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Chapter 34 - A new Dualism

  Chapter 34 Spiritology We began by noting the centrality of certain philosophical questions to the nature of our existence; such questions that humans have asked, as far as we can know, everywhere and since forever. So important were these matters that those rare individuals among us who at least *seemed* to have the best answers were feted and held in high regard. We noted that, for most of history up until the Baroque period and the scientific revolution society’s philosopher was often also the theologian and the scientist, and oft-times the physician. And what is the problem? Our first question was “who am I?” I experience my life very much as a passenger in this body. Happily, so far, the various bits all seem to work satisfactorily. I experience, or generate, thoughts and moods .. the extent to which I feel *in control* of these thoughts and moods is variable and debateable, but my sense is that I control them. On the flip side, I am stuck in this body. I have found no way t...
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Chapter 33 - The case of i

  Chapter 33 The i example All through the day, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine All through the night, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine Now they're frightened of leaving it Everyone's weaving it Going on strong all the time, All through the day, I me mine. Wikipedia says:”  " I Me Mine " is a song by the English rock band  the Beatles  from their 1970 album  Let It Be . Written by  George Harrison , it was the last new track the group recorded before  their break-up  in April 1970.” George wouldn’t like it, but here’s a different take: All through the day, we know we exist All through the night, we know we exist (etc - you can make up the rest). And we can cheekily ascribe Harrison’s *i sing therefore I am* to Rene Descartes, renowned as the father of modern philosophy, renowned for his aphorism “I think therefore I am” (= cogito ergo sum), and *also* renowned for advancing his signature mind-body dualism. But Descartes was also a mathematician, a...
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Chapter 32 - The Noble Motive of the Humanities Faculty

  Chapter 32 The Noble Motive We began in the first chapters noting the drive of humans to understand the bigger questions of the life we lead here: who we are, what is going to happen, and what should *we* do. We noted the status philosophers have enjoyed since civilisation’s beginning, and we thought that merited while philosophy was synonymous with wisdom and knowledge. And the *relative* fall from grace that philosophy has witnessed, in contradistinction to the rise of the status of science, would reasonably irk the academic invested in the place Humanities holds in academia. It would be arguable that the anti-science attitude many non-science academicians hold can be put down to professional envy and competitiveness. Without doubt academics are a very human lot, subject to every vice common to humankind, and capable of any wrong other humans are subject to, but perhaps plain envy and competitiveness does not *fully* explain the resistance Humanities display to the mechanistic,...
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Chapter 31 - The Wages of the Seven Sins

  Chapter 31   “…the wages of sin is death” Romans 6:23 It is no idle matter to have written a book that was to become the most referenced philosophic work of the 20th Century, and it would be a naive notion to imagine the  impact  of such a book is not a matter worthy of exploration. The contention here, though, is that virtually the entire philosophic content of the book is trivial, or exaggeration, or misleading, or patronising, or selective, or otherwise a misrepresentation to some degree of the realities of science and scientists. It is a further contention that such misrepresentations have had *consequences*: firstly in academia, and then to the rest of our interdependent society. As consequences propound and reiterate, it behooves us to reverse malign trends for a better way forward. As it happens, the malign consequences of the global embrace of SSR can be classified by the seven “sins” already outlined. Each “sin” has had its own perverse effect.   Sin ...
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