John Searle discusses language as a subject of philosophy, in this fascinating YouTube clip from 1978.
He is speaking with Bryan Magee, a fascinating writer in his own right.
Source: http://cfaille.blogspot.com/2010/08/john-searle.html
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Saturday, August 28, 2010
John Searle
Post under
1970s,
Bryan Magee,
John Searle,
Language,
philosophy
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Games and fun
Post under
games,
Media,
philosophy,
stories
Games play (heh) an important part in my life.
I blame my big brother. He introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons at the impressionable age of, ooh, about 13. It was new and exciting, a fun game in those days, before the news media and fundamentalist Christians had heard of it; a friendly, co-operative game, bringing socially inept geeks together in their common love of fantasy and fairy tales.
D&D has come a long way in the 30 years since then (mostly backwards, at least for the players, although obviously it's kept the publishers in business). But it's also given rise to an entirely new genre: the computer FRPG.
It's not widely appreciated, even by players of both, how different the computer FRPG is from the version with pencils and paper and polyhedral dice. Some people think that writing the perfect computer FRPG is just a matter of coding a big enough world, and faithfully and meticulously translating enough of the rules. But this thinking ignores the most important rule of all, which is the core of the difference.
Put simply: the pencil-and-paper game is a social event - a bunch of people get together to have fun. The computer version is a storytelling medium - the "author" draws up a plot, and the player's job is to find a way through it. There may be many different ways, some arriving at slightly different endpoints, but the basic framework and goal are not negotiable. (True, most human DMs start out with a similar "plot" in mind. But good ones will change it as they go along; only bad DMs will try to force their players to stick to a framework they planned from the start. A well-run game is not so much a story as a symposium.)
And that's why the computer FRPG is a form of art, no matter what Roger Ebert says on the subject; because it's not like the social game that is played between friends. Rather than spending so much time defining "art", I think Ebert should give more thought to his idea of a "game". Games like Neverwinter Nights, the Zelda family, Morrowind, Jade Empire - these are not about winning or losing, or even playing. They are about experiencing a story.
Some of them allow more latitude than others. Resident Evil imposes a fixed path, set out by constant short-term motivators. Neverwinter Nights - the most faithful translation of pen-and-paper rules I've seen - forces you to jump through the hoops laid out in the order required, because there's simply not much else to do. Oblivion, by contrast, gives you near-complete freedom - but there's still a single, central storyline to be completed.
The 2008 version of Prince of Persia is an extreme example. Not only do you have to follow the plot (with virtually no latitude about what order you do things in or what skills your character develops), but when you screw it up, you're immediately returned ("restored") to the point just before you did. This mechanism caused a lot of controversy at the time - some people thought it was taking the risk and the skill out of the game.
But, in truth, none of these games is about risk or skill, any more than watching a whodunnit is about your ability to outguess the fictional detective. They are about the experience.
And that, dear Mr Ebert, is art. Some of it is even, I would claim, good art.
I recently replayed Jade Empire, and I would say that, in script, acting, cinematography and (most importantly) storyline, it stands comparison with decent Hollywood action movies. Zelda: Twilight Princess is by turns engrossing, thrilling and touching, as well as beautifully visualised. Oblivion, while scriptwise a pale shadow of Morrowind, tries to make up for it with technical execution (I recall the first time, stealing through some tunnel, I saw an ogre ahead of me - I almost wet myself).
There's also, of course, plenty of bad art in the genre. Assassin's Creed has a confused and cliched storyline, with little latitude to explore and no attempt to reconcile the inconsistencies. Ditto Freelancer, and Neverwinter Nights 2. Bad writers keep you on the story railroad by putting in arbitrary, unexplained restrictions to what you can do. Whereas the better games either trap you in a storyline where there is always an obvious, immediate short-term goal (Zelda, Resident Evil), or continually nudge you towards the plot with internally consistent motivators (Morrowind).
But even bad art is still art. Good art shows what it can aspire to.
If the computer FRPG were really just a digital version of the tabletop game, then Ebert would have a point. As it is - well, he should try playing through some of these games. Then let's see if he can still maintain that he hasn't experienced some kind of art.
Source: http://itreallyisupsidedown.blogspot.com/2010/08/games-and-fun.html
Monday, August 16, 2010
Dethroning the Imperial I
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article,
artsy,
meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,
morality,
philosophy
From this week's ToTheSource, comes Dinesh D'Souza:
We have witnessed a moral revolution since the 1960s that has altered our public understanding of morality and spurred the “culture wars” that continue to divide America. This moral change cannot be understood simply in terms of “urban values” (Blue America) versus “community values (Red America). Nor is it accurately described, as some Christians describe it, as a slide from morality to immorality.
Rather, the moral shift can be understood in this way. Until the 1950s, most Americans believed that there is a moral order in the universe that is external to us, and makes claims on us. Some might dispute the precise content of this moral order, but its general edicts—be faithful to your spouse, assume responsibility for your family, be honest in your business dealings, exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship—were widely accepted. This is not to say that everyone lived up to the shared moral code, but the code supplied a common standard against which personal conduct could be measured, both by the individual and by society.
Then something changed in the 1960s, and the change continues to reverberate in our lives today. What has changed is that the shared belief in an external moral order has eroded and dissipated. Many Americans (probably most of them Christians) continue, of course, to believe in a transcendent basis of morality. But this view no longer commands assent across the broad swath of society. One can no longer make a public appeal to the external moral code. The Clinton sex scandals were clear proof of this: some Americans considered his actions morally scandalous, but others thought it was no big deal.
The decline of belief in an external moral order has been accompanied by a rising belief in a new moral code. This may be termed the morality of the inner self. Today many people understand themselves as beings with inner depths. When they are faced with an important decision—what to become, who to love, what to believe—they decide not by following their parents, or their teachers, or their preachers, and perhaps not even God. They decide by digging deep within themselves, and following the direction of their inner compass to guide them infallibly in a given situation.
As the philosopher Charles Taylor argues, this morality of the inner self, what he calls the “ethic of authenticity,” emerged in resistance to a rival view, which held that morality is a matter of calculating costs and benefits. Against this utilitarian morality, leading thinkers like Rousseau insisted that morality could not be reduced to crass calculation. Rather, they said, morality means listening to the voice of nature within us. We gain access to this knowledge not primarily by thinking but by feeling
This idea has deep Christian roots. The church father Augustine would have agreed with Rousseau that the mode of moral understanding is inward. But for Augustine we dig within us in order to gain access to the divine voice that speaks through our inner conscience. Augustine contends that God is the lamp that illuminates the inner soul. Rousseau broke with Augustine by severing this connection between the inner voice and any external authority. For Rousseau the inner voice is the sovereign and final authority.
This is the moral code that we have inherited today. It didn’t come to us directly from Rousseau. Rather, it was first adopted by intellectuals and artists in England, France, and the United States. These elite groups, of the kind that dominated the Parisian café, the Bloomsbury society in England, and Greenwich Village in the United States, have been living according to the bohemian code for a long time. What changed in the 1960s is that these values, once confined to small enclaves in society, now became part of the social mainstream. Today the ethic of authenticity is widely popular in America, it is affirmed in countless movies and in the media, and it exercises an especially powerful appeal among the young.
We are wrong to dismiss this as a mere affirmation of selfishness, a rejection of morality. It is a massive shift in the source of morality—away from the external order, toward the inner self. Nor should the new code be understood as relativism or nihilism. It does not affirm that “anything goes.” It insists that the inner voice is morally authoritative and should be followed without question. This is the way that we can achieve Rousseau’s goal of being “true to ourselves.”
I do not believe that this new ethic of the Imperial Self can be completely uprooted, as some people who bemoan the decline of the old moral consensus would like to do. But I am also concerned with the moral danger of conceding final moral authority to the Imperial Self. Human nature is flawed and the “voice within” is sometimes unreliable and sometimes wrong. As Immanuel Kant warned, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
Perhaps a more practical goal is to contain, and perhaps to roll back, some of the excesses of the new ethic of authenticity. This involves a recovered sense of the moral sources that continue to inform our moral self-understanding, sources that can be found in our religious and ethical traditions but which have disappeared from our public debate. The urgent task at hand is to recognize the power of the new ethic of authenticity while steering it toward something higher, to ennoble the self by directing it toward the good.
Source: http://solanobilitasvirtus.blogspot.com/2010/08/dethroning-imperial-i.html
What is Sacrifice?
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Learning,
life,
philosophy,
Sacrifice,
Self Realization,
Srimad Bhavad Gita
In Sri MadBhagvad Gita, chapter four the concept of Sacrifice has been explained. It says every creature is meant to do some sacrifice and unconsciously we do it all the time. However we are never aware what we renounce. All creations are made of five elements Earth, Wind, Water, Fire and Sky.
When we want to attain a certain desire we sacrifice to procure them. Fire is an essential element that is present in all our senses and sense organs, physically and metaphysically. Hence in literal or metaphorical sense fire is termed to be the divine sacrificial tool. As it would burn all into ashes which then sublimes to the rest of four elements.
For instance: Married couples to attain sensual pleasure sacrifice at times their pleasing sights, habits, sounds and peace.” Karma Yogis” or Eucharist’s oblation to achieve some material success are all basic instances.
Similarly to attain self realization some sacrifice all their material pleasures to the fire of Knowledge. The elaboration goes to what we are meant to do , why the term of ultimate truth comes up while it is only self realization of yourself that your physical presence is only their to do prescribed actions of nature, no matter what you desire there is nothing you will take with you. At the end of it all you will get what you deserved.
Detachment is a sacrifice. Some practice celibacy as sacrifice. However what we do not realize is even if we are doing are regular activities, at some point we all sacrifice something which was required for attainment of the goal or certain pursuit.
When Krishna asks Arjuna to stand up, leave all material thoughts to fire and fight is a simple manifestation of what we need to do in our daily life. Instead of being belittle, attached unnecessarily to certain attributes, if nature prescribes a sacrifice of them to move ahead, do not ponder. Only react.
To brief, we should not step back and think otherwise if we are on a certain track for it to be good or bad, at the end we only react to nature’s action. There is nothing that we do on our own. Nobody owns you. Your presence came alone and will leave alone. Your biological parents only reacted to natural science of reproduction. They do not own you.
Once we reach the stage where we have sacrificed all for eternal knowledge, the fire turns all our sins to ashes. Valmiki, who wrote Ramayana, was a miscreant however once he chose to indulge in route to transcendental knowledge all his sins were washed away.
The other revelation in this chapter is the explanation of Braham’s reincarnation from time to time whenever there is some unrighteousness prevalent. It is not necessary that it has to be an avatar or physical being, it could be anything. Even a flood is nature’s force to wipe out the physical beings that are no longer required and have been taking too much from nature without sacrificing anything.
We blame the wars however it too is a cosmic force that made people stand and fight. The way we are going, we are ruling out sacrifice and only taking as much as we can from nature. And it is science that if you do not give something as an action you will never get a reaction and your physical presence hence is not required. Hence there would be a point when we all will perish. It could be anything, nature’s wrath to nuclear holocaust.
Hence sacrifice is nothing however it is surrender in a certain manner to nature. It is a gradual process and even if we go through the Gita several times, the realization of the true essence comes only with prescribed time. With each action we break away from one incarceration. Once we reach where we oblate attachment, the rest of the sacrifices will flow without any thought or emotions. The knowledge of being you will come to you once you follow nature’s course and surrender. When the true knowledge will evince, it will give you a state of absolute bliss and pleasure. You will be nothing; will want nothing however will be afloat profound happiness where love and happiness will only be your rest of the state for eternity
Source: http://childrenofsea.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-is-sacrifice.html
Resisting the Gnostic impulse
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philosophy,
Religion,
spirituality
Gnosticism is a perennial impulse. I don't mean all the mythic confabulations that the bewildering variety of Gnostic sects spun during the first three centuries C.E. I mean a tendency they all had in common. Like the Devil himself, it is deadliest when unrecognized.
To expose that for what it is, however, we need to excavate the two notions that the ancient Gnostics all shared. The first was that the universe as we observe and experience it is evil. It is a prison from which only a few prisoners, able to recognize and accept enlightenment about their true situation, have any chance of escape. Second, and on most of the ancient accounts, the world was created by an errant demiurge of some sort who keeps sparks of the divine, our true selves, imprisoned in our bodies. Accordingly, the task of those who want salvation is to escape the clutches of matter altogether and rejoin that ineffable, purely spiritual Pleroma ("fullness") from which the Demiurge had the ill grace to devolve. It all sounds like an elaborate fantasy to most of us today who have heard it at all. But it actually sprang, and in some forms continues to spring, from a tendency I recognize even in myself: cosmic cynicism.
By 'cosmic cynicism' I mean the attitude which naturally springs up when we disbelieve that the "cosmos," that vast, more-or-less ordered whole we experience, is the product of a Love and a Reason that are one. The cosmos or "universe," in the scientific sense of the term, doesn't care about what we tend to care about most—such as love, goodness, and beauty. Nowadays, of course, many of those who find the universe morally or spiritually wanting tend to be atheists or agnostics. They see much apparently pointless suffering and note, bitterly, that "the innocent" suffer at least as much, if not more, than the villainous. That fortune and deserts do not seem to coincide is the hard truth motivating believer and unbeliever alike to raise "the problem of evil." That indeed constitutes the main objection to any form of theism. And those who find that objection decisive conclude that, if the universe is created at all, its creator must be immoral, foolish, or both--certainly not the all-perfect God of classical theism. That's what the Gnostics concluded; yet, thanks to the historic monotheistic religions, most moderns don't buy the sort of metaphysics that allows for and requires an errant demiurge. So today's cosmic cynics generally conclude there is no creator in any sense at all. The universe is just a brute fact, brutal in its indifference to our most cherished, sentimental pieties. Humanity is just an evolutionary experiment, probably doomed, and certainly not worthwhile in any terms but those of Dawkins' "selfish gene." In good Gnostic form, that is now considered the "enlightened" point of view by most of the culture's clerisies.
Yet how much success would a man have if he tried to induce a woman to marry him by pointing out that their genes, together, have a real good shot at beating out many others in the struggle for survival? Not much; and we can't even imagine a woman proposing to a man in such terms. We need our sentimental pieties, if that's what they are, in order to find life worth affirming. But the Gnostic naturalists urge us not to imagine that Reality cares a whit, or is even capable of doing so. And even those of us, the majority, who aren't really naturalist in our philosophy can't help worrying that some version of naturalism might be true. After all, most scientists are naturalists, and science is the most successful form of intellectual inquiry we've ever come up with. Scientists are today's bearers of "enlightenment." So as we go on being human, indulging our sentimental pieties, many of us can't help being at least a tad cynical about it as we take our cues from the enlightened.
That kind of cosmic cynicism, which we might call "tough-minded despair," isn't just modern. In fact, it has always been with us. One finds it in such ancient philosophers as Democritus and Lucretius, and I suspect that their attitude was more widespread than the written record indicates. But the Gnostics had much larger followings than such thinkers. That's because most people have never been able to believe that the universe is just a brute fact which neither requires nor admits explanation in terms of something that transcends it. There must be some sort of story behind it, even if the self-styled experts tell us otherwise. Or so most people think, as they always have. So we might see Gnosticism as cosmic cynicism combined with a metaphysics that at least purports to explain why such an ultimately futile setup as the universe came to be.
But when we look at Gnosticism that way, it becomes clear almost at once that the Gnostic impulse isn't limited to either Gnosticism properly so-called or to secular, metaphysical naturalism. The largest Eastern religions—Hinduism and Buddhism—don't seem to value this life all that much either. For them, the goal is to attain nirvana by escaping the universe, understood as an endlessly cycling wheel of death and rebirth—and we do that, roughly, by accumulating good karma. "We gotta be good here so we can get outta here." That's the same impulse as the one behind Gnosticism. The Christian notion that creation is a positive good, freely created in love by a personal God, whose aim is to unite it to himself through the divinization of his rational creatures, is not really what we get in Hinduism, Buddhism, or in most other religions originating East of Iraq and west of Hawaii. The largest of them incorporate a cosmic cynicism. The Universe is something to be left behind, not elevated and transformed, when we reach whatever our goal is supposed to be. It's just maya, illusion: the Self's hiding from itself.
One even finds cosmic cynicism in the Bible, from the mouth of Qoheleth. Ecclesiastes got included in the canon largely because it's a kind of reverse preparatio evangelica for the Messiah. But it only works that way when messianism becomes apocalyptic and universal—which is just what we find in Judaism as it approached the time of Jesus of Nazareth. Ultimately, the only antidote to cosmic cynicism is the belief that the Universe is both rational and good, because the Reason that created it has a reason based in Love for doing so. That belief was the engine behind the development of modern science, which began in the Christian Middle Ages.
For most of us, though, the underlying belief in the goodness and rationality of the cosmos comes only by faith through an authority that transcends human reason. We're pretty cynical about authority these days. And that's the other main reason it's so hard to resist the Gnostic impulse. We accept the authority of scientists, more or less, because science works, more or less, in a way that observation and common sense enable us to appreciate. But the things of the spirit? If there is such a thing as "spirit" at all, we seem to face only competing authorities about what it is and what, if anything, it's for.
That is why, I believe, Newman was right to argue that in the end, the only choices are Catholicism and atheism. That choice is not logically exhaustive, but I am convinced the future will show it to be existentially so. Among human beings, only the bishops of the Catholic Church, united with the pope as their chief, claim to be given authority by a God who can neither deceive nor be deceived to say what God has revealed. If there is no such authority, then we cannot know what God has specially revealed, and hence we can maintain no lively sense that God, even if he is Reason in some sense, is Love. We can have only opinions about what various people have said, written, and done about God, assuming there is one. And in the era of postmodernism, we are as cynical about opinions as we are about the cosmos.
Source: http://mliccione.blogspot.com/2010/08/resisting-gnostic-impulse.html
Sunday, August 15, 2010
MISS YOU, YOU AND YOU! ; )
Post under
philosophy
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| nurul hasmira |
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| marissa safia |
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| nur farahin |