File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0311, message 119


Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:01:01 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, war


I didn't know you were a Sopite, Tocsin. Why we should embrace yet 
another market-oriented philosophy is beyond me: philosophy already a 
commodity, humans the measure of all things, judgemental relativism, 
reason confined to self-interest...

James's claim is not rendered inaccurate by the fact that other animals 
reason any more than the fact that chimps use tools disproves that 
tool-making of a certain kind is distinctive of humans (chimps don't 
engage in the second order reflexive monitoring that is necessary to use 
tools to make tools, etc, and to make history.) Which is not to deny 
continuity, but surely there is discontinuity too. (It's true, though, 
apes do kinda *look* like George Bush and dogs like Tony Blair).

Do I detect alarm bells from the age of mockery?

Clarion



Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus-AT-gis.net> writes
>James Daly wrote:
>
>> > Reason after all is the highest and defining human faculty. It is a
>> > trust that the universe of being is responsive to human values, and
>> > that human goodness is not ultimately wasted, as it was for the
>> > Sophists,
>
>To which Carrol replied:
>
>> This both defames the Sophists and trivializes human struggle. The
>> Sophists virtually invented hope that makes sense, that is the hope that
>> through human struggle in a universe indifferent to humans we can build
>> something halfway decent for a while.
>
>I'd also like to point out that the claim "Reason after all is the highest
>and defining human faculty" is inaccurate.  Research over the past ten years
>or so has shown that various higher mammals (certainly chimpanzees and some
>other simians, also if I remember right even dogs and cats) do in fact
>reason, even if not to the degree of sophistication, self-awareness,
>self-delusion, arrogance, and incredible stupidity that humans do.  Many
>mammals also experience emotion.  All told, we're pretty continuous with the
>rest of the animal world, actually (and as a radio network in the US likes
>to mention, an ear of corn has more genomes than people do).  For my money,
>one of the most distinctive things humans do is pun, and it's arguable that
>our crowning acheivement is the ice cream cone.  (Hey, that's not as silly
>as it sounds.  Mathematically, it's a work of beauty; the combination of
>milk, salt, ice, fruit, nuts, chocolate, wafers etc is an astonishing feat
>of agricultural and chemical creativity, and refrigeration is no small
>technological accomplishment either; its evanescence encourages one to
>progress toward the spiritual goal of attention to the Now; as a union of
>Italian gelato and [I think] Syrian wafers that was invented during [I
>think] a Chicago World's Fair about a century ago, it demonstrates the
>possibility of a joyful intercultural fusion; and how can anyone think of
>war or even be angry when laying seige upon an ice cream cone?  A true
>example of a dialectical absenting that absents a constraining or
>destructive absence.)
>
>Hungrily, T.
>
>---
>Tobin Nellhaus
>nellhaus-AT-mail.com
>"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
>
>
>
>
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