Hi PGC With respect, you've embarked on a fools errand there, PGC. Given the way John has framed the task any contribution made by xyz will end up not being a contribution in philosophy. Take Charles Pierce who pretty much founded semiotics and made contributions in fields as diverse as psychology and chemistry; or Frege who invented predicate logic; or Descartes work in mathematics, or Leibniz's invention of calculus; the big punch line has to be that either these people were not philosophers or their important contributions were not in philosophy.
Whats needed is a defense of philosophy. John's task is based on an unjustified assumption that he made in his opening post. He argues that philosophers are just reporters; that in, for example, the field of method they just report on what scientists have always done. Thats just uninformed garbage. Firstly, there hasn't ever been a method scientists have always employed. Secondly, there is always an argument between scientists over how to proceed correctly. This is particularly evident in the cognitive sciences where there is an acute difficulty in equating some objective measurement to some subjective experience. The benefits and pitfalls of quantitative over qualitative methodologies is argued about within neuroscience departments the world over. Students are preached to about Popper and falsificationism in one lecture and in the next they are told that this methodology is inherently should be abandoned. Even in physics, the 'hardest' of hard sciences, there is trouble afoot with string theory, and a debate rages as to whether it is falsifiable, and then whether that matters. You take your stand and you argue your case and in doing so you engage in: philosophy. So, even if it is a scientist arguing that qualitative methods are (or are not) worth persuing, he is making a philosophical argument. Even John, right now, is doing the very same thing. He is engaging in philosophy. He is expending all this effort on what he has argued is worthless. He is one big hypocrite whose very position defeats itself. The position that the only things that have value are tangible scientific results is of course not in itself a scientific result. John is an unwitting positivist who falls into the same logical trap all positivists do. All the best Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 22:58:21 +0200 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: [email protected] To: [email protected] On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 9:18 PM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy <[email protected]> wrote: > deep, clear, precise, unexpected, and true + discovered in the last 2 > centuries by philosopher who is "not scientist" by John Clark's arbitrary > standards? Ok. Aldous Huxley, writer and philosophical mystic, not > "scientist" in your book, But I loved his book Brave New World, I first read it when I was about 10 and reread it just a few months ago. > discovers and articulates to the broad public that mescaline is effective at > eliciting a subjective experiences that harmonize with the following kinds of > philosophies, observations, and mysticisms: People have been drinking alcohol for at least 7000 years because it alters their perception of the world, and they have been eating Peyote, who's active ingredient is mescaline, for almost as long. I like Aldous Huxley, and like his grandfather and brother even more, but I don't see how reporting on something that people have known for thousands of years is new or unexpected. I am corrupt at times, but not this cheap John! Articulating philosophically the overlap between a first person experience and mystic traditions in "Doors of Perception" with "altered states of perception throughout the ages" generally, is pure John Clark philosophy; a philosophy in which 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine and ethanol are just "altering user's perception of the world". This implies a logic wherein a person getting shot, going to a store, shooting heroin, enjoying a piece of cake and a cup of coffee, doing nothing, pursuing a career, taking mescaline or having a beer are all just simply "altering their perception". This is so vague and general it is "philosophical" by your own standards: not deep, not clear, not precise, and not true by any measure I can affirm. Children eating ice cream and consuming mescaline are just doing the same thing, just "altering their perception"? I await your explanation, even just on the level between alcohol and mescaline, as they seem to a) be different chemically and b) elicit different effect profiles both on metabolic levels and on subjective levels of experience. Your equivalency statement is disputed by the Huxley in Doors, who outlines the difference many times, like so: Ours is the age, among other things, of the automobile and of rocketing population. Alcohol is incompatible with safety on the roads, and its production, like that of tobacco, condemns to virtual sterility many millions of acres of the most fertile soil. The problems raised by alcohol and tobacco cannot, it goes without saying, be solved by prohibition. The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currently popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones. Some of these other, better doors will be social and technological in nature, others religious or psychological, others dietetic, educational, athletic. But the need for frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain. What is needed is a new drug which will relieve and console our suffering species without doing more harm in the long run than it does good in the short. Such a drug must be potent in minute doses and synthesizable. If it does not possess these qualities, its production, like that of wine, beer, spirits and tobacco will interfere with the raising of indispensable food and fibers. It must be less toxic than opium or cocaine, less likely to produce undesirable social consequences than alcohol or the barbiturates, less inimical to heart and lungs than the tars and nicotine of cigarettes. And, on the positive side, it should produce changes in consciousness more interesting, more intrinsically valuable than mere sedation or dreaminess, delusions of omnipotence or release from inhibition. No chemist would buy this equivalency. No biologist either. Liberals would disagree with you, even drug warrior fanatics disagree with you as well as the philosopher/writer you love(d), who thinks this reductionism itself is harmful and your equivalency false. I have trouble seeing anybody, even fanatics of all kinds taking seriously such an equivalency proposition. Scientific proof certainly fails to equate the two. What is left is faith in John Clark. PGC John K Clark By 12:30 pm, a vase of flowers becomes the "miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence". The experience, he asserts, is neither agreeable nor disagreeable, but simply "is". He likens it to Meister Eckhart's "istigheit" or "is-ness", and Plato's "Being" but not separated from "Becoming". He feels he understands the Hindu concept of Satchitananda, as well as the Zen koan that "the dharma body of the Buddha is in the hedge" and Buddhist suchness. In this state, Huxley explains he didn't have an "I", but instead a "not-I". Meaning and existence, pattern and colour become more significant than spatial relationships and time. Duration is replaced by a perpetual present. Mescaline had been discovered and isolated by Hefter, or your understanding of "science" in 1898, but without the above link. This, thousands of years later (at least 5600 to be precise) than Huichol and other Native American tribes had intuitively and via bioassay verified the assignment of 1person pov mystical experience through cactus. Huxley verified that this class of subjective state is real, not merely tribal superstition as "science" has held up to that point (and because of prohibition/corruption/cowardice still does to large extent), gave a clear dosage, and described the unexpected link between ingestion of some molecule or plant and a set of mystic positions and experiences of various cultures on the globe throughout the ages. Aldous Huxley is not a personal hero of mine. But I do admire the step: "YO wait just a second! This isn't just some provincial superstitious nonsense. 400 milligrams and funky 1st person effect is real." Your version of "Science" did not uncover the 1 person reality of such states in any shape or form for the last few hundred years. It didn't even do so in the last hundred years. It took at philosophical mystic to state this connection. PGC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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