Defining 'Spirit'

One might want to define truth in other than a context of Platonic realism. A disquotation theory or some other might be helpful.

Given a particular verbal lexicon of meanings, if one does not assent to the meanings a priori it is unlikely that one would understand the concepts or meanings. Pontius Pilate asked rhetorically of Jesus Christ 'what is truth?'.

If I read a contemporary cosmology theory or language and substituted my own values for the terms or expressions I would not understand what the theoretical physicist intended. Notably some expect understanding of 'truth' to be brought to them to overcome their skepticism. Perhaps one must be drawn by the Spirit unto a relationship with God or actively work to learn philosophical ideas instead of receiving insight as a bonus for signing up with 4g wireless service two years.

It is also helpful to define 'spirit'. One might say that it is simply the life experience of a human being regarded as a data set by God. In theory a morally conscious human being aware of the truth values of Jesus Christ might behave differently socially than one that regards 'spirit' as meaningless and human experience as entirely phenomenal. Those that are spiritually dead in the sense of being unsaved or unenlightened regarding the spiritual life can miss the boat and slip into the river Styx like a slithering creature in devolution down the slippery slope to oblivion and even judgment.

Well, if spirit is simply human experience perceived or unperceived as spirit that state of affairs might describe (so far as humanly possible) the Spirit of God (I would think) to be Divine experience-the uncreated Being in omniscience without cause.

On Philosophy

Philosophy is a method or process of reasoning rather than an ossified practice. Philosophical syncretism is a way of building that model of the man-in-the-Universe Johnny Cash sort of one-piece-at-a-time opinion about reality before one physically dies that differs from religious syncretism. The latter present ossified doctrine and the former is a map in progress.

It is possible to extract ideas from the sky religion that gave rise to Hinduism and Buddhism too indirectly and regard those elements within a cosmological context such as the recurrent Universe of Nietzsche, the spinning bucket in the void thought experiments of Newton, The World as Will and Idea of Shopenhauer, 'The Three Dialogues’ of Bishop Berkley and his ideas about idealism contrasted with the illusory nature of reality of Buddhism and of course the noumenal-phenomenal dichotomy of Immanuel Kant and so forth.

Sakyamuni was perhaps a prince of a society over-run by another culture. He may have became a political and religious exile and in some respects resembles Abraham more than a little. Abraham and the Buddha were founders of social events-methods that would become morph into religious practices. Buddhism is far more of an historically reviewable religion than is Brahmanism, and less complex in its kit.

The fifty billion year kalpa of Hinduism and a recycling Universe are fascinating primitive cosmological theorizing. If one views very early Hinduism and Buddhism without the elaborations accreted upon them one discovers more philosophical outlooks.

That reminds me of the saying of God to the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament that everyone knows him, and they intentionally forget that He is. What Sartre calls 'false consciousness' set upon ancient ideas long ago. Christianity isn't much changed over two millenia though one may consider the accreted sectarian and heretical syncretisms that have flourished. Some forms of Hinduism and of Buddhism seem quite changed in comparison to the content created by their founders too.

One might enjoy reading of the historical growth of philosophical and religious thought concurrently in the past and perhaps today too. The rise of symbolic logic in the 19th century, and of Leibnitz' mathematical logic centuries before followed the ongoing progress in scientific knowledge and mathematics and was energized by the emerging paradigms. I would think that Darwin was stimulated not only by his Christian upbringing and the notion of sequential accretion of life forms in Genesis but from the entire continental expansion of knowledge as well. There were others regarding evolutionary change before Darwin.

The comparison of Descartes' cogito and 'Discourse Upon a Method' with Sartre's later 'Being and Nothingness' reveals the same sort of ratiocinating individual encountering an objective experience of a different real physical world-universe that is an implicit aspect of duality in other religious and philosophical methods.

One regards Zoroastrianism and its emphasis upon a duality of Good and Evil and reflects how that faith was historicaly eradicated by elimination of the believers. 'Beyond Good and Evil' was Nietzsche's tome, yet the only way one might rightly compare the transcendence of good and evil is through monism with pluralism as an apparent, or even illusory fact of the expression of being and life.

Thus one finds the malleability of words and reference objects of late 20th century analytical philosophy Strawson, Quine, Kripke etc within the ontology of uncertainty paralleled in the uncertainty of quantum mechanics. A quantum universe itself uncertain is a sort of larger expression of the subjective uncertainty and temporality of the world-for-itself.

One may find quite a lot of philosophy to favor, and then regard The One and The Son of God as the best inference worth faith.

Homosexuals Leading the Way in New Cases of H.I.V. in the U.S.A.

In the U.S.A. in 2009 about 26,000 cases of H.I.V. were made through male to male (homosexual) contact. An additional 4,500 cases were contracted in heterosexual relations inclusive of prostitution. Fewer than 2000 cases occurred through the use of contaminated needles.

In the United States, and in Tennessee, the H.I.V.-A.I.D.s issue is largely a concern of homosexuals, illegal drug users, the prostitution industry and those interested in preventing the increase of dangerous disease.

The African H.I.V. issue is a horse of a different color with the non-monogamy historical cultural practice being one of the causes of the transmission of A.I.D.s Many women have several contacts a day, and scientific research discovered that H.I.V. cases increase markedly with promiscuity.


http://www.avert.org/usa-transmission-gender.htm

Broadcast Media of Prions Lurking Out There

A French study of prion transmission between species has shown that the misfolded protein structures that are the cause for Mad Cow Disease make interspecies and human-to-human communications more readily than previously known. Autopsies on brains to determine if the disease was communicated does not necessarily indicate if the disease had been broadcast to organs it might lurk in. Perhaps the blood-brain barrier had protected brains better than in the remainder of the body. In the French investigation the prions were transmitted successfully 26 of 41 times to organs rather than being a minority occurrence in the brains of the targets.


http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-prions-species-easily-thought.html

In Britain as many as 1 in 4000 people may be media for PrPSc prion transmission according to samples of appendixes of the populous. Evidently the prions find lymphoid tissue a friendlier ecosystem than brain tissue.

In Humans the disease is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The disease causes a rotting of the brain resembling ordinary dementia or an over-abundance of concussions.

State of Union Speech 2012: President Obama's Support for Extended Tax Cuts for the Rich in Dec.2010 Was Unfair to the Poor

President Obama's state of the union speech attacked the under-taxed status of the rich in the nation. Of course President Obama is directly responsible for the present low, low tax rates of the Bush II era that he supported vigorously for renewal in December 2010. If re-elected he probably would assure that the tax cuts become permanent as a sort of woosification of the Democratic political agenda.

President Obama presented the seat of honor to billionaire Warren Buffet's secretary. Maybe she knows that the tax cuts will expire again this later this year if the President does not again intervene to extend them. Probably the Republicans will mercilessly lever the President and force him to forego extended Hawaiian vacations and large entourage unless he capitulates.

President Obama is fundamentally a weak moderate Republican chasing after the receeding to the right Republicans trying to meet them halfway. Sure he insinuated homosexuality into the military and New York to match up New England's policies on that, yet of course the corporate world supported that policy so it cannot be said that it was a Democratic plank.

Can Mitt Romney Overcome the Bias Against Wealth as Ross Perot Failed to Do in 1992?

Mitt Romney has become a kind of poster child for the upper 1% paying inadequate taxes while prospering during hard times. Of course the upper 1% do not experience hard times as the poor know them, so they are not to blame for lacking ideas about how to fully employ the poor so they prosper.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-romney-voter-reaction-20120125,0,2084544.story

Mitt Romney, like Franklin Roosevelt is from the right side of the Interstate. Some Republicans hope that he may be a leader of the people rather than a leader for royalty. Some look for signs of the coronation of Jeb Bush if Republicans are turned off by the unAmerican wealth of Mitt Romney. Real Americans want to work at McDonalds flipping burgers.

Actually I liked the $1 menu and the double cheeseburgers quite a bit during my bicycle riding around America looking for a house to paint decade. They were good years when I could afford two doubles for Christmas and a large coffee.

Florida voters have a choice to make; to elect the Georgian visionary envisioning himself as President making excellent speeches, the morally excellent Rick Santorum

or the former Mormon missionary draft deferred top .006 percent Rich Mitt Romney. I do not prefer royalty for anything although the Queen of England is occasionally cool. All I can say is I wish that Ross Perot had stayed in the 1992 Presidential race and won.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-romney-voter-reaction-20120125,0,2084544.story

A Comment on Russell, Frege and Quine's Theories of Names

I think it useful if one regards one thread of the evolution of analytic philosophy moving through logic and language as well as the relationship to the empirical world culminating eventually beyond 'Naming and Necessity' in Quine's later work 'Ontological Relativity'.

If Russell's approach is descriptivist and Kripke's is causal on names then Quine synthesizes the two complimentary approaches in placing lexicons within ontological sets of meaning.

Kripke gave names the characteristic of being 'rigid designators'. One may hypothesize a modal logic in which 'Richard Nixon' invariably refers to a real individual, yet with M-Theory ideas of an infinite promulgation of all-possible universes it is easy to hypothesize all possible model logic ontologies with infinite varieties of Richard Nixons and Richard Nixon meanings in infinite stages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_and_Necessity