User talk:Dan~enwiki

BF

Rather than putting a line on your main page and commenting , Dan, I added this talk page. If you want to remove it, go ahead. I like what you wrote and have many similar ideas. Here on wikipedia I started Angel, then Dakini, then New Age. The latter has so many revisions(over 150) from people inwardly biased who haven't a clue what New Age means, but decide what was written from an experiential POV must be wrong, or "evangelizing", or biased, or anything else they wished to come up with... a poor excuse for knowing nothing about the subject. Take a look at the 3 talk sections on New Age, and you might see a history of this behavior. Most importantly, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Whales have both emailed me, trying to "lay down the law", or to correct my writing style.

I've noticed many of the prolific authors, who are on here all the time, use a gang mentality. They feel justified in removing content using the wikipedia standards, and track a victim like wolves hunting weaker prey. Once they draw blood, meaning the person here complains, they destroy context, use snide remarks, and eventually Larry jumps in to endorse these predators' ripping-going-for-the-juggler hunting/stalkings. This may seem a little blown out of proportion, but to the victim, she hurts from their bites. Some of these wolves advised me to leave wiki; some said I needed a thicker skin.

There is another reality that cannot be measured with scientific instruments. What is time, other than the ticks on a clock? Time does work for all the rules of science, yet now physicists are beginning to see a higher truth where time stops. They are mystified by 90% of the universe being dark matter, meaning all the laws of nature and science apparently are only 10% of "what-is".

Tacit(silent) knowledge may be mystical, or a deep gnosis, in that a person knows she knows, beyond any doubt. Skeptics always love to descend like flies on rotting meat, once their reality is jeapordized by the Truth, from another POV; and they never admit the source of their Fear is homeostatic complacency. BF

THE LOOBY

   Only loobies find excellence in these words.
   It is thinkable that A is not-A; to reverse this is but
     to revert to the normal.
   Yet by forcing the brain to accept propositions of
     which one set is absurdity, the other truism, a
     new function of brain is established.
   Vague and mysterious and all indefinite are the
     contents of this new consciousness; yet they are
     somehow vital.  by use they become luminous.
   Unreason becomes Experience.
   This lifts the leaden-footed soul to the Experience
     of THAT of which Reason is the blasphemy.
   But without the Experience these words are the
     Lies of a Looby.
   Yet a Looby to thee, and a Booby to me, a Balassius
     Ruby to GOD, may be!

talk:Pascal's Wager

You are bringing up a great deal of silliness, and I reccomend you take a deep breath and reappraise the tract you are looking to take with your edits on religious articles. You havn't upset me at all, but I must warn you religious artilces attract about as much heat and passion as you are likely to find on the wikipedia, and I wouldn't want you to catch the ugly lack of wikiquette from someone who is less amused. just so you know, the universal life church allows you to become a Christian reverend, it doesn't create new, non-christian faiths. Likewise, the US govt. is particularly stingy when it comes to authorizing new faiths, due to the tax benifits, and their having been burned in the past (scientology anybody?). Anyways, cheers, and thanks for the laughs. Sam Spade 08:52, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Universal Life Church calls itself an existentialist religion. Ulc.org clearly states that they will ordain anyone, regardless of creed or beliefs. (See http://www.ram.org/misc/awards/pittnewsoped.html as well.) I've founded a Universal Life Church of the Star Goat, with the required three members and a statement of beliefs.

Now, the founders of the Goatist religion clearly have strong beliefs about God and the non-existence thereof. They express these beliefs through the Reformed Church of the Star Goat. If you think no-one could believe in a literal Goat, I suggest you study the history of the Reformed Druids of North America. Heck, I've made myself believe in a personal Eris at times. I plan to invoke and believe in the Star Goat next time I feel like a Discordian ritual. As you can see, I take silliness very seriously.

I won't mention Goatism in the article unless someone decides to include the 'no-one could really believe that' argument. But even though that argument makes no sense, I suspect that someone outside Wikipedia has made it. In other words, some who wants to include it could probably find an external source. We can safely regard statements of the form, "No-one could think X," as false. Dan 07:33, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yep, folks sure are nutty. I'm glad you find yourself so very funny, that is an atribute to prize in this life. Good luck, and thanks for all the fish. Sam Spade 15:46, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I added that stuff about two periods, but I no longer have the book. As a boy, I spent many hours with "Science and Sanity" and at the end, after all the rambling, I could find little in terms of "action items" in today's lingo, other than to exercise consciousness of abstracting and that use of two periods, or maybe you are right, a comma and a period. I agree that I did not see a lot of sentences with two terminal periods, but I am sure it was one of Korzybski's very few specific instructions. People do not always do what they recommend. Feel free to delete that if you like. The idea is, however, consistent with Korzybski's preoccupation with the apparent inability of sense data and, even worse, words, to capture extent of the world. Thus, the use of the structural differential is at least partly to remind one that one is abstracting, selecting, and the two periods seemingly are consistent, as a reminder of what was left out. Pdn 05:08, 12 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Leon Kass article

Dan, I invite you to add more detail on Leon Kass to his article. There was some ideologue who was sitting on it for a long time, deleting whatever I added, claiming that his academic achievements and "personal relationship" with Kass justified all his edits automatically. I got him to calm down some, but I'd really like to make clear the full range of Kass' views, and you seem to understand them from at least a skeptical perspective.

So, I invite you to add to the Leon Kass article...and if that guy Noesis comes back, let's deal with him together. --Zaorish 17:31, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a plan. I wanted to wait and see if Noesis added any "context" himself, but I think we've waited long enough. I thought you had some good additions that vanished, unless someone else wrote those. Dan 06:46, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I really appreciate your help. ^_^; I'm only beginning to learn the true stress of such wikiwars.--Zaorish 23:08, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Leon Kass

moved from Talk:Leon Kass:

For example, you state "He feels that these now well-accepted practices desensitize society, increasing the likelihood of acceptance of more advanced technologies such as reproductive cloning." Yes, but the thrust of his ethic is that these actions remove an important aspect of who and what we are. Society comes later (as in the babel arguement). To him, our humanity lies in the mystery of our individual origins, encapsulated in sexual reproduction (this links to the nuclear family/women thing of which I am personally dubious). To return: to expose these origins in a petri dish is to take that away: "...[T]here may well be a dehumanizing effect on the scientist himself, and through him, on all of us. The men who are at work on the new beginnings of life are about to subdue one of the most magnificent mysteries, the mystery of birth and renewal. To some extent, the mystery has already been subdued. Those who do in vitro fertalization are in the business of initiating new life. To the exent that they feel that there is nothing unusual or awesome in what they are doing they have already lost the appreciation of mystery, the sense of wonder." (Toward a More Natural Science. 1985. p. 74) This is a powerful image to Kass, himself a former biochemist. The post-enlightnment (Kass is a Rousseau fan, importantly) and modern scientific project, the end of mystery, comes at the expense of our dignity: "We have paid some high prices for the technological conquest of nature, but none perhaps so high as the intelectual and spiritual cost of seeing nature as mere material for our manipulation, exploitation, and transformation. With the powers for biological engineering now gathering, there will be splendid new opportunities for a similar degradation in our view of man. Indeed, we are already witnessing the erosion of our idea of man as something splendid or divine, as a creature with freedom and dignity. And clearly, if we come to see ourselves as meat, then meat we shall become" (As Above, p. 77) This, I think, is the lesson of the Babel story for him. The society that sees the technically maluable physical world as all that there is to existence is the society who loses what is essential to its individuals. When that occurs, can the fragmentation and dissolution of that society help but follow? And isn't this multiplied when deeper notions of human origins are questioned as implied in the test-tube debate? He ends the Babel talk with a warning which I think sums up his skepticism of modernity and is the essential launch-point of his understanding of biomedical ethics, certainly as it pertains to the in vitro debate: "[T]he humanist project of Babel has been making a comeback. Ever since the beginning of the seventeenth century, when men like Bacon and Descartes called mankind to the conquest of nature for the relief of man’s estate, the cosmopolitan dream of the city of man has guided many of the best minds and hearts throughout the world. Science and technology are again in the ascendancy, defying political boundaries en route to a projected Human Empire over nature. God, it seems, forgot about the possibility that a new universal language could emerge, the language of symbolic mathematics, and its offspring, mathematical physics. It is algebra that all men understand without disagreement. It is Cartesian analytic geometry that enables the mind mentally to homogenize the entire world, to turn it into stuff for our manipulations. It is the language of Cartesian mathematics and method that has brought Babel back from oblivion. Whether we think of the heavenly city of the philosophes, or the post-historical age toward which Marxism points, or, more concretely, the imposing building of the United Nations that stands today in America’s first city; whether we look at the world-wide web and its Word Perfect, or the globalized economy, or the biomedical project to re-create human nature without its imperfections; or whether we confront the spread of the post-modern claim that all “truth” is of merely human creation—we see everywhere evidence of the revived Babylonian vision." (Technology and the Humanist Dream, Babel Then and Now. in http://www.reason.com/rb/rb012302.shtml). As I have said, I am definitely a former student and fan. I would make no pretensions to be expert enough in him or this forum to argue with you about what should be presented in it, or how. I don't know what advocacy journalism is, much less whether the author is engaging in it. I guess I am just locked in, clearly. I hope you find this interesting or productive, and not just a rehash of what you already know. If you think this should be talked about elsewhere, fine. If you want me to just go away, I can do that too. Thanks for your attention and sorry if your copywrite issues have been infringed upon. 64.160.117.34 10:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)HB[reply]

my response: Kass does indeed start from a claim about humanity and human dignity. Before I get to my disagreement with his view of humanity, I want to mention that I also disagree with his view of modernity. As you say, Kass seems to argue that according to modern thought, "human beings are merely the sum total of biological processes." But I associate modern thought with general semantics, and GS views most talk of "being" with suspicion. We never observe what objects "are". So, for example, we can analyze humans into biological processes, but I would distinguish sharply between the result of analysis and the human we start with. This kind of scientific examination deliberately ignores most aspects of the object in order to produce models we can use to predict experience -- like maps we can use to find our way around empirical Reality. "The map is not the territory." Many other ways of looking at the world may better serve different purposes. And this philosophically extreme version of modern thought tells us to remember that our points of view leave out or ignore most of the world. For example, science has nothing to say about this external post on the subject of humanity and morality, at least not until we get to the practical questions. (Yet science does make that view seem attractive, mainly by weakening its competitors.)

This takes us back to humanity and Kass. You point out that he possesses a view of humanity and human dignity. (I knew this from his Babel lecture, which I heard and hated before 9/11.) Since you wrote this in response to my remark about 9/11 hijackers, you appear to think that an evil philosophy like theirs can't possibly share this trait. But, of course, it does. A glance at this fatwa will show that Al-Qaeda starts from a particular view of human origins, nature and dignity. In their view, our humanity derives from our special creation by Allah, "by whom you demand one of another -your rights-". Both Kass and bin Laden define humanity in ways that seem unrelated to self-consciousness, or even the biological definition. Both seem to favor laws that appeal to their personal views for justification, ignoring other principles. Both of them, therefore, implicitly reject the claim that laws exist solely to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (I called this the basic premise of America.) Since all analogies fail (otherwise we wouldn't call them analogies), we can find important differences between the two men. (See previous remarks about all views looking at some aspects of reality and leaving out others.) But I consider these similarities important as well. Especially since both of them praise laws that restricted freedom for dubious benefit (according to that Jeffersonian standard.) Your teacher specifically charges that science can't justify laws against "adultery" -- what do his principles have to say about executing women for this "crime"? We know what his preferred book of religious stories has to say. See also this passage. For a longer response to his practical argument about society and morality, see this other external post. Perhaps I've forgotten some important factor in this discussion, but if so you can remind me. Dan 00:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oy Vey. You seem to want turn this on a reading of K. from GS, of which I am not familiar, until I read this. I think I understand it conceptually, however, so I will try to respond as best as I can. If you mean by "a map is not territory" that our own narrow perspective limits any human endeavor to capture or understand the essence or true Reality ("Reality" being encapsulated in the linguistic "map" of "territory"), that point is fair enough, but its not a particularily modern idea, and I don't think that K. would necessarily have an issue with certain aspects of this metaphysic. Many, including him, I think, would say that the first 2-4 lines of the book of Genesis are specifically formulated to establish and imply just that. The point is, scientific endeavor, another "map" to you I think, gets caught in the very conundrum that you identify, and it leads to places and definitions of humans that do not come without a price, reguardless of whether they are more "Real" or not. I acknowledge that this pespective comes from a "map" that K. has drawn for himself. I have to go now but I shall return and answer the 9/11 thing later. 69.111.110.138 23:12, 4 November 2006 (UTC)HB[reply]

"Reading of Kass"? I meant that as a reading of modernity. I talked about GS to show that I disagree with Kass about modern thought, and that the most extreme version of "modern thought" bears little resemblance to his strawman. In other words, I didn't mean to call it a new idea, I meant to say it appears at the center of modern thought (you can see a hint of this in Newton's rules for science) and this flatly contradicts K's claim about what modernity says (at least the way you summarize it in that quote). Incidentally, what do you mean by "Reality" being encapsulated in the linguistic "map" of "territory"? I can think of one or two meanings I'd agree with, but let's make sure.

I want to add one point about the practical social argument that Kass makes. He says science and reason (examination of the natural world) can't supply moral standards. Therefore, he says, society may fall apart without external standards that someone like me would call irrational. But pretty much everyone in the western world claims to agree on the moral goodness of freedom. Even anti-feminists cloak their arguments in talk of true freedom or true happiness. They've implicitly conceded the moral, unprovable part of our side's argument, leaving mainly factual claims that allow science and reason to shine. For example, we know that not all women want children, and current science cannot justify the claim of a widespread inner need for children (see Rules 1 and 4 at the Newton link). Dan 00:54, 5 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK. To your reading of "modernity": I suppose I should choose my words better, as I don't want to get into a larger discussion of modern thought. I was trying to point out certain trends that K. would call dangerous in some way, though not outright undesirable. The assumptions of modern biological (he is a bio-ethicist, after all) science, for example, are oriented around the principles outlined above. I would point to evolutionary biology (an aspect of modernity too, I hope you would agree), with the theory that natural selection acts upon random mutation alone in DNA as the vehicle through which evolution of species occurs. I would also point to the fruits of that human endeavor, including, but not limited to, the project of the sequencing of the human genome and identification of all human genes (a "cracking the code" if you will), as examples. I recognize that GS would call these "maps" and state that they do not necessarily get to the heart of the matter, or are as incomplete as any other endeavor, but that is beside the point. They inform a certain way of seeing humans, and that viewpoint is dangerous to K.

Then let him explain who believes this viewpoint and what exactly it says. (On the surface, it sounds like a strawman version of liberalism as its enemies see it.) Then let him explain why reason can't solve the problem, and refute the practical arguments saying that it can.

To your next point: "Al-Qaeda starts from a particular view of human origins, nature and dignity. In their view, our humanity derives from our special creation by Allah, "by whom you demand one of another -your rights-". Both Kass and bin Laden define humanity in ways that seem unrelated to self-consciousness, or even the biological definition. Both seem to favor laws [Important: show me where K. states that U.S. LAW, not Policy, should conform to his vision,

Do you mean to say that he doesn't favor laws against "cloning"? This would surprise me greatly. Google says otherwise, and adds more recommendations for laws. And that just tells us what he admits to openly. His more general arguments seem frankly pointless if we ignore their real-world links to a political movement that loves government force in the "right" place.

and then show me where he states that such laws should be universalized, as the fundamentalist islamicist vision appears to do] that appeal to their personal views for justification, ignoring other principles. Both of them, therefore, implicitly reject the claim that laws exist solely to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (I called this the basic premise of America.)" Let's look a little closer at "the basic premise of America": "We hold these truths to be SELF EVIDENT [caps mine], that all MEN are created equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Perhaps I don't understand what your saying, but it seems to me that Bin Laden and K. have some impressive company. Again: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which connected them with another, and to assume ... the separate and equal station which the LAWS OF NATURE and of NATURE'S GOD entitle them ..." I don't see self-consciousness or biological definition here, at least not the way post-darwinian biology would define us. Incidentally, I also don't see anything about women. This is not to be infalmmatory, I am trying to make the case that to the extent that K. is similar to OBL, so are the very foundations of our own polity, of whom, incidentally, K. is a member. Your problem seems to be that they reject freedom from the Jeffersonian standard, but that standard was founded via a similar methodology.

When you get right down to it I don't really care what the Founders thought in private, since their practical points do not seem to require any justification beyond my own principles. Nor do I care why people accept the Jeffersonian standard as long as they do. Kass does not. (I alluded to this earlier, but it seems worthwhile to give Ravenhurst's Law in its full form: "We can find similiarities and differences between any two objects or people, and we can label any arbitrary aspect of the situation 'essential'." I started out talking about definitions of humanity because you appeared to think this distinguished Kass from bin Laden. Then I gave my main criterion for lumping them together, namely, their apparent rejection of Jefferson's standard.) But if it matters, Jefferson saw his morality and his (largly separate) Deist beliefs as derived from reason. He even wrote his own gospel to remove the supernatural elements. ("I am, moreover, averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public, because it would countenance the presumption of those who have endeavoured to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquest over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed. . It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself to resist invasions of it in the case of others, or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.") I think he would have called himself an atheist or agnostic had he read Darwin.

Finally on the point of whether K.s conception constitutes an outright rejection of human freedom and an alternate understanding of civics, you may want to take a look at K.'s greatest influence: http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&eid=KassAmy.
To your next point: "I want to add one point about the practical social argument that Kass makes. He says science and reason (examination of the natural world) can't supply moral standards. Therefore, he says, society may fall apart without external standards that someone like me would call irrational. But pretty much everyone in the western world claims to agree on the moral goodness of freedom." Yes, freedom is a nice concept, and important. Indeed, essential for K. But the fact that the ugliest deeds of the 20th century flowed out of one of the most free and advanced and sophisticated civil societies (Weimar Republic) of its time keeps Straussians like K. awake at night (Strauss, as you probably know, was a Holocaust escapee, and a Heidigger pupil until the tables were turned). It is from this perspective, I think, that K.'s skepticism has evolved. Simple appeals to the moral goodness of human freedom, unbounded by anything but rationality, can be dangerous and, at times, catastrophis. "Beware of ideas", the old straussian mantra goes.

By a startling coicidence, expressions of modernity like general-semantics and logical positivism try to offer practical ways to resist tyranny and fascism. GS has influenced the field of therapy and spawned various recommendations for education (the first line of defense). We also have political movements and organizations dedicated specifically to fighting any encroach on our freedoms. Incidentally, it seems to me that if you went back in time and gave modern technology to almost any political/religious group, you could produce deeds as ugly as any act of the 20th century (allowing for the lesser populations of the time). You've offered no scientific evidence for the supposed link between modern thought or freedom, and bloodshed.

Next, the Leviticus stuff: "We know what his preferred book of religious stories has to say. See also this passage." It is not befitting of someone of your obvious intellect (this is not intended as a backhanded compliment) to attribute concepts from a biblical passage upon which K. has no commentary, that I know of at least, to K. If K. claims specifically that these are right, or fosters his own interpretation, find it and cite it. Don't just say "this sounds like K. to me!!" The only Leviticus stuff that I can remember revolves around the dietary laws in The Hungry Soul. He is not a Torah or Talmud scholar, and as far as I know he does not publically accept these books as a coherent whole, with equal weight and merit, handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai, as the Rabbis do. I am willing to be PROVEN wrong on this, but find it in K.s work.

Kass says he can't find sufficient moral standards through reason. He seems to allude to (some version of) the Ten Commandments when he says reason can't even give us a prohibition on adultery. Now, looking at the polyamory community, it seems perfectly true that reason cannot justify a universal prohibition on "adultery" (though for most people it seems to follow logically from Heinlein's definition of love plus the desire for honesty.) I ask, therefore, where Kass gets this desire for a universal prohibition. (I think I know the answer. You can see a liberal response to the implied argument at this new external post. Edit: since conservatives seem committed to hypocrisy -- either social or legal -- as a moral principle, and since Leon's definition of deviancy probably has more to do with birth control than with working outside the home as such, I don't know why you'd think I care what his wife does.) And since he attacks my principles based on what we allegely fail to rule out rather than what we endorse (he mentions murder as well), I turned his critique around on him: where do his stated principles forbid the real-world execution of women for adultery?

Next: "The map is not the territory". Oh God. Help me understand this will you? The map is not the territory, but the word "territory", is a linguistic symbol (for lack of a better term) intended to depict Reality, and hence another map. Thus, the statement "the map is not the territory" is confounded by the paradox that the thing that map is not is another map which is again, not the territory.

Yes, I added a similar point to the criticism section of the GS article. But we feel compelled to postulate the existence of an external world despite the lack of any logical proof or even a clear philosophical picture of what we mean. (Furthermore, while this seems irrelevant to our current discussion, it seems clear to me that we feel this need because we perceive patterns in experience. Science formalizes this process of finding patterns and "explaining" them. So GS sometimes refers to the external world as the "scientific object". Positivism, of course, tries to do away with this assumption. The GS version actually resembles Leibniz in one way: it doesn't require the assumption that external events cause our experience. Instead it assumes a partial similarity of structure, meaning that for some or all of the events we experience, other events occur in the 'same' chronological order in the 'external' world. Supposedly we can make an even greater correspondance between those external events and the events in our scientific maps by testing the maps in accordance with Newton's rules -- if the map says experience X should follow Y, we can try to test it empirically. Meanwhile we look for the simplest model or map that explains the most X. This seems roughly equivalent to our everyday assumption of external reality.) More generally, comparing one level of "abstraction" with another probably requires creating a new representation (or map) of what we observe (territory) so that we can compare it with an older map. Oh well, we have no better method and we literally cannot avoid using this one (unless we die or lose consciousness permanently.) We have practical methods to help try to detect bias in the way we characterize 'data'. Conversation and the practice of reading hostile publications spring to mind. Dan 23:33, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See above for the positive feedback loop, ad infinitum. I need another drink. Free me from this prison.
I am to resume my professional duties soon, and so I will not be able to respond as quickly, but I will respond. You probably are annoyed by now with all of this and would count this as a blessing. I do appreciate you allowing me to be part of this forum and in helping me get back to basics, since I don't get to think this way very often anymore. Thanks again 162.119.232.109 11:29, 6 November 2006 (UTC)HB[reply]

Aleister Crowley

Was looking at the Aleister Crowley article, and clicked on the link Mr. W.H. that you added and ... it is solely about Shakespeare. Shouldn't the link be simply "Mr. W.H." ? Shenme 06:03, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if I follow you. The guy who used that name for his anonymous source wrote about Aleister Crowley, so he very likely knew the reference. If Crowley himself used the name, I would feel certain he knew (see any work by Crowley, and count the references). Dan 07:38, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi

I need help, someone keeps putting garbage n me userpage, what can I do? Dnd293 06:16, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Beats me. Do I know you?

Money

How much money would you be interested in selling your user page for? $686? Please repond asap on my talk page. Many thanks,
Zesty Prospect 16:06, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right, well, listen here you facist dictator. I want your bloody user page for free. NOW!! Its immperitive, i will be killed otherwise you idiot. Angry regrets, Zesty Prospect 15:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Plotinus

Hey Dan how ya doing? I just caught your comment on the Plotinus talkpage, hey come on back and we'll discuss it. LoveMonkey 19:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]