Pythagoras first coined the term "philosophy" to mean love of wisdom. Philosophy goes deeper than knowing about the world because it considers knowing about knowing. It is the realisation that even when you know about knowing you still have to know about knowing about knowing and so on, ad infinitum, so knowledge is an endless analysis of questions about answers. Philosophers call this an infinite regress.
Science seemed to break free of the regress by focusing on the material world and making models of the world. The model could be mathematical or it could be something as practical as a steam engine which is a model of transferring heat into motion. Science yields a working description, a model of the world and calls this knowledge. Science progresses by obtaining ever more accurate descriptions.
The reason people funded science is that it improved technology and this technology supplied better working models that could be traded. Science has made possible a vast number of benefits from antibiotics to solar panels.
Science has not yet provided a good description of what it is to be human. It has shown that dreams and imaginings activate the same parts of the brain as sensations and so has led to the idea that what we see in our brains is a copy of the world, a sort of virtual reality based on our senses. But what sees what the mind's eye sees? It is clear that the model of ourselves is incomplete.
This brings us to religion. If there are more questions than answers then why not stop asking questions and instead feel your way to reality? Unfortunately this technique often leads to unreality.
The introduction of a God or Gods does help with the problem of personal idiocy. If we sit quietly and listen to our thoughts it is obvious that whole words just happen, we don't consciously put together the letter sounds of h-a-p-p-e-n, they just happen. It gets worse, whole thoughts just happen. Where do they come from? Most people don't carefully synthesise the letter sounds of their thoughts and if they laboriously examined the thoughts they would discover that they are just a melange of stuff they have accepted and heard. If they asked "why" and "how" about every thought they would end up in the philosopher's regress and be forced to admit that they just don't know.... Religion offers a way out of the regress, according to religion God says your own ideas of everything are wrong, God is right in all things and it is the devil makes you overthink it. If you follow this you might be lucky enough to be more relaxed and hence happier about life. Sadly to be happy you may have swapped being an idiot for being a religious idiot, but not necessarily.
Lastly we come to Plays.
All the world’s a stage,
This is the modern media conception of the meaning of life: a play, a living narrative. It is a narrative so why not fully embrace the narrative of your thoughts? All you are is the projection of this narrative to other people. You should see yourself through the eyes of others and value yourself by the value they put upon you. The media message is that you should be like an actor, like them. The message has worked, as sales of selfie sticks show.
Unlike religion, which has a stable or slowly changing script that you shouldn't really think about too much, the players are encouraged to live in their internal narrative. A narrative that just springs into mind and is modified with every role and smartphone message.
Actors always work for those who produce the scripts. At present the producers are still in the post-modern phase of tearing apart other ways of seeing life. We can only dread what is coming as the main feature of the media production for the world is released.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Plato.
20/4/2020
Science seemed to break free of the regress by focusing on the material world and making models of the world. The model could be mathematical or it could be something as practical as a steam engine which is a model of transferring heat into motion. Science yields a working description, a model of the world and calls this knowledge. Science progresses by obtaining ever more accurate descriptions.
The reason people funded science is that it improved technology and this technology supplied better working models that could be traded. Science has made possible a vast number of benefits from antibiotics to solar panels.
Science has not yet provided a good description of what it is to be human. It has shown that dreams and imaginings activate the same parts of the brain as sensations and so has led to the idea that what we see in our brains is a copy of the world, a sort of virtual reality based on our senses. But what sees what the mind's eye sees? It is clear that the model of ourselves is incomplete.
This brings us to religion. If there are more questions than answers then why not stop asking questions and instead feel your way to reality? Unfortunately this technique often leads to unreality.
The introduction of a God or Gods does help with the problem of personal idiocy. If we sit quietly and listen to our thoughts it is obvious that whole words just happen, we don't consciously put together the letter sounds of h-a-p-p-e-n, they just happen. It gets worse, whole thoughts just happen. Where do they come from? Most people don't carefully synthesise the letter sounds of their thoughts and if they laboriously examined the thoughts they would discover that they are just a melange of stuff they have accepted and heard. If they asked "why" and "how" about every thought they would end up in the philosopher's regress and be forced to admit that they just don't know.... Religion offers a way out of the regress, according to religion God says your own ideas of everything are wrong, God is right in all things and it is the devil makes you overthink it. If you follow this you might be lucky enough to be more relaxed and hence happier about life. Sadly to be happy you may have swapped being an idiot for being a religious idiot, but not necessarily.
Lastly we come to Plays.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
This is the modern media conception of the meaning of life: a play, a living narrative. It is a narrative so why not fully embrace the narrative of your thoughts? All you are is the projection of this narrative to other people. You should see yourself through the eyes of others and value yourself by the value they put upon you. The media message is that you should be like an actor, like them. The message has worked, as sales of selfie sticks show.
Unlike religion, which has a stable or slowly changing script that you shouldn't really think about too much, the players are encouraged to live in their internal narrative. A narrative that just springs into mind and is modified with every role and smartphone message.
Actors always work for those who produce the scripts. At present the producers are still in the post-modern phase of tearing apart other ways of seeing life. We can only dread what is coming as the main feature of the media production for the world is released.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Plato.
20/4/2020
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