extreme makeover” shows in the United States, by the recourse to cosmetic surgery both among the young and the not so young. And yet, as we all know, such beauty is fleeting, ephemeral; perhaps our taste for this type of beauty is an indication of the nihilistic philosophy which pervades so much of our culture. By saying this I don’t mean to suggest that sensible, external beauty is not important, that we shouldn’t care about our looks; self-image is important and we should want to present a pleasing appearance to others, but out of respect for them and not out of vanity or sheer egotism.
I think the cult of beauty that I’m speaking of encloses the person in him or herself and therefore does not allow the person to experience other dimensions of beauty such as the beauty of self-sacrifice, the intrinsic beauty of persons that radiates from their virtuous living, from their dedication to an ideal greater than themselves. Examples of such beauty abound in history, but one has only to think of the recent figures of Mother Teresa or John Paul II. Because beauty in its many forms does delight us, I think it’s important for us to examine what type of beauty we’re attracted to, what types of things delight us. Thomas Aquinas in his wisdom saw clearly that the human person cannot do without delight and that when the person is deprived of spiritual joys then carnal delight will take their place. Perhaps this is the reason for the contemporary cult of beauty that I’ve spoken of, and also the reason for much of the sadness and despair that has invaded human life. If this is so, and I do think it is, then we are in dire need of recovering the spiritual dimension of beauty.
Religion: With God on Our Side
Matthew Hutson offers up a brief but good article over at Psychology Today on the the ways in which egocentrism shapes religion belief. Further evidence that we create God in our image.
Religion: With God on Our Side
Egocentrism in reading God's mind.
By: Matthew Hutson
"That land that I live in has God on its side," Bob Dylan sang in 1963, cynically reprising a go-to justification for war. That is, believers think they're doing the Lord's work—sometimes a dangerous inclination.Psychologist Nick Epley explores how we attribute beliefs and attitudes to other minds, including those of deities. In ongoing research at the University of Chicago, he and his collaborators are finding that people's own beliefs line up much more closely with the beliefs they attribute to their gods than to those they peg on other people. (These include attitudes about abortion, gay marriage, and the Iraq war.) And if you manipulate people's views, their gods' assigned views change, too. Further, neuroimaging shows that pondering God's thoughts and considering your own both activate the same parts of the brain, areas distinct from those used to guess the views of the average American.
Epley suggests three possible explanations for the God-self overlap. First, when we have little information about what others are thinking—God is the ultimate secret-keeper—we assume they're like us. Second, the idea that you and your man upstairs are on different pages is threatening. And third, since what you believe is true (you think), and God believes what is true, you must have the same beliefs.
"We're not the only ones to think about this," Epley says. "Since its inception, Christianity has warned of the problem of creating God in one's own image." About half of Americans consult God for advice daily. In light of these data, one could ask whether that's any more productive than asking your imaginary friend where you put your keys—he doesn't know any more than you do.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Politics of Obesity: Our National Eating Disorder
Obesity has become an epidemic in the United States with one out of every five Americans facing this health crisis. In this presentation, the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism examines "The Politics of Obesity".