Philosophy Wire: Paradox logic…

While the broad architecture and organization of the human brain is universal, new research shows how the differences between how people reimagine common scenarios can be observed in brain activity and quantified. These unique neurological signatures could ultimately be used to understand, study, and even improve treatment of disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. [1] But how can something that copes with the chaos of life be organized? How can logic make sense of the illogical? Think again. Look at the obvious as you once did. Without asking for anything but what you are already given without asking any-thing. The only reason we will never understand how the brain works, is our deep belief that it does...

Now go. Dive in the deep sea…

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Philosophy Wire: Fasting… Sleeping… Surprising!

Research uncovers previously unknown effects of fasting, including notably increased metabolic activity and possible anti-aging effects. [1] People despise religion today. Because we are born with logic. People like science today. Because we are designed to see patterns. And yet, a world full of patterns begs to be surprised. A cosmos giving birth to logic, can only be unreasonable. Stop thinking. And your needs to think will surge. Stop trying to understand everything. And your capacity to do so will rise. Break the structure of everything. And you will see that the lack of structure is their structure. In a cosmos full of phenomena, the essence can be nothing more than the unseen. Listen to those preaching belief. And you will see the only proof of reason. Stop caring for your body. And your aging will seize. Want to live. And you will die young. Stop eating. (Leave the apple) And your needs to eat will increase… (Leave that apple!) 

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Philosophy Wire: If humans were clever, would they flock?

Crowd panics, market bubbles, and other unpredictable collective behaviors would not happen if people were smart about these things and just thought through their behavior before they acted. Right? Wrong. A UC Davis researcher looked at how people behave in simple reasoning games and found that people are usually driven to "flock," or behave similarly to others in a given situation. Seth Frey, an assistant professor of communication at UC Davis, said this happens "even when people use the fancy reasoning processes that are supposed to make humans so special". [1]

Following others.
Mimicking.
Part of nature.
As humans.
As pigeons.

Do you think you stand out?
Try looking at a pigeon in the eyes.
No, you are not logical or clever.
You are just following the light.
And you are blinded by it.

Think about it.
Thinking is not what makes us special after all…

(Really. Ask the pigeons)

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Philosophy Wire: Trust… you.

Why do some people trust their gut instincts over logic? It could be that they see those snap decisions as a more accurate reflection of their true selves and therefore are more likely to hold them with conviction, according to new research. [1] Today’s society does not hold the emotions and instinct too high. We love and worship cold hard logic. But we tend to forget that this logic is based on the hardest axioms. And because these axioms were selected despite all existing data we had, their child (logic) is so hard and strict in defending them. Our true self knows that. And he ignores logic whatsoever. Look at the crying child. No, he is not wrong. He is right. And that is why he cries so much. Soon the child will leave the strict Father. To start a life on its own. Soon the child will ‘die’. And even God will cry for not trusting Himself…

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Philosophy Wire: Fear. Lack of fear. Shaping opinions.

A group of scientists managed to change the opinions of people to more liberal ones by simply removing the element of fear from them (by making them think they are… superhumans). Another experiment in the past showed that the existence of increased sensitivity to fear makes people more conservative. [1] People mistake the existence of fear as a disadvantage. But this is only because they have the wrong definition of fear in their mind. God-fearing people are not stupid people just afraid of the wrath of God. Fear is a result of a deeper a priori knowledge too important to ignore, even though you want to. Those who fear not, are usually people who are arrogant enough to believe they are gods themselves – able to do anything they wish without any consequences whatsoever. On the other hand, people who sense fear and respect that emotion are more in sync with the universe and its cold logic: Do harm and the cosmos will return the favor. Do evil and you will turn evil. Go to the darkness and the darkness will consume you. And the universe is a cold and dark place. Not fearing that is simply ignorance or – worse – arrogance. There is no wisdom in lack of fear. Only childish stubbornness. Yes, we are afraid of the darkness. And it takes a lot of courage to try to follow the light…

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Philosophy Wire: Morality and Rationality. An unlikely bond in the mind of modern unethical people…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2017-08-28]: While some people rely more on reason and evidence than others when deciding on their beliefs, a new report from psychologists at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Exeter suggests people can also come to see a reliance on reason and evidence as a moral issue - to see the rationality of another's beliefs as indicative of their morality. [1] We worship logic. We love evidence. And yet true love is based on nothing. True love is irrational. We tread on dangerous paths. And the road is already slippery.

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Philosophy Wire: Babies. Young people. Old people. Who thinks more correctly? [Spoiler: Noone]

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2016-02-04]: Babies have logical reasoning before age one: Human infants are capable of deductive problem solving as early as 10 months of age, a new study by psychologists at Emory University and Bucknell finds. The journal Developmental Science is publishing the research, showing that babies can make transitive inferences about a social hierarchy of dominance. [1] Many people think that the young people do not think correctly. They do not know much. Young people on the other hand believe that the old ones do not think correctly. They know too much and they cannot accept new things. No one is thinking that thinking is the only hurdle towards understanding the cosmos. Because we all think too much…

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Philosophy Wire: Beginning, One, Logic, Light. Thoughts.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-05-17]:

Scientists try to recreate the primordial soup of elementary particles which consisted the universe in its initial steps. [1]
We try to recompose the whole from its parts.
We believe things change.
We think time as moving forward.
We believe that SOMETHING existed in the Beginning.
Scientific thought?
Intuition?
Faith?
Or simply... logical?
Simple thoughts.
Shinning through layers of modern dogmatism...
There is no time.
Things do not change.
The whole cannot be divided into parts.
Scientific thought?
Intuition?
Faith?
Or simply... logical?
Simple thoughts.
Shinning through layers of modern dogmatism...

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Philosophy Wire: Non thinking. Lies. Logic.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-05-07]: When it comes to detecting lies, you should trust your instinct, research suggests. We are better at identifying liars when we rely on initial responses rather than thinking about it, say psychologists. [1] Stop thinking if you wish to understand...

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Philosophy Wire: Nonconformity and freethinking: The new mental illness! [DSM-IV]

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-01-23]: Is nonconformity and freethinking a mental illness? According to the newest addition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it certainly is. The manual identifies a new mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed. [1] Rational is the belief of the many. The others are just... ill!

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Philosophy Wire: Being logical in an illogical world...

 

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-09-11]:

People rely on logic.
But logic cannot explain anything.
It cannot explain why the universe exists. "Logically" it shouldn't.
It cannot explain why our planet is here. "Logically" it shouldn't.
It cannot explain why we are here. "Logically" we shouldn't.
Stop being so logical.
The cosmos is inherently illogical.

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective.

Λογική. Logic.

Logic is based on Axioms / Η Λογική βασίζεται σε αξιώματα

Axiom of choice

Axiom of extensionality

Axiom of empty set

Axiom of pairing

Axiom of union

Axiom of infinity

Axiom schema of replacement

Axiom of power set

Axiom of regularity

Axiom schema of specification

Von Neumann-Bernays-Gödel axioms

Continuum hypothesis and its generalization

Freiling's axiom of symmetry

Axiom of determinacy

Axiom of projective determinacy

Martin's axiom

Axiom of constructibility

Rank-into-rank

Kripke-Platek axioms

BONUS: A proposition being EITHER true EITHER false (see Dialethism)

Axioms can Change.

Based on our Free Will.

So go on!

Think of something else!

It will immediaetelly be "true"!

Τα αξιώματα μπορούν να αλλάξουν.
Μόνο με την ελεύθερη μας βούληση.
Εμπρός λοιπόν!
Σκεφτείτε κάτι άλλο!
Και αμέσως αυτό θα γίνει "αληθινό"!

Philosophy Wire: Neanderthals, big eyes, stupid brain...?!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-03-13]:

A study of Neanderthal skulls suggests that they became extinct because they had larger eyes than our species. As a result, more of their brains were devoted to seeing in the long, dark nights in Europe, at the expense of high-level processing. [source: BBC News]

If you ask me, this is an over-simplyfied analysis. Bigger eyes => more processing of visual images => less processing power left for other thinking? Wow! Who 5-year-old kindergardeen student came up with this "high level thinking" argument? Simplification, serial way of thinking, analogies: the guarranteed way for failure in science.

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Philosophy Wire: Evolution, rationality, irrationalism…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-12-16]: The process of evolution is a purely alogi [Gr. άλογη] (irrational) random process. And yet we think that this process gave birth to our rational brain… Is that logical?!?

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Culte de la Raison (Religion of Logic)

In 1792 the French revolted. They revolted against religion and installed a new “religion” – the Religion of Reason! (“Culte de la Raison” in French, which took place in the context of the French Revolution). The new revolution required of course – as any revolution – its toll on human blood. Many people were killed and churches destroyed. The church if St. Paul in Paris is one example.

The photos below show the results of this revolution…

The history of St. Paul church in Paris

In 1792 "logic" took control...

People died because they were not too... "logical" ?

Destruction of statues and paintings was part of the "revolution"

Reason can be too unreasonable sometimes…

PS. One can find a very good article for the Cult of Reason here – the article is unfortunately in Greek. If one tries Wikipedia for that he will just end up with some lines of text giving no information on such events (one line for the destruction of churches and NO mentioning of any deaths whatsoever!)…

Philosophy Wire: The “crazy” man, the Spaceship, the Pentagon

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-03-23]: A man who started studying physics because of an alien metallic voice he heard into his head, was the main person invited as part of the 100-Years Starship (100YSS) program of the US Pentagon [source: BBC News]. Who said that science is “logical”?

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Logic, truth (α-λήθεια) and the need for Return

Logical is the familiar. We think that what we know, what we are accustomed to, is more “Rational”. But this is not the true meaning of Truth (αλήθεια in Greek). Day by day we accumulate more dogmas in our thinking. Day by day we build higher castles on the sand. In the time of Parmenides the existence of “non-existence” was under examination. Now we are “certain” that we once did not exist and that we will stop existing at some point (see here). And when a genius comes and proposes a new way of thinking, we react strongly. Until this new way of thinking becomes again familiar and stops looking threatening… But the true meaning of Truth lies within its origin: truth is αλήθεια in Greek and it is constituted by α + λήθη = (do not) + (forget). The ancient Greek inventors of the word have hidden inside it the wisest of all imperatives: Do not forget! Truth (α-λήθεια) is what we find when we re-discover what we have forgotten (λήθη). The beginning can be more wise than the end… Because only then did we were thinking freely.

Main article: Harmonia Philosophica [English]

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Philosophy Wire: Chopin’s madness and the oppression of “logic” people

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-01-25]: Scientists reached the conclusion that Chopin suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, which caused him to have frequent hallucinations. [source] Many people who have hallucinations are characterized as “mad”. But what is the difference between genius and mad people? Most geniuses, like Nietzsche or Gödel, had characteristics which would easily result in their classification as “mad”. “Madness” is many times the opinion which opposes the opinion of the majority. And only a genius can avoid being incarcerated into an asylum…

Related articles for further reading: The dictatorship of the science of psychiatry

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Philosophy Wire: Intuition better than Logic?

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-01-20]: Research published in Science shows that the best chess players make their decisions based on intuition rather than conscious thought [source: http://news.in.gr/science-technology/article/?aid=1231075468]. If this is true, then could it be that “logic” we are so accustomed to is wrong? What does out logic teach us? What does our intuition teach us? How do we know which is more “valid”? Science says the first? You?

PS. See "Religion and Science Unification" for more on the subject...

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