Search results

Modern Economics: Natural or Social Science? Economics is a natural science because natural science is about the study of objects rather than subjects. Labor, land, and money, the basic elements of economics, are all commodities of modern economics (objects of commerce), i.e. humans are...

Why do Social Theories Become Ideologies? An ideology is systematically biased by its assumptions and it constantly must protect its assumptions from erosion if it is to maintain the status of its ideology. For Marx the ideologist becomes a constant apologist for his ideology. An uncritical...

Greed is a Character Trait not an Emotion! Greed is a habit formed through constant repetition. It is an act of will. Emotion, also called instinct, is a product of natural selection. Only the human animal is greedy. What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all...

How can I learn my optional illusions? How can I reject my optional illusions? In the dialogue “Apology” Plato writes about Socrates while in the dungeon just before drinking the hemlock that the citizens of Athens condemned him to be executed. In the dungeon shortly before drinking from...

Natural Science “don allow no meaning in here”! Natural science clears the land before it builds its structures. NATURAL SCIENCE IS BULLDOZIER might be a useful linguistic metaphor for comprehending how the natural sciences function. The first thing that a Normal Science (as defined by...

Does Natural Science Encourage a Narrow Mind? Paradigm directed science encourages the scientist to steadfastly adhere to carefully crafted narrow minded thinking. Because “normal science” has been so successful in achieving its narrow goals I claim that our whole society has become...

The Oil Spill is Only a Symptom The Gulf oil spill is a minor skin rash that is of great importance primarily because it signals us of the presence of a disease capable of destroying our civilization. The herd is stampeding toward the cliffs and there is an unsophisticated horde of riders...

Flag: Making the Abstract Concrete The flag is a symbol of an ideology; a symbol is an act, sound, or objects having cultural significance and the capacity to excite an emotional response. Ideology often reifies, i.e. making into an object an abstract idea, for the purpose of concretizing a...

Individuality: Creation versus Adaptation Creation/Adaptation—Meaning/Biology—creation is to adaptation as meaning is to biology. Our species is a great experiment by Mother Nature—can a species of animals with self-consciousness survive quick extinction? We might usefully consider our...

Psychoanalysis is Quantum Mechanics I use the metaphor Psychoanalysis is Quantum Mechanics as a linguistic means to convey to you my comprehension of PSA (psychoanalysis) is somewhat based upon my comprehension of QM (quantum mechanics). This is not to say that I know a lot about either of...

Socrates says “know thyself”: I say which self? I don’t know what happened to me. I was beside my self with worry. My pet dog Fido uses his imagination to create image schemas to help him to comprehend and move about in his world. I use my imagination in much the same way but because my...

Evolution has not prepared us for this Humans are animals with self-consciousness. This self-consciousness may show it self to some small degree in other animals but this capacity for self-consciousness makes our species different in kind from other animals and this difference makes all the...

Crude Poetic Justice? Wikipedia informs me that “poetic justice” is a notion that fictional literature takes on as a cultural demand whereby literary outcomes must support moral standards by justifying in the end the virtuous behavior of the good guy and punishing the bad behavior of the bad...

Twinkies & Chips—Sound Bites & Bumper Stickers A steady diet of Twinkies and chips will give us a fat gut while a steady diet of sound bites and bumper stickers will give us a fat head. Political parties and television commercials often depend upon well-crafted sound bits and bumper stickers...

Art and Wit are Subversive of Civilization; in a ‘Playful Way’ The repressions of modern life have lost for us the “primary pleasures of which the censorship disapproves”. Art and wit liberates repressed instinct; both rid us of our inhibitions and open the unconscious for inspection and...

Dialogue/Cooperation as Debate/Conflict Dialogue is to cooperation as debate is to conflict. Dialogue utilizes communication to facilitate harmony with the other while debate utilizes argumentation power to facilitate victory over the other. Internet discussion forums advance the human...

What is the meaning of ‘meaning’? A strange question in one sense but as fundamental a question as one needs to pursue in another sense. I would say that meaning is an emotion that I recognize when the emotion engendered by an inducer are reflected back to me in the form of feelings. I...

Does an Intellectual Life Endanger Peace of Mind? Few individuals discover and display a talent, a personal resonance that can truly excite public appreciation. Those who do display such a resonance are truly rewarded. However, I am not particularly interested in those few but I am interested...

Would IT have happened had Greenspan studied SGCS? Allan Greenspan is the former director of the Federal Reserve; “IT” is the giant financial boondoggle that almost sent the globe into another Great Depression. Greenspan admitted that the “model” he was trusting was mistaken. The model in...

The Cost of Stayin Alive! I once asked a professor of philosophy “what is philosophy about?” he responded “philosophy is a radically critical self-consciousness”. It took me thirty years to understand this statement. I shall take a “radically critical self-conscious” look at the question of...