Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Conversation has published a gem of an article, aimed at people suffering climate “guilt”, to help them philosophically come to terms with the fact that they are experiencing emotional distress, about events which haven’t happened
According to The Conversation;
Do you suffer from climate guilt? A dose of philosophy can help
People cannot engage in something they cannot see or feel. We need concrete reasons to care and act. In this way, climate change presents a threefold intangible challenge:
1. we can perceive the weather, but the climate system is something rather abstract, a statistical construct
2. we now know climate change is anthropogenic, or man-made, but how can we understand this? One way is to say: mankind is the reason, but this becomes also very abstract. Who actually is represented with mankind? Another way is to say: China or the US is to blame, as if we are speaking of subjects and not concepts. We cannot grasp how you and I contribute to climate change, not by doing something extraordinary, but with our everyday lives
3. we cannot perceive how we as individuals can contribute to mitigating climate change. Eighteenth-century philosopher George Berkeley stated that “To be is to be perceived.” If we can’t see the change in the climate system, nor the reason why it is actually occurring, does it exist in our daily lives?
My favourite takeaway soundbite is the following;
… Furthermore, climate is not here and now. Its only possible way to be perceived is through recognition of patterns, by computer modeling and, most importantly, through representations. …
The author of this article is Luis Fernández Carril, Faculty member at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
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And 3D glasses. Philosophy and 3D glasses to see climate whatsis.
Above all…. do not respond in Welsh!
Seeing how you didn’t ask:
Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi,
Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri;
Ei gwrol ryfelwyr, gwladgarwyr tra mad,
Dros ryddid collasant eu gwaed.
(Chorus)
Gwlad, gwlad, pleidiol wyf i’m gwlad.
Tra môr yn fur i’r bur hoff bau,
O bydded i’r hen iaith barhau.
Cthulhu Ftghan!
Anybody want it in Kernewek (i.e. Cornish)?
Richard
a land of my fathers is dear to me ,
country of poets and singers, famous men of renown ;
his brave warriors, patriots ,
freedom shed their blood .
( chorus )
country, home, true am I to home .
while seas secure the land so pure ,
oh may the old language endure .
And blinkers. Philosophy, 3D glasses and blinkers to see climate whatsis.
And a case of jaundice.
You are naughty! 🙂
And a case of scotch.
And an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope… Oh damn!
And Hollywood. We need Hollywood to see climate change.
Looney Clooney’s latest cinematic disaster helped them see the dangers of trying to sell that hockey schtick lie.
I was thinking a pair of those X-Ray glasses, the kind that used to sell in the comic books, right next to the Charles Atlas advert,
Paris is coming. Much more of such is on the way.
No stone will be left unturned.
…and no skeptic will be left unstoned.
Louis LeBlanc commented: “…and no skeptic will be left unstoned.”
So….”everybody must get stoned.”
I’ll drink to that!
Yammas!
The song for that…
And no tern will be left unstoned either.
Oh yes the famous BS school of philosophy.
http://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?u=http%3a%2f%2fhalloweencostumes.costumestore.com%2f102603_01_Lg.jpg&ehk=yr47dTGWTtfLkJaXZh84qg&w=320&h=320&c=7&p=0&dpr=2&pid=1.7
Oh great Gaia, the prophets of doom and the climate modellers. It’s all too touchy but please no feely!!!!!!!
Hey hot tree huggin’ gals. Ted says no but I understand you completely.
Indeed, tree-huggers often pursue grants.
Nutters like this help convince people that harmful AGW is a cause, not a scientific fact.
Harmful? I have only seen benefits.. even the promulgated possible harms seem more benefit than anything.
. . . and they’d be RIGHT!
Love that final quote, Eric! In other words “trust our models, trust our word.” What a riot!
The Philosopher’s Stoned
Shame, the final frontier.
As they say, you can’t make this stuff up? Oh, wait a minute, they just did!
Yes it is called;”The Emperors New Clothes”
The exact same illogic was required for the intellectuals of that fable to see and feel that fine fabric.
Human Nature Is .
” we now know climate change is anthropogenic, or man-made, but how can we understand this?”
Really? We do? How exactly”
“Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so”
Same reasoning……..
Same reasoning…..
Not exactly:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched–this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
– 1 John 1:1
The founders of Christianity claimed solid empirical observations as the basis of their belief.
They just don’t seem to be to replicate it for others.
“…which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched…”
…which is called “hearsay” in courts, not evidence.
(Not to mention the statute of limitations.)
“Not to mention the statute of limitations”
Shucks, does that mean we can’t send God a bill for the clean-up after that flood He caused in 1600BC?
A court of law would have a tough time rendering justice if Jon and Alexander were setting the rules. Jon would require witnesses to do more than just testify to what they saw. They would have to “replicate” the entire experience for the jury. I’m not sure how that works for a murder. And if you succeeded in overcoming Jon’s requirements and got someone a long sentence based on eye-witness testimony, you would still have a high hurdle to overcome. According to Alexander, recorded testimony becomes “hearsay” and is no longer evidence once the witness is dead. So criminals would have to be set free as soon as the star witness died even if it was the very next day. However, I’ve never heard of a convict being freed based on that reasoning. Perhaps defense lawyers just haven’t been aware of that loop hole.
Juan Slayton July 30, 2015 at 9:17 pm
They would have to have been very old to do so, since the New Testament was not written until about a hundred years after the events it describes. Nor do we have any idea who wrote the Book of John, although most scholars say it was more than one man. Nobody these days seems to think it was written by John, and the author is nowhere identified by name. … sorry, Juan, but that is not only hearsay, it is a couple of generations worth of hearsay.
So while the “founders of Christianity” were totally mute on the subject, I have no doubt that some folks a hundred years later or so who were NOT the “founders of Christianity” claimed “solid empirical observations as the basis of their belief” … and?
I’m sorry, but “I heard it said that a hundred years ago …” is not “solid empirical evidence” on my planet.
w.
Louis Hunt:
Nobody ever has been convicted or recognized (NB: which is radically different from being convinced, any number of fools can be convinced with clever lies, Christian, Muslim, Putin’s or Obama’s) on the basis of a “testimony” (i.e. hysterical balderdash) given by the person or persons unknown more than 2000 years ago in the country (Roman Empire) that ceased to exist and could not possibly be under jurisdiction of any currently existing courts. Your witnesses are as laughable as Jehovah’s…
I am getting old. I researched religions of the world for decades. I feel that once, for the record, I should allow myself to express, what exactly I think of the New Testament (let us postpone the discussion of the rest of the bloody history of Christian faith).
Rich and powerful bishops presiding over the Council of Nicaea more than 300 years after the crucifixion of Jesus from Nazareth by Roman authorities in Jerusalem, the same bishops who finalized canonical texts of the five canonized Apocrypha comprising the so-called “New Testament,” meticulously tried to expunge from these texts anything that could contradict their dogmas, newly re-formulated for the tithe-paying unwashed masses.
In those tempestuous times of constant wars, persecution of heresies, barbarian pillages and hunger there were very few literate people (many of the bishops themselves couldn’t read or write), and scribes missed a few important things, which cannot be erased now — for who would dare redact the Gospels? There are attempts to re-translate these blunders in a Church-friendly way but… no axe can cut out what a pen has written.
For example, there is a famous passage in Matthew where Maria comes to Jesus with her other children, his brothers and sisters, to beg for money, and he kicks them out (Matthew 12:48-49, Luke 8:21); the Christian myth of Maria’s virginity has been invented (on the basis of Latin translator’s error) later, to accommodate Mediterranean proclivity toward “Mother Goddess” cult.
See also Luke 18:19 (“And Jesus said unto him, “Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, that is, God.””). If you truly believe the word of the Gospel, you must, first of all and above all, believe in words spoken by Jesus. Jesus himself said, emphatically and unambiguously, the he is not a god. He never pretended to be a god.
Jesus, a fastidious self-made Jewish Essean martyr who shunned and despised women and swine, insisted that the only permissible prayer was the ancient Egyptian prayer to the Heavenly Father, the life-giving Sun-god Amon (“Amen” — the name of this god remains in the end of the prayer, separated later by Christians separated from the last phrase, as if this name would somehow be a meaningful “ending” for a sentence, whereas it loses any meaning in their interpretation; this Egyptian prayer of Esseans is exactly described in the Judean War by Flavius Josephus), that any intercourse with a woman (even as a thought experiment) is an unforgivable sin, and that only those Jews (other peoples, the goyim, were not to apply; all Christians were Jewish men only before Paul radically distorted Jesus’ teachings — which was, probably, the most successful political turn on a dime in human history) who give away all — that is, literally, all their worldly possessions, to the last coin, to the last piece of trash — would be saved from oblivion and shall inherit the Earth, where the Kingdom of Heaven (an euphemism used by Jesus to define the freedom of Jewish sacred rites from desecration by the Roman power, the divinity of the Emperor being the most offensive idea to any Orthodox Jew) was to be soon established.
Jesus lived according to his words and died for them. He would never, in his wildest dreams, claim a personal divinity. He was wrong in many of his beliefs. But have some respect. The poor man would have been horrified to death by what has been done in his name. So, if you swear by the Bible, stop calling him a god. Or, if you disagree, and wish to misinterpret or pervert the plain and simple words spoken by Jesus himself, your argument shall be with him, not with me. Good luck.
They would have to “replicate” the entire experience for the jury. I’m not sure how that works for a murder.
Well that’s sort of what they did when I was a juror.
So criminals would have to be set free as soon as the star witness died even if it was the very next day. However, I’ve never heard of a convict being freed based on that reasoning. Perhaps defense lawyers just haven’t been aware of that loop hole.
Mob lawyers have.
When Constantine converted to Christianity he chose the sect in Rome (not surprisingly) which had no connection with Palastine, nor with Jesus. This sect invented the ‘divinity’of Jesus, virgin birth, 12 male disciples and much else besides.
I used to wonder how priests, monks, bishops and popes could behave so badly -were they not afraid for their immortal souls?
Finally, I realized that religion is and always has been a means of controlling the masses.
There must have been exceptions among the ruling elite but not many.
CAGW operates the same way and so, too, Communism.
I am, by the way, a lifelong atheist for whom education, logic and reason are all-important.
Willis, sorry, you are working from scholarship that is close to 100 years old. All the scholars agree that John was the last book of the Bible to be written. We have found a scap of the book of John that dates to about 100AD. Which if we were really lucky and had a piece of the first copy of this book to be written, means that the last book of the bible was written only about 70 years after Jesus died. If as is more likely, the scrap we have is a copy of an earlier book, than the writing of the Bible easily occurred during the lifespan of people who would have been eye witnesses. The books of Paul were certainly written within a decade or two of Christ’s death.
MarkW July 31, 2015 at 2:49 pm
Mark, if your claim is that modern scholarship has established that the Book of John was written by John, you’ll have to provide a citation for that. I can’t find one.
In addition you’ll have to find a link to modern scholarship that says that the Book of John was written by one man. I can’t find one.
Is it possible that the Book was written by John the disciple? Sure, anything is possible. But the odds seem slim at this point.
Look, what I objected to was Juan’s claim, viz:
Here is some modern thought on the subject (emphasis mine):
Given the number and size of the many differences between John and the “synoptic gospels”, I fear that if the founders had “solid empirical observations”, they forgot to get together and agree on them beforehand … and John’s “observations” were the most outre of the bunch, so much so that early Xtians rejected them outright as heretical.
So if all of the gospels are based on “solid observational evidence”, I fear someone forgot to give John the memo …
w.
No, no, no, not John at all, but some other fella of the same name.
===========
XD
Willis,
I take it your “SOURCE” is a link, but I can’t seem to get it to work. Possible for you to check?
js
MarkW,
I think you have been misled by propagandists. Papyrus Rylands 457, P52,
cannot be dated to the beginning of the second century with any certainty. You can see a discussion in the comments section here.
http://vridar.org/2015/07/01/comparing-the-sources-for-caesar-and-jesus/#more-59384
And more of the same here.
http://www.jesusgranskad.se/p52.htm
Juan Slayton August 1, 2015 at 7:58 am
Fixed, thanks.
w.
The don’t need deep philosophy (only that always helps) just logic and a questioning mind.
You need a great deal more than that. Here’s G.K. Chesterton’s take on the subject:
Without “the dumb certainties of experience” logic is just a BS generator. One of the best pieces of engineering advice I ever heard was something like: “Never start to calculate before you’re pretty sure what the answer should be.” Any other approach is an invitation to GIGO (garbage in garbage out). Logic is not nearly enough.
Now you can’t see CO2-Climate Change? I thought everyone was exhorted to look around, and then they could just see it. One woman I know saw some spiders she’d never seen before, and that was it!
Hmm, Climate “guilt” Hmmmm nooo,, I don’t think I am Afflicted with that. Now I’m waiting until my boys to go to sleep so I cam eat the last of the chocolate cake without having to share. I’ll feel guilty later.
michael aka bad dad
Never ever seen someone, anyone, which as low basic understanding of Philosopy as in that nonsense claim.
People are allowed to be stupid – they better not show it like that. For correct information regarding Theories of Science which is the theoretical part of Philosophy… just follow link above….
So…
It cannot be perceived but by the models of the climate scientists.
In other words, it is invisible.
Not just invisible, but powerful.
Awesome power. Perhaps all powerful.
And we shall pay it heed or it shall vent its rage upon us and smite us.
Change “scientists” to “priests” and you could have a really good book on your hands.
All hail the invisible, omnipotent and great CO2
Philosophy can certainly help us to see the climate change movement/cult “philosophically”.
The most important area of philosophical inquiry is epistemology, in which we learn that there are known known, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
And that in general, most of what humans believe at any particular time tends to turn out to be culturally manufactured donkey poop. Hence the beliefs of the past generally look foolish.
But, in addition, a cursory glance at the past reveals that “Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation.” Charles Mackay 1841,
I don’t know what, of the many things believed in 2015, is true and what is donkey-poop.
I strongly suspect that “extreme weather” induced by CO2 will turn out to be mostly a mass delusion which results from a composite of various familiar cognitive biases.
Meanwhile people are resorting to self-flagellation in order to forestall the apocalypse, or to grant themselves a throne in heaven.
This all lead me to wonder if anyone on the web had made these tentative connections before.
It turns out that someone has, in this brilliant article (link below). Highly, highly recommended:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/09/22/the-millennial-cult-of-global-warming/
Every time I see words “We know now that…”, I know some especially reprobate lie would follow, be it about climate, cosmology, health care or whatever.
“… Furthermore, climate is not here and now. Its only possible way to be perceived is through recognition of patterns, by computer modeling and, most importantly, through representations. …”
The Crisis Of Evidence: Why Probability And Statistics Cannot Discover Cause
William M. Briggs
Ah. The Global Human Warming crowd.
Ha ha
Here cums the UN Vatican Balls Party in Paris! Oy vey the smelz of dat.
The good Dr needs to chill and join Woolloomooloo University’s Philosophy Department. Just ask Bruce.
You rang?
‘Allo, Bruce.
G’day. Would love to put a shrimp on the barby, but it’s to effen cold. Have seen a few uncomfortable brass monkeys running around this winter down ‘ere.
It was Climate Ravings of this sort that first stimulated me to look more deeply into the whole business and be convinced that it was just that…a business and not a scientific fact.
“If we can’t see the change in the climate system, nor the reason why it is actually occurring, does it exist in our daily lives? ”
If a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, was it the tree Michael Mann spliced into his hockey stick?
Don’t comment here. Go and comment there. (There’s a Welsh professor commenting in Spanish and a Canadian Taoist monk).