Liberate Public Education

Political contentiousness and interpretation of symbolic meanings never end in the litigious world of Washington D.C. So many litigation court hours were spent removing manger scenes from public court buildings and other public areas and so forth that the government expressed an inability to harmonize public mass education with the will of people to be free to exercise religious expression publicly including public schools. If the federal government forces minors to attend school until the 8th grade instead of doing something useful like brick making then it should not force them to stifle their free speech on religious expression.

To harmonize the different public interests the government should get out of the public school business and pay students to attend private schools of their choice with the government role simply being to assure quality control for all students.

Only students of the poor and middle class should receive subsidized public education, only the poor should receive free public medical services, and only the rich should be taxed at 60% including capital gains.

Diversity in public education means strength of independent thinking rather than Soviet and Nazi style indoctrination.

Philosophy as Rigorous Science, Chat, Thought or Whatever

Philosophical thought may be about finding meaning or whatever else is 'wise'. Wisdom may be simplicity or awareness of the truth within a convoluted social world with litigious minutia destroying the woods and the trees. Sartre wrote his 'Being and Nothingness' during World War Two Paris after being released by the Nazis from a p.o.w. camp. He wrote 'Critique of Dialectical Reason' and lost an eye during the venture, and also visted Stalinist Russia. One might consider his work unrigorous since it has no math symbols, yet it is a good way of viewing human social organizations with a different lens-simultaneously phenomenally and sociologically even with individual and collective epistemology baed on analysis on cognitive subjectivity.

Edmund Husserl was a philosopher born in 1859 determined eventually to make philosophy a rigorous science. He wrote quite a lot with titles like 'Logical Investigations'. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that his later works were helpful in relating scientific ideas to pre-scientific conceptual paradigms. Husserl was a phenomenologist.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/

One may find rather readily quite a bit of depth in philosophical history of logic. Of course one remembers Aristotle' invention of classical logic, then one can skip to Leibniz' invention of mathematical logic that he kept in a drawer and never published, and on to Frege, Russell and eventually the 20th century analytic philosophers. The development of symbolic logic then use of it in an expanding permutation of forms found use in things from computer programming to algebra and SO3 groups etc.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/

That philosophical development of formal logic has had quite a number of individuals that have put work into it from Strawson to Kripke (Naming and Necessity). One may expand one' own interest in logic over decades if given an opportunity, yet one also might wish to apply such rigorous thought to the world of perceptions and even cosmology.

Individuals may read logic and epistemologies derived from it and apply it as a filter to consider the works of philosophers like Immanuel Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' or simply to reading a newspaper and discovering commonplace logic fallacies in politics. Philosophical thought may lead one to an awareness of the inadequacy of the mundane social existence, of why reality T.V. and soap operas haven't much prospect for making the world utopia, or why the reorganization of society into a better functioning organization de facto is so challenging. Not all philosophical thought is along the lines of a technical occupation pursuit with guaranteed pay.

Many people with graduate degrees in philosophy become lawyers or else in order to draw a paycheck-not a bad idea either. Nearly a quarter of lawyers get into another occupation within a few years. Considering society without a paycheck may free one a little from corporate control and the threat of termination if one does not hush-that's why so many executives are fairly mute in politics today except for sycophantic utterances.

It is a good thing to have a rigorous approach to knowledge and run experiments. It is also interesting to have a disciplined approach to reading as much of the world's knowledge concerning philosophy as one may in a lifetime, yet of course the time runs out and one is left with faith and hope that The Lord will accomplish His miracles. One must try to apply one-self a little earlier then to apply rigorous methods to faith activities-perhaps the mere Lutheran style of reform bringing a Priesthood of Believers to graduate beyond the hierarchical priesthood left over from the feudal era...there are many disciplined activities for philosophers today and not all require scientific method.

On the premise that 'Anything is morally acceptable to prevent global ecosphere collapse."

I was wondering about that-nice thought. Means and ends issues though. I think its possible that if society is really rotten at heart that one might have to let it go destroy itself with a clear conscience and rely on God to save the elect.

Its also the case practically that social rule becomes increasingly corrupt in the public and corporate sectors as individualism is annihilated and collective power is concentrated. The people in governmemnt and the corporate world with so much power may be the least likely to fix anything in an ordinary Utopian perfection acceptable to perfectionists.

Merry Christmas.

On the History and Concept of the Theory That the World Is an Illusion

That the world’s objects change and decay ordinarily, and that the sky and seasons appear to change obviously provided an observation opportunity for early philosophers to regard and hypothesize as being temporal and illusory perhaps even derived from a perfect world of designs or forms. Plato described an ideal world of changeless forms, while Sakyamuni considered the temporal world Maya- illusion.

The idea of illusion and dualism is anthropolgically primordial. One finds its elements in the religious evolutions from Europe-India through the Vedic and in Zoroastrianism. Hegelianist evolution of the spirit as a world consciousness is another form. Neitzche and Shopenhauer were influenced by Zoroastrian ideas-the latter believed the world is an illusory, bad world with an implicit nature of evil (The World as Will and Representation). Karl Marx was inflluenced by a dualist criteria as a student of Hegel and his dialectical evolution is a kind of godless evolution toward utopian social reality through the maya of social dichord.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)

The Mayan calendar expiring in 2012 is held by some to be a reason to tour in the Yucatan.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian_religion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_religion

http://dunedinschool.wordpress.com/category/religion/purification/ death of Mithridates by Zarathustran king

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism Ahura Mazada (good) vs.forces of chaos (druj) (bad)

With the pain and suffering of this world, with extended unemployment and the impermanence of lot ownership, one may regard the experience of life itself as illusory. With relativity and the evolution of time the manifestation of actualized forms may take unusual, unpredictable twits and turns. Even the calculation of probabilities is saturated with uncertainty including that mysterious beyond the parameters and premises potential for unknown force overthrowing the formalization of theory.

It reaches its terminal moment when as Sartre said death emerges as 'the complete triumph of the other'. What the otherness of being is that permits a universe badly defined and human beings to be and become is unknown.

It is yet challenging to posit that A is B or life is illusion. One might contemplate the odds of any existing event or process being and illusion I would guess...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/#KolProCal

One should want to define the meaning of illusion and 'world' before applying the formula 'world=illusion' and decide if it is just the Earth or all of the solar system that are illusory. At some point in the Universal set there must be some real or existing entity for which the world is an illusion. If everything were an illusion without a real observer one might have an interesting cosmology yet an improbable one.

One may opt with Kierkeguaard to rely upon the transcending power and person of Jesus Christ to establish an eternal relationship with ‘The One’ God.

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

The solid-state mass of this universe is at the smallest conjectured level believed to be energy. E=mc2 at least indicates the convertibility of energy into matter. Matter can be regarded as a steady state of energy. Energy is 'locked' into a steady state as mass. If one reads about the nuclear mechanic of the sun as a hydrogen star, and learn about the production of helium etc, and also about the primordial creation of baryons early in the history of the present math of cosmological theory one is reading of energy and mass as a steady state.

Simultaneously mass and energy are believed to be sustained immediately by a quantum field.

Quantum superposition and entanglement of particles, the wave-particle duality of mass-energy (vis the double slit photon experiment) is a remarkable field to read about. Quantum particles for themselves may exist in a field of uncertain nature in other dimensions that extrudes into the four dimensional universe and is snared by virtue of relations to other particles probabilities of cancelled out of being elsewhere into a steady state.

The mechanics of the underlying fields are unknown. How the steady state field relates to the underlying sustaining field is uncertain. Does time exist in that quantum field where every particle can be anyplace in it universe and doe not appear in this one until observed or entangled? Does relativity apply in the quantum field as it does in this universe with four dimensions?

The question of the universe being an illusion or not is really the wrong question. It’s real enough for what it is, and there are real sentient beings living in it. An illusion is a contingent term given a particular value like all other words I would think. Is the Universe like some other illusion, or is it like an emergent and apparent relative phenomena like the apparent wind speed aboard a sailboat of zero when it sailing along in a ten mile an hour wind from the stern with 100% efficiency?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc

Augustine and Ontological Relativity

I wanted to mention Plotinus' neo-Platonism and his exposition of Platonism in The Enneads. Socrates at least believed in God, and the concept of One being emanating everything that exists seems the better interpretation of Plato extent. It was written only about 600 years after, in a language still pretty much like that of Plato.

Numbers are an expression of divisible relations-or an early form of relativity I would think. Natural numbers, rational numbers or Cantor's trans-infinite infinities with given ordinal relations that cannot be sub-divided infinitely (as in the Eleatic paradoxes) are a way the mind made order in representative structure...abstract structures necessarily about reality. The problem as Russell might have pointed out is a categorical error in language about where to categorize abstract idea and designs. As a Christian I have no trouble with any of the opinions because I think God can keep track of the math and quanta of all sorts.

The work of ordering and formalizing expressions of interval and structure with signs is accomplished in-the-world, and there isn't much difference between the mind as a field with trillions of synaptic connection routes processing sense input in its particular way in the unified temporal field of the Universe and the world itself except qualitatively. That is the mind and nature are phenomenal and integral within the fundamental universal monism.

Augustine could easily regard thought as valuable in a special or even Hegelian way. Because of the Creator's relationship to mankind it is ideas and relationships that are consequential. The Spirit of God transcends the material world or encompasses it, and Leibniz's spiritual one-dimensional monads or thoughts about the Intellect emanated by The One lead to the cloud of unknowing's mystery.

Augustine's penetrating examination of abstract objects as being real is something of a very early analytic philosophy as well as Platonist. Strawson's' Individuals' and Quine's Word and Object’ follow up the relationship of ideas to the real world, and improve upon the empiricism of the era that was ending and being surpassed by ontological relativity in epistemology.

The transcendence of classical realism for a phenomenalism and a subjective epistemology unified with the corporeal is a modern point of view. Mind is grounded in the noumenal and the quantum realm of probability statistics as well as naive reality taken as unshakable by traditional empiricists.

Plotinus points out a hierarchy of relations from The One to the Intellect, the realm of forms and the real world with so many examples of broken forms. One might take that as a fair approximation of the concept that fundamental structure given to quantum mechanical energy have an 'intelligible object' content as well as mass or energy. One might wonder if the way that quantum mechanical particles exist with concurrent uncertainty and determinism overall is not an illustration of the way the realm of forms downloads its designs into the actual solid-state universe.

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

President Obama Annual December Tax Cut Urging Returns

This time each year President Obama urges tax cuts saving the GOP the trouble of exerting themselves much. Like maggots eating away the dead flesh to prevent gangrene (too much taxation) tax cutting can go too far and start eating red, healthy muscle. Maggots after their work is done need to be doused with piss to kill them off (remember that if you have an open wound and flies lay their eggs in it). Tax cutting on the rich should have topped at 60%. The healthy infrastructure of the U.S.A. is being ate away and replaced globally by cheap labor and domestically by cheap illegal immigrant labor.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jeYmQnHmUVMMTpohHkMNA8Odwraw?docId=cb59100dd082478cad633 Obama Urges Payroll Tax Cut

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Obama-Urges-Congressional-Republicans-to-Support-Extension-of-Key-Tax-Cut-135059533.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/us/politics/extension-of-payroll-tax-cut-passes-senate.html?_r=1

The rich may not mind the vast public debt with low tax rates as they can collect the interest paid on the U.S. federal debt themselves.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126413824 'How to Lose a Trillion Dollars'

If the U.S. credit rating is down-graded again, some investors are sure to profit. Fitch warns that in 2013 it may drop if more budget cutting (or revenue increases) fail to occur.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/us-usa-fitch-idUSTRE7BK1V720111221?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Eight Officers, NCOs/Specialists Investigated in Connection With Suicide of Alaska Private in Afghanistan

Eight Officers, non-commissioned officers and specialists in Afghanistan have been suspended in connection with the death of Fort Wainwright Stryker brigade soldier Danny Chen based in Alaska.

Charges in connection with the death range from dereliction of duty, negligent homicide, assault, battery, reckless endangerment and so forth. It sounds like Private Chen encountered substantial opposition personally, yet the case is open. Bizarre conduct for officers and nco's to say the least.

The soldiers suspended and sent elewhere pending charges...1st Lt. Daniel J. Schwartz, Staff Sgt. Andrew J Van Bockel, Staff Sgt. Blaine G. Duga, Sgt. Adam M. Holcomb, Sgt. Jeffrey T. Hurst, Sgt Travis F. Carded, Spc. Ryan J. Offutt, and Spc. Thomas Curtis

State of Alaska Government personnel are of course concerned when bullying occurs to its residents and Alaska based soldiers. In the military, soldiers under authority have no option of significant resistance to supervisory corruption as they are legally bound by oath to follow orders. Obviously soldiers should have some sort of technological witness chronomonitor to record abusive incidents.

The military like civil society exists within a social compact that allows smooth functioning of society and individual interest subordinated to the mass interests. Unfortunately sometimes those in power regard their opportunities for corruption as a natural right of themselves or as a class. It will be good if the matter is swiftly, methodically clarified.

http://www.adn.com/2011/12/21/2227948/8-charged-in-death-of-alaska-based.html

Alaska Gov. Mead Treadwell Says Alaska Coastal Management Plan Cost Would Be $5.4 million

American states with ocean coastlines have some input into Federal management of it's lands on those areas. I would guess that includes federal timber rich lands plundered in the Tongass Forest of Alaska as well as the other more than 6000 miles of coastline. St. Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell estimates the cost to the state to have it own coastal management plan would be 5.4 million dollars per year. The previous coastal management plan sunsetted out earlier this year, and so the next might go onto a state ballot

Just a few days ago a popular Juneau area beach named Sandy Beach was found after chemical laboratory testing sent by a local Tlingit group to contain toxic levels of mercury leftover from the Treadwell mine area that was driven below the Gastineau Channel and under the beach area. Long ago the Treadwell mine entrance at Sandy Beach collapsed.

The Treadwell Mine produced more than 3 million troy onces of gold before collape in 1922. Treadwell, a carpenter, sold his claim for 1.5 million dollars earlier and left for San Francisco. The mine at Douglas (across the channel from Juneau) went a deep a 2400 feet below the surface.

Mercury poisoning is a sad consequence of the mining process even today as it is used to extract gold from other minerals. In prior times fish contaminated with mercury were banned by the federal government from sales in the United States. It is on ongoing concern for fishermen, crabbers and others that make their living toiling to bring seafood to the table.

Some Alaskans have long been concerned about environmental quality and shoreline conservation and are concerned to stop the destruction of shoreline and contiguous ecosphere regions' health. The residents of the Earth aren't known to be planning to evacuate soon and return to the planet E.T. where sugar-plumbs grow toxin free.

http://hainesnews.net/2011/12/20/coastal-management-would-cost-5-4-million-state-estimates/

http://www.ktoonews.org/2011/12/12/popular-beach-may-have-high-mercury-levels/

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