“Seus programas técnicos levaram a levaram a avanços interessantes dentro da teoria da probabilidade, mas nenhum novo insight foi acrescentado sobre a natureza da ciência. Seu programa degenerou.”[1]

Resposta – Cética.

“Podemos aceitar que a ciência se baseia na indução e aceitar também a demonstração de Hume de que a indução não pode ser justificada por apelo à lógica ou à experiência, e concluir que a ciência não pode ser justificada racionalmente. O próprio Hume adotou uma posição desse tipo. Ele sustentava que crenças em leis e teorias nada mais são que hábitos psicológicos que adquirimos como resultado de repetições das observações relevantes.”[2]

Reposta – Racionalidade do princípio.

“Uma segunda resposta é enfraquecer a exigência indutivista de que todo o conhecimento não-lógico deve ser derivado da experiência e argumentar pela racionalidade do princípio da indução sobre alguma outra base. Entretanto, ver o princípio de indução, ou algo semelhante, como “óbvio” não é aceitável.”[3] Pois, o “óbvio” depende de nossa educação e é particular.

Resposta – Negação de que a ciência se baseie em indução.

“O problema da indução será evitado se pudermos estabelecer que a ciência não envolve indução. Os falsificacionistas, notadamente Karl Popper, tentam fazer isso.”[4]

[2] CHALMERS, A. F. O que é a ciência afinal? 2009. Editora Brasiliense. P. 42

[3] CHALMERS, A. F. O que é a ciência afinal? 2009. Editora Brasiliense. P. 43

[4] CHALMERS, A. F. O que é a ciência afinal? 2009. Editora Brasiliense. P. 43

Entire cast of Real Housewives of DC at Hume, VA winery « Warren …
The Sherando Times has learned that Michaele and Tareq Salahi of Oasis Winery in Hume, VA are slated to star in the upcoming Real Housewives of DC, the latest installment of a reality series that has developed a cult following on the …

White House State Dinner Crashers Tareq & Michaele Salahi Named In …
“Even before their brush with reality TV fame, the couple had gained some notoriety for a long-running feud with Tareqs parents, Dirgham and Corinne Salahi, over control of the familys Oasis Winery in Hume, Va. …

Entire cast of Real Housewives of DC at Hume, VA winery – Warren …
Entire cast of Real Housewives of DC at Hume, VA winery Warren County Report Newspaper Michaele Salahi , in red, chats with fellow cast members at Oasis Winery…

Couple slips though security to crash state dinner – Democratic …
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=VA”la… Contributor Candidate or PAC Amount Date FEC Filing SALAHI, TAREQ HUME, VA 22639. OASIS VINEYARDS ALLEN, GEORGE (R) Senate – VA FRIENDS OF GEORGE ALLEN $600 general 07/17/00 …

DAVE DUBROW NEWS TICKER: SECRET SERVICE SAYS COUPLE CRASHED STATE …
The couple reportedly is involved in a long-running ownership dispute with Tareq Salahis parents over the Oasis Winery in Hume, Va., which has filed for bankruptcy. Salahi took his mothers attorney to court last year after accusing …

Rumored “Real Housewife of D.C.” Talks Life and Love in the …
Your husband, Tareq Salahi, founded Oasis Winery, located outside of D.C. in the beautiful hunt country of Hume, Va. Is that also where you reside? Yes, we live in Hume and absolutely love it. We also have a farm house in the Shenandoah …

El Mon de la Politica i altres consideracions.: Hume i Rousseau …
Lamentablement, Hume va malinterpretar el seu galanteig. Quan lambaixador, Lord Hertford, va ser reemplacat, l estada de Hume en el paradis va arribar a la seva fi. Mme. de Boufflers li va demanar que ajudes a Rousseau a aconseguir …

El Taller de Creativitat de Jacob: Al fons de la bota
Lil·lustrat escoces va carregar amb vehemencia contra els canons i, en certa manera, va ser el pare, el rebesavi, del tot shi val. Hume va ser un tenac enemic de la metafisica i, es clar, no es poden llencar els deus a la foguera …

Spheres, Shifts & Societal Transformation: Preaching this Sunday …
Manassas, VA 20110. The message I will be preaching will be titled, *CHRIST OUR REFUGE OF HOPE*. As of right now I believe my text will be from Psalm 62:5-8. v.5 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. … Brian Francis Hume: United States: I do consider myself a man of fierce passions—including, but not limited to: pursuing the Lord; loving my beautiful wife, Aneta; reading (spiritual, leadership, cultural, business, etc.) and writing; fathering the …

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How mind acquired knowledge? (Nov. 25, 2009)

Berkeley, the British philosopher of the 19^th century, insists that we cannot directly comprehend objects with just our senses: our senses are causally linked to phenomena that are affected by the objects. In this case, the “existence of objects” becomes problematic if we try to insert a third transmission factor between the subject and the object to account for our comprehension. The traditional reflection that we need a speculative concept-based system of thinking to mediate between object and subject has been disrupted by physical sciences.

By the by, the conviction that transformations of our senses lead to comprehending brute matters relied on a double proof: first, the impossibility of acquiring knowledge by the sole speculative thinking and second, empirical research enhanced our knowledge base.

Hume, another British philosopher, claimed that causal relations, among other concepts considered essential, cannot be understood from matters that are offered to our senses.  According to Hume, the sensed brute matter is our only source of knowledge and thus, it modifies our understanding but never leads us to formulating laws: “empirical knowledge is never certain”. Hume warned against indulging into metaphysical concept (as the true opposite to objectivity); this word “metaphysic” aroused this erroneous fear that got the subsequent contemporary philosophers rattled and wrote thousand of obscure pages just to sounding objective. This anxious fear of extending metaphysical notions prompted philosophers into describing objects as equivalent to their qualities or characteristics, thus, evaluating relations is equivalent to evaluating qualities.

Consequently, contemporary philosophers reached this understanding that sure and stable knowledge has to be founded on reasoning such as it is done in geometry and the principle of causality. The paradox, said Einstein, is that we learned that most reasoning systems do not necessarily generate certainty in any field of science or that are intimately necessary for our knowledge development.

Bertrand Russell in his “Inquiry into meaning and truth” stated: “We all start with the realism that objects are what they appear: grass is green, snow is cold, and stone is hard. Then physics teaches us that color, heat, or hardness are different in quality or characteristics of what we might have experienced. The observer is in fact registering the impressions of the grass, snow, or stone. When science attempts to be objective it sinks, against its will, into subjectivity. Thus, naïf realism leads to physics, physics then demonstrates that realism is false. Logically false, and thus false.”

To avoid their concepts being labeled “metaphysical” then Scientists have been formulating boundaries or axioms to their concepts; for example, in order for a concept not to degenerate into metaphysic then first, enough numbers of propositions must be linked to the sensed world and second, the conceptual system must have essential functions of re-arranging, organizing, and synthesizing the sensed “reality”. A system expresses a game of logical symbols ruled by logical arbitrary given propositions.

Einstein is not bothered at all by the term metaphysic; he does not mind accepting an object as an independent concept in spatial-temporal structures. As he views it, it is unavoidable bypassing metaphysical concepts and thus, there should be no need to be apprehensive of a concept being considered metaphysical. Einstein thinks that concepts are logically creations of the mind, that it cannot be due to inductive reasoning from the sensed experiences. For example, prime numbers are considered invention of the mind. Yes, that concepts are extracted from the sensed brute matters is a reasonable contention, what is wrong is to exclude all concepts not considered to be related to the sensed world as metaphysical concepts.

What is so fishy about contemporary philosophy is that they avoid dwelling on the processes of hundreds of thousands of years that was necessary for human brain to acquire the necessary associations and images of objects and expressions, of metaphors, and then abstract analogies. It is my contention that reasoning methods of induction, deduction, and logical systems of rules are but organizations and descriptions of mental processes of the brain and memories for retrieving and recalling stored information. I believe that the neo-cortex has been undergoing specialized connected areas for expert specialized and restricted disciplines for work or labor divisions. General knowledge is going down the drain that will result in man destruction and moral oblivion.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  We hope you’re having a wonderful time with your friends and families.

Our clip this week continues our coverage on Winter houseplant care and features Glenna Bennett of Swanson’s.

We hope it is as enjoyable as it is educational.  Happy Thanksgiving again, and we’ll see you all Monday!

-Ed

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities

This should be over the front door of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

Oh, yes he does.

In recent weeks we have been chatting about growing houseplants in the home.  So today, let’s discuss one of the major problems you can experience at this time of the year: providing adequate humidity for your houseplants.

Of course, this whole problem comes about because as the weather get colder outside, we jack up the temperatures inside and the air becomes hot and dry.  Not good for houseplants, and really not very good for us either.  So how do we provide humidity for our houseplants?

Often I hear the recommendation that one should mist their houseplant leaves with water once a week.  Then I hear someone else say twice a week, then another once or even twice a day.  That’s a bunch of garbage, unless you’re happy with becoming a slave to your plants.  Here are a couple of my recommendations:

1) Place a glass or decorative vase of water near your houseplants.  As the water evaporates, it provides the humidity your plants need.  You can simply hide the container of water behind the plants and you’ll hardly see it.  If it’s a fancy decorative vase, you may even want to display it out front where it can be admired for its beauty.  After all, who other than you will know it’s there to provide humidity for nearby houseplants?  Refill and change the water in the container every few weeks.  Isn’t that loads easier than misting it twice a day?

2) Another option is to place your plant on an “island of humidity.”  You can do this by simply taking a water-proof tray or saucer, filling it with gravel or small decorative stones, then adding water almost to the top of the gravel/stones.  Once the water is at the proper height, place your houseplant on the stones.  Thus, you provide an ocean of humidity around your plant.  Again, this solution offers no muss, no fuss, yet solves the humidity problem.  As a matter of fact, this method is as old as the hills, one your grandma or her grandma would have used to provide humidity for houseplants.  In the days of wood stoves, women often would even put a kettle of water on the stove to help provide humidity for both humans and houseplants.  It just goes to show you:  If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

It is often recommended that houseplants be placed fairly close together in the home so they create their own environment.  This isn’t a bad idea, especially during the winter when the air tends to be so dry inside.

One really difficult group to treat for humidity is plants that are placed on high shelves or in indoor hanging baskets.  Of course, that’s because the air becomes hotter and drier the higher in the room you go.  However, I have a solution for those areas too!  If it’s a hanging basket, simply bury a small glass along the edge of the basket (for example, a small mason jar or personal-sized jam jar).  Don’t forget to keep it filled with water.  And remember: it has nothing to do with watering.  It’s there only to provide humidity, so you will have to continue watering as normal.

It’s always good to keep in mind that most houseplants are tropical, so they are accustomed to humid conditions, and those are the conditions in which they thrive.

I’ve been giving some thought to the objections that have been raised by those who see anthropocentricity as an objection to creationism or even theism. The epistemological gap is fundamental and cannot be avoided. I can only see the universe through my perceptions and then rely on my perceptions of others to come to what really amounts to a perception-consensus about what truth is. Nobody in the RichardDawkins.net forum seems to account for the fact that even a unity of thought, as to what scientific observations/perception mean, does not warrant the conclusion that the issue of how the universe or Man came to be is resolved.

Name one scientific rule that is wholly infallible and which can never be changed. Does evolution theory get a special dispensation from its believers? Why not admit that evolution may very well be only a partial answer, a best answer, but certainly not the final answer? Until one ‘gets off the dime’ on the position of absolutism, there cannot be the possibility of argument. If either the the evolutionists or the creationists have the absolute final answer, there is nothing to talk about. If there are, among them, those who are willing to come off the absolutism platform, at least for purposes of argument, a discussion can be had.

As Denish D’Souza points out, for example, it may very well be that is has been accepted as a rule that light travels at 186,000 mph. However, no scientist knows whether that is true in all places in the universe or near wormholes or blackholes, assuming these exist. If there is a background noise, we don’t know what happens to light at the ‘edge of the universe.’ The law of physics as they apply to light, for example, are subject to revision. In several places in the God Delusion, and in Dawkins’ Darwin Lecture at Stanford, he does unequivocally claim that natural selection and evolution are the only plausible answer(s) for all that is — thereby allowing him to eliminate one more god from the list of others who have fallen at the hands of intellectualism and science. Nevertheless, he has not, and cannot, defeat the human conception that there is something higher than genetic destiny and that higher thing sits outside of our personal/human condition.

The response that I see to the anthropocentricity objection is essentially as follows:

I am the center of my perception as you are to yours. The further we look into the world the more we come to an understanding of the atomic universe and the principles that govern it. Incredibly, microbiology seems to be coming up with many of the same findings or observations that the astrophysicists are (i.e., as to the atomic structure of all that is and the rules that govern it).

Similarly, the further out we look into the universe, we revert to a principled view of the atomic universe. Under either analysis, we come back to the same place and remain the center of our universe. We are the center of our universe and we always come back to the same place — as we must. Can you separate yourself from your perceptions? What is it that you know about the universe that has not come through and by perception?

Just think about it — at any given time, you are at a center of Earth since it is a sphere. (unless there is a desire to get into a discussion about the earth’s magnetic fields and pole alignment). Indeed, you can begin measuring away from yourself in any direction and will reach the same infinitude in terms of space and time. Prove otherwise. Until the astrophysicists can measure from Earth to the ‘background noise’, the presumption seems to be in favor of treating the Universe as though it is infinite in any direction.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that we are so anthropocentric and limited by our human condition. My own anthropocentric perception is unique and cannot be the mere byproduct of a genetic destiny and yet be so vastly different from the perceptions of others. Again, animals seem to have a limited sense of self and the ability to change the self. Humans seem to be created by evolution, or otherwise, as something completely different as to function and purpose (or lack thereof).

We are each undeniably the center of the universe known for us. Separate yourself from your perception and you might have the opportunity to live the life of an animal. Our awareness of our own perception dictates our ability to strive for change in the self, environment, and a glimpse of something higher than ourselves. Our perception is the beginning of freewill. The question seems to be whether our ability to engage in freewill (moral behavior by ‘choice’) is the result of being created/evolved from something higher or different than the general animal kingdom. In any event, the anthropocentric position is equally applicable to evolutionists as well as the creationists. Self loathing by either side doesn’t seem to fix this fundamental problem.

Absolutism has absolutely no place in human existence where it has to be admitted that human perception, even in groups, is subject to revision.

Antoine Bechamp

In 1932 a booked titled “Bechamp or Pasteur?” was published under the name E. Douglas Hume. Hume was actually a woman who had to ghostwrite under a male name to get her book published. Hume wrote about Antoine Bechamp, a contemporary of Pasteur. Bechamp was department chair at the University at Lille, France and the most respected professor and researcher at the time.

Bechamp was a talented and committed researcher who cared more for what was going on in the lab than awards, politics or personal appearances. He worked nearly everyday of his life until his death at age 93. Bechamp reasoned that it was not the pathogens that caused disease, but rather the condition in which pathogens lived. Disease happens when an imbalance causes some of pathologen (bacteria, viruses, yeast) to take over. What causes the imbalance? Poor nutrition, overloaded or weak immune system, stress. This seems like such a simple idea, but it is the fundamental question of the whole controversyto this day. Even Pasteur, agreed that pathogens do not cause disease alone. Dr. Price was convinced that the change from traditional diets high in vitamin A and D to “foods of commerce” was a significant factor in the rise of TB rates.

I encourage you to do a little research on Pasteur, you will discover the following:

• Pasteur had background no in medicine or physiology; he was trained as a chemist
• Pasteur likely created the disease known as “hydrophobia,” rather than found a cure for it.
• Pasteur started the horrific practise of vivisection. Still in use today, it is responsible for much needless suffering of animals.
• Pasteur was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people inoculated with his unproven vaccines, and indirectly for thousands more when disease was introduced by other unproven procedures developed by Pasteur.
• Pasteur was more a merchant than a scientist, with his frequent reporting of false test findings and fraudulent data, which always had two purposes: self-promotion and profiteering from the sale of drugs and vaccines that were often made mandatory by legislators.
• Pasteur’s methods of treatment actually killed Alexander, the King of Greece, for a disease he did not even have.
• Pasteur frequently avoided working on naturally diseased subjects, instead he introduced the idea of inducing sickness by giving disease injections into healthy subjects.

As for his Germ Theory, there was a great deal of opposition to it among many researchers of the time.

In a lecture given in London 1911, M.L. Leverson, MD stated:

“The entire fabric of the germ theory of disease rests upon assumptions which not only have not been proved, but which are incapable of proof, and many of them can be proved to be the reverse of truth. The basic one of these unproven assumptions, wholly due to Pasteur, is the hypothesis that all the so-called infectious and contagious disorders are caused by germs.”

Rudolf Virchow,the discoverer of the cell theory, with respect to the Germ Theory, commented:

“Germs seek their natural habitat – diseased tissue – rather than being the cause of diseased tissue.”

Virchow thought that the presence of germs identified a tissue as diseased, and was not the cause of disease. A weakened or diseased tissue was a target for pathogens, providing a hospitable environment in which they can thrive. Quite different from germs having caused the weakened tissue in the first place.

Bechamp graphically showed the same idea when an amputated arm was brought into his lab. The patient’s elbow had developed gangrene within eight hours after a sever blow, amputation was the only option to save the patient. Bechamp began to examine the severed limb using his microscope. To his amazement he found no bacteria in the gangrenous tissue. After a few hours bacteria began to appear, where initially there were none. Bechamp’s associate, Professor Estor, remarked “Bacteria cannot be the cause of gangrene; they are the effects of it.”

Robert Koch

Robert Koch was racing against Pasteur to find the cause of anthrax, which was killing great numbers of cattle in Europe at the time. He took blood from the diseased cattle and isolated bacteria from it and injected mice with the bacteria. Of the mice that died, Koch cultured their blood and compared it to the original bacteria from the cattle. His postulates are still memorized by medical students the world over as the foundation of the Germ Theory:

1. The organism must be present in every case
2. Must be isolated
3. Must cause the disease in a healthy host
4. Must be isolated again

Each postulate has been proven false, both at the time and even today, but his postulates are still basic tenets of the Germ Theory “religion”. Both anthrax vaccines that Koch and Pasteur developed were near total failures, thousands of sheep all over Europe were killed as part of the “experiment”. Both Koch and Pasteur did everything possible to alter and cover up the results of these failures.

Strike two

Koch developed the first vaccine for tuberculosis, using his postulates. The vaccine was called “tuberculin”. In Berlin, 2000 patients were inoculated with tuberculin. They died at a higher rate than TB patients who hadn’t been treated at all. Tuberculin simply did not work.

Even more upsetting to Koch was the revelation that the Prussian government had made an exclusive agreement with Koch to sell tuberculin and share the profits. This was a political disaster for the Prussian government and a huge blow to Koch’s reputation. It was also an embarrassment for the cause of scientific medicine when the prestige of the scientific method suddenly suffered this failure. Koch never recovered his credibility and today is only remembered for his “Postulates.” However Koch helped arrange the marriage of science and marketing, for which divorce does not appear likely any time soon, especially at present.

Edit: Our podcast is up!  Sorry for the wait.

Happy Monday to everyone, and thanks for stopping by our site!

Our topic this week takes us back into the home to discuss caring for houseplants.  The podcast can be found below:

Ed’s Podcast: Caring for Houseplants

As always, if you’d like to save the podcast for later playback on your iTunes or iPod, right-click the link above and select “save target as” (Mac users select “save link as”).

After this week, we will be shifting gears towards the holidays, so you can expect a lot more Christmas-related content to help you in your seasonal plant-related endeavors.

We hope you all have a great Monday and we’ll see you in two days!

-Ed

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)nació y murió en la antigua ciudad prusiana de Königsberg. Procedía de una familia modesta y de arraigada profesión de fé cristiana. Echó fama de persona metódica y ordenada. A pesar de nunca haber salido de su ciudad natal y sus alrededores, el suyo fue un espíritu cosmopolita y siempre estuvo al tanto de lo que pasaba en el mundo a través de periódicos y libros. La extensión e intensidad de sus conocimientos fueron estimuladas por la penuria económica y el agobio del pluriempleo, que le obligaban a profesar casi la totalidad de las materias de las Facultades de Filosofía de la época. Comprendían las ciencias empíricas -tanto naturales (física, química o geografía) como humanas (historia, filología, antropología) y las “ciencias puras”, como la matemática pura y la filosofía pura, ésta a su vez dividida en dos grandes apartados (la metafísica de la naturaleza y la metafísica de las costumbres) que acabarían vertebrando la propia obra de Kant.

Kant adquirió una cierta familiaridad con la tradición de la metafísica racionalista, de inspiración remotamente leibniziana, sistematizada por Christian Wolff. Éste sostenía que todos los entes que componen la realidad han de ser posibles (es decir, no contradictorios) y existen en virtud de una razón suficiente, de suerte que estos dos principios se bastarían para explicar todo cuanto hay. Un armonismo éste del que ayudarían a salir a Kant el empirismo antimetafísico de Hume y el radicalismo político de Rousseau.

En lo que se refiere a Hume, y por más que Kant no vacile en atribuirle la hazaña de haberle despertado del “sueño dogmático”, la deuda precisa matizaciones. No está claro que el empirismo constituya la teoría del conocimiento más adecuada para satisfacer las necesidades del pensamiento científico, como la de dar cuenta, por ejemplo, del funcionamiento del principio de causalidad. Cuando la priedra lanzada por un muchacho rompe el cristal de una ventana, lo único que empíricamente percibimos es una sucesión de hechos -lanzamiento y rotura- pero no así el nexo causal entre uno y otro, que sería absurdo reducir a la simple secuencia temporal de nuestras percepciones (nadie diría, pongamos por caso, que la undécima campanada del reloj sea la causa de la duodécima cuando oímos dar la hora al mediodía). Frente a la pretensión empirista de que no hay nada en el entendimiento que no se halle con antelación en los sentidos (nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu) un Leibniz habría respondido que ciertamente no lo hay… salvo el entendimiento mismo (nisi intellectu ipse). Si Hume despertó a Kant del sueño dogmático, fue Leibniz quien le previno de incurrir en el sueño escéptico y abandonarse a la tentación de renunciar a cualquier esfuerzo por ir más allá de lo empíricamente dado, con la funesta consecuencia de impedir al sujeto cognoscente la posibilidad de contribuir activamente a la organización intelectual del conocimiento científico en lugar de someterse pasivamente a los rudos y crudos datos suministrados por los objetos conocidos de conformidad con los cánones empiristas.

La “revolución” filosófica de Kant divide en dos la historia entera de la filosofía. Descontando el difuso precedente del humanismo renacentista, la reivindicación del protagonismo del sujeto en la filosofía moderna se remonta a Descartes, pero la de Kant es más sobria y sofisticada que la cartesiana. El sujeto del que habla Kant no es el “yo substancial” de la metafísica racionalista inaugurada con Descartes y que vendría a ser para el criticismo incognoscible, pues no hay manera de confirmar su existencia (Kant reservará para esa supuesta substancia -la res cogitans del cogito, ergo sum- la denominación de sujeto metafísico o “yo nouménico”), pero dicho sujeto tampoco se reduce a inconexas percepciones de sí, como lo quería el empirismo antimetafísico de humeano, pues el yo de “yo pienso” o cogito habrá de acompañar a todo acto de conocimiento, un sujeto que oficiaría como “la condición de posibilidad” de cualesquiera objetos o hechos en cuanto conocidos (recibirá en la jerga kantiana el nombre de sujeto o “yo trascendental”, con lo que el criticismo kantiano pasará a ser llamado trascendentalismo).

De la deuda de Kant para con Rousseau, reconocería deberle poco menos que su “sentido de la humanidad”, obnubilado con frecuencia en los filósofos por un pedante intelectualismo, y consideraba a Rousseau “el Newton del mundo moral”, en el que él mismo había sido introducido de su mano. Cabría decir ahora, que el lugar central ocupado por el sujeto (el sujeto moral y no ya el tracendente) se traduce en la “autonomía” de su legislación moral o su moralidad, la cual el hombre se impone a sí mismo libremente en lugar de esperar a que le venga heterogéneamente impuesta desde fuera. La huella de Rousseau en Kant-más que la de ningún otro ilustrado, cosa que aquél sólo lo fue muy matizadamente- se dejará apreciar con fuerza en el texto Contestación a la pregunta: ¿Qué es la Ilustración? de 1784, donde Kant aventura una famosa caracterización de esta última:

Ilustración significa el abandono por parte del hombre de una minoría de edad de la que él mismo es culpable. Esta minoría de edad significa la incapacidad para servirse de su entendimiento sin verse guiado por algún otro. Y uno mismo es el culpable de dicha minoría de edad cuando su causa no reside en la falta de entendimiento, sino en la falta de valor y de resolución para servirse del suyo propio sin la guía de algún otro. Sapere aude! ¡Ten el valor de servirte de tu propio entendimiento! Tal es el lema de la Ilustración.

Another Winter week comes to a close, and what better way to celebrate your two days of freedom than by sitting back and watching some gardening videos! : )

This week’s clip offers some more tips on how to care for your lawn this Fall to help improve it for the Spring.

Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you Monday!

-Ed

“David Hume was born April 26, 1711 in Edinburgh, Scotland.  His father died the following year and left the estate to his eldest son, John.  John ensured that David would receive a good Presbyterian upbringing and sent him — at the age of 12 — to the University of Edinburgh.  David left three years later, to become a philosopher!

His family suggested he try law, and he tried, but found that it — as he put it –  made him sick.  So he went off to travel a few years in England and France.  It was at a Jesuit College in France that he wrote A Treatise of Human Nature (in two parts), which he published anonymously in London in 1739.

Hume was the ultimate skeptic, convincingly reducing matter, mind, religion, and science to a matter of sense impressions and memories.  First, he agreed with Bishop Berkeley that matter, or the existence of a world beyond our perceptions, is an unsupportable concept. Further, cause and effect were likewise unsupportable.  We see sequences of events, but can never see the necessity that determinism requires.  Further still, his investigations led him to dismiss the existence of a unifying mind within us.  What we call mind is just a collection of mental perceptions.  And finally, without mind, there can be no free will.

I will let him speak for himself.  Pay close attention to some really good arguments!

All ideas are copies of impressions…it is impossible for us to think of anything which we have not antecedently felt by our senses….When we entertain any suspicion in a philosophical term, we need but inquire from what impression is that supposed idea derived.  If it be not possible to assign any, this will serve to confirm our suspicion that it is employed without meaning….

Some philosophers found much of their reasonings on the distinction of substance and quality.  I would fain ask them whether the idea of substance be derived from impressions of sensations or impressions of reflection.  Does it arise from an impression?  Point it out to us, that we may know its nature and qualities.  But if you cannot point out any such impression, you may be certain you are mistaken when you imagine you have any such idea.

The idea of substance is nothing but a collection of ideas of qualities, united by the imagination and given a particular name by which we are able to recall that collection.  The particular qualities which form a substance are commonly referred to an unknown something in which they are supposed to “inhere.”  This is a fiction.

And so…no matter!

There are some philosophers (e.g. Berkeley) who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self;  that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence, and are certain of its identity and simplicity.For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call my self, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure, color or sound, etc.  I never catch my self, distinct from some such perception.

I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collections of different perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement.  Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying their perceptions.  Our thoughts are still more variable.  And all our other senses and powers contribute to this change.

The mind (or self) is a kind of theatre where perceptions make their appearances, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety.  But there is no simplicity, no one simple thing present or pervading this multiplicity; no identity pervading this process of change; whatever natural inclination we may have to imagine that there is.  The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us: it persists, while the actors come and go.  Whereas, only the successive perceptions consititute the mind.

As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of a succession of perceptions, it is to be considered, on that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity.  Had we no memory, we should never have any notion of that succession of perceptions which constitutes our self or person.  But having once acquired this notion from the operation of memory, we can extend the same beyond our memory and come to include times which we have entirely forgot.  And so arises the fiction of person and personal identity.

And no mind!

There is no idea in metaphysics more obscure or uncertain than necessary connection between cause and effect.  We shall try to fix the precise meaning of this terms by producing the impression from which it is copied.  When we look at external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover a necessary connection; any quality which binds the effect to the cause, and renders one a necessary consequence of the other.  We find only that the effect does, in fact, follow the cause.  The impact of one billiard ball upon another is followed by the motion of the second.  There is here contiguity in space and time, but nothing o suggest necessary connection.Why do we imagine a necessary connection?  From observing many constant conjunctions?  But what is there in a number of instances which is absent from a single instance?  Only this:  After a repetition of similar instances the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of the cause, to expect the effect.  This connection, which we feel in the mind, this customary and habitual transition of the imagination from a cause to its effect, is the impression from which we form the idea of necessary connection.  There is nothing further in the case.

Out with cause and effect!

The most irregular and unexpected resolutions of men may be accounted for by those who know every particular circumstance of their character and situation.  A genial person, contrary to expectation, may give a peevish answer, but he has a toothache or has not dined.  Even when, as sometimes happens, an action cannot be accounted for, do we not put it down to our ignorance of relevant details?Thus it appears that the conjunction between motive and action is as regular and uniform as between cause and effect in any part of nature.  In both cases, constant conjunction and inference from one to the other.

Free will is only our ignorance of cause and effect, and cause and effect is an illusion, so free will is an illusion.  Simple.

In all reasonings from experience, then, there is a step taken by the mind (that the future resembles the past) which is not supported by any argument.  Nevertheless, we take this step.  There must therefore be some other principle (than rational or demonstrative argument).  This principle is custom….What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter?  A simple one, though, it must be confessed, pretty remote from the common theories of philosophy.  All belief concerning matters of fact or real existence, is derived merely from some object present to the memory or the senses, and a customary conjunction between that and some other object.  Having found, in many instances, that two kinds of objects have been conjoined (say, flame and heat), the mind is carried by custom to expect the same in the future.  This is the whole operation of the mind in all our conclusions concerning matters of fact and existence.

So long, science!

If we take in hand any volume, of divinity or metaphysics, for instance, let us ask:  Does it contain any reasoning concerning quantity or number?  No.  Does it contain any experimental (probable) reasoning concerning matter of fact?  No.  Commit it then to the flames:  for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.I am at first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, utterly abandoned and disconsolate.  Fain would I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth.  I call upon others to join me.  But no one will hearken to me.  Everyone keeps at a distance, and dreads that storm which beats upon me from every side.  I have exposed myself to the emnity of all metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and theologians.  Can I wonder at the insults I must suffer?  I have declared my disapprobation of their systems.  Can I be surprised if they should express a hatred of my ideas and my person?  when I look about me, I foresee on every hand, dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny, detraction.  When I turn my eye inward, I find only doubt and ignorance.  Every step I take is with hesitation; every new reflection makes me dread an error and absurdity in my reasoning.

In 1739, he returned to Edinburgh, where he added a third part to A Treatise, on morality.  He suggested that morality comes from sympathy, which is an instinct for association with others.  He goes on to say that it is emotions that move us, not reason, and he presages Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism by defining virtue as “every quality of the mind which is useful or agreeable to the person himself or others.”  Even beauty is based on pleasure and pain, and love is based on our desire to reproduce — shades of Freud!.  What little attention this part received was negative.

At this point in his life, he went through several minor political positions.  And he gained a great deal of weight — something unusual among philosophers!  Then, in 1748, he published An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, followed in 1751 by An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.  These were essentially a rewrite of A Treatise.  In it, he included a new essay, “Of Miracles,” wherein he portrays some of Christianity’s most basic beliefs as nothing but superstition!

He continued on that subject with Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, in which he compared Christianity, Deism, and Atheism.  Among other things, he suggests that the world we know — including ourselves — is the result of eons of nature’s experiments.  His friends asked him not to publish it.  They published it for him posthumously (no pun intended).

In 1752, he wrote Political Discourses.  Although he liked egalitarianism (roughly, communism) and democracy, he felt that both were too idealistic.  This book influenced Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism.

In 1754, he published the first volume of the History of England, a book admired by such notables as Voltaire and Gibbon (the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).

In 1763 he went to Paris, where he soon became the talk of the town and was especially popular at the salons of the great aristocratic women of France, who apparently took a liking to his grand body as well as his great mind.  Several years later, he brought the nearly insane Rousseau to England, which turned out to be a disagreeable adventure for both of them.

He died August 25, 1776, of ulcerative colitis.  His friends found the great atheist polite, pleasant, even cheerful, to the end.”

The History Of Psychology, Part 2: The Rebirth

Dr. C. George Boeree

© Copyright 2000 C. George Boeree

Ali.♥

It sure seems like an odd time of the year to be talking about lawn care!  But according to researchers, this is one of the best times of the year to fertilize the lawn.  Feeding your lawn now with the proper type of lawn fertilizer encourages root growth, and as they say, “The better the root growth, the healthier and sturdier the top growth next year!”  So when do you feed the lawn and what type of lawn fertilizer do you use?

I like to pin point garden projects with important dates because I think they are easier to remember.  So with Fall feeding, I associate with Thanksgiving as being a great time to feed the lawn.

If the grass blades are frozen, do not feed the lawn.  The reason is that as you walk across the frozen grass blades they break, leaving footprints in the lawn.  To me that looks rather ugly, and the footprints will remain for several weeks.  However, if there is snow on the lawn, many consider that an ideal time to fertilize because as the snow melts, it tends to carry the lawn fertilizer deeper down into the root zone.

What type of lawn fertilizer do you use?  Don’t use just any old type of lawn fertilizer.  Be certain to use a Fall or Winter type of lawn food.  The reason for this is that the Fall and Winter types of fertilizers are slow release formulas.  In other words, they stimulate very little top growth and instead encourage root growth.  After all, who wants to be out mowing the lawn at this time of the year?  But at the same time, feeding now will encourage better greening of the lawn over Winter, so the lawn should look really nice.

Many researchers say this is maybe the most important feeding time of the year.  This is based on the fact that Winter feeding has proven to encourage better root development.

It’s best to use a lawn spreader to spread the fertilizer, as one will get a much more even distribution of the lawn food.  For this job you can use a drop spreader, cyclone spreader, or a small hand held cyclone spreader.

I am often asked about “thatching” the lawn at this time of the year.  I really suggest that you wait until Spring to do this task.  In the Autumn, the grass hopefully is not growing much, so if you thatch it, it will take weeks and maybe even months for the lawn to recuperate.  Consequently, the lawn will look like the Mojave desert for most of the Winter.  I would suggest you wait until early Spring to thatch, when the lawn is about to begin growing again.

If you want to punch some holes in the lawn for better drainage or aeration, I think Autumn is a good time to do it.  Why?  Because the soil is a bit more moist and it is easier to penetrate the turf with an aerating tool.

Remember to wash out and clean up your spreader after you have made your application of Fall or Winter lawn fertilizer.  In fact, this is a good time to clean up and sharpen all of your garden tools so they’ll be ready for Spring.

Sincerely,

Ed

In case you wonder why I am not posting much now, it is because I am trying to come up with an interesting idea for my next project and the workshop next week. I can tell you right now that it will have to do with defacement of portraits in Maya art and architecture. This project will work along these theoretical lines:

Defaced people on a ballcourt panel from Cancuen

The human subject emerges from relations of exteriority and from parts to whole. In the empiricist philosophy of David Hume, Deleuze (1991) finds an alternative to the linguisticality of experience that has been part of the Kantian and Hegelian traditions. Based on Deleuze’s reading of Hume, DeLanda argues that subjective experience is formed from distinct and separable sense impressions. Ideas derived from these impressions are direct replicas of the impressions without any representational link (as a contrast to Kant’s faculties of representation). The ideas only have a lower intensity than the impressions (cf. Bergson 2004). Therefore, each kind of impression (visual, aural, passion) has a singular individuality and existence. They are heterogeneous and cannot be reduced to one another (DeLanda 2006, 48-50). Emotions and senses like sight and hearing are depicted in the expressive record in the Maya area (Houston et al. 2006). This data can be used to understand how these impressions were understood from the ideas formed by the impressions.

The subject pursues a goal through the principle of utility and establishes relations among ideas through the principle of association. The association of ideas gives the singular impressions and ideas a unity, an assemblage. Our habits of grouping ideas and comparing them transform a population of individual ideas into an emergent whole (DeLanda 2006). Habitual repetition creates a stable identity for the assemblage and habits sustain the association of ideas (cf. Turner 1994). The human being is habitual and creative at the same time.

On the personal scale, the main effect of language is to form beliefs. To believe in the ideas brings them closer to the impressions. However, it is often the intensity of a belief that drives social action, rather than its linguistic proposition and semantic content (DeLanda 2006, 48-52). Thus, human agents did not study, analyze and contemplate the monumental iconography into the cosmological and symbolic details described by various Mayanists (cf. Normark 2008a). Monumental iconography rather worked like Gell’s (1998) sense of index that directly affected the viewer. It was the intensity of the beliefs associated with the impressions of viewing the iconography that created an intense ritual arena. The iconography was also a way for a signifying regime to direct the ideas into a homogeneous form, and these ideas would then affect their components (the impressions) as well.  

The subject emerges from subpersonal components and it interacts with other subjects through short-lived assemblages called encounters, which consists of the co-presence of human bodies and materialities (DeLanda 2006, 52-53). Sartre’s (1991) concept of serial action, of how people form temporary series in relation to materialities, is a complementary perspective in the study of social encounters (Fahlander 2003; Normark 2007). Locations where series of people formed and encounters occurred can be found in abundance in the archaeological record: house lots, causeways, plazas, rooms, water reservoirs, sinkholes, caves, quarries, etc. (Normark 2006a). Encounters can also be seen in the iconography (Reents-Budet 2001), detected through the epigraphic record mentioning nobility visiting or interacting with other nobility (Schele and Mathews 1991; Stuart 1999), and the location where this occurred (Stuart and Houston 1994).

An encounter is territorialized by behaviors that define the borders, such as grinding corn in a house lot (Hutson 2004), quarrying stone (Abrams 1994), and the meeting between nobles from different sites (Martin and Grube 2000). Embarrassment and dishonor can be seen as deterritorializing processes in an encounter. We have examples of this in the iconography of defeated captives (Houston 2001; Martin 2001; Schele and Freidel 1990; Schele and Miller 1986). The same event is also a territorializing process for the victorious ruler and the organization of which the ruler was part. Such lethal encounters were eventful and allowed the participants an expressive possibility to display character, such as courage and integrity (DeLanda 2006, 55; Normark 2007). Defacement is an effect of similar encounters.

Draft article: DraftHumeSympathy20091116Agosta 

There is a long history in British empiricist philosophy that engages “sympathy.” There are at least four meanings of “sympathy” in the writings of David Hume, dating to his a Treatise on Human Nature (1739). In today’s post I want to qualify the statement that “sympathy” in Hume means what today we call “empathy.” In selected quotations where Hume conjoins the sympathetic communications of sentiments with the idea of an other individual, “sympathy” means “empathy.” In particular, “delicate sympathy” would capture those features of fine-grained distinction that are characteristic of empathy, but the possibility remains undeveloped by Hume. In the development of Hume’s philosophical activity, “delicacy of sympathy” is swallowed up conceptually by “delicacy of taste.” In subsequent passages (and here is the qualification), “sympathy” means “the power of suggestion” or “emotional contagion” (see above “contagious”; T 3.3.3.5; SBN 604-5). These different, over-lapping, not entirely consistent uses of “sympathy” exist side-by-side in the Treatise (1739) as demonstrated by the textual evidence cited in the attachment. Furthermore, “sympathy” is not a static concept in Hume; but undergoes a dynamic development. By the time of the Enquiry (1751), the push down of “sympathy” behind compassion and taste is complete. “Sympathy” migrates in the direction of compassion as it takes on the content of qualities useful to mankind as benevolence, leaving taste to dominate the field of fine-grained distinctions in the communicability of feelings between persons (“friends”) as well as in the appreciation of beauty.  This former point is essential. Taste gives us an enjoyment of the qualities of the characters of persons in conversation, humor, and friendship that is a super-set of what empathy does with its fine-grained distinctions in accessing the experiences of other persons. The prospect of “delicacy of sympathy” in the social realm of human interrelations is left without further development by Hume. Instead, Hume presents taste as the capacity to discriminate “particular feelings,” which are produced by beauty and deformity. [1] This special capacity to feel is dependent on the ability of our sensory organs to perceive the fine details of a composition. A detailed engagement with these distinctions is attached above.  Please give me the benefit of your comments, feedback, criticisms, impertinent remarks – you get the idea. All signed, authenticated contributions given full credit in the footnotes if this rough draft is ever formally published.

As noted, Hume has at least four distinct meanings of “sympathy” that he uses opportunistically. First, “sympathy” functions in the communicability of affect; next it encompasses what is often described as “emotional contagion,” the communicability of affect without the inclusion of the idea of the other individual as its source; thirdly, it encompasses the power of suggestion; and, finally, it comes to include an element of benevolence, approaching the meaning of “compassion” that we hear in it today. How this series of transformations unfolds is the topic of this story as the meaning of “sympathy” evolves from a communicability of affect to the (re)active sentiment of compassion with which we regard it today. The crucial difference between sympathy in the strict sense and emotional contagion is delimited in terms of a double representation. The opportunity for Hume was to develop the parallel between a “delicacy of taste” and a “delicacy of sympathy,” the latter capturing what we moderns mean by “empathy.” This opportunity is lost, however, and the “delicate” aspects of sympathy end up being gathered together with “delicacy of taste” and buried over in the discussion of aesthetics rather than as a free standing topic in (moral) psychology.

Good morning, everyone!  We hope you’re ready for another week of helpful gardening hints, because we sure are!

We will be briefly stepping out of the home this week to talk about Fall lawn care.  We still plan on providing more information on indoor gardening for you, but we want to stress that just because it’s cold doesn’t mean you should neglect your garden outside!  In fact, this time of the year is crucial for certain types of lawn care.  Below is our weekly podcast covering this topic:

Ed’s Podcast: Fall Lawn Care

As always, if you’d like to save the podcast for later playback on your iTunes or iPod, right-click the link above and select “save target as” (Mac users select “save link as”).

We hope you all have a quick, relatively painless Monday, and we’ll see you all here on Wednesday!

Sincerely,

Ed

One of the most frustrating things about taking an introduction to SLA course is the overabundance of often contradictory theories and the lack of consensus among researchers on what the research questions of interest are, on what is to be measured, and how it is to be measured. Indeed, the very relevance of empirical data to SLA and the nature of SLA as a scientific field have been called into question by some!

Geoff Jordan has set out to put at end to this state of affairs. His book, Theory Construction in Second Language Acquisition (2004, John Benjamins), is what I’m reading at the moment, and after 4 chapters it is certainly the most entertaining and clearly written book on SLA and methodology that I have ever read.

The book begins with description of the problem in SLA as Jordan sees it. The field is divided into two camps with radically different epistemological approaches. There is a rationalist camp, of which Jordan himself is a proud member, and a relativist camp, occupied by the likes of James Lantolf and David Block. The relativists, says Jordan, have latched onto a post-structuralist, post-modern epistemology which declares the relativity of all knowledge and denies an objective outside world to be observed and measured. In this epistemology, science is nothing more than a social construction, and it’s discoveries are only “true” relative to itself. This radical subjectivity and solipsism arises, says Jordan, from a misapplication and over-interpretation of Hume’s problem of induction.

To make a long story short, Jordan is calling for a rejection of relativist approaches to the study of SLA and a renewed focus on theory building, using empirical measurement as a crucial tool.

I find this approach refreshing. We spend a lot of time in class arguing across purposes. It is highly desirable to agree on our research questions and the methods of inquiry that are likely to be fruitful. Moreover, I think that the post-structuralist, post-modern, constructivist movements do nothing but muddy the waters of human knowledge. They wantonly and arrogantly dismiss the collective efforts of 4 centuries of science as nothing but social construction lacking any claims to objective truth. How, pray tell, did that social construction lacking any claim to objective truth accomplish the invention of the automobile? The confirmed predictions of Newtonian mechanics? The harnessing of the power of the atom? Relativism quickly disintegrates into absurdity and nihilism, ignoring the experience of everyday life and rejecting all claims to truth.

I’ve only finished 4 chapters, so I will be posting more on Jordan. Coming up: Jordan evaluates current theories in SLA for their adherence to a rationalist epistemology.

’til next time…

Wahrheit vs. Fiktion

“Was ist also Wahrheit? Ein bewegliches Heer von Metaphern, Metonymien, Anthropomorphismen, kurz eine Summe von menschlichen Relationen, die, poetisch und rhetorisch gesteigert, übertragen, geschmückt wurden, und die nach langem Gebrauch einem Volke fest, kanonisch und verbindlich dünken: die Wahrheiten sind Illusionen, von denen man vergessen hat, daß sie welche sind, Metaphern, die abgenutzt und sinnlich kraftlos geworden sind, Münzen, die ihr Bild verloren haben, und nun als Metall, nicht mehr als Münzen, in Betracht kommen.”

Das sagte einmal der, der gern mit dem Hammer philosophierte. Friedrich Nietzsche, dieser philosophische Krieger, sah bereits, dass die Welt, wie wir sie uns zurechtlegen, nicht unbedingt der objektiven Wirklichkeit entspricht, von der wir alle ausgehen. Lange bevor Einstein uns unserer gewissen, dreidimensionalen Welt beraubte und uns Freud die Macht über unser innerstes Selbst, den Urtrieb, absprach, erschütterte er die bornierten Einbahnstraßendenker seiner Zeit (und der heutigen). Die Einblicke und Erkenntnisse, die das Gefüge der Sprache und ihrer Metaphern der Wahrheit suchenden Menschen eröffnet, bilden nach Nietzsches skeptischer Einsicht eine Welt des Scheins, eine Sphäre der Illusion. Denn sowohl die Metaphorik der Sprache, als auch die Subjekt-Prädikat-Struktur der traditionellen Satzgrammatik, erzeugen schlechterdings die Vorstellung einer “Identität des Dings”, die nunmehr eine Fiktion, eine konventionell sanktionierte Form der Lüge bezeichnet.

Fiktive Wahrheiten

Nietzsche Tagtraum

Für Nietzsche ist es “nicht mehr als ein moralisches Vorurteil, daß Wahrheit mehr wert ist als Schein; es ist sogar die schlechtest bewiesene Annahme, die es in der Welt gibt.” Und weiter heißt es: “Bei allem Werte, der dem Wahren, dem Wahrhaftigen, dem Selbstlosen zukommen mag: es wäre möglich, daß ihm die Scheine, dem Willen zur Täuschung, dem Eigennutz und der Begierde ein für alles Leben höherer und grundsätzlicherer Wert zugeschrieben werden müßte.” Eine Philosophie, die es wagt, den gewohnten Wertgefühlen Widerstreit zu leisten und falsche Urteile als die unentbehrlichsten zu werten, ohne deren Messen der Wirklichkeit an der rein erfundenen Welt die Menschheit nicht leben könnte, stellt sich nach Nietzsche jenseits von Gut und Böse.

Damit nimmt er die heutigen Erkenntnisse der Fiktionsforschung, bezüglich der Wichtigkeit der Fiktion für uns, bereits vorweg. Man weiß inzwischen: Fiktionen kann man als Übungsraum ansehen, um sich mit anderen möglichen Wirklichkeitsmodellen auseinander zu setzen, die der Rezipient mit seinem eigenen Erfahrungshintergrund abgleicht. Durch Einfühlung lernen wir daraus und können uns besser an veränderte Umweltbedingungen anpassen. Es geht hier nicht, wie Käte Hamburger bemerkte, darum, aus Wahrheit Fiktion zu machen, sondern aus Fiktion Wahrheit entstehen zu lassen.

Wahre Fiktionen
Nietzsche zufolge reden wir uns so lange ein, die Natur objektiv zu sehen, bis wir uns nichts anderes mehr vorstellig machen können. Gerade das geht aber seiner Einsicht nach nicht, weil der Mensch grundsätzlich nicht zu Objektivität fähig ist, da er ja selbst immer ein Teil der Natur ist. “Macht man jemandem klar, dass er, streng verstanden, nie von Wahrheit, sondern immer nur von Wahrscheinlichkeit und deren Graden reden könne, so entdeckt man gewöhnlich an der unverhohlenen Freude des also Belehrten, wie viel lieber den Menschen die Unsicherheit des geistigen Horizontes ist und wie sie die Wahrheit im Grunde ihrer Seele wegen ihrer Bestimmtheit hassen,” sagt der Nihilist weiter. Allein aus einem Glauben heraus, der auf wiederkehrenden Beobachtungen basiert, bemühen sich die Menschen um ihr Wissen. Um etwas, das feierlich am Ende als die “Wahrheit” gekauft wird. Schon der Empiriker David Hume meldete daran seine Bedenken an. In seiner Tradition entwickelte Nelson Goodman eine Theorie der Weltenerzeugung. Die Erde steht beispielsweise je nach Betrachtungsweise still oder bewegt sich. Für einen Schildkröterich, der gerade mit seiner Schildkrötin in einer blauen Lagune kopuliert, steht die Erde gewiss still. Für einen Astronomen, der gerade mit einer Assistentin… forscht, hingegen rast sie mit einer Geschwindigkeit von 29,8 Kilometer pro Sekunde durch das Weltall.

Quellen:
Friedrich Nietzsche: Jenseits von Gut und Böse
Friedrich Nietzsche: Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne
Nelson Goodman: Weisen der Welterzeugung

Ausgabe 23, November 2008

La reflexión filosófica de la Ética sobre la moral no tiene forzosamente un carácter normativo-tal es el papel de los moralistas-, aunque su crítica tiene incidencia en el obrar. Esta situación bifronte de la Ética se recoge en la distinción entre la ética normativa y la ética crítica o metaética.

Ética normativa: éticas teleológicas, deontológicas y axiológicas.

La ética normativa es una disciplina filosófica que trata de señalar lo bueno o lo malo en la vida humana, siendo misión de la prhónesis, de la prudencia en sentido aristotélico (tema que trataremos más adelante pues merece mención aparte), su aplicación a la inmensa variabilidad de los casos particulares. Los principales modelos han sido los teleológicos (de télos, fin) y los deontológicos (de déon, deber). El primero viene ejemplificado por la ética aristotélica, en la cual el Bien es aquello a lo que todas las cosas tienden, siendo la eudaimonía (felicidad) el bien buscado por los humanos. La tarea de su ética consistirá en esbozar un modo de vida que nos conduzca a la dicha. Mucho después, utilitaristas del siglo XIX (J. Bentham, J.S. Mill) la asumirán, desde perspectivas diferentes, para promover “el mayor bien para el mayor número”, contribuyendo de algún modo al Estado del Bienestar.

La ética kantiana no se preocupa tanto por la felicidad, cuestión de nuestras inclinaciones, sino de que nos hagamos dignos de ella. Si el fin fuese simplemente ser feliz, la razón no sería el mejor mecanismo, sino un sistema instintivo. Por lo tanto, la razón, como capacidad práctica, deberá tener influjo sobre la voluntad para que ésta sea buena en sí misma, asimilada al cumplimiento del deber por el deber.

Max Scheler, con su Ética axiológica (de axión, valor) trató de otorgar al concepto de “valor” la centralidad que antes detentaran el “fin” y el “deber”.

Ética crítica o metaética: teorías descriptivistas y no-descriptivistas.

La Ética ha clasificado las distintas teorías éticas en descriptivistas (también denominadas realistas o cognitivistas) y no-descriptivistas. Dentro de las descriptivistas, las teorías naturalistas estiman que las condiciones de verdad de los enunciados morales son similares a los de las ciencias empíricas, por lo que los métodos de éstas serían suficientes para dilucidar su verdad o falsedad, sin precisar de ninguna premisa ética, dado que el significado de los enunciados éticos es similar al de aquellos otros en los que no aparecen términos éticos. Tras la denuncia de Hume respecto a la legitimidad de paso de “es” al “debe”, G.E. Moore criticaría esa concepción al pensar que incurría en lo que denominó como “falacia naturalista”. Su posición intuicionista comparte con el naturalismo el que los enunciados éticos pueden ser verdaderos o falsos y que los términos éticos se refieren a propiedades, pero sosteniendo que éstas son indefinibles (en el sentido de que serían tan indefinibles e inalizables como el amarillo), ni empíricamente observables, sino propiedades sólo accesibles a la intuición.

Frente a las teorías descriptivistas (naturalistas o intuicionistas), el no-descriptivismo, con F. Hutcheson y D. Hume, se desarrolló a mediados del siglo XX en el emotivismo de C.L. Stevenson y el prescriptivismo de R.M. Hare. Para el no-descriptivismo, ni los términos éticos se refieren a propiedades ni los enunciados éticos pueden ser parafraseados metalingüísticamente en el lenguaje de la verdad o la falsedad. Si alguien dice: “Esta mesa es blanca” podremos decir de la proposición que es verdadera o falsa, pero si decimos: “Matar es malo”, descritiva, aparentemente, es en realidad prescriptiva, pues “malo” no es ningún hecho del mundo, sino un valor introducido por el que juzga, así que únicamente cabe decir que nos parece correcta o incorrecta. Según el emotivismo, un enunciado ético no describe nada del mundo, sino que expresa las actitudes o emociones del hablante, haciéndose imposible el discurso racional en ética.

Hello all and happy Friday!  Following our theme of indoor flowering plants, this week’s segment focuses on plants that specifically blossom around Thanksgiving.

This is a perfect guide for picking out the perfect indoor flowering plants to compliment your home this Thanksgiving.  We hope it gives you some great ideas and inspiration for adding more plants to your life.

Have a safe, fun weekend, and happy gardening!

-Ed

With Thanksgiving just a couple of weeks away, I think this is a good time to talk about some of the flowering plants you can use indoors to brighten your home for the holidays.

Of course, the most popular of the autumn flowering plants are the Chrysanthemums, better known as “Mums.” These are particularly popular because they predominately come in autumn shades of yellow, orange, and red.  And if you’re on a budget, I think you’ll find they are usually a little less expensive then most other flowering plants or cut flowers.  Plus, when they finish flowering you can plant them outdoors, so you’ll be able to enjoy them as perennials in next year’s garden as well.  I should mention that they also come in a broader range of colors than mentioned previously and that they also come in many shapes and forms.  I recommend the single flowering daisy mums in particular, as they’re our favorites.

Another popular flowering plant is the Klanchoe with its multiple flowering stems, tiny flowers, and large succulent-type leaves.  The advantages of this plant are that it usually flowers for quite some time and, since the leaves store moisture in them, it can go for quite awhile between watering.  The flowers primarily range in shades of yellow, orange, and red.  Incidentally, this makes a nice year-round houseplant.  In fact, it is probably the most popular flowering houseplant in Europe.

In recent weeks, I have noticed quite a few azaleas too.  These are also plants you can enjoy indoors, then plant outdoors next spring after all danger of frost has passed.  The white, pink through red flowers stand out above the attractive bright green evergreen leaves.  These plants sometimes have a tendency to dry out quickly, so be certain to check their watering needs every day of two until you can determine just how much water they require.

When I visited the nursery last week, I noticed dozens of Cyclamen plants in full bloom.  I hope you’ll take a good look at this plant as a possible indoor flowering houseplant for the holidays.  The flowers are unusual in that they point upside down with the flower petals facing upward.  Also, the foliage of many varieties often have some interesting markings.  After flowering, these attractive plants can become year-round houseplants.  I have a friend in Canada that keeps her’s flowering year-round.  She has it growing in the kitchen above the sink on a window ledge, where it gets bright light but very little if any direct sunlight.

Last but not least of the attractive Thanksgiving holiday flowering plants is the “Thanksgiving Cactus.”  It is very similar to the Christmas or Easter Cactus except, as the name implies, it flowers during the Thanksgiving holiday period.  Most have pink flowers, but occasionally you will find them in salmon or white varieties.

Now and again you will even find African violets or miniature roses displayed and sold during the holidays.  In fact, I was in a nursery greenhouse store just a couple of days ago and they had orchids and even some exotic tropical flowering plants.  These options are a bit spendy, but really special.

You’ll find some basic indoor care ideas on our web site www.humeseeds.com in the library section.  And in upcoming weeks, I’ll be discussing houseplant care in even more detail, right here in this weekly column.

Remember: Our relationship with the planet today is tomorrow’s future.

Sincerely,

Ed