Philosophy Wire: Body. Spirit. Decay. Immortality.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-09-29]: At least one part of the human brain may be able to process information the same way in older age as it does in the prime of life, according to new research. [1] Do we need a research like that to start looking at the obvious? The body ages. But the human minds stays young for ever.Search inside you. And you will see that you already know the truth...

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Philosophy Wire: Immortal. Children.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-03-21]: Feeling immortal. [1] From being children, we feel the truth. We know it. After that, we are just… told we are kids. Grown ups know better. But grown ups have the tendency to forget. Oh, I would give everything to remember what I knew as a kid!

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Immortality: Possible. / Αθανασία: Εφικτή.

Photo: Pahas [http://www.flickr.com/photos/gpahas]

Many living beings are literally immortal. [1] From trees [2] to lobsters [3] to Hydra [4], immortality is more common than we may think. Our lost contact with Nature is probably the reason we have denied ourselves this possibility. We consider us as one of the most evolved species and yet we die younger than almost any other species. We took a wrong turn a lot time ago and we now consider as "progress" anything that kills us. The way back is a long one. But isn't it time we started walking?


Πολλά ζωντανά όντα είναι κυριολεκτικά αθάνατα. [1] Από τα δέντρα [2] στους αστακούς [3] στην Ύδρα [4], η αθανασία είναι περισσότερο κοινή από όσο πιστεύαμε. Η απομάκρυνση μας από τη Φύση είναι ίσως ο λόγος που έχουμε απομακρυνθεί από αυτό το ενδεχόμενο. Κάπου πήραμε λάθος στροφή και θεωρούμε ως "πρόοδο" ό,τι μας σκοτώνει. Ο δρόμος προς τα πίσω είναι μακρύς. Μήπως όμως ήρθε η ώρα να ξεκινήσουμε να γυρίζουμε;

Philosophy Wire: Lobster the… immortal!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-10-09]: If a lobster is immortal [1], what does that tell us about us? Maybe we are not so evolved as we think? Or could it be that death is not as bad as we think it is?

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Philosophy Wire: Controlling your age with mind!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-05-03]:

Researchers may have found the body's region responsible for aging. For the first time, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University report that the hypothalamus of mice controls aging throughout the body. "Scientists have long wondered whether aging occurs independently in the body's various tissues or if it could be actively regulated by an organ in the body," said senior author Dongsheng Cai, M.D., Ph.D., professor of molecular pharmacology at Einstein. "It's clear from our study that many aspects of aging are controlled by the hypothalamus. What's exciting is that it's possible -- at least in mice -- to alter signaling within the hypothalamus to slow down the aging process and increase longevity". [source: science news]

Mind over body!

This time for the ultimate goal: immortality.

Philosophy Wires are getting too easy lately…

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Philosophy Wire: Living longer, being sicker, the purpose of life…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-12-15]: The greatest ever study on Disease has shown that humans are progressively living longer, but while being sicker. [source: 1, 2] Medicine has the wrong target because humans have the wrong goal. Our purpose is not to live more. As the Harmonia Philosophica motto at the bottom of the page says, the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things…

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Philosophy Wire: Trees 3,000 years old, humans, immortality…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-12-04]: Deep in the Sierra Nevada The President, a 54,000-cubic-foot gargantuan tree at the height of a skyscraper in the Sequoia National Park, lies in silence after it has just been declared the second largest living organism on Earth. After 3,240 years, the giant sequoia is still growing wider at a consistent rate... [source: web news, web news 2] I do not know about you, but I get the weird feeling that I am not envy of this longevity of that tree… Or maybe I do? I cannot decide which one of the two, if true, is more exciting…

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Philosophy Wire: Good morning, good evening, goodbye…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-05-24]: What is the difference between death and the goodbye of a friend who leaves far away? What is the difference between farewell to a beloved person from a simple good night? Every day we sleep and every day we wake up. Truth is many times right in front of us, for us to simply see it…

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Philosophy Wire: Immortal worms, Mortal humans, no sex?

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-03-03]: Worms which reproduce asexually seem to be able to sustain a divide-and-rebirth circle for “ever” [source: The Guardian]. Would you sacrifice sex for immortality? The funny thing is that most people would answer “No” to this question. And so the “evolved” human would lose the battle from a worm due to his “free” will…

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Nietzsche, an irrational believer!

If you are one of those who like to refer to Nietzsche without having ever read him, you can stop reading that article now. People who refer to Nietzsche with the confidence of the ignorant and who repeat the “God is dead” phrase again and again just show what they want to hide: that they HAVE NOT read more than ten lines of text written by Nietzsche (books for Nietzsche written by others do not count – see below why). This is what the dogmatic ignorant usually does: he reads something that someone else has written for a philosopher (never the philosopher himself, since that would be “difficult”), isolates a phrase that matches his beliefs and then he repeats that phrase until they die (both he and the phrase).

If you read the Notebooks of Nietzsche or the (very important) “The birth of Tragedy” (Gr. Η Γέννηση της Τραγωδίας), you will see how the opinion you have formulated by listening to what others are saying about a philosopher greatly differs from the opinion you formulate when reading the philosopher HIMSELF! In “The birth of Tragedy” Nietzsche speaks of the Dionysian man and how he, during his ecstasy, encounters the mysterious One which transcends the world. He refers to gods and the need for the existence of myths and… miracles! He talks about the songs that the drunken Dionysian man sings under the mid-noon Sun and how he is filled with joy when his existence is united with the primal One. He talks about how music reveals that One (Gr. Εν) which hovers over every phenomenality. He speaks against Science and Logic, who both think they can explain the world by just sticking to its phenomenal surface. At some point he also shortly explains his antithesis with religion today (i.e. the religion of his time): it is because it has become a religion of scholars – while Reason cannot explain the mystery of “existing” !!! At another point he reaches to the point to refer to the supernatural comfort we feel when we are united again with that “primordial Being”. He even refers to eternal living beyond every phenomenon and against any nullification!

Let us consider things now. How much is the above wealth of thoughts away from the simplistic “Nietzsche is an atheist. He said that God is dead!” opinion? I am not saying that I have the key for the interpretation of all of the above. But anyone who insists on simply putting a doctrinal “atheist” tag on this high-quality stream of thoughts can be anything BUT correct. When many of the above could be part of a... theological text, we are not entitled to isolate a sentence and draw any conclusions from it.

In "Thus Spake Zarathustra" Nietzsche calls us to become children, as Christ did a long time ago.

The great philosopher was not against God in general (see Nietzsche - Writings from the Late Notebooks, Rudiger Bittner), but against the representatives of Christianism who failed to solve the problems of the world. Nietzsche was against any kind of "foundations". If God existed, then foundations must also exist. (see here) When talking about "god" the philosopher does not even talk about God! The god which he declares "dead" is not God, but the ethical imperatives of Christianism in his era. [Thus Spake Zarathustra, page 29 in Part 1 Chapter 1: "What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call Lord and God? "Thou-shalt," is the great dragon called"] The Superhuman is a new human who is not genetically superior but ethically superior, who is driven by the will for power and who does not care for the "other world" but only lives for the world "down here", on Earth. The man of a new metaphysics, the Eternal Return. The ass is the animal of that supreme human, like Jesus sat on such an animal when he entered Jerusalem. Nietzsche calls us to find god inside our selves (source).

Try to see past the outer phenomenal differences...

Papanoutsos (Gr. Παπανούτσος) actually reads the “God is dead” phrase not as a triumphal phrase of victory, but rather as an ascertainment that Nietzsche made with sadness: man with his science (against which Nietzsche attacks furiously again and again) thinks he can understand everything. But he cannot. Only the superhuman can help us now that "god is dead" and make us see the god inside us. [Papanoutsos: Παπανούτσος, "Φιλοσοφικά Προβλήματα", Φιλοσοφική άποψη της ιστορίας της φιλοσοφίας, σ. 215] (didn't Christ taught the same?) Zarathustra expresses an anxiety in an era when every educated man should be happy with the progress of science...

But not many pay attention to that exception to the generally optimistic climate.

How much different is the "other world" for which Jesus talked from Nietzsche's (equally mystical, weird and paradoxical) world of the "eternal return"? Nietzsche was poetic and irrational - as much as it is required to be a Believer. Nietzsche did not have the love he wanted in life. And he seeks it with hatred. With passion that only he who seeks God in its ultimate form can have. Only the Dionysian man in his ecstasy can be aware of the “primordial Being”. And don’t let anyone tell you what this Being (the One) is like!

Read Nietzsche for yourself in order to learn what he says! Rational interpretations which put his thoughts in “category checkboxes” are certainly not appropriate for the man who founded the… irrationalism!

Philosophy Wire: The pardon to Billy the Kid and the philosophy of "non-existence"


Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2010-12-31]: The Governor of New Texas, Bill Richardson, finally denied to grand pardon to the notorious criminal of the Wild West known by the name "Billy the Kid" (source: news article). The weird about the case is not the pardon itself. The interesting thing in this case is the mere fact that people tend to talk and discuss about people who have died, about people who have "ceazed to exist". How do we do that? Why do we do it? How can we discuss about something which "does not exist"?, Parmenides would ask...

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What does it take to believe in death... Part 3

Part of "What does it take to believe in death" series...
by Spiros Kakos

1. What does it take to believe in death... Part 1
2. What does it take to believe in death... Part 2
3. What does it take to believe in death... Part 3

4. What does it take to believe in death... Part 4

Part 3...

II. The concept of Identity

Besides the belief in the notion of Change we analyzed in the 2nd Part, believing in the notion of death (in a way that means the complete extinction of our body and spirit from the world) also requires someone to believe in the notion of "Identity" as well. To believe that someone is dead means that you believe you can actually tell when this someone is himself and when he has seized being himself, i.e. when he has "died". When someone dies we understand he has changed and he is not who we knew he was: he does not talk, he does play, he does not interact the way he did (the false belief in the notion of Time will be analyzed in the next part, so we can still use past and present tense here).

When we think we "know" someone we attribute to him certain characteristics. We know a friend of us is who he is because he talks in a specific way. But what if he changes the way he talks? Will he not be the same? We know he is the same because he thinks in a certain way - in "his" way. But what if he changes his way of thinking? Will he not be the same? We know he is the same because he has a specific birth mark on is arm. But that if he removes that? Will he not be the same? We know the is the same because he has specific hair. But what if he changes them? Will he not be the same? We know he is the same because he has a specific set of cells in his organism as all individuals do. But human cells are continuously replaced (even the cells in our brain), about six (6) times during our whole lifetime. Are we not the same after the changes in our cells? We know someone is the same because he lives. But what if he stops living? Is he not the same anymore? Dying is part of who we are and "knowing" someone means knowing his death as well. The point is, that we do not have a specific way to know when someone is someone and not someone else! We cannot tell the identity of someone (or something) and we certainly do not have specific ways to tell when someone has stopped being! The limits we set with respect to the "identity" of a person are not based on something solid. The simple phrase "he has died" implies that we know those limits, while in reality those limits do not even exist...

III. The concept of Time

But what about Time itself? Our belief for death is based on our belief in the existence of time per se. There can be no death, i.e. discontinuation of existence from a point in time onwards, without time itself existing and transcending our world. But time is a very elusive notion, that is even questioned by scientists (let alone philosophers, who have the tendency to question everything). Einstein is famous for saying "People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion"... And death can only exist in a world where people still believe in this stubborn illusion...

What does it take to believe in death... Part 2

Part of "What does it take to believe in death" series...
by Spiros Kakos

1. What does it take to believe in death... Part 1
2. What does it take to believe in death... Part 2
3. What does it take to believe in death... Part 3

4. What does it take to believe in death... Part 4

Part 2...

I. The concept of Change

 
If death is also a change we undergo, why do we think that change results in something so drastic as...complete extinction? As I said in the The Extinct Fish that Reappeared Philosophy Wire, everything is a matter of definion. And we should re-examine our definitions if we want to really mature spiritually. If we cannot really tell how something can actually "change", then maybe the simplest childish answer that comes to our mind is the correct one: things do not change!

What does it mean for something or someone to "change"? How can something change? If it changes, doesn't it become a different "something"? How can we change every second, but still remain the same person? The most simple questions are the hardest ones. What is evident seems to hold the key to the most serious underlying dogmas that define our thought...

To be continued...

Philosophy Wire: The extinct fish that reappeared...

Philosophy Wire of Spiros Kakos [2010-12-17]: Scientists found again a Kunimasu fish that was thought to be extinct 70 years ago (source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan_extinct_fish_found). Has the fish reappeared, or was it wrongly labeled as "extinct" in the first place?

Can something which has "disappeared" appear again? Can something which swims, suddently stop "being" and...disappear into the void of non-existence - so...void that it cannot even be the object of the human thought? Try thikning about something which does not exist... Can you? Everything is a matter of definition. And we should quickly reassess our definitions, if we want to stop "discovering" extinct animals again and again...

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What does it take to believe in death? - Part 1

Part 1...

1. What does it take to believe in death... Part 1
2. What does it take to believe in death... Part 2
3. What does it take to believe in death... Part 3

4. What does it take to believe in death... Part 4

Many people talk about “immortality” and try to show why the human soul is not destroyed after the death of the physical body. Many people try to articulate arguments in favor of the idea that an “immortal” spirit exist, which continues to “be” even after the physical brain stops functioning. However those discussions and efforts are based on the wrong presumption that “immortality” is what has to be proved, and not “death”.

Many people today take many things for granted. Our time is characterized by an arrogant belief in a materialistic point of view for everything, according to which only what modern physics and chemistry claims to be true is actually true. The opinions of philosophers – and especially of those who lived many years ago – are not taken into account by many. However things are not so simple.

In order to believe in “death”, i.e. in the complete extinction of the human spirit after the physical body stops functioning, you must believe in a series of dogmas that are still under debate between philosophers. In order to believe in “death”, you must believe in the existence of differences between objects (something with which Parmenides would disagree), you must believe in the existence of the notion of “change” (something with which Zenon and Parmenides would disagree), you have to believe in the existence of the notion of “time” (something with which even many modern scientists would disagree)…

All of the above will be analyzed further in a series of articles under the title “What does it take to believe in "death?”.

Philosophy Wire: Telomerase enzyme anti-aging hope or pure paralogism?

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos: 2010-11-29 Scientists are investigating the use of the telomerase enzyme as an anti-aging agent. New finding in mice show that the specific enzyme can actually act as a block to the normal aging process [Source: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101128/full/news.2010.635.html].

Scientists can make mice age at a slower rate. Is that good?

Is that however something "logical" to pursue? Is immortality "natural"? Is nature wise or should we seek to deny our own nature as mortals? If common "logic" dictates the fear of death maybe the correct "solution" is the acceptance of that death, since common logic has almost never given the solution to any great problem. Thinking based on personal interest - like the "I want to live for ever" interest - was never a good source for philosophy...

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