Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Adams, one of our founding fathers, a president and the father of a president, a mammoth figure in US history, owned dogs while he was in the (newly constructed) White House.  That isn't surprising.  It is kind of an all-American kind of fact.  We might at some level be disappointed if he had NOT had at least one dog. But did you he name one of them "Satan"?  Perhaps for the perverse pleasure of training this pioneer White House pet? Instead of saying "heel" I guess Adams would say "get thee behind me."  [Matthew 16:23].  No, the above is not a picture of Adam's dog. ;-) It obviously has some features in common with our President-elect, though.

 So: as I indicated yesterday, Nishida says  that the will is free because it is not bound by natural law in choosing the good. [No, that isn't him in the attached photo.] So: what is the good?  I understand Nishida to be saying that the good is the actualization of potential.  So long as we are becoming who we really are, we are in the right.   How does this play itself out in particulars where we might really want to know what the good is?  Where telling us "it is what your real self would want" is no help?  Consider an example Jean-Paul Sartre would later evoke.  A young Frenchman has to decide whether to stay home and take care of his frail mother or leave her to her own devices and go join the resistance to the German occupation.  Telling him that he should actualize potential seems likely to be of little help.  But Nishida does seem to avail himself of the (very Jamesian) notion that human history is the working out of such co...

  At chapter 15 of Kitaro Nishida's book we finally pass into the discussion of ethics and "the good" within human conduct, the long-deferred but titular subject of it all. Nishida's definition of freedom of the will seems to steer directly into Kantian territory. End of chapter 17, "[The] unifying activity [of consciousness] is not a product of nature; rather, it is because of this unity that nature comes to exist. This unity is the infinite power at the base of reality, and it cannot be limited quantitatively. It exists independently of the necessary laws of nature. Because our will is an expression of that power, it is free and goes beyond the control of such natural laws."  A few chapters later, after a classification of all other ethical positions and his view of their errors, he gets to his own: goodness is the perfection of this will-beyond-natural law, and so the fullest expression of the underlying unity of consciousness. So at the end of chapter ...

  A few years ago now, somebody at Quora asked the broad and fascinating question, "How has Greek philosophy influenced Christianity?" I gave a brief answer, and one that I think is pertinent to this time of year.  Let's begin with Hanukkah, which actually begins at sundown on Christmas Day this year.  Hanukkah -- this is a quick and rough statement -- celebrates an uprising against Greek influence, as it manifested itself in the "abomination of Desolation" (pagan sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem).  So my answer brings in the Jews of the Second Temple period, the early Christians, and of course as requested ... the Greeks. In one mix. I hope I have stirred your curiosity.  Here is the answer:       Very deeply. And from the beginning. After all, the two cultures (of Judea and Greece) were merging           already in the time of the Seleucid Empire. In the second century BCE the Hellenizers pressed too hard ...

This comes under nice-to-know and -absurd-that-it-is-worth-saying.  My sympathy for organized religion, including that in which I grew up, grows lesser and lesser.  https://theconversation.com/ai-jesus-might-listen-to-your-confession-but-it-cant-absolve-your-sins-a-scholar-of-catholicism-explains-244468  

The murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, has been a compelling news story.  On the one hand, there was the excitement of a who-dunnit and a will-he-get-caught. On the second hand, there was and is the opportunity to pontificate about the health care and health insurance industries in the United States and their rage-producing dysfunction. UHC is the largest health insurance company in the United States. On the third hand, there is the opportunity to go "meta," to react to how other people, especially through these new-fangled social media lenses, are talking about the murder of Brian Thompson.  THAT has become a big deal, because it turns out the head of a private health insurance company -- especially one whose rates of coverage denial seem to have risen strikingly under his command -- is not a sympathetic victim. Who'd a thought? Thompson's company has actually pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to find reasons to deny claims. Hence the soci...