Critical Thinking in Morality 4 January 2015

Critical Thinking in Morality by Douglas R McGaughey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Critical Thinking in Morality

When it comes to evaluating the virtue or lack of virtue of others, we are readily critical.  Yet, what “critical” means is by no means so obvious.  Our judgment of others can only be limited to how they appear to us.  Nonetheless, each of us is all too aware of the difference between our external appearance and our inner selves.  This difference is not only what ensures that each of us is a unique and unrepeatable individual in the cosmos but also what cautions us against all too readily judging the virtue or lack of virtue of others.

Thinking Critically in Science and Religion (12 Pages) 18 November 2014 – Updated July 2019

Updated July 2019

Thinking Critically in Science and Religion by Douglas R McGaughey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Pdf version with footnotes (rather than endnotes) and page numbers:

Thinking Critically in Science and Religion

            Just what is critical thinking?  Of course, there’s no single, right answer to this question because we are dealing with metaphors.  However, gaining awareness of the options for what it means to think critically can provide us with insight into the place our species assumes in the order of things.

Creativity – Not Just for Geniuses 30 October 2014

Creativity — Not Just for Geniuses by Douglas R McGaughey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Creativity – Not Just for Geniuses

Paul Elie reports in his NY Times Magazine article of September 7, 2012, “30 Variations and a Microphone:”

“Glenn Gould was booked into 30th Street Studio for the two middle weeks of June in 1955. The weather in New York was sunny, the temperature in the 60s. He arrived at the studio by taxi from a hotel near Central Park, wearing an overcoat, a beret, a scarf and gloves, and carrying a leather suitcase and his folding chair. He stripped down to a dress shirt and a sleeveless V-neck sweater. Opening the suitcase, he set out pills, bottled water and towels. Rolling up his sleeves, he ran hot water in a sink, the sort of deep-basin porcelain sink that mops are wrung out in, and soaked his hands and forearms until they were red.

Earlier that year, he paid a visit to the Steinway & Sons showroom on 57th Street: in the basement, several dozen grand pianos stood side by side, and he had played them in succession, finally identifying one he liked.

Now the piano, known as No. 174, was in the studio, with microphones arrayed around it. He set up his chair and settled himself before the keyboard. He took off his shoes, so he could move his feet without making noises that would be picked up on tape.”

M-Word Introduction 26 October 2016

M-Blog Introduction by Douglas R McGaughey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

M-Word Blog

We need to discuss the M-Word!  Don’t misunderstand me.  A discussion of the M-Word is important not because we are going to Hell if we ignore it.  A discussion is important not because we are not going to survive the evolution struggle (less dramatically, will not get what we want) or because we are not going to experience “real” personal satisfaction if we ignore it.  Simply stated, morality is important because we want to be human rather than mere animals or mechanical toys.  It is at the pinnacle (actually, just below the pinnacle) of a set of astonishing, intangible (hence, immeasurable) and freely chosen (hence, ignorable) capacities that can make us human.

Incomplete Copernican Revolution (12 Pages) – Updated July 2019

Updated July 2019

The Incomplete Copernican Revolution in Popular Legend, the Natural Sciences, and in Practical Reason (Morality) by Douglas R McGaughey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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The Incomplete Copernican Revolution in Popular Legend, the Natural Sciences, and in Practical Reason (Morality)

Abstract: There are three senses in which the Copernican Revolution of the 16th century is not yet complete today. The first sense is in terms of the popular account about what Copernicus actually accomplished and the reaction on the part of the church in Rome to Copernicus’ writings. The second sense is in terms of the meaning of the revolution for the natural sciences and what it means to do science after Copernicus. The third sense is in terms of practical reason (morality) or the religious consequences of the CR.

The Incomplete Copernican Revolution in Popular Legend

 The popular account of the CR maintains that Copernicus displaced the earth from the physical center of the universe and, thereby, challenged what one took to be a cherished cornerstone of Christian theology with respect to God’s providential plan of salvation.  Furthermore, the popular account claims that Copernicus’s writings were placed on the index by the Roman Catholic Church after his death.  A corollary to the legend is that Galileo was excommunicated and placed under house arrest for his defense of the Copernican model.

As with all legends, there is a kernel of truth to these elements, but the distortions far outweigh the kernel.  What is unequivocally true, of course, is that Copernicus forced us to deny our senses and to view our solar system, though he thought it was the universe, with the sun, not the earth, as its physical center.  The Harvard Astrophysicist, Owen Gingerich demonstrated that almost everything else in the story is massive distortion.[1]

Copernicus’ writings were censored by Rome, which of course is bad enough, though they were not placed on the Index of forbidden texts –however, the censorship was not of his science!  Rather, he was censored wherever he claimed to have proof rather than an hypothesis.  At those points of enthusiasm and not in rejection of his mathematics, the church raised its objection.  However, Gingerich’s examination of the manuscripts by no means confirms even the semblance of universal censorship.  To be sure, the closer the manuscript was to Rome (!), the more likely that it was censored.  Outside of Italy, however, the manuscripts were not censored, and Copernicus’ writings were required reading for theologians at least in Spain.

Gingerich reports that the case with Galileo is similar.  His mathematics was not rejected, he was never excommunicated, and he was placed under house arrest not for defending the Copernican system but for insubordination and defamation of the Pope.  He made the mistake in portraying the Pope, his childhood friend, as the bungling simpleton (“Simplicio”) in his Diologue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.  Furthermore, Cardinal Baronius, Vatican librarian, not Galileo is the author of the famous aphorism:  “The bible does not tell how the heavens go but how to go to heaven.”

In terms of the popular legend, then, the CR is far from complete since this legend is riddled with misconceptions and distortions.  Not the least, concentration on the displacement of humanity from the center of physical reality eclipses the crucial sense in which humanity is unequivocally the epistemological and creative “center” of reality.

A Poem – September 26, 2013

Laws both Physical and Moral
September 26, 2013

Empiricism:  When the physical world slips through one’s fingers
It is easiest to grasp at universals
In which one cannot put one’s foot once

Rationalism:  Since universals are unseen
It is easiest to define faith
As belief in the eternality of this Logos

Skepticism:  When appearances shatter
Our world of substances and
Universals are un-provable because non-empirical and indefinable

Critical Realism screams:  At least we have formal certainties
Verifiable by transient material
That our certainties asymptotically approximate

Critical idealism:  Has no need of screaming since it speaks of
Necessary conditions that make skepticism possible
And focus shifts to certain capacities, not questionable contents

We live by faith not because we only think we know things or universals but
Because we can do things nature cannot
Yet true for all, we are alone with our responsibilities

There is nothing on earth or in heaven
To shore up our precarious position
Except our own a priori confidence in creative freedom and laws

Doug McGaughey

“What is Categorical about the Categorical?” Updated 3 September 2012 (7 Pages) – Updated July 2019

Updated 14 July 2019

What is Categorical about the Categorical? by Douglas R McGaughey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at criticalidealism.com.

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What is Categorical about the Categorical?
On the Sensible and the Supersensible

Human experience is dependent upon the inseparable, yet distinguishable, interaction between two dimensions: the sensible and the supersensible. Each dimension must simultaneously make a contribution, or else there can be no experience (see the very opening lines of the Critique of Pure Reason B 33). Although we must speak of two dimensions that make our experience possible, we are no more talking about dualism as the explanatory ground of experience than attributing multiple, interacting causes to a physical event shatters the unity of efficient causality. We would be concerned with dualism only if we succumbed to a Cartesian dual-substance notion of experience, but that would, of course, presume that we had access to such things as substances that could confirm their reality. Rather, we do not experience substances, only their appearances. Granted, “hardness” (Unnachgiebigkeit) and “durableness” (Dauerhaftigkeit) are strong indicators of the presence of substance, but we too quickly substitute substance for its appearance. We live in a world of appearances and a priori synthetic judgment, and any conclusions about the nature and character of substance are among our synthetic judgments either a posteriori or a priori since we cannot experience substances themselves.
These two dimensions appear to be 180° opposite to one another. The sensible world consists of a set of appearances that are perceptible, material, divisible, measurable, and constantly changing. The supersensible world consists of a set of “appearances” that are imperceptible, immaterial, indivisible, immeasurable, and, when it comes to concepts, unchanging. Observation of these contrasting sets of appearances by no means presumes what needs to be proved. Rather, it is only a contrast between descriptive sets, and it is the task of Critical Idealism to sort out what is necessary and what is purely accidental about these sets of appearances.

Critical Idealism and Postmodernism 13 November 2011 (5 Pages) – Updated July 2019

Updated 15 July 2019

Critical Idealism and Postmodernism by Douglas R McGaughey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Pdf version with footnotes (rather than endnotes) and page numbers:

 

Critical Idealism and Postmodernism

One of the intriguing ironies of the history of philosophy is that Enlightenment Modernism already anticipated and provided a strategy for responding to the skepticism of Postmodernism.

Postmodernism is usually linked to Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition[1] (1979, English 1985), in which he dismisses the meta-narratives of Western culture as bankrupt because of their destructiveness.  It is also associated with a movement in architecture that is characterized by the demolition of gigantic buildings (e.g., hotels in Las Vegas) and sport facilities as a symbol of the impermanence of even the most massive of human constructions.  In the theory of knowledge, Postmodernism is intimately connected with Deconstructionism that seeks to cultivate the virtues of vulgar skepticism for a project of justice.

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