Notes

         You and Doug have been communicating an interest in science that I would have you place here so I can make some comments in context.

On Jul 8, 2010, at 10:02 AM, Doug wrote:

Dick,

In thinking about looking at nature too closely I was struck by radioactive decay. The change in the number of radioactive atoms of a given element in a given time period is equal to the decay constant for that element times the number of atoms of that element present. The probability of any one atom decaying is random yet some how the element seems to know how many atoms are present so it knows how many should decay. This all get covered up in probabilities and statistics so we never have to ask such a question. Fascinating! 

Your friend

Doug

**

To: Doug

Sent: Thu, Jul 8, 2010 3:07 pm

Subject: Re: Radioactive decay

Consciousness (self awareness) is perhaps, within itself, an extension, a part greater than ourselves. It appears to me that the sciences as well as the arts are missing a selection of what  Reality is. In my thinking this reinforces my concept that as a species as well as individually we are more fictional than we realize. Most of ourselves is cultural conditioning. What works well in physics does not equally translate into the process of thinking. How can we define what is 'missing' from a greater sense of 'self-species' understanding of our 'placement' in the universe as well as in our own sense of  consciousness and understanding (rather than knowledge). 

Dick.    A correlation between radioactive decay and unconscious/consciousness?

**

Dick, Thanks for your thoughts on the subject. It is clear that knowledge as we define it and understanding are very different as you suggest. Hiding things in statistics and probabilities does not help me with the deeper understanding.

I am sure you are correct that we are mostly cultural conditioning and other mysterious stuff.

Doug

**

         You return with a comment on a continued interest in the ‘other mysterious stuff’. Let’s keep this simple.

“Knowledge: the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association  (2) : acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique  b (1) : the fact or condition of being aware of something . . . .”

“Understanding: 1 a : to grasp the meaning : to grasp the reasonableness  c : to have thorough or technical acquaintance with or expertness  d : 2 : to accept as a fact or truth or regard as plausible without utter certainty
3 : to interpret in one of a number of possible ways . . . “

Both of the above definitions are modified for my purposes from Merrium-Webster’s software.

The above notes stem from an earlier recent discussion about the possibility of gaining too much knowledge about the secret mysteries of Nature. Doug thought on how Quantum Mechanics may lead to too much human knowledge but you thought that Greater Nature (G---D) would always be more allusive than humankind because there is no equality in terms of knowledge and/or understanding.

This is making me tired, Amorella. It is interesting to discuss because it may spark imagination and thought, but I cannot see where this discussion may go in terms of the books.

Later, dude. Post for now. – Amorella. 

Chapter Six will focus on this aspect of The Rebellion. The two characters Mother and her Grandfather.

Faust  and Dr. Faustus  come to mind as well as Original Sin and Paradise Lost.

There has to be a moral compass, a walking of the line and not crossing. Yes or No. You lectured about it in Paradise Lost. You have your notes.

I used Mortimer Adler as one of my sources. What is Good? That is, define what is good. Back to Aristotle. I don’t know if I still have those notes.

The main focus for this next chapter is this question: Are we a part of this Rebellion for the right reasons.

I can relate to that. I think about this. ‘Am I writing these books for the right reasons?’ It is important to know the truth as much as one can.

But in this case, in the story, you have to dig deeper and pick up an angelic-like perspective to keep it in context. No good Angels, bad Angels in this story. Enough has been written on that aspect. But, an angelic perspective can be viewed through the Supervisor.

I don’t want to go there. Even in imagination. One can get caught up in self-deception, the best example I can think of is Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Obviously, it is Milton himself who is thinking for Satan, not Satan. Milton used reason to allow Satan to think he is doing his work for the right reasons. He wants to be close to G---D, to be like G---D, as it were.  Satan is depicted as very bright, which is one of his problems. Such an existential dilemma for him. Milton had his own existential dilemmas. The reader can more easily identify with the thinking of Satan than any of the good Angels. Is that because of Original Sin? I think not. Original Sin is the human side of the rebellion in Heaven not the angelic side. To me, in this context, original sin is wanted to be something other than what we are as a species, to want to be good Angels when we are human beings.

If you are going off in this direction, Amorella, I have to think it out. In the story, none of the human dead want to be angelic. To me, this is a good thing, this is one of the reasons they are in Elysium to begin with.

So, you see why this chapter theme has to come up.

But I am not going to focus on the Supervisor as Milton focuses on Satan. I am assuming the Supervisor has some of the characteristics of what I would call a good angel, most based on Mortimer Adler’s book, The Angels and Us (1982).

That is well and good, orndorff, to have a base, but let’s go further into your heart of what is important to you. You just finished reading about Adler in Wikipedia and are thinking that two people you hold in high esteem are Adler and Joseph Campbell. And, you read and lectured tidbits from Adler’s Ten Philosophical Mistakes while covering Paradise Lost. A summary of Adler’s thinking from Wikipedia will do well here as a reminder of what is important as you continue to define your thinking and where it is coming from as it relates to the books. You have to be seen in context as well since you are the legal author, and the words are streaming from your mind, not mine. – Amorella.

“Moral philosophy  (from Wikipedia: Mortimer J. Adler)

Adler referred to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as the "ethics of common sense" and also as "the only moral philosophy that is sound, practical, and undogmatic". Thus, it is the only ethical doctrine that answers all the questions that moral philosophy should and can attempt to answer, neither more nor less, and that has answers that are true by the standard of truth that is appropriate and applicable to normative judgments. In contrast, Adler believed that other theories or doctrines try to answer more questions than they can or fewer than they should, and their answers are mixtures of truth and error, particularly the moral philosophy of  Immanuel Kant.

Adler believed we are as enlightened by Aristotle’s Ethics today as were those who listened to Aristotle’s lectures when they were first delivered because the ethical problems that human beings confront in their lives have not changed over the centuries. Moral virtue and the blessings of good fortune are today, as they have always been in the past, the keys to living well, unaffected by all the technological changes in the environment, as well as those in our social, political, and economic institutions. Adler believed that the moral problems to be solved by the individual are the same in every century, though they appear to us in different guises.

According to Adler, six indispensable conditions must be met in the effort to develop a sound moral philosophy that corrects all the errors made in modern times.

First and foremost is the definition of prescriptive truth, which sharply distinguishes it from the definition of descriptive truth. Descriptive truth consists in the agreement or conformity of the mind with reality. When we think that that which is, is, and that which is not, is not, we think truly. To be true, what we think must conform to the way things are. In sharp contrast, prescriptive truth consists in the conformity of our appetites with right desire. The practical or prescriptive judgments we make are true if they conform to right desire; or, in other words, if they prescribe what we ought to desire. It is clear that prescriptive truth cannot be the same as descriptive truth; and if the only truth that human beings can know is descriptive truth—the truth of propositions concerning what is and is not—then there can be no truth in ethics. Propositions containing the word "ought" cannot conform to reality. As a result, we have the twentieth-century mistake of dismissing all ethical or value judgments as noncognitive. These must be regarded only as wishes or demands we make on others. They are personal opinions and subjective prejudices, not objective knowledge. In short, the very phrase “noncognitive ethics” declares that ethics is not a body of knowledge.

Second, in order to avoid the naturalistic fallacy, we must formulate at least one self-evident prescriptive truth, so that, with it as a premise, we can reason to the truth of other prescriptives. David Hume said that if we had perfect or complete descriptive knowledge of reality, we could not, by reasoning, derive a single valid ought.

Third, the distinction between real and apparent goods must be understood, as well as the fact that only real goods are the objects of right desire. In the realm of appetite or desire, some desires are natural and some are acquired. Those that are natural are the same for all human beings as individual members of the human species. They are as much a part of our natural endowment as our sensitive faculties and our skeletal structure. Other desires we acquire in the course of experience, under the influence of our upbringing or nurturing, or of environmental factors that differ from individual to individual. Individuals differ in their acquired desires, as they do not in their natural desires. This is essentially the difference between "needs" and "wants." What is really good for us is not really good because we desire it, but the very opposite. We desire it because it is really good. By contrast, that which only appears good to us (and may or may not be really good for us) appears good to us simply because we want it at the moment. Its appearing good is the result of our wanting it, and as our wants change, as they do from day to day, so do the things that appear good to us. In light of the definition of prescriptive truth as conformity with right desire, we can see that prescriptions are true only when they enjoin us to want what we need, since every need is for something that is really good for us. If right desire is desiring what we ought to desire, and if we ought to desire only that which is really good for us and nothing else, then we have found the one controlling self evident principle of all ethical reasoning—the one indispensable categorical imperative. That self-evident principle can be stated as follows: we ought to desire everything that is really good for us. The principle is self evident because its opposite is unthinkable. It is unthinkable that we ought to desire anything that is really bad for us; and it is equally unthinkable that we ought not to desire everything that is really good for us. The meanings of the crucial words "ought" and "really good" co-implicate each other, as do the words "part" and "whole" when we say that the whole is greater than any of its parts is a self-evident truth. Given this self-evident prescriptive principle, and given the facts of human nature that tell us what we naturally need, we can reason our way to a whole series of prescriptive truths, all categorical.

Fourth, in all practical matters or matters of conduct, the end precedes the means in our thinking about them, while in action we move from means to ends. But we cannot think about our ends until, among them, we have discovered our final or ultimate end—the end that leaves nothing else to be rightly desired. The only word that names such a final or ultimate end is "happiness." No one can ever say why he or she wants happiness because happiness is not an end that is also a means to something beyond itself. This truth cannot be understood without comprehending the distinction between terminal and normative ends. A terminal end, as in travel, is one that a person can reach at some moment and come to rest in. Terminal ends, such as psychological contentment, can be reached and then rested in on some days, but not others. Happiness, not conceived as psychologically experienced contentment, but rather as a whole life well lived, is not a terminal end because it is never attained at any time in the course of one's whole life. If all ends were terminal ends, there could not be any one of them that is the final or ultimate end in the course of living from moment to moment. Only a normative end can be final and ultimate. Happiness functions as the end that ought to control all the right choices we make in the course of living. Though we never have happiness ethically understood at any moment of our lives, we are always on the way to happiness if we freely make the choices that we ought to make in order to achieve our ultimate normative end of having lived well. But we suffer many accidents in the course of our lives, things beyond our control—outrageous misfortunes or the blessings of good fortunes. Moral virtue alone—or the habits of choosing as we ought—is a necessary, but not sufficient condition of living well. The other necessary, but also not sufficient condition is good fortune.

The fifth condition is that there is not a plurality of moral virtues (which are named in so many ethical treatises), but only one integral moral virtue. There may be a plurality of aspects to moral virtue, but moral virtue is like a cube with many faces. The unity of moral virtue is understood when it is realized that the many faces it has may be analytically but not existentially distinct. In other words, considering the four so-called cardinal virtues—temperance, courage, justice, and prudence—the unity of virtue declares that no one can have any one of these four without also having the other three. Since justice names an aspect of virtue that is other regarding, while temperance and courage name aspects of virtue that are self-regarding, and both the self- and other regarding aspects of virtue involve prudence in the making of moral choices, no one can be selfish in his right desires without also being altruistic, and conversely. This explains why a morally virtuous person ought to be just even though his or her being just may appear only to serve the good of others. According to the unity of virtue, the individual cannot have the self-regarding aspects of virtue—temperance and courage—without also having the other regarding aspect of virtue, which is justice.

The sixth and final condition in Adler’s teleological ethics is acknowledging the primacy of the good and deriving the right therefrom. Those who assert the primacy of the right make the mistake of thinking that they can know what is right, what is morally obligatory in our treatment of others, without first knowing what is really good for ourselves in the course of trying to live a morally good life. Only when we know what is really good for ourselves can we know what are our duties or moral obligations toward others. The primacy of the good with respect to the right corrects the mistake of thinking that we are acting morally if we do nothing that injures others. Our first moral obligation is to ourselves—to seek all the things that are really good for us, the things all of us need, and only those apparent goods that are innocuous rather than noxious. – from: Wikipedia: Mortimer J. Adler

**

The above will be used to remind yourself where these books are going. True, they are fiction, just as you see yourself as mostly fiction. You do subscribe to much of what Adler says above, and quite frankly he says it much better than you.

 This is what I admire about both Adler and Campbell. Both wrote mostly what I agree with, with similar conclusions based on what appears to be reasonableness within my own mind, to me.

 There we are. Post. – Amorella.