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Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:05:40 -0000

Reform from a religion similar to Shi'a?

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:55:47 -0000

You can simply create an anonymous email account. Feel free to contact me after you have created one. notabeneloq[at]live[dot]com

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:57:06 -0000

Historical context refers to when and where--the original time and place--from which the James excerpt was taken. The sentence you quoted was not complete, while ignoring James' other positive remarks about academia:

"Facts are there only for those who have a mental affinity with them. When once they are indisputably ascertained and admitted, the academic and critical minds are by far the best fitted ones to interpret and discuss them,--for surely to pass from mystical to scientific speculations is like passing from lunacy to sanity; but on the other hand if there is anything which human history demonstrates, it is the extreme slowness with which the ordinary academic and critical mind acknowledges facts to exist which present themselves as wild facts, with no stall or pigeon-hole, or as facts which threaten to break up the accepted system. In psychology, physiology, and medicine, wherever a debate between the mystics and the scientifics has been once for all decided, it is the mystics who have usually proved to be right about the _facts_, while the scientifics had the better of it in respect to the theories. The most recent and flagrant example of this is 'animal magnetism,' whose facts were stoutly dismissed as a pack of lies by academic medical science the world over, until the non-mystical theory of 'hypnotic suggestion' was found for them,--when they were admitted to be so excessively and dangerously common that special penal laws, forsooth, must be passed to keep all persons unequipped with medical diplomas from taking part in their production. Just so stigmatizations, invulnerabilities, instantaneous cures, inspired discourses, and demoniacal possessions, the records of which were shelved in our libraries but yesterday in the alcove headed 'superstitions,' now, under the brand-new title of 'cases of hystero-epilepsy,' are republished, reobserved, and reported with an even too credulous avidity.

Repugnant as the mystical style of philosophizing maybe (especially when self-complacent), there is no sort of doubt that it goes with a gift for meeting with certain kinds of phenomenal experience. The writer of these pages has been forced in the past few years to this admission; and he now believes that he who will pay attention to facts of the sort dear to mystics, while reflecting upon them in academic-scientific ways, will be in the best possible position to help philosophy. It is a circumstance of good augury that certain scientifically trained minds in all countries seem drifting to the same conclusion."

I criticized Wilber's conceptions about history and science, which have been discredited for decades and his shallow, New Age popular philosophy, neither of which is equivalent to hating him. Nobody solicited my participation. Baha'i is an interesting case study.

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:01:59 -0000

You raise a number of good points I would like to discuss in greater detail, but this discussion is not relevant to the topic here. Could we continue this off-list by email? This way I could also send you relevant readings.

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:39:55 -0000

The dualism I was responding to was that in the article cited by fubar: "the modern mind, which assumed that reality is objectively ordered, and the Christian mind, which assumed it to be regulated by God's will." This is different from the dualism you mentioned. Clearly, mind is part of body in the natural world. If the body of the mind--the central nervous system--is affected, the mind is affected.

Yes, I agree that methodological naturalism is the best for obtaining knowledge about the natural world, and it is limited to that realm.

Understanding postmodernism is important for a science teacher, especially because you have unknowingly and mistakenly incorporated one of its principles--constructionism--into naturalism, despite their incompatibility.

The description you offer--"we make the knowledge by interpreting data, giving it meaning, and presenting it in a certain way"--is a good one because it shows the pervasive influence of postmodernism. Scientists do not make or create knowledge consistent with the subjectivity of constructionism. The structure and processes of nature exist independently of what scientists think. Scientists perform experiments to determine structure and understand processes, not to make or construct knowledge that subjectively varies from researcher to researcher. An exceptional book that would clarify these issues and assist in presenting scientific methodology to students as scientists practice it is Hugh G. Gauch, Scientific Method in Practice (Cambridge UP, 2002). It is very readable and clarifies the confusion surrounding the interpretation of Kuhn's work.

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:26:31 -0000

If you disagree with a conclusion, then explain why. Here is a link to the entire essay for you to read for yourself:
http://www.readbookonline.n...
For historical context see Janet Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914 (Cambridge UP, 1985).

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:46:47 -0000

First, Smith's grasp of the history of science isn't much better than Wilber's. Smith mistakenly conflates cosmology with cosmogony. Like Wilber, Smith also mistakenly conflates science and scientism. Smith's misconceptions about science have been noted by a number of philosophers of science and religion (see the journal Zygon).

Second, Bridgment's statement isn't accurate (he died almost 48 years ago).

Third, the reviewer London goes on to describe how he understand Smith's conception of the "postmodern predicament," which really isn't a problem. Neither London nor Smith seem to realize that there are a number of philosophers of religion and science who reject both modern duality and postmodernism (for example, John F. Haught), but Smith is accurate when describing the decline of postmodernism, the poverty of some contemporary philosophical schools, and the limitations of science.

Fourth, as far as Baha'i is concerned, it depends on what and who you read. The texts support that objective knowledge of the external existence of the physical world can be known, in contrast to postmodernism; the harmony of science and religion; and the meaning of life. Some House members speak disparagingly of postmodern while at the same time--apparently unknowingly--embracing some of its popular aspects, suggesting their inconsistencies result from a superficial understanding. There are only a few individual Baha'is that can offer a coherent, informed view--no different than looking for a needle in a haystack. Comprehension of these historical and philosophical issues is best sought from sources external to Baha'i.

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:24:54 -0000

Quoting a partial sentence out of context composed in the last decade of the 19th century by James does not support your conclusion, especially since most of what James addressed here was demonstrated to be inaccurate after a couple of decades into the 20th century.

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:53:51 -0000

Who issues the invitations to testify before US Senate Committees?

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:35:35 -0000

While I agree with your comment about research in basic sciences, I disagree that we cannot attain increasing rigor and objectivity beyond the latter domain because of unconscious bias or conscious influence--your own statements support that these can be identified and corrected. One of the central goals of scholarship is to train researchers to recognize and compensate for their own biases, predispositions, conflicts of interest, and cognitive deficiencies. All of the necessary skills and qualities--critical thinking, logic, scientific method, intersubjective agreement, sincerity, integrity, rigor, fair-mindedness, humility--can be learned and practiced by anyone with the will to do so. Someone once said that scientific methodology was rigorously applied common sense. Unfortunately, educational standards are so lax and teachers not always qualified that many students never appreciate the true capacities of their own minds. We do not have to accept being victims of propaganda or "playthings of the ignorant." On the contrary, moral integrity requires that we strive for increasingly accurate comprehension.

However, as you point out, there are many who have neither the training nor the interest to separate from the dross of popular discourse. Then there are others who tenaciously cling to unreasonable beliefs out of self-interest or from psychological insecurity.

While fubar's overreaching generalizations are distortions, he isn't too wide of the target when supposing that experts can be condescending--some truly are and this behavior can have deadly consequences. But by effectively imagining this is always the case and dividing people into good or bad categories based on uninformed subjective judgments borders on a kind of intellectual racism and is self-limiting. Consider what Joseph Epstein said in his book Snobbery (page:

"High standards generally — about workmanship in the creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art, and much else — far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life. When the people who value these things are called snobs, the word is usually being used in a purely sour-grapes way. “Elitist,” a politically supercharged word, is almost invariably another sour-grapes word, at least when used to denigrate people who insist on a high
standard. The distinction, I believe, is that the elitist desires the best; the snob wants other people to think he has, or is associated with, the best. Delight in excellence is easily confused with snobbery."

At the risk of over-generalizing and based on not just the comments here alone, disdaining prejudice and advocating for the oneness of humanity while at the same time creating and applying all manner of denigrating labels--covenant breakers, apostates, dissidents, marginals--followed by personal attacks, censorship, exclusion, and shunning, effectively refutes religious influence as being superior to the secular humanism.

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:16:26 -0000

Does evidence and research support the spectrum of human conceptual capacity being so simplistic and limited that it can be divided into the dual adversarial categories of elitists and populists? Can academic institutions throughout the world and affiliated individuals--professors, researchers, professional staff, students--really be reduced to a monolithic entity and be dismissed as not making any significant contributions that comparisons to medievalism and dinosaurs are accurate and fair? Is credibility in the scholarly sense nothing more than snobbery or is it understood as a significant correspondence between words and evidence? Are people who examine evidence and do research elitists or is this simply a snobbish, derogatory label to dismiss others who might be aware of evidence that contradicts your own dearly held beliefs?

Some spiritual people think that reasoning, fair judgment, and human intellectual capacity are some of God's greatest gifts, that it is a worthy goal to try to understand evidence on its own terms, instead of what only conforms and confirms to their own psychologically invested beliefs, regardless of contradictory evidence.

If you think gross generalizations, black-or-white/either-or categorizations, and derogatory labels represent the apex of human ability, then I doubt anyone can offer you anything that does not coincide with your own certainty. Continue reading Wilber and everything else which doesn't challenge you and makes you feel comfortable. If this makes you happy, then perhaps that is good enough.

Re: Global Currency Proposed By Russia

davids1 — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:02:29 -0000

Esperanto? Forget it. What is the preferred language at international conferences in science, medicine, finance, computer science, environmental studies, mathematics? It is English. Experts in advanced and technical disciplines are not about to waste their time changing to another language that doesn't have the history or the vocabulary to meet the demands of these specialties.

Re: Can a Woah-man! Serve on the UHJ?

davids1 — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:41:32 -0000

Fubar, with all due respect, the best thing you can do for your mind is to stop reading Wilber. Wilber's New Age popular philosophy as it relates to history and science is neither original nor academically credible.

Re: Global Currency Proposed By Russia

davids1 — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:00:23 -0000

"Prophetic vision" had nothing to do with it. The telephone and wireless telegraph were invented before the end of the nineteenth century.