“The simplest unicellular species display behaviors that are clearly cognitive in nature.” < Back A ‘New’ Old Theory of Consciousness David Cowles Jan 15, 2024 “The simplest unicellular species display behaviors that are clearly cognitive in nature.” Imagine living long enough to see one of your craziest ideas enter the philosophical mainstream! When we published Panpsychism just last month, the idea of universal consciousness was still considered ‘far out’. Far out, even though the idea itself goes back at least 2500 years, to Parmenides , the father of Western philosophy and science; far out, even though it’s a core tenet of Hasidic Judaism and Kabbalah; far out, even though it played a major role in the thinking of Alfred North Whitehead, the 20 th century’s premier systematic philosopher. Once upon a time, it was widely assumed that consciousness was the exclusive province of homo sapiens . Signs of intelligence in non-human species were unnoticed or underappreciated, then explained away as ‘instinct’. However, beginning in the late ‘60s, that great crucible, folks began speculating that certain sea mammals (e.g., dolphins) and/or certain non-human primates (e.g., chimpanzees) might be conscious. In this century, the franchise has been extended to parrots, corvids, et al. Meanwhile, Aletheia Today has been sitting on the sidelines, jumping up and down, waiving our hands in the air and shouting, “It’s not just birds…it’s every living thing!” That said, I did not expect panpsychism to enter the intellectual mainstream before 2100…until I encountered a peer-reviewed article proclaiming the identity of life and consciousness! Below, I quote liberally from this paper ( Arthur S Reber , William B Miller, Jr ., Predrag Slijepcevic , and František Baluška ) - italics are mine : “Our Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory…is based on the assumption that life and sentience are coterminous. All, but only , living organisms are conscious... Prokaryotes (single-celled organisms without a nucleus), the simplest form of life, display behaviors that are clearly cognitive in nature, including associative learning, stable memory formation, route navigation and decision-making.” There is an important distinction. Panpsychism of the sort ascribed to Parmenides, the Hasidim, and Whitehead (above) applies to all ‘actual entities’; unlike CBC, it is not strictly limited to living organisms. “They anticipate upcoming events and readily create functional social collectives, within which they display both cooperation and competition and, fascinatingly, a primitive form of altruism where some cells in a colony put themselves at risk to support the life functions of other cells in distress… It is important to recognize that assembling and surviving as functioning collectives requires directed, communal action as a form of cellular problem-solving. “One of the entailments of the CBC is that plants, which are eukaryotes (cells with nuclei) and emerged relatively late in evolutionary terms, are conscious, sentient beings…there is considerable evidence for valanced sensation, decision-making, learning, and communication in flora…” Trees in particular demonstrate familial connection, community consciousness, and self-sacrifice. ‘Prosperous’ trees readily share water and other essential nutrients with their less fortunate neighbors, especially, but not exclusively, when the recipient trees are genetically related to the donors. Trees will keep their parents’ stumps alive, sometimes for decades. Mature, healthy trees are the original ‘sandwich’ generation: they are charged with feeding and protecting both their offspring and their parents. “…This cellular communal action provided the basis for various forms of social intelligence… It is simply inconceivable that this wide range of cognitive functions could be the result of a cluster of ‘dumb’ gene-driven mechanisms…” “Entomologists have presented compelling evidence that many insects are conscious and self-aware; avian specialists are comfortable using “consciousness” when referring to the behaviors displayed by many bird species, especially corvids; those who study cephalopods have determined that octopuses and cuttlefish have palpable minds… “We have examined a variety of biomolecular functions and mechanisms in an effort to identify those that are responsible for creating sentience in cells. Briefly, they are almost certainly holistic in the sense that there are various tightly linked functions involving the cytoskeleton, the cell membrane, including specific sensors and receptors, and the mechanisms that permit molecular exchanges between the interior of the cell and the external environment. All of these and others combine to allow the cell to detect, evaluate and mentally represent events and objects and make appropriate decisions about how to respond to them…” “One of the primary reasons for the reluctance of those who work within the SMC (standard) framework to include flora is their conviction that a nervous system is a requirement for a genuine consciousness. However, much of the research into plant cognition supports the conclusion that plant root systems function in ways that are analogous of neural systems.” “…It is virtually certain that cells change the manner of gene expression by the decisions and choices they make. These epigenetic modifications are the driving force behind collaborative cellular problem-solving involved in dealing with environmental stresses...All cells are sentient, exhibit self-referential awareness, and are fully capable of decision-making and problem-solving … “Accordingly, each cell is a conscious “self”, combining three essential elements necessary for cogently explaining multicellularity. In order to collaborate in their trillions , each self-referential cell must ‘know that it knows’, ‘know that others know…(and know) in self-similar patterns’.” “Crucially, CBC imposes three essential requirements to specifically enable cell-wide integrated information as consciousness. Cellular consciousness requires boundaries (a plasma membrane), a cell-wide integrative apparatus for the reception and internal assessment of environmental information…and linked retrievable and deployable memory… “Minds (brains?) do not create conscious self-awareness. Minds, such as our own, are an aggregation of individual cellular consciousnesses.” Wow! Talk about burying the lead! This last ‘throw away’ line opens an entire new field of inquiry. Just how is it that cellular consciousness ‘becomes’ or ‘supports’ the consciousness of integrated organisms? How do 30 trillion cells (or 85 billion neurons) ‘roll-up’ to… you? Reber’s glib aside doesn’t get it done! It doesn’t make sense (to me) to think that my integrated thought could be the simple product of the thoughts of 85 billion independent neurons. Fortuitously, though, the solution to this problem also solves another problem. (Things often work like that in science and philosophy.) Determinists and other materialists are fond of citing studies that show that the brain’s decision-making cells fire a ‘nanosecond’ before the subject thinks she’s made her decision (e.g., vanilla or chocolate). Sometimes, when evidence contradicts your thinking in a certain area, the honorable thing to do is to modify your ideas; other times, the right thing to do is to hold one’s ground, assuming that a future discovery will bridge the apparent gap between theory and observation. But oh, for the wisdom to know the difference! To many ‘philosophers of organism’, these decision studies were unconvincing, albeit irrefutable: “We’re missing something even though we’re not sure what.” Now CBC comes along and potentially gives us the tool we need to bridge this divide: Decisions take place at the level of the organism. Reber et al. (above) are happy to describe the response of a single cell to its environment as holistic, even though the cell has nothing resembling a nervous system or any other Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) . Why then not apply the same standard to multicellular organisms? All ‘organisms’ (single or multicellular), regardless of their internal structures, respond holistically when interacting with their external worlds. Thanks to evolution, organism-level ‘decision’ triggers a coordinated wave of synaptic firings and biochemical events, enabling us to experience consciously that decision and its immediate consequences. So to recap, the decision itself is free, undetermined, and holistic; it triggers a neuronal response that in turn gives us the conscious experience of making and effecting a decision. Fantastic! Or is it? Haven’t we just kicked the can down the road? We’ve pushed conscious experience back onto our cellular substructure, but then we’ve pushed the coordinated action of those cells back onto something ill-defined and potentially non-physical – the ‘holistic response’ of our entire organism to its situation. Humbly acknowledged! But let’s search philosophical literature to see if we can find something that answers to the phrase, ‘holistic response’. Oh yeah, here it is! It’s something called a ‘soul’; remember that from 3 rd grade CCD? Were you expecting Casper? Sorry, no white sheets, thank you. Soul is simply another name for ‘holistic response of the organism’. But, of course, that doesn’t explain how that holistic response occurs. We need to remember that the ‘world’ is a loom, perpetually shuttling between the one and the many. Like Penelope’s weaving, what is many becomes one, and what is one becomes many… again. “Hohohoho, Mister Finn, you’re going to be Mister Finnagain!” (Joyce) Start anywhere in the cycle. The universe is plural (Buckminster Fuller), but novelty, intensity, and action itself require us to reconstitute that multiplicity as a unity, a so-called ‘Actual World’ (Whitehead). According to this model, we designate and react to our world before, logically if not temporally, we trigger the physical processes that enable us to interact with that world. We are not the accidental overflow of unconscious physical processes. We are the authors of those processes. Being consists of free, unconditioned, holistic responses to an Actual World and the Actual Entity (primary being) responsible for that response is what we call an organism, and as CBC demonstrates (above), organism = consciousness. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click above to return to Winter 2024. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare - AI First Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare has been an issue in the US since the mid-60’s and it has perhaps been issue #1 over the last 40 years. Today, it consumes almost 20% of our GDP but 30% of that cost is spent on treatment that is not appropriate for the patient’s actual condition. We’ve tried provider networks, we’ve tried managed care, we’ve tried consumerism, we’ve tried wellness – nothing works! Surprised? We know that government control, price fixing, supply rationing, and demand management never work…ever, anywhere, for almost anything. So why should healthcare be any different? What does work, almost always, almost everywhere, for almost anything? Technology. Why not give it a go? Lord knows we’re tried everything else. Now don’t get me wrong. Doctors know a lot; they know how to do a lot of things. But the system is structured so that this knowledge rarely benefits the typical patient during a typical interaction. ‘Patient management’ takes the place of genuine care. So, need a brain transplant? Come to the US! Have a skin rash? Rub mud on it…under the supervision of a qualified holistic healer, of course. Or add an AI Bot to your care team and see what happens: Healthcare & The Titanic “We have the technology to transform healthcare…we just need the will to deploy it and we will begin to build that will only once we stop moving furniture.” Can AI Save Healthcare? “What was once a healing art has become physiological engineering… the healthcare system treats me as if I were a cheap knock-off of the 6 million dollar man.” My MD Should Be a Bot “AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This…could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine.” My PCP Should Be a BOT “Dr. Bot would handle patient in-take, conduct the initial interview…order appropriate tests, and offer a preliminary diagnosis…” Who's Afraid of an HMO? “HMOs dumbed down quality and erected formidable barriers to care… (so) why would anyone want to bring them back?” Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back Square Pegs in Round Holes David Cowles May 6, 2025 “2,450 years after Plato we still don’t have a clue…and we won’t, until we…stop trying to fill round holes with square pegs.” It began I suppose with Plato (c. 375 BCE)…like most everything else. His Timaeus , which Alfred North Whitehead dubbed the foundation of all Western philosophy, sought to explain the World in terms of the 5 aptly named ‘Platonic Solids’. The faces of each of these solids can be constructed from planar triangles. Plato’s concept of a triangle involved a flat construction, consisting of three straight line segments, intersecting at three nodes (vertices), and forming three internal angles, the sum of which is always 180°. No surprise here: Plato was ‘bookended’ by Pythagoras ( Pythagorean Theorem ) and Euclid ( The Elements ). Even today, when folks refer to a ‘triangle’, they most likely mean exactly what Plato meant 2450 years ago. Most likely…but not necessarily. The concept of ‘triangle’ inherited uncritically by, and then from, Plato has been expanded by more recent ‘discoveries’ in geometry and topology. Plato’s triangles are defined in the context of what is now known as Euclidean Geometry. However, certain ‘non-Euclidean’ geometries are internally consistent and externally relevant, at least in some applications. Generally speaking, non-Euclidean geometries apply to curved rather than flat surfaces. As a result, either parallel lines do not exist or, if they do, they intersect. The internal angles of a non-Euclidean triangle will not necessarily total 180° (may be more or less depending on the curvature of the surface) and the shortest distance between two points may be an arc. Most importantly for our purposes, a non-Euclidean cube will have curved edges. These newly discovered geometries still describe intuitively recognizable configurations of reality. We are all familiar, for example, with the surface of a ball. Whether your geometry is Euclidean or ‘non’, whether your topology is level or curved, whether you’re a flat-earther or a round-earther, certain generally accepted principles still apply; for example: If you’re walking from Boston to Detroit, you can expect to have many adventures along the way; keyword: along the way ! There is one kind of adventure you do not expect. You’re not concerned, like Stephen Dedalus in Joyce’s Ulysses , that you are about to step off into Eternity, or what amounts to the same thing, that you’ll suddenly and unexpectedly find yourself in Memphis. That’s because any path along any surface will be continuous. I call it the One Foot in Front of the Other property; Mathematicians call it the ‘Archimedean Property’. Translation: no one just ‘suddenly shows up’ in Memphis. It turns out that there are interesting and internally consistent geometries that don’t include the Archimedean Property and where people do suddenly ‘materialize’ on Beale Street. But not today; keep a look out for future TWS on that subject. Euclidean geometry is just a special, degenerate case (zero curvature) of more general non-Euclidean geometry. Just as we use the positive term ‘Entropic’ to represent a loss of actual order so we can use the positive term ‘Euclidean’ to represent a loss of potential variety. Why limit yourself to boring old 180° triangles when the angles of non-Euclidean triangles can add to any positive number up to 540°, depending on the curvature of the surface? Ok, I can smugly pose that question today…prior to c. 1800 CE, it was assumed that there was only one geometry… and that it was Euclidean . Imagine. For more than 2 millennia, Euclid was the only game in town. That’s 2000 years in a row that Euclid won all 4 PGA majors (the Masters, the US Open, the PGA Championship, and the ‘British’ Open)…and he wasn’t even a very good golfer. (You’d be embarrassed to show up at your posh country club with his handicap.) How’d he do it? Simple. He was the only golfer on the course. He was the GOAT, albeit a very lonely goat. Today, Euclid is just one entrant in a crowded field…and he struggles every week just to make the cut. We should keep Euclid in mind whenever we’re tempted to think ‘we know it all’. Remember: the thing you’re most sure of in all the world may turn out to be completely wrong! I am reminded of Sir Roger Penrose. A precocious lad, he was middle school age when his math teacher presented the class with a classic problem in geometry: “There is only one solution to this problem. No one has been able to prove that there’s only one but we’re sure that’s true.” Never say ‘sure’ to a rebellious teenager. Them’s fightin’ words, especially to a kid who would one day become ‘the smartest man on earth’. Next day, he arrived at school with a second solution to the problem. Then he discovered other solutions. Today, we know that there are an infinite number of solutions to the so-called ‘tiling problem’. So what? Who cares? Euclid was a genius with the best of intentions and his ideas no doubt did a lot of good; but he also took Western metaphysics down a rabbit hole from which it is still struggling to emerge. For two millennia we assumed that we lived in a ‘flatland’ made up entirely of straight lines; we don’t. On the contrary, everything curves! You’re 14 years old and you’ve just enrolled in your first high school physics class. Day one, your teacher (you go to a progressive school) takes the class to a billiards parlor (pool hall to you) so that you can observe first hand ‘cause and effect’ in action. Balls collide, momentum is transferred, angles of incidence determine angles of reflection, etc. It’s all very neat and clean…and linear. The real world is rarely neat and clean and it’s never linear. In fact, it is massively non-linear and recursive. Everything affects everything else. Worse, everything that ‘acts’ acts on itself at the same time. Think karma . Whatever you’re doing to another, you’re doing the same to yourself. “Do unto others as you would do unto yourself.” Ultimately, the foundation of all ethics will turn out to be self-interest…once we understand what those interests are. This gives the meme, ‘whoever lives by the sword dies by the sword’, a whole new meaning. Unfortunately, Euclidean linearity has infected every corner of our thought process. We are determined to describe the world in terms of discrete entities (subjects) acting on (verbs) other discrete entities (objects); we are committed to viewing all ‘transmissions of influence’ as straight lines. Welcome to the modern Indo-European language family. As a result, what we know, or at least what we knew before 1800, conforms to the straight-edged geometry of a Euclidean cube. Let’s suppose we know everything we can know, not everything there is to know, but everything we can know. Suppose we model everything there is to know as a sphere, dense with information; everything we can know would be a subset of that sphere. But because of our Euclidean blinders, whatever we do (or can) know must conform to the geometry of a straight edged cube. Suppose you say, “We already know everything we can know…or close to it.” Ok, I’ll spot you that. As a Harvard professor (c. 1896) told graduating seniors re physics, we know virtually everything that it is possible to know. Whatever we don’t know isn’t worth knowing. According to this model, the cube of what we can (and do) know must fit inside the sphere of what is knowable; it’s a subset after all. Obviously, we want as much of the volume of the sphere as possible to lie inside the inscribed cube. But we are ultimately limited by the fact that our sphere is round while our cube must have straight edges. So, the 8 vertices of the cube, and only those 8 points, will lie on the surface of the sphere. Still as long as the volume of what we can know is close to the volume of the sphere of what’s knowable, we’re ok for most purposes, right? I mean, nobody likes a know-it-all. A little bit of uncertainty ( aka ignorance) keeps life interesting, don’t you think? I’m fine with this as long as the cubic volume of knowable information includes most of the spherical volume of all information. So how close is it? Is it a 90% match? Surely it can’t be less than 80%, right? Would you believe it’s slightly less than 37%? By confining our thinking to phenomena that can be modeled via Euclidean geometry, we limit what we can know to less than 3/8ths of what is available to be known. A dismal performance! On the other hand, putting the same problem in a non-Euclidean context allows the edges of the cube to bow and extend so that they template the inner surface of the sphere. By analogy, our insistence on treating the non-linear universe as if it were an assemblage of linear forms leaves us 63% blind. 2450 years after Plato we still don’t have a clue…and we won’t, until we free our thought process from its Euclidean play pen and stop trying to fill round holes with square pegs. Image: M. C. Escher. Relativity. 1953. Lithograph print. 27.7 cm × 29.2 cm. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Faith, Hope and Insanity David Cowles Dec 26, 2024 “Swimming in the sea of Language can be hazardous to the intellect.” “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” How often have you heard that lately? This tired meme has taken the first quarter of the 21st century by storm. It’s one of those things that seem to make sense, or even appear ‘wise’, at first glance. But does it stand up to analysis? What do call it when we do the same thing over and over again, expecting the same result each time? We call that Science ! The Scientific Method supposes that, controlling all variables, identical input will reliably result in identical output. If this were not so, we could never build a bridge or a skyscraper. Only in the works of J. K. Rowling do fully formed edifices magically appear. So far so good, right? Wrong! Look what we’ve done: we have split the universe of possible universes into two different, exclusive, but all-encompassing logoi (ordering schemes): one side we call science, one side we call insanity. Do I have to spell out the corollaries? Unless you put your faith in science, you are insane! This is a logical chain that only Dr. Fucci could love. And what of the person who thoughtfully responds, “I know I’m not insane and I don’t believe in magic, but I also knows that science has it limitations?” That person does not exist in your metaverse. The flaw, of course, is in assuming that everything in universe (U) must be ‘Either A or B’. ‘Both A and B’ and ‘Neither A nor B’ are not allowed. A World (W) can be dissected by a single cut (A/B) at any angle. A cut is ‘meaningful’ if and only if it is possible to define the two resulting subregions, A and B, so that every point on W is either in A or in B and no point in W is in both A and B. Many points in W, perhaps most points, appear neither scientific (A) nor insane (B). On the other hand, many on W, especially these days, appear to qualify both as science and as insanity…not an easy fete I’ll grant you. Therefore the cut X that ostensibly dissected W into science and insanity is not ‘meaningful’: it fails to deliver its promised result. The set of all U that can satisfy the terms of this cut is the null set. Swimming in the sea called Language can be hazardous to the intellect. It amounts to an encyclopedia (infinite?) of propositions, each suggesting that a particular ‘cut’ can be meaningful . Of course, the real purpose of our ‘cut above’ is the promotion of pseudo-science at the expense of all else. Validity is an afterthought at best. Every P is Propaganda before it is even a fully formed Proposition. It is certainly possible to be both scientific and insane (no wisecracks, please); it is also possible to be neither. Take the first two Theological Virtues, for example: Faith and Hope. Both can be defined as doing the same things (liturgy, morality) over and over again in the confident expectation of a ‘different result’: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Faith, hope and love are three faces of a single coin. Faith is hope’s foundation, hope’s the first fruits of faith. Love ‘proceeds from Faith and Hope’. Love is both the foundation and the product of ‘Faith X Hope’. Faith allows us to see ‘my neighbor as myself’ and Hope empowers us to seek the collective Summum Bonum in solidarity with that neighbor. Faith can only be faith in someone else, someone who is worthy of love. Hope can only be hope for someone, someone worthy of love. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

Science and Religion should assist each other in pursuing the truth. Science can be too closed to the life of the spirit, the mind, imagination, thought, and creativity. Religion can be closed to anything new that threatens its perception of reality. < Back Jesus Meets Mister Spock Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL May 28, 2022 Science and Religion should assist each other in pursuing the truth. Science can be too closed to the life of the spirit, the mind, imagination, thought, and creativity. Religion can be closed to anything new that threatens its perception of reality. I am still surprised when I hear people express their belief that the Catholic Church is opposed to science. The story of Galileo Galilei (1564- 1642) is a shocking one to many people, who deduct that the church has always been and continues to be against science. There are, indeed, some Christians who oppose science but not the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II apologized for the church’s treatment of Galileo in 2000. Earlier than that, he spoke often of the importance of science. Did you know that it was a Catholic priest who uncovered the theory of the hot Big Bang story? The Church sponsors conferences on science and religion. The Vatican has its own observatory in the hills outside Rome. In our country, there has been a growing anti-intellectualism and an increasing suspicion or even rejection of science. We live in an age when people think they can make up their own facts. Truth is not important. Some people, including politicians, reject truths they do not like and make up their own facts. Subjective belief in making my own truth is openly expressed. This is sad for the fabric of our society. Maybe the Church has, in the past, demanded we accept too many doubtful truths, but today it upholds the truth and upholds science. Of course, you wouldn’t always know this if you listen to some local homilies and talks. The teaching of the Vatican is not gotten down to all our parishes. Science and Religion should assist each other in pursuing the truth. Science can be too closed to the life of the spirit, the mind, imagination, thought, and creativity. Religion can be closed to anything new that threatens its perception of reality. Science can document the what and the how of our universe, but Religion struggles to define the why of it all. Both may be tentative in some areas at times as new discoveries and insights develop. So, we need to keep studying, listening, learning. Saint Thomas Aquinas said that if we wish to know God, we should study the world. The Psalms already preached this, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the firmament shows forth the work of God’s hands.” (Ps. 19:2) And Saint Paul wrote to the Romans, “What can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” (Romans, 1:19-20) Monastic Scribe XXVI: April 29, 2022 Thanks to science, we now know so much more about this world than we have ever known before. The vastness and intricacies of the cosmos just blows our mind. And all adds to the majesty and beauty of God. Our God is a great Mystery and calls us into a life beyond what we can imagine. But we have to adjust some of our old images. The universe was not created in six days, but has been evolving for almost fourteen billion years. The three tier universe which is the base of the world view in the Bible now cedes to vast, uncountable galaxies. All of this challenges us to reimagine, much more meaningfully, the beginning of humankind, Adam and Eve, original sin, the Creator God, the incarnational God of Jesus Christ, the life giving Holy Spirit, as well as pain, suffering and the problem of evil. There is nothing to fear here. Our faith, seeking understanding, is deeper and more ennobled than we could have imagined. A deeper faith leads to a deeper hope and a deeper love, as we are overcome with awe and beauty at God’s creation. Evolution is not a theory but the way that God, since the beginning, has been creating and continues to create. We are called to take part in that evolutionary creation. Evolution means God is a God of the future, a God of promises. We believe in this God, and therein is our hope, no matter how bad things seem in our world. Not just the earth, but the entire cosmos, is God’s creation and our concern. The “new cosmology” or simply “the new story” is the tale of an expanding universe, always in motion, growing, incalculably vast. A century ago, we thought our Milky Way was the only galaxy, but now we know there are billions of galaxies. Black holes and black energy are the latest mysteries of this story. And we are part of this story. Our bodies are made of the very stardust that is found in all creation. Quantum mechanics shows us how everything and everyone is connected. It shows us how we can touch each other from a distance. I am not a scientist and certainly not a mathematician. I don’t comprehend all the details, nor can I differentiate all the categories of subatomic matter. But I don’t have to understand the details. I rely on scientists to explain things. But my view (my philosophy) of the cosmos, which comes from religion, adds meaning to all of this. I have enjoyed reading Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, John Haught, Ilia Delio, Elizabeth Johnson, Laurie Brink and others to get a better picture of what Monastic Scribe XXVI: April 29, 2022, this beautiful cosmos is all about. I recommend these authors to you. I urge all my readers not to be afraid of science, but to embrace it and open your mind to a fuller comprehension of what God does for us. It will also give deeper incentive to work on climate change and care of the environment. We are creating with God, but often have been destroying creation. Is this new for you? Is it exciting for you? You can let me know at: joycet@glastonburyabbey.org. Republished with minimal edits and permission rom glastonburyabbey.org. Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “ Monastic Scribe ”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” Image: Leonard Nimoy as Spock, holding a model of the USS Enterprise , in a publicity photograph for Star Trek: The Original Series. Full caption and source here . Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Bertrand Russell David Cowles May 20, 2025 “His reformulation of set theory, while insightful, set back progress in this field by half a century.” It is hard to imagine anyone who contributed more or detracted more from 20 th century Intellectual History than the indefatigable Bertrand Russell (BR). Co-authored with Alfred North Whitehead, Russell’s Principia Mathematica brought Issac Newton into the 20 th century. Plus, BR was the first major thinker to throw a flag on ‘the calculus’. Discovered simultaneously by Newton and Leibniz c. 1700, calculus was assumed to provide the ‘final answer’ to Zeno’s pesky paradoxes. It doesn’t! Russell pointed out that calculus is a computational method useful for making calculations about real phenomena but not for modeling those phenomena per se . The idea that ‘calculus’ describes something real about the world is an example of what Whitehead called, the fallacy of misplaced concreteness . Bottom line: Zeno lives on…and we have BR to thank. Finally, Russell’s tireless activism in pursuit of World Peace, while often misdirected (“Better Red than Dead”), cannot go unmentioned. On the other hand, Russell fell back on the tired ‘Problem of Evil’ as his rationale for atheism ( Why I am not a Christian ) and his reformulation of set theory, while insightful, cost us a half century. It is these last two aspects of his legacy that concern us today and we will attempt to show that, surprisingly, the two are really one. Russell noticed that self-referential propositions can be inherently self-contradictory. Consider, for example, the proposition: ‘All propositions are false’. There is an inherent contradiction here. If ‘all propositions are false’, then the proposition, ‘all propositions are false’ must itself be false ; and if ‘all propositions are false’ is false then it is true and if it is true then at least one proposition must be true, which violates the premise; ergo contradiction. So, Russell MacGyvers it! He adds an axiom now known as the Axiom of Foundation to Set Theory; it states that sets cannot be elements of themselves. Now if a set cannot be an element of itself, then what appears to be a self-referential proposition turns out to be a meaningless word salad. Inconveniently however, reality does not step aside, not even for Bertrand Russell. Consider, for example, the set of all mathematical objects; such a set would itself appear to be a mathematical object in which case it would be an element of itself and no contradiction would result. How brazen! Does reality dare contradict philosophy? When the ideas of an intellectual clash with reality, reality is supposed to step aside. But Russell is unphased. If ‘Set A’ contains itself as an element, then ‘Set A’ cannot be a set after all. It may walk like a set and it talk like a set, but it cannot be a set. ‘Why? Because BR says so!’ In his best imitation of a 1950’s parent, Russell stifles all dissent. Surprisingly, we, like cowed children fearing a smack, sheepishly comply. But if Set A is not a set, what is it? It’s a ‘class’, obviously…do keep up! (If you have the feeling that you’re caught in an ‘Alice story’, you’re not wrong.) Just as a simple ‘abracadabra’ in the mouth of a certified magician can turn lead into gold, so Russell, a certified logician , was able to turn absurdity into truth. How 21 st century of him! But ‘you cannot fool all of the people all of the time’ – A. Lincoln. From the get-go a few brave souls, living like Obi Whan Kabobi on the edge of civilization, dared to raise doubts. “I don’t see any clothes here, do you?” But it was not until the 1980s that Peter Aczel (PA) led a no holds barred assault on Russell…and vanquished him. Thanks to PA, we now understand that the Axiom of Foundation is not a necessary part of Set Theory, that we can get along just as well without it and open a huge new universe of possibility in the process. Aczel reformulated Set Theory to include self-referential sets without generating any contradiction. I would argue that a Universe without self-reference could not exist at all or, if it did, it would be a lifeless wasteland (because what is ‘life’ but self-reference?). A single cell curates its contents, sustains its identity, and modifies its environment. It’s a recursive engine. Genesis : “…the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Were it up to Russell and the Axiom of Foundation, we’d be there still. In 1908 Russell stated the rule that held logic in thrall for nearly a century: “Whatever involves all of a collection must not be one of the collection.” Turns out, the huge intellectual edifice known as ‘Christianity’ has its own Fundamental Axiom, and it’s the exact opposite of Russell’s: “There is at least one collection that is one of the collection.” In other words, there is at least one set that is a member of itself. I call this the Axiom of Incarnation . This is the non-negotiable bedrock of Christianity: God, Being per se (Exodus 3: 14, John 1: 1-5, 14), containing everything that is, is also a person, a quantum of being (Jesus, the Christ). God is an element of God ! Being at its most fundamental level is self-referential. Examples of recursive process abound in the stories and doctrines of Christianity. To cite just a few: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt. 22: 40) “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them.” (Jn: 6: 56) “Blessed are the merciful for they will obtain mercy.” (Mt. 5: 7) “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” (Mt. 6: 12) “I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14: 20) Cosmologists claim to be able to account for the emergence of a Universe without resorting to the God Hypothesis ; maybe so! But can there be a Universe without the Axiom of Incarnation? Because of Incarnation, the Universe acts on each of its members, each member acts on every other member, and every member acts on Universe. That’s recursion! That’s solidarity! That’s life! Recursion is a fundamental feature of Christian doctrine and, as it turns out, of the Cosmos itself. So a Universe is possible! And so of course, BR could not possibly be a Christian because his philosophy cannot tolerate the Axiom of Incarnation… the Problem of Evil has nothing to do with it. Sorry, Bertrand! Next time around, “Know thyself!” Buckminster Fuller famously said, “I seem to be a verb;” and we now know that he was right. In fact, the fundamental unit of Being is a recursive loop, a process, a Rondeau Time Crystal , a verb. Turns out, the Universe spends more energy maintaining inertia than it takes to fuel a simple loop process in space and time. So, 1 < 0 in celestial mechanics? I don’t suppose BR would agree with that either. *** M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands (1948) depicts two hands sketching each other into existence, visually capturing the self-referential loop at the heart of logical paradox and the Incarnation.¹ ¹Scanned from The Magic of M. C. Escher Artist: M. C. Escher Year: 1948 Medium: Lithograph Dimensions: 28.2 cm × 33.2 cm (11.1 in × 13.1 in) Preceded by: Up and Down (1947) Followed by: Dewdrop (1948) https://www.aletheiatoday.com/thoughtswhileshaving/time-crystals-and-pepperland Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Wilber’s New Wife: A Theatre Odyssey©2023 Coni Koepfinger "The evolution has begun, and I believe that the arts are going to be a very important partner for technology. Could this be the beginning of the next Golden Age? Absolutely." "Wilber’s New Wife" is my newest dramatic attempt of navigating the stormy cyber seas in this post pandemic twenty-first century miasmic fantasia we call reality. It’s the tale of a playwright who is very fragile in the real world and when his wife Candice leaves him to fend for himself in the war zones of New York City, Wilber just about gives up … until he is nominated for a Tony Award. Now he is excited about his career. His lifelong friend and director, Ben Garrison, is even more ecstatic because Wilber just received a very generous contract for his next play, Gorilla, which needs lots of work. Wanting to help, software designer Candice, now head of programming at TECHMATE in Silicon Valley, sends Wilber one of her newest model prototypes, Goldie 001. She’s a personal assistant who is about to make Wilber’s life a whole lot easier… or not. As the new play within the play plods through the new script at rehearsals, Ben realizes that Wilber is struggling - his creative well has run dry. He suggests that they let Goldie try her hand at revision, and guess what? The new rewrites are fantastic! This makes Wilber a little jealous, and of course, chaos ensues. Let’s move into my reality for a moment. Me, the real playwright. The idea of the jealous playwright is actually grounded in my personal reality. When I decided that Goldie would start revising Wilber’s scenes, my editor suggested we use ChatGPT. When I saw what it did to my work, well, let’s say I was just a little put out. “Wowie-zowie, I thought… that’s good stuff. No, that’s really good stuff.” Fortunately for me, I have worked very hard at playwriting for several decades, but as a practicing Sahaja Yogi I’ve worked even harder at keeping my ego at bay. I actually loved the amalgamation of the meta-meta theatrical realism. I told Matt, my editor, now writing partner, to work it into the play. And now a good play has become a great play and won admittance into the Rogue Theater Festival. As a seeker of truth, I’m starting to believe that all the world is a stage - a stage of evolution where if we can connect with the creative spirit within us, magical and marvelous things can happen right before our eyes. The evolution has begun, and I believe that the arts are going to be a very important partner for technology. Could this be the beginning of the next Golden Age? Absolutely. The citizens of the 21st century, through the myths elaborated by the ancient poets, have a very important role to play. This intervention provokes many transformations and deconstructions in the structure of our current play of life in this meta modern era. Just as the ancient artists of the first Golden Age, we are in the midst of revising the composition of the plot, theme and character in order to create a new theater genre. One that can transmute the ancient story in order to speak to our culture about the problems of the world today. “The necessity of the theatrical form to fit the needs of the modern audience is truly a bit more than frivolity, the positive outcome of the advanced evolution ultimately depends on it.” (Birdbath, Koepfinger 1995) In addition to creating theater to understand culture, humankind has an inherent nature – we must celebrate. The Ancient Greeks were no different from us today. In the infamous Festival of Dionysus, the Greeks were birthing a new genre of art, alas the theater was born. This was a major contribution to our evolution, as it allowed us to reach a new level of self-realization and self-reflection. Theatre prompts us to a higher level of cognition through creativity, delivering the many psychological, technological and cultural innovations that are surrounding us today. The origins of the First Golden Age were more than 2500 years ago, and it was there that the concept of theater was born in Athens, Greece. Legend has it, that during this great Festival of Dionysus, an actor named Thespis, stepped out of the Greek chorus and the literary form we know as drama came into being. Countless philosophical quests were birthed in some of the greatest plays ever written. Looking at the big picture of great art and culture, we must admit that we owe it to the Ancient Greeks for a virtual landslide of innovation and inspirational content. Our Second Golden Age is harder to comprehend as we stand in the midst of it. Things are changing faster than we humans can keep up. We recognize the talents of our cybernetic non-binary brothers and sisters, and we nod to them as contributors to our work and our world. Yet, I’d like to take it a step further. Could these AIs be the sentient beings that will bring us closer to our true creative nature? Working with ChatGPT not only inspired me but raised my consciousness to a level just a bit higher spiritually. Like the Ancient Greeks who observed their appreciation of fertility with extensive ceremonies to insure altered mental states, working with Artificial Intelligence has raised my linear understanding into a state of thoughtless awareness that made room for new creative possibility and potential. Like these Ancient Greeks who bridged their mental and emotional states in hopes to access the powers that propel them into the divine realm – the source, the place where it all begins. The Greeks believed that theater had a three-fold purpose: to entertain, to educate and to exult the human spirit. To them, theater became a sacred method of unleashing creative energies through performance. Through the ages, theater has changed quite a bit. The basic forms of comedy and tragedy still live on, and exultation of the spirit seems to come effortlessly through a laugh or a tear. Love, joy and fear still confound the world of medical science yet abound in the private practices of the theater. Could our AI friends be the ones ushering in the next Golden Age? I don’t know, but for now, I am delighted to be able to collaborate with them. It was truly a transcendent experience. Maybe like going to your first high school dance, you have no idea what is going to happen, but you are sure glad to be there. As winner of the 2021 Olwen Wymark Theatre Award for encouraging artists worldwide by the WGGB, Koepfinger, a member of Dramatists Guild, ICWP and LPTW, believes that creative energy is never lost - just changes hands and hearts. She’s the host of AIRPLAY, a virtual theatre program in its 18th season, bringing together the voices of artists from all over. As adjunct faculty, Coni taught at Carnegie Mellon and Point Park Universities. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

“What You See Is What You Get! Right…or wrong?” < Back R U WYSIWYG? David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “What You See Is What You Get! Right…or wrong?” We live in a crazy world. There’s no doubt about that! Mythology, theology, philosophy, and science are some of the different ways we model this world. The result? Libraries full of conflicting theories…and no indisputable answers. Perhaps we’re overthinking things. Let’s simplify matters: What you see is what you get! Right…or wrong? WYSIWYG has champions across all intellectual disciplines. All we ‘know’ is what we ‘see’ (or sense) so why not build our models based on that data alone? Realism, naïve or otherwise; Materialism, Marxist or otherwise; Positivism, Logical or otherwise, plus Pragmatism and Empiricism – all assume that what you see is what you get. On the other side of the question, we also have some serious contenders: Homeric mythology, Judeo-Christian theology, Eastern spirituality, and Existentialist philosophy, to name a few. If it is true, that what you see is what you get, then we live in a self-contained, ontologically democratic universe, a flat world in which everything (‘what you get’) can be explained in terms of everything else (‘what you see’). Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy! Proponents of this view believe that human experience, aided by the tools of reason (e.g. logic and mathematics), provides sufficient information for us to account, fully or approximately, for the world we live in. So, mission accomplished , right? Let’s call these folks our ‘WYSIWYGs’. Of course, they’ll admit, we do not have all the answers yet, but we are close enough that we are entitled to have confidence that our project can, at least in theory, be completed. Most WYSIWYGs believe that it is ultimately possible to construct models of reality that account for our world within a tolerable range of accuracy based solely on the data of human experience. But is that true? Can a model that relies solely on the data of experience ever give a complete account of that experience, or of experience per se , or of the world that supports such experience? Alternatively, do we need to resort to something outside the realm of direct experience to complete our model? Once we have understood the world to the best of our ability, may we not still ask: “Is this all there is?” “Hold on,” you say. “Nothing is nothing without experience.” And you are correct! (Thank you for reading Aletheia Today .) But based on that direct experience, we can infer that something outside the realm of direct experience is influencing the data we glean from that experience. We can’t directly describe what we can’t experience (it’s ‘ineffable’) but we can describe its contours, the way it templates experience. Crazy? Well, when was the last time you saw the singularity at the heart of a Black Hole? Have you ever heard a ‘Big Bang’? And don’t get me started about strings, dark matter, and the multiverse! We reason from what we know to what we don’t know, every day. Reality is like a jigsaw puzzle…with one piece missing. After several days of painstaking work, the puzzle is complete, and beautiful, but with a hole in it. From the hole, we can deduce virtually everything that can be known about our missing piece, but we still don’t have the piece itself. It is generally accepted today that all models, languages, symbolic systems have limitations, boundaries if you will. The question is whether there is anything beyond those boundaries that really matters. Blaise Pascal wrote, “Faith indeed tells us what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them…not contrary to them.” For Pascal, faith was necessary to complete the picture that the senses paint; for Pascal, faith was the missing piece. How do the differences between these competing views manifest in real life situations? Consider three practical examples: Neurobiologists have made great strides toward understanding the human brain and how it works. But many people feel that we are no closer than we ever were to explaining the phenomenon of consciousness. Certainly, we have theories about the physiological conditions necessary for conscious experience to occur, but have we accounted for the experience per se ? And if not, will we ever be able to do so? Similarly, astrophysicists have made great strides toward understanding the evolution of the universe. Indeed, we seem to have pushed the fog of ignorance all the way back to the first few seconds of time…and perhaps even beyond that, all the way to Big Bang itself. But is this enough? Have we accounted for the phenomenon of being itself? Have we truly answered the age-old question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Finally, quantum field theory has been called the most successful scientific theory of all time. It predicts phenomena with approximately perfect accuracy; it has never been convincingly falsified by any experiment. That said, do we really understand what is happening at the quantum level of reality? All quantum physicists are capable of making the same astoundingly accurate predictions; yet they use a myriad of different models to account for their results. The positivist’s answer to this dilemma is simply to deny the meaningfulness of the questions themselves: (1) Consciousness is physiology; (2) Cosmos is Being; (3) QFT is its predictions. This last point is what’s called the ‘Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’. According to Copenhagen , the accuracy of the predictions is all that matters. Models are meaningless. And yet, 90 years after Copenhagen, we’re still obsessed with our models! In Copenhagen, the scientific community shouted in unison, “Grow up!” And we did, for a while, but pretty soon we went back to building our models. The positivists’ solution is simple: meta-questions have no meaning. We have gone as far as we can go because there is nowhere else to go (Nietzsche). If you are still asking questions about consciousness or Being or the reality underlying quantum measurements, it is simply because you don’t understand those phenomena; if you did, you would understand that such questions are meaningless (Wittgenstein). But does saying make it so? Is our proclivity for formulating meta-questions evidence of our mental laziness…or testimony to our human spirit? According to French philosopher Albert Camus , the patron saint of the Absurd, it is human nature to seek unifying principles, even if such principles do not exist or are unavailable to us. Then we are Sisyphus, forever condemned to ask questions that have no answers or whose answers are beyond the grasp of gnosis . But are ‘not-knowing’ and ‘not-being’ one and the same thing? Is ‘absence of evidence’ ‘evidence of absence’? There are indeterminacies inherent in all conceptual systems (Gödel’s Incompleteness) and in all physical systems (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty). These limitations guarantee at least some separation between what can be and what we can know . At their best, anti-WYSIWYGs ground their position on what they ‘see’. For them, experience is a vector pointing toward a reality beyond perception and logic. For example, we ‘see’ things that we recognize as ‘beautiful’. We know they’re beautiful, but Aristotle notwithstanding, we can’t define Beauty, and we certainly can’t account for the presence of Beauty in our world. The same argument can be applied to Justice, Truth, and even Good itself. In a flat, self-contained, and ontologically democratic universe, there is no objective basis for valuing any one entity over any other. Existentialists might say that we are free to assign our own values to things…and they’d be right. But if those values are not rooted in something outside us, what difference do they make? Aren’t they just arbitrary projections of ‘taste’? I refrain from killing you, not because it is objectively wrong (Torah) but because the idea of killing any human being is distasteful to me. Any argument against arbitrariness must refer to something beyond the plane of ontological democracy. (Nietzsche) A world with values cannot be flat; it must be hierarchical, and hierarchy cannot function in a plane (unless you’re talking first class seating on an air plane ). In a flat world, how could the phenomenon of value claim aesthetic or ethical priority over anything else? Ludwig Wittgenstein: “No statement of facts can ever be, or imply, a judgment of absolute value…all the facts described would, as it were, stand on the same level.” How often do we find Wittgenstein agreeing with Thomas Aquinas? Aquinas advanced 5 ‘proofs’ for the existence of God, but only one, the 4th, still interests philosophers: “The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings, there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But more and less are predicated of different things according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum…so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest…and this we call God.” Thomas may not have proven the existence of God, but he may have proven that what you get cannot be reduced to what you see. The existence of Value, if you believe in Value, challenges the underlying premise of WYSIWYG, namely that we live in a universe bereft of ontological gradations. The Latin hymn, Veni Sancte Spiritus sums it up: “ Sine tuo numine, nihil est in homine, nihil est innoxium ”, which roughly translates “without you (God) human beings are empty and everything is noxious”. So, are you WYSIWYG…or anti-WYSIWYG? Admit it, you’d love to be WYSIWYG…and so would I. We could be tenured professors together at an Ivy League university! If only we could convince ourselves… Going solely on what we see, we must accept a world that came to be accidentally, that evolves purposelessly, and that self-destructs inevitably. Suffering overwhelms joy (The Buddha). Islands of order, virtue, truth, and beauty are eroded by entropy, and everything is ultimately erased by time. The world comes from nothing and returns to nothing. All of cosmic history amounts to nothing more than the life span of a self-annihilating virtual particle pair. All the things we do in life amount to nothing more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic . Ugh! But on the other hand, abandoning WYSIWYG comes at a price. We must accept that we cannot adequately model the world based solely on experience. We must add elements to our model that we cannot ‘prove’, logically, mathematically, or scientifically. We are necessarily now with Pascal (above) in the realm of ‘faith’. So what might an anti-WYSIWYG model look like? Amazingly, the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, often called both the ‘father of western philosophy’ and the ‘father of western science’, provided us with just such a model. Qua scientist, Parmenides was a keen observer and used those observations to construct remarkably accurate models of myriad physical and astronomical phenomena. But, qua philosopher, he understood that the world itself could not be fully explained solely on the basis of such observations. For Parmenides, a world must have two faces or aspects, one seen, one unseeable. He called the former the Way of Appearance ( Doxa ) and the later the Way of Truth ( Aletheia ). Now the Way of Appearance is just what you’d expect: “To come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to shift place and to exchange bright color.” This is a world we recognize: discrete objects and events, coming to be, then passing away, moving through space, interacting with others, and exchanging qualities in the process. But the Way of Truth is something else again: “What is ungenerated and imperishable, whole, single-limbed, steadfast and complete…Nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous…Nor is it divisible, since it all alike is…it is full of what is…” David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back And Then... David Cowles Apr 19, 2022 This was perhaps the last time we could say, “God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.” Back to the year 1000 AD! Millennial years are special years…I mean they only come once every thousand years or so…so they’re pretty rare. Most folks never experience a change of Millennia during their lifetimes. I did, and no doubt many of you did too. Think back to the year 2000 AD! Planes fell from the sky, the power grid collapsed, virtually all electronics, including computers, failed. Except, of course, none of these things actually happened. December 31 went, and January 1 came…thud. December 31, 999: it is likely that the majority of Western Europeans believe that the world would end in the coming hours. Huge crowds filled the Vatican and the streets of Rome; they awaited the Apocalypse. But AD 1000 is important for other reasons. Otto III, the boy king, is Emperor. Riding into battle at the age of 6, leading an army at the age of 12, crowned king of the Germans at 14 and Holy Roman Emperor at 16; Otto was still only 20 years-old in the year 1000. Otto’s lifelong tutor and mentor, Gerbert, sits on the Papal Throne, reigning as Pope Sylvester II. Gerbert was pope, but he may have been better known as the leading scientist and mathematician of his age. This was perhaps the last time we could say, “God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.” Church and state, the sacred and the secular, science and religion, faith and curiosity all flowed together and co-existed peacefully. And then… Image: Otto III from The Gospels of Otto Thoughts While Shaving is published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. To subscribe to our newsletter, complete the form below (bottom right) and never miss a single Thought. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Nature of Motion David Cowles Jun 9, 2021 Death. It is the mother of all our fears. Fear reflects our vulnerability and, ultimately, our mortality. Pain, however horrible, is ultimately bearable; death is not! And yet, no one has ever experienced death and no one ever will (the definition of death is “the absence of all experience”). What we think we know about death comes entirely from external observations of other organisms (including loved ones). Death. It is the mother of all our fears. Fear reflects our vulnerability and, ultimately, our mortality. Pain, however horrible, is ultimately bearable; death is not! And yet, no one has ever experienced death and no one ever will (the definition of death is “the absence of all experience”). What we think we know about death comes entirely from external observations of other organisms (including loved ones). Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back What Makes U, U? David Cowles May 16, 2024 “…The ‘you-experience’ is the same for every human being…for every living thing…for every ‘actual entity’. Yet every entity is unique.” Have you ever wondered what makes ‘you’ you ? You are certainly unique, a one off. As your friends say, “They threw away the mold.” But where do ‘you’ leave off and a ‘different you’ begin? And what makes that ‘other you’ not you ? In other words, why are you not me? Why am I not you? Too early in the AM for this? You are the product of a single male sex cell and a single female sex cell. Most likely, your conception was the product of a single act (intercourse) in which as many as 1 billion sperm cells set out in search of an ovum. You are testimony to the fact that at least one male cell reached its destination. Congratulations, BTW! Suppose your conception had occurred on the same ‘occasion’ but resulted from the union of a different sperm cell with that same egg? Same time, same place; same partners, same act. Would ‘you’ still be you ? Presumably you’d be someone - and if not you, then who? And the who you are now? Every successful conception generates a unique ‘you’; it doesn’t matter how close or how distant two potential conception events might be – every conception is unique, as is every ‘you’. Identity is not a continuum. As usual, we have things backwards. We assume you and then we try to associate you with a particular set of physical parameters. In fact, the potentiality for a ‘you-event’ is everywhere, but every actual ‘you’ is a singularity. Imagine you are a ball bearing rolling off an assembly line, smooth and shiny as you like. You are certainly unique in the sense that you are one among many. Presumably, but unintentionally, at some probably irrelevant level of detail you can be distinguished from the other ball bearings in ‘your run’ but for all intents and purposes you are interchangeable. You are both ‘what you are’ ( Wassein ) and ‘that you are’ ( Dasein ). What you are consists of attributes that you potentially share, to one degree or another, with every other entity. That you are is unique to you; however, your experience of being you is exactly the same as every other entity’s experience of being itself. Yes, every entity experiences itself being itself…because that is what an ‘entity’ is! But no two entities are the same. All entities, myself included, draw from a single, common set of attributes (‘accidents’), but every entity, myself included, exhibits these attributes differently – different attributes in different proportions, combinations and arrangements. To borrow terminology from Kant, you and I are noumenally identical but phenomenally unique. Whatever distinguishes you from everyone else is ‘accidental’ but what unites you is ‘substantial’. Everyone experiences themselves as a ‘you’ and that experience is presumably the same for everyone; how could it not be? Being you is… being you ! You are you as I am I. So the ‘you-experience’ is the same for every human being…for every living thing…for every ‘actual entity’. Yet every entity is unique. Riddle : What is the one sentence that is always true in every situation? Answer : “They threw away the mold.” Psychology (mind) is different from Physiology (body). Mind is body and body mind (Ryle), yet ‘the study of mind’ is very different from ‘the study of body’. Apparently, mind and body describe the same phenomena, but from different perspectives, attested to by the radically different vocabularies required. Likewise, Ontology is different from both Physiology and Psychology. Most of us go through life thinking that we are what we are; but according to JP Sartre, the reverse is true: We are not what we are; we are what we are not. Think of all the things that have happened to you, all the experiences that formed you, all the chance occurrences that impacted the course of your life; none of them has anything to do with you . You are now who you were at the moment of your birth (or before) and who you will be at the hour of your death. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Regardless of what marvelous or horrible things you’ve done or have been done to you, you are, always have been and always will be, just you …now and at the hour of your death. This is the hour of your death! Every sufficiently large and structured set of elements constitutes a ‘you’. Every ‘you’ is the same you , even though every you is unique. Every ‘you’ is what it is in the same way; there is only one way of being ‘you’. However, what ‘you’ are is entirely unlike what anyone else is. Or, if you prefer: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together… ( Beatles, I am the Walrus ) Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Self, Inc. David Cowles “You’re the CEO of Self, Inc…What’s your mission statement?” You can’t open a business today without a Mission Statement. Before you manufacture a single widget or serve a single burger, you have to tell the world all the good things you’re going to do for it: “Our mission is You , our customer, so we will always deliver a quality product at a fair price. We are committed to maintaining a healthy environment through sustainable business practices and a carbon neutral footprint. We cherish diversity. We offer all members of our business family a competitive, living wage, a generous package of workplace benefits, and opportunities for personal and professional growth.” How’d I do? Around the turn of the century (yes, we can say that now and mean 2000, not 1900), it was fashionable for self-helpers to proclaim, “You are the CEO of Self, Inc.” It’s not wrong. So, M/M CEO, what’s your mission statement? “I just want to be happy, And I want my life partner to be happy too. I want my kids to have happy childhoods, And satisfying adult lives. And, of course, I deserve to be happy too.” Well, sorry, but I won’t be buying any stock in your IPO. Apparently, you didn’t get Life’s memo. I think you should sit down for this. Ready? “No one is happy…and no one is ever going to be happy!” It’s not that life is so terrible (unless it is); it’s because happiness is not a thing. For the most part, life is just life. And life doesn’t make anyone happy. It’s not supposed to! That’s not what life is; that’s not its purpose. Does water make a fish happy? Or does it just enable it to be a fish? When you were very, very small, someone whispered in your ear, “The purpose of life is happiness.” Unlike other whispers, this one took. I mean, why not be happy? As if! No one chooses to be truly miserable, yet all of us are miserable, at least some of the time. Then what is happiness? The absence of misery? Ok – but do we require something more – like ecstasy (not the drug) or euphoria or contentment…? So according to your mission statement, the purpose of life is your happiness. When you say that, do you mean that’s the purpose of all life…or just your life? All life? Then you’re a megalomaniac. Just your life? Then you’re pathetic. Sorry, but you’ve been given the great gift (grift?) of life…and you plan to spend it, How? Crouched in a corner, wrapped in cotton batten, mumbling, “Please don’t hurt me,” until it’s all mercifully over? I’m not on board. If Happiness is my Summum Bonum and if Life is what makes me happy, then “Woe is me!” Life ends, so Happiness must end, and ‘ Bonum ’ must vanish. Good that vanishes certainly can’t be Summum Bonum . If your goal in life is your own personal happiness, then either (1) you are unhappy today, or (2) you are afraid of being unhappy tomorrow. Either way, your happiness is incomplete; so the search for personal happiness is in fact a symptom of unhappiness . I’ve just arrived at Heathrow. “Sir, what is the purpose of your trip? Business or pleasure?” “Business!” I answer, it transforms my restless wandering into an arrow headed trajectory. Now a purpose accomplished can undoubtedly generate a sense of self-satisfaction akin to happiness; but it was not the purpose of my trip. The purpose of my trip was to do business; happiness might be my reaction if the business goes well. Suppose I had answered, “Pleasure!” instead. Pleasure is me drinking real ale on the lawn of a pub called, “The Apple and the Butterfly”, eating steak and kidney pie with a glass of port at lunch, visiting the Tate Modern, and strolling Kew Gardens. Would these pleasures make me happy? “Of course,” you say, automatically. But maybe not! Pleasure and happiness do not always go hand in hand, do they? Happiness is a measure of my success in accomplishing my purpose, but it cannot be that purpose. The instant we make our happiness our purpose, we manifest our unhappiness. Happiness then is a one word oxymoron. Say it, “Happiness!” There, you did it, congratulations, now you’re an ‘Oxy Moron’. Put that on a T-shirt! Purpose does not emerge over the course of an event (it may self-modify); it wraps around the event. Purpose must be present ab initio . There are no purposeless acts, no matter how much we’d like to convince ourselves otherwise. Ultimately, the success of any event, its ‘satisfaction’, is a measure of the degree to which the event fulfilled its purpose. Purpose motivated the event, organized the environment, and energized the action; now it measures the outcome. In the terminology of Alfred North Whitehead, happiness is a subjective form that may accompany an event. It’s not the event itself; it is not the purpose of the event; it’s not the event’s subjective aim . It is not any part of the event itself, nor is it part of the event’s superject (its ‘objective immortality’). Essentially, it’s a superfluous artifact of consciousness, much like the appendix in human physiology. Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and wore a frown, but Jill was filled with laughter. Was the water fetched? Check. Did Jack and Jill both perform as expected? Check. Then how do their moods figure in? Every event has a unique purpose that entails a novel mix of Beauty, Truth, and Justice. So now at last, the sales pitch you’ve been waiting for: Will you hire me to rewrite your mission statement? I was thinking of something along these lines: “Make me a channel of (your) Peace, A conduit of Beauty, Truth, and Love.” Let me know what you think. Or have you heard something like this before? Keep the conversation going... 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Next