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Newsletter Nr. 607
Amsterdam, March 7th, 2016


PLATO'S CAMERA - Paul Churchland's Neural Theory of Ideal Forms - ANDREA DIEM-LANE

For over two millennia, philosophers have debated how we gain knowledge of the world. The Greek thinker Plato argued that there are universals of human cognition, such as concepts of beauty, justice, and the Good, innate to us. While these ideas or eidoes, often referred to as Platonic Forms, are certainly nuanced in each cultural setting, they can best be understood in the first place because of a prior overall conceptual framework. For instance, in China, India, Africa, Iran, and Greece the inhabitants of these lands may define beauty or justice quite differently. Yet, despite one’s background, humans all seem to understand the over-arching “idea” of beauty and justice. We begin to “intuit” these universals from the moment we enter this world, and they in way help us navigate the world. Nonetheless, as a rationalist Plato asserted that through reason and logic it is the philosopher who can truly penetrate through all of the particulars witnessed and fully grasp the universal, higher forms from which everything was modeled. This knowledge would be transformative, he added.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/diem-lane21.html


TRANSCENDING INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER - Response to Keller's Opportunity in Tri-memetic Chaos - JOE CORBETT

In Marty Keller's “The Opportunity in Trimemetic Chaos”, he argues that the value meme of moral autonomy and reason in modernity is under attack, on the one hand, from the traditional tribal mentality that never got over the liberation of bodies and minds from the collective, and on the other hand, especially from the postmodern identitarians who revel in their self-identity with a chosen sub-group (neo-tribalism), by-passing any possibility for the development of individual character. He seems to think that this is evidence that modern values are precarious and have not yet been fully embedded in our interiors. But he also thinks that this is an opportunity to win the fight for modern values once and for all in the evolutionary advancement of consciousness by engaging in a trimemetic war with the regressive forces of tribal identity, especially the postmodern identitarians who have skipped the development of their individual character, like the bad libertarians they are.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/corbett38.html