TO PHILOSOPHY TALK from STANFORD U.,
Some thoughts on your ?Top 10 Philosophical Issues of the 21st Century?:
MY CONCLUSION: --- BACK TO BASICS!
10. Finding new basis for common sensibilities and values:
The Golden Rule: ?Do unto others as you would they do unto you!? Alone or in groups one must put oneself in the place of every object, animate or inanimate, to achieve best chances at justice for that object and themselves. This idea of being one with all is far more than a mere esoteric.
9. Finding a new basis for social identification:
Not only ?are all politics local?, they, like all else of man?s endeavors on his home world, are and have been - even in the age of the foot without wheel -
terrestrial also (mentioning worlds one can?t then use universal in this context, so terrestrial). Further may we agree that the global firestorm of corporate profit
motive, while in large measure having given comfort and ease in its justly regulated (regulated because of its attention to this greed, profit at cost to others) days, when given its randy head, has put this enormous clamp on the good, on our world that we now experience, so that going local, for example in building one?s food sources is the only way to ensure the very thing all life, as it was created to do, does, and that is survive?
So let?s be careful in extolling some half?existent reality of the going forwardness of so-called ?distant and powerful forces? as though they shall remain, or should, given that right of the people to decide whom shall serve them and how. Even with the bar-coded human staring in from the outside of the future corporations and sometimes authority would have it, even if some Titan shrugs.
8. The Mind-Body problem. Neuroscience is revealing so much about the brain:
One thing about the mind that may indeed never change, and that is its flexibility to resolve all to itself, as a tool to its continuance, without the plugged-in analysis that may find one day the electricity does not come.
As to what is so special about us.
Please if anyone can, decipher for me if you will, using the whale?s own perspectives, its knowledge of its chosen (a mammal that went from the land to the seas by choice in some bygone era) milieu, what it knows about the world and its creatures. But bare in mind, you cannot use human constructs/perspectives to do this.
也许像奥卡姆和海森堡这样的老师在我们的询问中应该更有头脑。
艺术家要求总结经验教训。
7. Can freedom survive the onslaught of science:
What is freedom to an ant (mentioned in a 'Holy Book' as a creature for man to watch and learn from)? Can we say it is the ability to be of worth to and therefore kept by the colony? And of the bird, any bird. Can we say from what we see, that freedom for them is both a wing and a prayer. Wing, allowing large-circumference searches, and prayer in its peck and watch nervously, peck and watch?
Then for that so-full-of themselves you and I (the race of human beings ? as different from, we think, bird-beings and the ant-beings for instance), what is freedom for us?
Is it self, self all for narrowly defined individual self? Or is it self, self expansive all that makes up self? ? and this is no pie-in-the-sky toting happy, feely 3rd Century B.C. or 14th Century European Peasants Rebellions for justice, or 1960?s in the
United States of America?s hippy placing of flowers in gun barrels wish hope and prayer, but the reality of our place and where in fact Will fits into it.
And what does science and these so-named discoveries have to do with the simple truths that cannot be run from, nor searched out and quantified into new designation, again, behind the glass for our so clever perusal?
自由意志?to attack, bomb, kill innocents for cause and perceived justice, is this in fact free will, or is it a kind of insane vengeance-induced intoxication
and self-destructive stupor, that true intelligence, true big-brain mind, would find more thoughtful answers for, like perhaps the whale has?
6. Information and misinformation in the information age:
让我们在这里也同意，信息从来就不是应该的，而是偶然的和让时间?s-quorum决定。如果它是其他的，那就是:一个稳重，坚定的手，在所有方面和地方都是可信的，那么，是什么让我们了解了外科手术本身不断发展的技术和科学?
Was she, this dame, a loose, grave-robbing,
illegitimate whore and fiend in her early (late by Egyptian, Greek and Arab standards) European days?
I will not drown you in examples drawn from the sciences of truths (in these examples read information vs. misinformation), that later were (politely) proven
no truth at all, and as for the charge of good or bad; what indeed is good, if not that it strives for clear, even-handed, uplift of all created things, bad being the
?clear? opposite of that? And if what is asserted, as I think might be: how does one tell the one from the other? Just by that, its sense of justice for all or not, its inclusion vs. its exclusion, its truth for truth?s sake vs. its dissembly, the meaning grasped (if nothing else) by they that can discern and report
truthfully. - Back to no too-breathy One, back to a sensible thought-out One, and do we belong there?
5. Intellectual property, in the age of re-mix culture:
What dredges here is a saying attributed to Thomas Stearns Eliot: ?mediocre writers borrow, great writers steal.? It has also been noted with little room for
因为一个人受到世界的影响，所以他永远不可能真正具有独创性。约翰·沃尔夫冈·范·歌德曾说过:“最具独创性的作家并非因为他们提出新的东西，而是因为他们知道如何表达一些以前从未有人说过的东西。”
How do men live successfully in the world without knowing their histories?
How do we not know that many of the Hebrew and Christian, etc. commandments or best ways of living
'laws', come to us from the Egyptians who wanted to be
?true of voice? and hold their hand(s) from aggression (even though in much of it, they, as we, fail(ed)?
Is there indeed ? ?nothing new under the sun? as I think
所罗门是虚空中的虚空。可能会说吗?
So how ?gentle-persons? can we own anything, when
的确，我们，就像我们自己的创作一样，借用和缝合?它来自我们周围的世界和我们之前的一切，或者我们从我们的孩子那里借来的，就像美国印第安人说的地球。
Still, may I not posture overmuch ? being ?a poet-hearted fellow? I should like to think there was a Copyright law that might protect my work as that,
within reason (and they be: beyond quote and paraphrase, that in the writers case, I feel, when there is no ambiguity of origin, must be affixed) a thing I made.
4. New models of collective decision making and collective rationality:
Is it true, ? we?have no models of collective rationality.?? Maybe it is in its specific i.e. world-action taken within a specific time frame, but let me
sound here for the fact that all ideas that spread out from one or a very small source(s) to become ?worldly? did so from that/those small/individual voices and
sources so that it took only the taking-up and the following for the mass of men.
The world religions and ethical ideas did this. Ideas proffered by science and art and every means and discipline have so done, so that now, in Our dire need of joint action, to literally save ourselves and our posterity, we need listen ? Go Back - to all those voices that have asked for cooperation and leniency between men for all of his existence. All the ?law-givers?, the Abrahams, Solomons, Homers (in his, really it was/is, indictment of war), Socrates?, Jesus Christs, Joan de Arcs, etc. etc. etc.
-或者我们可以借鉴一些古代波斯国王的模式，我认为他们在统治、判断和决定方面是最好的，他们的手强大但平等/宽容。
Toleration is more than the front-porch of empathy, it is a way into the house, and has an aura of the giving-of-respect to it, which is the saving-of-face that must attend negotiations on all sides.
3. What is a person:
Maybe the things such as cloning and altered, ?drug?-enhanced personalities that are here mentioned ?will force us to rethink the very idea of a human person?
but it will not be the first set of prods or the last. The re-hashed, but oft forgotten ethics, again, of earlier ages that have come to most of today?s peoples by way of religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, for example, changed what it meant to be human in many cases. Witness how eventually it became unacceptable in many places where Christianity set down, especially in its early, ripe days, to kill without much thought as in Roman coliseums of that fast receding past ? though it took time to ?take hold?. Sight how peoples in the lands of early Islam were righted and even led to cleaner, healthier lives by adherence to the rules/ideas set out by the Prophet of that religion.
And let me do mention the ?simple? Back-to-basics trough Darwin led us to, or Newton, or Galileo, or Einstein, to name but a very few.
(Socrates) Plato thought all knowledge was memory.
Mother Mnemosyne must be proud of him!
所有这些单一的思想与他们所处的环境和时代是一致的吗?我们爬上去的肩膀?改变了人的本质，改变了人的认识，改变了人的认识。有人在灌木丛中散布恐惧，说:“就是这样，上帝死了!”天要塌下来了!没有什么会是相同的!所以我是其中一个，我对人类的信仰?s
capacity for wisdom acted aright flags, have more hope and yes faith, that sense and reason and indeed self-preservation will show us the way before all is verboten.
2. New models of the human relationship to environment and resource conservation:
?For our exploitation and use!? say the destroyers. And all of us do the destroying, if not outright for the immediate quarterly profit, I?ve-got-to-get-mine-now; my-daddy-was-an-axeman-and-that?s-what-I-do; oh-don?t-bother-me-there-will-always-be-war-somebody-has-to-make-the-munitions; I?m-only-a-shareholder; I-only-bank-here;
I-only-buy-here, or by our acceptance of an ?easy? way of life come by being handy and quick with the apathy. But one looks for the awakening some say is coming, where men Will grow up and become the parents of ourselves and this commonality we have some responsibility for.
1. Global justice:
我可以吗?I don’我不能告诉你我对阅读有多么失望，过去的哲学没有给出一个真正的模型。?to help us manage distinctly 21st Century problems like
保护环境?公正的原则?贫穷国家吗?。
Few want to hear simple truths because they smack of unscientific religion, faith, belief and doing-the-right-thing, which is what many have given their lives for (Socrates and Jesus Christ again).
I think there were persons who were very much against the chopping down of the vast groves of Palestinian Cedars.
Gerard Manely Hopkins has a poem called,
?Binsey Poplars? in which he bemoans the cutting of those trees and how future generations ?cannot know the beauty been?? Was the coast of Asia Minor once a
thriving forest? Were swaths so fast, they are equivalent to smaller or larger states in the United States cut down in the Amazon only ?just now??
And Africa, how dear aunt you have been mistreated by the civilized!
Plato?s ?Crito?:
Socrates. And is it just to repay evil with evil as the multitude thinks, or unjust?
Crito. Certainly it is unjust.
Socrates. For there is no difference, is there, between doing evil to a man and acting unjustly?
Crito. True.
Socrates. Then we ought not to repay injustice with injustice or to do harm to any man, no matter what we may have suffered from him. And in conceding this, Crito, be careful that you do not concede more than you mean. For I know that only a few men hold, or ever will hold, this opinion. And so those who hold it and those who do not have no common ground for argument; they can of necessity only look with contempt on each other?s belief. Do you therefore consider very carefully whether
or not you agree with me and share my opinion. Are we to start in our inquiry from the premise that it is never right either to act unjustly, or to repay injustice with injustice, or to avenge ourselves on any man who harms us, by harming him in return?...?
Examples of higher consciousness, of plain, just, thoughtful living, of ?how to be a man?? Many!
对我们大多数人来说?如果不是恐惧，谋杀和淫荡的错位的利益，这很容易吗?s irresponsible media and poor-hearted studios and studio heads send us we had the responsible and the we-can-do-this!
We as a race of beings could make this a veritable long awaited heaven on earth it could be with just a little less taking and a lot more giving.
I pray, yes, that word too I use.
I pray we might,
- Joseph Duvernay

I was glad to see No.6 included, which seems to me to be the most challenging issue philosophers need to deal with, as well as the one which frames all of the others. The cynic in me sees all the others as merely age old philosophical problems, fashionable dressed (no harm in this - we need to connect somehow with current concerns). But No.6 is genuinely, startlingly new. I look forward to the development of some intellectual tools from engaging with it - ones that could empower the citizen and help him/her confront the other global issues you list. Good luck.

8. The Mind-Body problem. Neuroscience is revealing so much about the brain
这种新知识是否解决了心灵的古老奥秘?还是说，它使我们的头脑变得愚蠢，剥夺了我们曾经认为自己有多么特别的东西?
I don't like either of those options. New knowledge about the mind and brain don't seem to bear on the question of how there can be a subject of experiences at all (at least, not in the sense that it leads us closer to a solution); and for this very reason, they don't reduce the mind to dumb matter (insofar as we mean by "mind" a qualitative experience of thinking, not mere functions that connect behavior to the environment), or rob it of its apparent specialness.

First a question/request - Why doesn't your web lackey make it so a thread is opened for every episode of phil talk as soon as (or perhaps before) it is aired, regardless of whether either of the Philosophy Brothers has the time or interest to write their own contribution? After all, they have already 'blogged' on the air, so they've had their say, while we plebs, whose intellects have presumably been stimulated by their on-air discussion, would like to comment. What's the down side of automatically making every episode of phil talk postable (hint - you can do the automatic part through the miracle of the modern programmable electronic computer). You stimulate our thinking and then cut us out of the conversation. Why? One is left to conclude that you really don't give a rat's posterior about what any of your listeners have to say. So please set up auto topic creation for the comments. Thank you.
That said, I will now post my actual comment here, which is not about David Letterman but rather about your latest show on 'What Would Jesus Actually Do?', because there is no place to post otherwise (see above preface). I actually sent this as an e-mail during the show, but I think that has even less chance of getting any eyeball time). Thus:
耶稣(通过新约)被微不足道地用来为一个国家或个人已经决定奉行的任何政策辩护。如果你把《旧约》——一个名叫上帝的复仇心强、嫉妒心强、精神错乱、超级聪明的外星人在世界各地横行——放到这里，就更容易为任何事情辩护了。实际上，没有人会向耶稣寻求做什么事情的建议，而只是为他们已经决定做的事情找理由(例如，乔治·布什、巴拉克·奥巴马、托尼·布莱尔、哈里·杜鲁门，等等，等等，等等，无穷无尽)。这说明了诉诸耶稣的欺骗性、不道德和不可救药的有毒性质——它们被用来减轻最令人反感的人(以及像我们这样的普通反感的人)的个人责任，无论我们打算如何进行不道德的行为。

哲学的问题在于，它从来没有回答过现在对人类来说最重要的是什么。对一个女人来说，是满足、财富还是一生中获得的交配次数和后代才算呢?

It seems Mr Dunaway has covered most of this. My primary concern may be covered by # 3, WHAT IS A PERSON, but I see a PRACTICAL philosophical problem, analagous to slavery in USA constitution. Soon, we will have created functional human beings, clones of individuals, or other sentient beings. I believe human governments are not capable to resist the incentives to allow these new beings to be abused. They will quite surely become slaves, for sex, labor, organ harvesting.
我认为这是一个哲学问题:我们的法律如何保护这些生物?
这样的滥用肯定会使我们所有人堕落。也许阿西莫夫等人的科幻情节已经解决了这个问题。
这似乎肯定会引发一些问题，影响当前对堕胎的看法，例如，人类生命何时开始。

I think that one of the most pressing problesm of our world today is how can we make our leaders more accountable. Very often our leaders feel thst their ideas or beliefs supercede the beliefs of the population that they govern. By definition, any group of people will have a diverse set of beliefs, and values, and that the leaders should recognize this and make decisions accordingly. However all too often, once they are in power, they only act on issues based on their own values, and make decisions that clearly are not a compromise across the groups that they represent.
他们是保守的还是自由的，是同性恋还是异性恋，是黑人还是白人，是信教的还是冷漠的;一旦他们担任了领导，他们就应该认识到自己对他们所管理的整个集团的责任，并在做出决定时考虑到所有成员的立场。今天，这种情况没有发生，世界各地的许多领导人为了获得权力会做任何事或说任何话，然后根据他们的个人观点做出决定，而不是认识到这个职位的存在是为了代表人民，而不是授权给人民。With the wide range of leaders across the world today, how can we as a society develop better methods to choose leaders who will work for the betterment of society, without being at the expense of others

Having been a part of the Online Universal Work Marketing team for 4 months now, I?m thankful for my fellow team members who have patiently shown me the ropes along the way and made me feel welcome
www.onlineuniversalwork.com

Your missing only One important ingredient that can easily resolve the rest of your top ten issues, and that is TRUTH.
我有好消息:它被找到了!
=
MJA

所有这些单一的思想与他们所处的环境和时代是一致的吗?我们爬上去的肩膀?改变了人的本质，改变了人的认识，改变了人的认识。有人在灌木丛中散布恐惧，说:“就是这样，上帝死了!”天要塌下来了!没有什么会是相同的!所以我是其中一个，我对人类的信仰?美国的智慧能力是正确的旗帜，有更多的希望和信心，在一切被禁止之前，理智和自我保护将为我们指明道路。

好吧，我还是在浏览旧帖子。我对第8篇文章的看法。神经科学确实在研究大脑的大量信息，但我仍然觉得我们距离真正理解它还有很长的路要走。如果我们真的理解了它，那么我们甚至可以使用超过10%的大脑。I can only hope
-Travis

Your missing only One important ingredient that can easily resolve the rest of your top ten issues, and that is TRUTH.

哲学的问题在于，它从来没有回答过现在对人类来说最重要的是什么。

对一个女人来说，是满足、财富还是一生中获得的交配次数和后代才算呢?

这种新知识是否解决了心灵的古老奥秘?还是说，它使我们的头脑变得愚蠢，剥夺了我们曾经认为自己有多么特别的东西?