After many hours of discussions with friends from all over the world and an astonishing range of backgrounds, I have come to regard "democracy" as an expression of a fundamental ethical or moral idea. Above all, a "democracy" should be perceived and felt as fair . I have noted elsewhere that our "representative" democracies " are a blunt instrument at best but is important that we see that they are attempting to create a "fair" system. They are usually underpinned by constitutions (again blunt instruments) that try to protect citizens -- especially minorities -- from "mob rule." A much wider view is taken in " A Thousand Small Sanities ," which paints a picture of liberal democracy . This is a fond portrait of a society, not a "system." The focus is on the innumerable institutions that work together to make a country more free, fair, and generally comfortable. Whatever the voting system may be, if a large segmen...

Looking for images associated with "truth",  this guy shows up a lot for some reason These are notes from a BIGSCREEN virtual talk on the subject. "Truth" is obviously a word and part of language as a whole. The word is used very differently in a religious context than in ordinary life. For example, when I say that it's true that I am 75 years old, I am using the word differently when (as it happened) somebody says that everything in the Bible is "true". This is a distinction hotly denied by people of "faith" but calmly accepted by everyone else. Religious "truths" are intelligible (but may still be debated) within a religious community. For example, at one point, the difference between Catholics and Protestants was whether the "host" (the crackers) in communion are "really" the body of Christ. Another issue that came up was the difference between opinion facts. We have seen that graduates of American High School...

OneNote seems to be the solution to sharing information cross-platform. Associated OneDrive seems to be a candidate for sharing outside of OneNote, should that be really needed. ------------ I stumbled onto this when checking out reviews of Scapple. The reviewer was disappointed that everything he needed was already in OneNote, so Scapple was a waste of his precious pennies. Actually, OneNote does look interesting for the larger task of organizing my massive collection of bookmarks, making simple sketches, and sharing Scapple sheets. This is a perfect example of finding something you really need but didn't know it. OneNote seems to be part of Office365, which may need a subscription update. It is cross-platform and can share links to Scrapple sheets as well as others (I note an OOP design from the Dalhousie project - 2014 Access also on iPad, and iPhone  including long-sought support for apple pencil !!! TO Save and Restore a Scrapple Sheet: Drag to a page in OneNote, tell it to sa...

Scrapple is a good alternative to Corkulus, especially for my goal of organizing written pieces for Medium and the task of organizing ideas in the first place. There is no iPad version of Scapple but there is a Windows version Scapple has a lighting-fast, responsive "feel" to it. Corkulous tends to be a bit clunky. There is a lot of depth to Scrapple, under a simple-seeming surface. It seems to be very well thought out, whereas...  Corkulous has a slapped-together feel, including a few things that look like bugs. For example, the Corkulous sidebar is cluttered with shapes borrowed from VISIO. Scapple sidebar is 100% relevant to what is selected. A Sample Sheet (First effort - perhaps 2 hrs) Interesting features: Pictures can be dragged directly onto the sheet from a web page Basic skill level in a few hours - similar to learning any UI tool Displays have a clean, professional look with deep and powerful options to enhance things like consistency, alignment, etc Problems No e...

Corkulous (as I use it) is a "Mind Mapping" tool. The idea is to visually map concepts and the connections between them with the aim of pulling some kind of coherent structure out of a pile of related ideas. In this case, I have over 400 posts that, if printed, would be over 1,000 pages. While creating each post has helped my clarify my thoughts of the moment, the result is a pile of essays that are not accessible in any practical way to interested users. A small mind map is shown here. A typical blog entry tends to touch on several related issues, each of which is likely to require some clarification. The index tries to do this, but it is not realistic to expect a reader to explore the index and the dozens of essays whose connection to the topic may be obscure. In any case, this results in a geometrically expanding demand on the reader.  The Mind Map project aims to isolate a few key ideas, such as "Mind" and create a single essay or a small number of linked essays...

Arising out of a discussion with Kerri, I talk about how we pretty much agree on what is happening in the physical world but disagree on what is to be done. On the other hand, Liberal Democracy assumes that some general agreement should exist on what can and should be done , including freedom of choice, association, and speech. I mention the connection between Islam and the European enlightenment. Religion is constantly changing, even though it claims to be somehow continuous and "eternal", which boils down to accepting the culture they were born into as their idea of what should be done. Shouldn't religions agree on a wide range of issues? In theory, shouldn't we agree on what is virtue? Isn't it true that most practical disagreement is based on philosophical differences? How is it that some see skin color as a threat? This would seem to be totally cultural  - a first-class example of how our "enhanced" experience of reality differs. --- I mention the ...

Thinking about how our "normal" experience is deeply analogous (isomorphic) with virtual reality. We all have a different idea of what is going on "beneath the surface" but much of this depends on language. The "Matrix" idea is not as interesting as people think. In that fantasy people still have a real brain. Whether or not we actually do have a real brain or just an illusion of one seems to be hardly worth discussing. What is worth discussing is how interaction with the real world (or something!!) turns into the rich "gold standard" VR of everyday life.

Thinking about Corkulous applications. I signed up for a 1-year subscription at this point. The app can be a black hole when you try to sync iPad and MacOs activities. macOS seems to be the way to go in spite of the theoretical attraction of the iPad. -- PS -- I have basically accepted the "bug" about the iPad and decided to work around it. My efforts to isolate the issue and correct it don't seem to be supported by the vendor. However, I have not withdrawn my nasty comments about support. I still feel that the vendor made little effort to work with me on this issue, seldom responding to my questions or suggestions. It was almost like I was talking to a "bot" who doled out canned advice based on keywords.

 What do we think of as "experience"? How we interpret the world depends on "Scientific" findings that we trust - not direct experience. Without such (tentative) knowledge, it's hard to characterize modern "experience". Is the "zen" acceptance of consciousness naive? Is it not true that consciousness floats on the top of a very deep well of processes that are not available to consciousness. We know that we are deeply rooted in the "real world" as the ancients didn't. Whatever consciousness may be, it has deep roots in the physical world, just like a tree. The mystery remains, but this is no reason to abandon rationality in favor of ancient mysticism.

I made a series of voice recordings after discussions in the virtual classroom of BIGSCREEN. The environment is amazingly effective in producing spirited conversation in spite of the cartoon avatars. You are talking to a real person, stripped of such distractions as age, appearance, and gender which tend to trigger assumptions about the speaker. It's an ideal environment for the exchange of ideas, although it must be said that it is not always used that way.  After such conversations, I made a few voice recordings - essentially continuing the thread of the conversations. Then I came back to those recordings and made notes for this blog. I usually find myself deleting the original recording since the core concepts can usually be summarized by a few short notes or discarded entirely if the topic lacks interest or has been covered elsewhere. What makes these recordings unique is the interactive setting that inspired them. In "VR" I have a real person "pushing back"...

The idea of using voice to text for the rough draft for the blog. Discussion of "belief" and how to approach the question "Do you believe ...". Belief is a transitory, unimportant psychological phenomenon. Action is important. The imposition of a "belief system" on others is the issue. This is behind the religious wars in Europe and the Crusades. Was it always this way? Did the Huns insist that everyone "believe" in their system and/or impose cultural ceremonies on them? Freedom of religion is central to the thinking behind the foundation of America, even though the early history was quite otherwise. The concept is that there is a wide source of agreement behind the legitimacy of authority. The constitution was a list of restrictions on what kind of authority was legitimate in terms of what kinds of laws could be considered legitimate. --------- Abortion. Does anyone have the right to interfere with the freedom of the mother (or the fetus)? Where...

 Starting points: "Mind" is very complex but we know more than nothing about it. We need to reconcile this with the idea that the "mind" is fundamentally mysterious. How do we add all we know to the "Zen" experience? Why do we do what we do? What are the influences on our behavior?  No obligation to follow "zen" or some "zen master" theories about experience itself and the mind.

 Misuse of language Law Belief Signaling that I am a member of the group Do Biologists "believe" in evolution like Fundamentalists don't? Ordinary "belief" depends on a structure of related inferences - "evidence" as opposed to motivated reasoning - totally linguistic. Scientific "evidence" refers to real experience. Religious "evidence" is based on philosophical reasoning (at best). "Survival of the fittest" is a circular concept. "Variation" is the mechanism of evolution. Hard to refute that variation exists... What does it mean to "believe" in God? At its base, it's a system of appeasing spirits through traditional ceremonies. If you don't believe in prayer, what kind of "God" remains? If you don't think God is active in history, are you misusing the "God" concept? Do you mean God=physics? The ground of all Being - Tillich . Video here . Is "ground of all being...

In popular culture, this question is often encountered as a joke: some bearded guy on a mountain top gives a clever non-answer to a question that is assumed to be un-answerable.  It’s easy to see how this issue became a joke. There are so many absurd answers offered with a straight face, that one suspects that the “real” answer is somehow being kept hidden from us, the unwashed masses too stupid to comprehend the reason for our very existence. In the past, most of us lived in a cultural “bubble” that provided the answer (or non-answer) to the question in a way that encouraged us to just nod our heads and move on. For example, we may have been told that our purpose on Earth was to “praise God” or “Make the World Safe For Democracy”. Modern thinkers at least try to step out of the bubbles. Modern philosophers will attack the issue with the tools of their trade: language Using those tools, they may decide that the question is meaningless or subject to 1,000 answers by named historical...

We all live in the same physical world, but we overlay what our senses and logic tell us with ideas that fundamentally change our experience of it. The result is that many of us (most of us?) live in impermeable bubbles where logic and persuasion cannot penetrate. It is important to realize this basic fact about human beings. It is impossible to "disprove" Christianity to a true believer. They experience a different world. They speak a different language. For them, "Christ died for your sins" is an intelligible sentence - absolutely "true" - although what the word "true" means in their world is very different from what we find in the dictionary. For me, this claim opens the door to a labyrinth of fantasy that could not withstand the questions of a five-year-old. It's just silly. Really? That's the way God set things up? As George Orwell pointed out in 1984, "Augmentation" is mostly accomplished with language - Scientific or ot...

I have written a massive amount  about this subject. I hope not to repeat what I've already said or what anyone would understand without wise words from me.  My problems with language as a representation of reality are discussed there and are hardly original. This post is about a few personal implications of this fact. My dear departed dad said it best, with typical sensitivity: "It's all bullshit". If he had said it when I was 5 he could have saved me some trouble... Some hints in the past ... By simply stopping to use religious terminology, I broke the spell of Christianity I have always felt that philosophy is "just words", as confirmed by Wittgenstein, Taoism But the big picture eluded me... "Religion" is impossible without extensive abuse of human language; All "ideas", including the nutty ones, are made possible by language alone Language "cheaters" and "gamers" are a pox on society   The weaponization of lang...

Role models help us answer life's most important question: "What sort of a person should I be?" It is the issue of virtue. What is virtue? Some philosophers ( Alasdair MacIntyre ) base their entire ethics on this question. As a kid, I escaped into Super Man comics and, later, Science Fiction. In both genres, heroic figures confront big issues - sometimes saving the world or at least overcoming villains with their own superpowers. I don't remember having "real-life" role models. My father was rather distant, like his own father. Eventually, that "distance" turned into outright abandonment. He did teach me to shoot and brought me along as a surveyor's assistant when I was 12, but I never thought I'd like to be like him "When I grew up".  On the other hand, he was the only role model I had available. I remember when he had his first heart attack. In a strange way that I feel is "progress", I have come to regard my father...