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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 29, 2014 - 11:07am PT
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Interesting op-ed in The New York Times from David Brooks on holding some key virtues (values) in mind for developing of our thinking. http://nyti.ms/1pnBuI2
According to Brooks, these values include love of learning (curiosity), intellectual courage (willingness to hold unpopular views, self-regulation of beliefs and views, critical consideration of information), strength of position (firmly held through critical self-evaluation, but not dogmatic, strength of conviction appropriately adjusted to strength of evidence), humility (not letting vanity or the desire for status get in the way of accuracy), autonomy (thinking for yourself, avoiding merely parroting others thinking), and generosity.
Brooks talks about generosity in these terms, "This virtue starts with the willingness to share knowledge and give others credit. But it also means hearing others as they would like to be heard, looking for what each person has to teach and not looking to triumphantly pounce upon their errors."
And, Brooks summarizes with, "very often thinking well means pushing against the grain of our nature — against vanity, against laziness, against the desire for certainty, against the desire to avoid painful truths. Good thinking isn’t just adopting the right technique. It’s a moral enterprise and requires good character, the ability to go against our lesser impulses for the sake of our higher ones."
Inspired me to want to share and work on doing a better job satisfying those values.
ST reminds me of hanging around the campfire after a day climbing (mostly); seems like it works when everyone in on the conversation is reasonable and respectful to the degree there is foundation present for the leg-pulling, teasing, challenging, and sh#t talking to stay in good fun.
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Aug 29, 2014 - 11:43am PT
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I only understood the last half of the last sentence.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 29, 2014 - 11:59am PT
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Ah, there it is: “the limits of science and data”! Now where have we heard that from? Could it be...
Nope, didn't get it from Brooks (didn't know about the article; thanks for sharing it). Could it be that great minds think alike? Nah!! ;-)
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Aug 29, 2014 - 12:27pm PT
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Mark, David Brooks didn't used to be such a nice boy, you know.... He had his Bush years, you see, and must repent forever more, at least per those liberals among us who cringingly remember his mini-me act of that period.
But today he wants to be interdisciplinary and comes up with these sorts of pieces regularly. I am not sure if they are just for covering his tracks out of the earlier 2000's or more likely simply that he likes to dabble in the humanities imagining to sooth the pains of the first world back East, shall I say. I read him too now and even had a crisis when he lovingly quoted my mother and her longitudinal study some years back. It was hard to harsh him from then on even though the dicta was to continue to savage him relentlessly.
Lovely Fructose, always on the upswing, has a very interesting piece linked just above by Henley. With such rigor, it seems the rest of us might have respite, don't you venture? Henley is quite the prosecutor. I would only add to Henley and others, Brooks too, that despite intentions, they still toy locked down with the mereological fallacy of confusing parts with the whole, in the endless inquiry into Mind versus Brain versus Body.
I go on to recall my friend the philosopher Arthur Cody:
"...there is real cause of alarm when one considers just what all the “grandstanding” has been about. Genes are not machines, and we ourselves do not work like computers. Unless and until we know how collections of genes go together, how they combine to form organisms, whether plants or animals or human beings, we will not know what, really, we are doing when we add a gene to an existing organism, or manipulate the genes in a germline in such a way as to affect future generations. If the process of forming an organism possesses, as I have argued, an element of freedom, and is fraught with an infinite number of choices along the path, each of them setting in train numerous complex and far from predetermined actions and reactions, it is terrible to contemplate the responsibility that lies upon us when, profoundly ignorant as we remain, we make bold to add to, subtract from, or alter the pages in the book of life.
Commentary Magazine, 06.01.2000 "Message from the Genome"
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Chris Roderick
climber
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Aug 29, 2014 - 12:40pm PT
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So what is the exact argument you friend Cody makes for saying things are not predetermined?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 29, 2014 - 01:19pm PT
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Ah, there it is: “the limits of science and data”! Now where have we heard that from? Could it be...
You might've missed it. That's Jerry Coyne critiquing Brooks.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Aug 29, 2014 - 02:07pm PT
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Fructose, and referring to theologians of the past.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 29, 2014 - 02:16pm PT
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HFCS, Ooops, I did miss it. Now that I've actually read the article, my overall impression is that David Brooks should probably avoid explaining neurology to others. Sounds like you may be aligned with the neurophilosophy of Paul Churchland and his eliminative materialism theory of mind?
My position as a science guy is still that there are limits to science. All the data, theories, and models that we have now and will have in the future will still leave room for more investigation and more accurate analysis. And, even then it will be the map and not the terrain. You asked me a while back if there is a "ghost" in the machine, a place where mystery and vitalism lives. My answer is still yes. But, then, that belief is merely based upon the awareness provided by my limited observation, experience, and mind which makes me then agnostic.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Aug 29, 2014 - 03:42pm PT
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Rationalism has at times explained the phenomenon of self-evident life (perhaps "the ghost") by suggesting or insisting it is merely a Ludibrium Materiae, a humanist myth of incarnation, a mere hoax insignificantly arising from the way the four dimensions must work. It is an ironic ruse with nothing inside it, they maintain.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Sep 10, 2014 - 08:02pm PT
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So, enjoy this spoofy image of David Brooks in the Capitol with his influential onlookers:
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