On 9/12/2013 3:30 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
In a conference Dennet said that a country with religious soldiers would be defeated by
a country ruled by engineers and economists ". the audience were well trained and
educated atheists, but they couldn´t avoid to laugh loudly at the end of the phrase.
He said that by way of making a provocative introduction. If you watch the rest of his
talk it's clear he doesn't believe it's necessarily so.
The problem with Dennet and in general with the analytical philosophers that are after
to the discoveries of experimental science, is the renounce to hypothesize and even to
despise whatever the experiemental science still don´t know. They have Cartesian
Blindness. But scientists, at least the bright ones are not blind. They ask themselves
new questions and assume hypothesis that others may discuss.
THe scientist did not studied religion. Therefore Dennet despise religion. David Sloan
Wilson is a evolutionary scientist that study religion from an evolutionary point of
view.. What DSW discovered was against the prejudices of Dennet,
I've read both of them, and Scott Atran and Loyal Rue, and I don't see that Wilson or the
others found anything contradicting Dennett.
However Dennet accepted the arguments of DSW (there are some videos out there), but that
did not changed his prejudices. It is too old and has invested too much on that.
Instead of extracting the consequences and going further, creating new hypothesis for
the advance of knowledge.
Dennett also studies religion and even wrote a book recommending more study of
religion,"Breaking the Spell". He's currently conducting "The Clergy Project".
The classical philosopher is different. He confront the questions that arrive to his
mind directly. And what the classical philosopher as itself is how to live, and this
means to know himself and the other like him. That means to discover the human mind and
the highest level. And because in order to live he act and think, he tries to know
consciously what he do unconsciously when he do and feel things. That introspection
method is valid and good because he find that what he discover has a lot of common
things with what others say about their own introspections. The concepts , entities o
and their relation are the same. there are differences in the rank of them and their
names. This means that these concepts are universal. For all humans.
That was certainly the method of philosophers like Hume and Nietzche - both of whom
despised religion and specifically the Abrahamic religions.
For sure, the modern reductionst scientists will advance and study higher level
phenomena, and one day will aknowledge the work of the classical philosophers. That is
just happening now with the evolutionary scientists.
Holistic science has always been the refuge of charlatans and snake oil salesmen. If it
were going to be useful anywhere you would expect it to be in the humanities, but you're a
fool if you hire a holistic lawyer to defend you.
Brent
"I have often thought that people who believe in "alternative medicine" should fly in
airplanes designed by people who believe in "alternative physics."
--- Terence Geogahegan
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