tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78466278425484192262024-03-13T04:41:32.036-07:00Philosophy TweetPhilosophytweethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01728982698558846759noreply@blogger.comBlogger596125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-45742434962219287892024-02-26T15:00:00.000-08:002024-02-26T15:51:46.299-08:00Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence<p><span style="font-family: arial;"> <span>Herein we embark
in our third journey into the hazy realms of AI, dear redears. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Geoplitics is the </span><span style="font-family: arial;">name we now give to
the power struggles of major international </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">players in the world
landscape, that </span><span style="font-family: arial;">have been ongoing
since the dawn of History, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">perhaps even before that. Current
geopolitics are </span><span style="font-family: arial;">explosive, with many
serious </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">conflicts simmering across the world. Artificial Intelligence
‘s</span><span style="font-family: arial;">geopolitics is also
a </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">very important matter to ponder about.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The geoplitics
of AI affects the power dynamics, interests and strategies of </span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">different </span><span style="font-family: arial;">actors in the </span><span style="font-family: arial;">international
system. AI is a transformative technology that </span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">has the potential to
enhance or disrupt </span><span style="font-family: arial;">the capabilities,
influence and security of </span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">States, Corporations and individuals. AI
also poses </span><span style="font-family: arial;">ethical, legal and
social </span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">challenges that require global cooperation and governance.
Ethics and </span><span style="font-family: arial;">cooperation </span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> are
badly needed today, wouldn’t you agree ?</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Vladimir
Putin said, in 2019, that he who masters AI will have the world.
Putin is a </span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">ruthless,</span><span style="font-family: arial;">warmongering tyrant,
but he is no fool, dear readers. For once, he is </span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">speaking the truth.
The power </span><span style="font-family: arial;">wielded by AI is
enormous and game changing, for </span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">better or for worse. Once again, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">wouldn’t you
agree?</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Some of the key
questions that AI can surmise are the following:</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">- How will AI affect
the balance of power and competition among major global players, such
as the </span><span style="font-family: arial;">USA, China,
Russia and the EU?</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">-How can AI shape
the development and use of military and intelligence technologies,
such as </span><span style="font-family: arial;">autonomous
weapons, cyberwarfare and survellaince ?</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">-How will AI
influence the norms and values of different societies and cultures,
such as human </span><span style="font-family: arial;">rights, democraccy
and privacy ?</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">-How will AI create
new opportunities and challanges for global cooperation and
governance, such </span><span style="font-family: arial;">as standards
regulations and instituions?</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> As usual, dear
readers, the answers lie in the future; in that brave new world of
ours, abusing once more of Aldous Huxley's’ wit and book titles.</span></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-74758851670904828812024-01-26T14:16:00.000-08:002024-01-26T14:16:19.345-08:00Artificial Intelligence and Power<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Governance,
Democracy and Military Capabilities</span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">Counting
again with the gracious leave of Aldous Huxley and his "Brave
new world" we embark on another journey of exploration of this
brave new world of ours.</span> <span lang="es-MX">Artificial
Intelligence and Power will be the waters that we will navigate in
this second article of the series on AI.</span> <span lang="es-MX">We
sincerely hope that we may enjoy the privilege of your companionship,
dear readers, in these explorations that we invite you to join us.</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">Matters
of power, governance, democracy and military might are one of the
utmost pressing issues of our contemporary world, deeply shaken with
raging wars, autocrats rising within democracies themselves and yet
another world's powers struggle, cold war style, not just looming in
the horizon but happening just now, </span>
</span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">The
surge of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) might pose or not an
existential risk in the near future, as we described in the last
article. Current Generative Intelligence (AI) and chatbots as GPT</span><span lang="es-MX">4</span><span lang="es-MX">
are disrupting democracies and fair elections right now. AI is
providing perilous ruses for democracies and highly dangerous warfare
devices in our conflicting world.</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We
intend, dear readers, to set out for you all the significant
information regarding those very sensitive issues, that are
disrupting the very tenets of our world. We invite you, once more, to
join us in the quest.</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">AI
and Democracy</span></b></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Carl
J. Miller, scholar and resercher states: “ Political discourses
have the power to shape the world and our lives.” When the world
changes, also power changes. Revolutionary changes are reshaping the
global scenario. AI has entered the play of politics.</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">Political
misinformation has an old history, a history as old as politics
themselves are, diving into the oceans of Antiquity</span>
<span lang="es-MX">Just remember the
alleged Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that Bush Jr. used to
trigger his desired war. We can go as back as the Peloponnesian War
in ancient Greece and far into a more distant past.. Today we have a
new and most powerful player in that field, AI. The so called “deep
fakes” are a highly pernicious tool now available to unscrupled
politcians, political parties and covert organizations who want to
influence domestic or foreign political events. Deep fakes are false
images, voices or videos designed by generative AI to mislead, in
every possible way, audiences keen for certainties in a dubious
information environment. The fakes ugly faces have emerged, for
example, in the fraught presidential campaign in Taiwan and in the
battlefields of Ukraine, very important chessbords in the current
global geopolitical playing field. Reliable information is now more
important than ever, when citizens and netizens all around the world
deeply distrust mainstream news media outlets, biased they maybe or
not. </span>
</span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> “<span lang="es-MX">Artificial
Intelligence is a threat to democracy “ says UK government expert,
Dame Wendy Hall. She is is a member of the UK government's AI
Council, and also regius professor of computer science at the
University of Southampton. Dear readers,</span> <span lang="es-MX">What
are the intentions and intended solutions of governments and large
technology companies in this regard? Let's take a look. </span>
</span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Bletchley
Park Summit</span></b></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Last
November, representatives and companies from 28 countries, including
the US and China, as well as the EU, signed the pact that aims to
tackle the risks of AI models. A “world-first” agreement on the
safety of artificial intelligence (AI) was reached at a global summit
in the UK, or so the say.</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Technology
experts, world leaders and representatives from 27 countries and the
European Union attended the Artificial Intelligence Security Summit
at Bletchley Park, once the birthplace of the code breakers of the
Second World War, where Alan Turing the father of the computer
worked.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The
British Government called it a "world-first" agreement
between the signatories, which aims to identify "AI security
risks of shared interest" and create "respective risk-based
policies between countries."</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">However,
it is unclear how exactly the agreements will play out.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">UK
Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Michelle
Donelan declared the agreement a "landmark achievement" and
"lays the foundation for today's discussions".The British
Government also announced the holding of future summits on AI safety.
Yes, sure they will.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">South
Korea will launch another "virtual</span><span lang="es-MX">
</span><span lang="es-MX">mini-summit"
on AI in the next six months and France will host the next in-person
AI summit next year. </span><span lang="es-MX">H</span><span lang="es-MX">owever,
experts argue that the agreement does not go far enough. They are
right.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">"Bringing
together the great powers to support ethical principles can be
considered a success, but concrete policies and accountability
mechanisms must be quickly undertaken," Paul Teather, CEO of the
AI research company, said."Vague terminology leads to
misinterpretations, while relying solely on voluntary cooperation is
insufficient to implement globally recognized good practices around
AI," he continued.</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">Billionaire
technology entrepreneur Elon Musk arrived at the summit and remained
silent during the talks, but said the meeting seeks to establish an
"arbitrator" for technology companies. "I think what
we're trying to do here is to establish a framework so that there is
at least one independent arbiter who can look at what the leading AI
companies are doing and at least raise the alarm if they have
doubts," he told the news agency. AP "I think what we're
trying to do here is... first, establish that there should be a
referee role, I think there should be. And then, you know, be
cautious in how the regulations are applied, so as not to go on a
charge with regulations that inhibit the positive side of AI," </span>
</span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1988
to facilitate comprehensive assessments of the state of scientific,
technical and socioeconomic knowledge on climate change </span><span lang="es-MX">and
</span><span lang="es-MX">its
causes, potential impacts and response strategies. The Panel sends
yearly reports to the UN, governments and other international
agencies. The most significant idea that came from the Bletchley Park
Summit is to cr</span><span lang="es-MX">e</span><span lang="es-MX">ate
a similar AI panel that will also send yearly reports. Dear readers,
we all know how the fight against climate change is faring, don’t
we?</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">That
collage of conflicting interests can only be decoded with
difficulties, because there are so many ,contradictory with othe</span><span lang="es-MX">rs</span><span lang="es-MX">
and self contradicting also. As unifying principle maybe, in the
words of the above quoted Carl J: Miller “The Power elite is mostly
unregulated” Big tech corporations are fundamentally profit driven,
alt</span><span lang="es-MX">h</span><span lang="es-MX">ough
AI counter Powers can be created by governments. The point is that
the latter themselves have conflicting interets within themselves in
AI enhanced survellance de</span><span lang="es-MX">v</span><span lang="es-MX">ices
or military capabilities, just to </span><span lang="es-MX">n</span><span lang="es-MX">ame
some of them. I</span><span lang="es-MX">n
</span><span lang="es-MX">realpolitik
terms, power has no ethics or morals. A lot of balancing acts are
needed here. We do not think that those are feasible in the near
future, but, dear readers, we serve you food for thought </span><span lang="es-MX">and</span><span lang="es-MX">
it is up to you to draw your own opinions. We are well aware that
distrust in governments and democracies run deep. “If voting made
an difference, they wouldn¨t le</span><span lang="es-MX">t
</span><span lang="es-MX">us do it”,
once Mark Twain wrote.</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Breaking
News…as this article is bieng wirtten, The New York Times titles “
E.U. agrees on landmark Aritificial Intellegence Rules “ and later
“European policy makers focused on AI’s riskiest uses by
companies and governments, including those for law enforcement and
the operation of crucial services…”. Let’s see how that works
out.</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">AI
and warfare</span></b></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">AI
and contemporary warfare is a complex and ever evolving issue that
has many implications of conflict and security. AI can be applied to
many aspects of warfare such as intelligenece, reconnaisance,
targeting, commnand and control, logistics, cyberoperations and
autonomous weapons. Remember the AI automated killing robots?</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">Some
potential benefits of AI in warfare examples are enhancing
situational awareness, improving accuracy and efficiency, less human
errors, and creating new capabilities and strategies. However, AI
beckons challenges and risks,among them ethical, legal, moral and
humanitarian dilemas. vulnerability to adversarial attacks and
manipulations, escalations and instability, los</span><span lang="es-MX">s</span><span lang="es-MX">
of human control and accountability.</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"> <span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The
main questions surrounding the use of AI in warfare are:</span></span></p>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<ul>
<li><p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">How
we can ensure that AI systems are aligned with human values and
comply with the laws of war and human rights ? Very difficult
question.</span></span></p></li>
<li><p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">How
we can mantain strategic stability and deterrence in a “brave new
world” AI where AI could cr</span><span lang="es-MX">eate</span><span lang="es-MX">
new domains and ways to conduct new modes of conflict, such as
cyberwarfare , information warfare and hybrid warfare. ? Such a
complex task awaits…</span></span></p></li>
<li><p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span lang="es-MX">How
can we foster cooperation and trust between nations and stakeholders
to develop AI responsably and transparently? </span>
</span></p></li>
</ul>
<p lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Dear
readers, the answers lie somewhere in the future… We sincerely hope
that you join us again in this quest of the “brave new world” in
our next article on this subject.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
</p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-61667313379769814692024-01-15T15:28:00.000-08:002024-01-16T07:57:15.822-08:00Artificial Intelligence and Humanity<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Are we living in a brave new world, as Aldous
Huxley famously entitled his book ? Perhaps. What sort of new world
looms in our future? Albeit we have some clues, actually we don´t
know for certain., in this article, dear readers, we endeavor to give
you some hints, some food for thought for you.</span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span lang="es-MX">Arti.ficial intelleigence (AI) was, during the
last few decades, the subject of study of sophisticated and highly
trained scientists and resarrchers. Sure, their knowledge abouy AI is
deep and vast, altough within certain and strict limits. </span>
</span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">AI was a mch researched and debated topic in that
scientific community, but a misterious and maybe somehow miraculous
to the general public; more science fiction than actual science. Not
anymore. The recent realease of Chay GPT, an AI chatbot, by Open
Source has attracted more than 100 million users in a matter of weeks
after it was available for everybody worldwide.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Ai is now a very important subject on the global
mainstream debate now. Chat GPT became a household name. The CEO of
Open Source, the company that launched the chatbot globally, is Sam
Altman, a longitme Silicon Valley charachter who founded the firm in
2015 as non profit organization in 2015, with Elon Musk and others as
it backers. It was a non profit outfit, but Microsoft invested in it
US$ 1 billion. A 2019 for for profit branch created and Microsoft’s
USD $ 10 billion investement later, Open AI as now we know it
surfaced in the tech world. The non profit and for profit branches
coexisted, not always peacefully. Recently, the revolving firing and
sacking of Sam Atman as CEO became a Silicon Valley soap opera, a
high tech carousel spinning over and over again. This is al over the
news as this article is written, the intrigues unwiding. Soap operas
maybe kitsch, but Silicon Valley's soap operas can be amusing and
dramatic. Would'nt you agree?</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Generative
AI and Large Language Models</span></b></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Chat GPT is an open source AI chatbot. Such
devices are trained with texts, images and data all across the whole
Internet. Millions and millions of texts ranging from Wikipedia and
the Britannica Encyclopedia through all digital libraries to the wide
range of social networks are the chatbot’s data learning material.
That is why they are named Large Language Models (LLMs). The
godmather of this learning method is the pioneer scientist Fei Fei
Li, born in Beijing and now a professor at Stanford University.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The LLms are radically changing the way humans
search, acquire and gain access to knowldge; not from other humans,
but from a chatbot. Wikipedia, at the dawn of the Internet age, was a
global project to créate an online encycopedia, wirtten by all those
who wished to do so and available to all those that wanted to read.
At first, it was flawed and demeed unreliable. Not anymore. Wkipedia
has turned 22 years old in 2023, hosts more than 61million articles,
written 334 languages , huge amonuts of reliable information, verifed
by more than 40,000 editors in the English language alone. Ai
chatbots answers to queries are not always accurate and they
sometimes suffer “hallucinarions”. We will return to those
soon. So, knowlwdge from humans to humans is increasingly being
replaced by chatbot providers, which randomly give answers with a mix
of accurate and false data.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Chat GPT is not the only AI game in the world.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has “Deep Mind”, a chatbot
acquiered from a british tech startup, perfected and optimized later
up to Alphabet’s goals. That tech giant has also its Aritificial
General Intelligence (AGI) project also. The chief mind behind
Google´s AI products and projects, Geoffry Hinton, an AI pioneer,
resigned over concerns about the dangers for humanity that AIG may
cause.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Meta, another tech giant, is also busy with AI.
Some devices are the brain childrenof Marck Zuckerberg’s obssesion
with meta-reality. Users may chat with Meta’s AI via Whatsapp,
Messeger, Instagram as that chatbot was a real human person, named
Llama2. Next in line, are the AI “glasses”, named Ray Ban Meta,
and Quest 3.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The question of knowledge is out there. , in
search for an answer. What will happen? Your guess is as Good as
ours. The answer is in that future “ brave new world”.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Artificial
General Inteliigence. Gloom and Glee</span></b></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span lang="es-MX">Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is an
advanced type of AI than can perorm all the tasks and dispaly all
the capabilities a human beign can. Super Artificial Intelligence can
surpass everything a human can do, it even surpasses what current
supercomputers can achieve, no matter how powerfull they may be. It
will have consciousness, the means to perfect itself or ven reproduce
itself. This is not a dream, is a reality beckoning just around the
corner.</span>
</span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">
“<span lang="es-MX">The problem is that nobody really knows what
is exactly going on inside o fan AI chatbot”, says Will Knight, a
higky trained and specialized journalist that has been reporting on
AI fr the last 15 years. Hence, the so called “hallucinations”
issue mentioned above. As AGI concerns, this not just a minor issue
of disinformation. Artificial General Intelligence can be a blessing
for humanity or its worst nightmare. Super AIG can be capable of
solving pressing existential issues as climate change or the
pollution of oceans, or suffer “halucinations” and given the
order to solve climate change, it may conculde that as humans cause
climate change, they must be wiped of the fase of the earth. This is
not a science fiction scenario, lke the Terminator’s film in which
intelligent machines are fightinhg humankind to destroy it, as a
manner of saying in a sort of wink to a a pop culture dystopia. It is
a real possiblity that must be dealt with now. Do you really
understand the perils, thus far? Do you understand the great posible
advantages to us all, thus far? </span>
</span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">AI doomers on one side and AI enthusiasts on the
other side, gleeing as heralds of a new Renaissance for humanity
contend with each other. Of course, we do not know who is right. Some
examples follow.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><u><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Gloom</span></u></span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><u>
</u>
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Yoshua Bengio is a Canadian computer scientist,
most noted for his work on artificial neural networks and deep
learning.He is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and
Operations Research at the Université de Montréal and scientific
director of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA). He
says: “ “We think that AGI is comimg sooner that expexted.
Socienties are not ready for the power that will be unleashed and the
distuptions to come. Misisuse and loosing control of AIG are likey
scenarios”</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Big tech corporate heavywhiights, reaserchers,
scientists as Elon Musk and many others recently signed an open
letter proposing to halt AI development for at least 6 months in
order to asses AGI risks. They argue theyht be similar to raging
global pandemics or a worldwide nuclear conflict.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Geoffrey Everest Hinton is a British-Canadian
cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, most noted for his
work on artificial neural networks. From 2013 to 2023, he divided his
time working for Google (Google Brain) and the University of Toronto,
before publicly announcing his departure from Google in May 2023,
citing concerns about the risks of artificial intelligence (AI)
technology, as we said above. “I am scared that if you make AI the
technology work much better, you help the NSA (US National Security
Agency) misuse it more. I'd be more worried about that than about
autonomous killer AI robots.”</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><u><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Gleeing
about AI</span></u></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span lang="es-MX">There are those
that disagree with the doomers, privately implying that the suffer a
kind of “ Frankenstein delusion syndrome”</span> <span lang="es-MX">Yann
André LeCun is a Turing Award winning French computer scientist
working primarily in the fields of machine learning, computer vision,
mobile robotics and computational neuroscience. He is the Silver
Professor of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New
York University and Vice-President, Chief AI Scientist at Meta. "The
apocalyptic claims about AI are preposterous. Safeguards can work. We
can hirewire laws and safeguards into AI constraints in a way we
cannot do with humans", he argues.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Andreessen Horowitz a private American venture
capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The founders
were Silicon Valley veterans turned now into high tech start up
financiers. They realesed a manifesto stating that tehcnology and
capitalism are the only solution. That is really a way to smuggle
unfettered AI tech to the markets. All too natural, because business
is profit driven.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Some big power governments are also covert AI
enthusiasts. Some big power governments are also convert AI
enthusiasts, in spite of the Bletchley Park summit held in november
proposing regulations or the recent US Biden Administration AI
regulatory directive. AI military capabilities are too enticing. "If
China has it, why won't we", the USA may think. "If the USA
has it, why won?t we", China could reply.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;"><span lang="es-MX"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">More
to come</span></b></span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This is the first of a
series of articles on Artificial Intelligence. Our intention is to
adress the ways that AI may affect all aspects of human governance
and power; the economy, the consuemers,trade, cand Jobs, to name a
few.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" lang="es-MX" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
</span></p>
<p class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span lang="es-MX"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">We hope that you, dear
readers, will join us in this quest.</span></span></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-65798158929290351982023-11-04T16:34:00.003-07:002023-11-04T16:34:24.726-07:00Ludwig Wittgenstein , among the most influential philosophers of the 20th century<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">(1889—1951)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most influential philosophers of the
twentieth century, and regarded by some as the most important since Immanuel
Kant. His early work was influenced by that of Arthur Schopenhauer and,
especially, by his teacher Bertrand Russell and by Gottlob Frege, who became
something of a friend. This work culminated in the Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, the only philosophy book that Wittgenstein published
during his lifetime. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It claimed to solve all the major problems of philosophy and was held in
especially high esteem by the anti-metaphysical logical positivists. The
Tractatus is based on the idea that philosophical problems arise from
misunderstandings of the logic of language, and it tries to show what this
logic is. Wittgenstein's later work, principally his Philosophical
Investigations, shares this concern with logic and language, but takes a
different, less technical, approach to philosophical problems. This book helped
to inspire so-called ordinary language philosophy. This style of doing
philosophy has fallen somewhat out of favor, but Wittgenstein's work on
rule-following and private language is still considered important, and his
later philosophy is influential in a growing number of fields outside
philosophy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">1. Life<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein, born on April 26th 1889 in Vienna,
Austria, was a charismatic enigma. He has been something of a cult figure but
shunned publicity and even built an isolated hut in Norway to live in complete
seclusion. His sexuality was ambiguous but he was probably gay; how actively so
is still a matter of controversy. His life seems to have been dominated by an
obsession with moral and philosophical perfection, summed up in the subtitle of
Ray Monk's excellent biography Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">His concern with moral perfection led Wittgenstein at one point to
insist on confessing to several people various sins, including that of allowing
others to underestimate the extent of his 'Jewishness'. His father Karl
Wittgenstein's parents were born Jewish but converted to Protestantism and his
mother Leopoldine (nee Kalmus) was Catholic, but her father was of Jewish
descent. Wittgenstein himself was baptized in a Catholic church and was given a
Catholic burial, although between baptism and burial he was neither a
practicing nor a believing Catholic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Wittgenstein family was large and wealthy. Karl Wittgenstein was one
of the most successful businessmen in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, leading the
iron and steel industry there. The Wittgensteins' home attracted people of
culture, especially musicians, including the composer Johannes Brahms, who was
a friend of the family. Music remained important to Wittgenstein throughout his
life. So did darker matters. Ludwig was the youngest of eight children, and of
his four brothers, three committed suicide.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">As for his career, Wittgenstein studied mechanical engineering in Berlin
and in 1908 went to Manchester, England to do research in aeronautics,
experimenting with kites. His interest in engineering led to an interest in
mathematics which in turn got him thinking about philosophical questions about
the foundations of mathematics. He visited the mathematician and philosopher
Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), who recommended that he study with Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970) in Cambridge. At Cambridge Wittgenstein greatly impressed Russell
and G.E. Moore (1873- 1958), and began work on logic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When his father died in 1913 Wittgenstein inherited a fortune, which he
quickly gave away. When war broke out the next year, he volunteered for the
Austrian army. He continued his philosophical work and won several medals for
bravery during the war. The result of his thinking on logic was the Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus which was eventually published in English in 1922 with
Russell's help. This was the only book Wittgenstein published during his
lifetime. Having thus, in his opinion, solved all the problems of philosophy,
Wittgenstein became an elementary school teacher in rural Austria, where his
approach was strict and unpopular, but apparently effective. He spent 1926-28
meticulously designing and building an austere house in Vienna for his sister
Gretl.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In 1929 he returned to Cambridge to teach at Trinity College,
recognizing that in fact he had more work to do in philosophy. He became
professor of philosophy at Cambridge in 1939. During World War II he worked as
a hospital porter in London and as a research technician in Newcastle. After
the war he returned to university teaching but resigned his professorship in
1947 to concentrate on writing. Much of this he did in Ireland, preferring
isolated rural places for his work. By 1949 he had written all the material
that was published after his death as Philosophical Investigations, arguably
his most important work. He spent the last two years of his life in Vienna,
Oxford and Cambridge and kept working until he died of prostate cancer in
Cambridge in April 1951. His work from these last years has been published as
On Certainty. His last words were, "Tell them I've had a wonderful
life."<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">2. Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wittgenstein told Ludwig von Ficker that the point of the Tractatus was
ethical. In the preface to the book he says that its value consists in two
things: "that thoughts are expressed in it" and "that it shows
how little is achieved when these problems are solved." The problems he
refers to are the problems of philosophy defined, we may suppose, by the work
of Frege and Russell, and perhaps also Schopenhauer. At the end of the book
Wittgenstein says "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following
way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical"
[emphasis added]. What to make of the Tractatus, its author, and the
propositions it contains, then, is no easy matter.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The book certainly does not seem to be about ethics. It consists of
numbered propositions in seven sets. Proposition 1.2 belongs to the first set
and is a comment on proposition 1. Proposition 1.21 is about proposition 1.2,
and so on. The seventh set contains only one proposition, the famous "What
we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Some important and representative propositions from the book are these:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">1 The world is all that is the case.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">4.01 “A proposition is a picture of reality.” Ludwig Wittgenstein <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">4.0312 ...”My fundamental idea is that the 'logical constants' are not
representatives; that there can be no representatives of the logic of facts.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">4.121 ...!Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display
it.” Ludwig Wittgenstein <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">4.1212 What can be shown, cannot be said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">4.5 ...The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">5.43 ...all the propositions of logic say the same thing, to wit
nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">5.4711 “To give the essence of a proposition means to give the essence
of all description, and thus the essence of the world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">5.6 “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Ludwig
Wittgenstein <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Here and elsewhere in the Tractatus Wittgenstein seems to be saying that
the essence of the world and of life is: This is how things are. One is tempted
to add "--deal with it." That seems to fit what Cora Diamond has
called his "accept and endure" ethics, but he says that the
propositions of the Tractatus are meaningless, not profound insights, ethical
or otherwise. What are we to make of this?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Many commentators ignore or dismiss what Wittgenstein said about his
work and its aims, and instead look for regular philosophical theories in his
work. The most famous of these in the Tractatus is the "picture
theory" of meaning. According to this theory propositions are meaningful
insofar as they picture states of affairs or matters of empirical fact.
Anything normative, supernatural or (one might say) metaphysical must, it
therefore seems, be nonsense. This has been an influential reading of parts of
the Tractatus. Unfortunately, this reading leads to serious problems since by
its own lights the Tractatus' use of words like "object,"
"reality" and "world" is illegitimate. These concepts are
purely formal or a priori. A statement such as "There are objects in the
world" does not picture a state of affairs. Rather it is, as it were,
presupposed by the notion of a state of affairs. The "picture theory"
therefore denies sense to just the kind of statements of which the Tractatus is
composed, to the framework supporting the picture theory itself. In this way
the Tractatus pulls the rug out from under its own feet.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">If the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsensical then they surely
cannot put forward the picture theory of meaning, or any other theory. Nonsense
is nonsense. However, this is not to say that the Tractatus itself is without
value. Wittgenstein's aim seems to have been to show up as nonsense the things
that philosophers (himself included) are tempted to say. Philosophical
theories, he suggests, are attempts to answer questions that are not really
questions at all (they are nonsense), or to solve problems that are not really
problems. He says in proposition 4.003 that:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our
failure to understand the logic of our language. (They belong to the same class
as the question whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful.)
And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are in fact not problems at
all.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Philosophers, then, have the task of presenting the logic of our
language clearly. This will not solve important problems but it will show that
some things that we take to be important problems are really not problems at
all. The gain is not wisdom but an absence of confusion. This is not a
rejection of philosophy or logic. Wittgenstein took philosophical puzzlement
very seriously indeed, but he thought that it needed dissolving by analysis
rather than solving by the production of theories. The Tractatus presents
itself as a key for untying a series of knots both profound and highly
technical.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">3. Ethics and
Religion<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wittgenstein had a lifelong interest in religion and claimed to see
every problem from a religious point of view, but never committed himself to
any formal religion. His various remarks on ethics also suggest a particular
point of view, and Wittgenstein often spoke of ethics and religion together.
This point of view or attitude can be seen in the four main themes that run
through Wittgenstein's writings on ethics and religion: goodness, value or
meaning are not to be found in the world; living the right way involves
acceptance of or agreement with the world, or life, or God's will, or fate; one
who lives this way will see the world as a miracle; there is no answer to the
problem of life--the solution is the disappearance of the problem.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Certainly Wittgenstein worried about being morally good or even perfect,
and he had great respect for sincere religious conviction, but he also said, in
his 1929 lecture on ethics, that "the tendency of all men who ever tried
to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of
language," i.e. to talk or write nonsense. This gives support to the view
that Wittgenstein believed in mystical truths that somehow cannot be expressed
meaningfully but that are of the utmost importance. It is hard to conceive,
though, what these 'truths' might be.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">An alternative view is that Wittgenstein believed that there is really
nothing to say about ethics. This would explain why he wrote less and less
about ethics as his life wore on. His "accept and endure" attitude
and belief in going "the bloody hard way" are evident in all his
work, especially after the Tractatus. Wittgenstein wants his reader not to
think (too much) but to look at the "language games" (any practices
that involve language) that give rise to philosophical (personal, existential,
spiritual) problems. His approach to such problems is painstaking, thorough,
open-eyed and receptive. His ethical attitude is an integral part of his method
and shows itself as such.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But there is little to say about such an attitude short of recommending
it. In Culture and Value p.29e Wittgenstein writes:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“Rules of life are dressed up in pictures. And these pictures can only
serve to describe what we are to do, not justify it. Because they could provide
a justification only if they held good in other respects as well. I can say:
"Thank these bees for their honey as though they were kind people who have
prepared it for you"; that is intelligible and describes how I should like
you to conduct yourself. But I cannot say: "Thank them because, look, how
kind they are!"--since the next moment they may sting you.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In a world of contingency one cannot prove that a particular attitude is
the correct one to take. If this suggests relativism, it should be remembered
that it too is just one more attitude or point of view, and one without the
rich tradition and accumulated wisdom, philosophical reasoning and personal
experience of, say, orthodox Christianity or Judaism. Indeed crude relativism,
the universal judgement that one cannot make universal judgements, is self-
contradictory. Whether Wittgenstein's views suggest a more sophisticated form
of relativism is another matter, but the spirit of relativism seems far from
Wittgenstein's conservatism and absolute intolerance of his own moral
shortcomings. Compare the tolerance that motivates relativism with
Wittgenstein's assertion to Russell that he would prefer "by far" an
organization dedicated to war and slavery to one dedicated to peace and
freedom. (This assertion, however, should not be taken literally: Wittgenstein
was no war-monger and even recommended letting oneself be massacred rather than
taking part in hand-to-hand combat. It was apparently the complacency, and
perhaps the self-righteousness, of Russell's liberal cause that Wittgenstein
objected to.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">With regard to religion, Wittgenstein is often considered a kind of
Anti-Realist (see below for more on this). He opposed interpretations of
religion that emphasize doctrine or philosophical arguments intended to prove
God's existence, but was greatly drawn to religious rituals and symbols, and
considered becoming a priest. He likened the ritual of religion to a great
gesture, as when one kisses a photograph. This is not based on the false belief
that the person in the photograph will feel the kiss or return it, nor is it
based on any other belief. Neither is the kiss just a substitute for a
particular phrase, like "I love you." Like the kiss, religious
activity does express an attitude, but it is not just the expression of an
attitude in the sense that several other forms of expression might do just as
well. There might be no substitute that would do. The same might be said of the
whole language-game (or games) of religion, but this is a controversial point.
If religious utterances, such as "God exists," are treated as
gestures of a certain kind then this seems not to be treating them as literal
statements. Many religious believers, including Wittgensteinian ones, would
object strongly to this. There is room, though, for a good deal of
sophisticated disagreement about what it means to take a statement literally.
For instance, Charles Taylor's view, roughly, is that the real is whatever will
not go away. If we cannot reduce talk about God to anything else, or replace
it, or prove it false, then perhaps God is as real as anything else.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">4. Conception of
Philosophy<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wittgenstein's view of what philosophy is, or should be, changed little
over his life. In the Tractatus he says at 4.111 that "philosophy is not
one of the natural sciences," and at 4.112 "Philosophy aims at the
logical clarification of thoughts." Philosophy is not descriptive but
elucidatory. Its aim is to clear up muddle and confusion. It follows that
philosophers should not concern themselves so much with what is actual, keeping
up with the latest popularizations of science, say, which Wittgenstein despised.
The philosopher's proper concern is with what is possible, or rather with what
is conceivable. This depends on our concepts and the ways they fit together as
seen in language. What is conceivable and what is not, what makes sense and
what does not, depends on the rules of language, of grammar.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In Philosophical Investigations Sect. 90 Wittgenstein says:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“Our investigation is a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds
light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings
concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies
between the forms of expression in different regions of language.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The similarities between the sentences "I'll keep it in mind"
and "I'll keep it in this box," for instance, (along with many
others) can lead one to think of the mind as a thing something like a box with
contents of its own. The nature of this box and its mental contents can then
seem very mysterious. Wittgenstein suggests that one way, at least, to deal
with such mysteries is to recall the different things one says about minds,
memories, thoughts and so on, in a variety of contexts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">What one says, or what people in general say, can change. Ways of life
and uses of language change, so meanings change, but not utterly and
instantaneously. Things shift and evolve, but rarely if ever so drastically
that we lose all grip on meaning. So there is no timeless essence of at least
some and perhaps all concepts, but we still understand one another well enough
most of the time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When nonsense is spoken or written, or when something just seems fishy,
we can sniff it out. The road out of confusion can be a long and difficult one,
hence the need for constant attention to detail and particular examples rather
than generalizations, which tend to be vague and therefore potentially
misleading. The slower the route, the surer the safety at the end of it. That
is why Wittgenstein said that in philosophy the winner is the one who finishes
last. But we cannot escape language or the confusions to which it gives rise,
except by dying. In the meantime, Wittgenstein offers four main methods to
avoid philosophical confusion, as described by Norman Malcolm: describing
circumstances in which a seemingly problematic expression might actually be
used in everyday life, comparing our use of words with imaginary language
games, imagining fictitious natural history, and explaining psychologically the
temptation to use a certain expression inappropriately.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The complex, intertwined relationship between a language and the form of
life that goes with it means that problems arising from language cannot just be
set aside--they infect our lives, making us live in confusion. We might find
our way back to the right path, but there is no guarantee that we will never
again stray. In this sense there can be no progress in philosophy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In 1931 Wittgenstein described his task thus:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“Language sets everyone the same traps; it is an immense network of
easily accessible wrong turnings. And so we watch one man after another walking
down the same paths and we know in advance where he will branch off, where walk
straight on without noticing the side turning, etc. etc. What I have to do then
is erect signposts at all the junctions where there are wrong turnings so as to
help people past the danger points.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But such signposts are all that philosophy can offer and there is no
certainty that they will be noticed or followed correctly. And we should
remember that a signpost belongs in the context of a particular problem area.
It might be no help at all elsewhere, and should not be treated as dogma. So
philosophy offers no truths, no theories, nothing exciting, but mainly
reminders of what we all know. This is not a glamorous role, but it is
difficult and important. It requires an almost infinite capacity for taking
pains (which is one definition of genius) and could have enormous implications
for anyone who is drawn to philosophical contemplation or who is misled by bad
philosophical theories. This applies not only to professional philosophers but
to any people who stray into philosophical confusion, perhaps not even
realizing that their problems are philosophical and not, say, scientific.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">5. Meaning<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Sect. 43 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations says that:
"For a large class of cases--though not for all--in which we employ the
word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its
use in the language."<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It is quite clear that here Wittgenstein is not offering the general
theory that "meaning is use," as he is sometimes interpreted as
doing. The main rival views that Wittgenstein warns against are that the
meaning of a word is some object that it names--in which case the meaning of a
word could be destroyed, stolen or locked away, which is nonsense--and that the
meaning of a word is some psychological feeling--in which case each user of a
word could mean something different by it, having a different feeling, and
communication would be difficult if not impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Knowing the meaning of a word can involve knowing many things: to what
objects the word refers (if any), whether it is slang or not, what part of
speech it is, whether it carries overtones, and if so what kind they are, and
so on. To know all this, or to know enough to get by, is to know the use. And
generally knowing the use means knowing the meaning. Philosophical questions
about consciousness, for example, then, should be responded to by looking at
the various uses we make of the word "consciousness." Scientific
investigations into the brain are not directly relevant to this inquiry
(although they might be indirectly relevant if scientific discoveries led us to
change our use of such words). The meaning of any word is a matter of what we
do with our language, not something hidden inside anyone's mind or brain. This
is not an attack on neuroscience. It is merely distinguishing philosophy (which
is properly concerned with linguistic or conceptual analysis) from science
(which is concerned with discovering facts).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">One exception to the meaning-is-use rule of thumb is given in
Philosophical Investigations Sect.561, where Wittgenstein says that "the
word "is" is used with two different meanings (as the copula and as
the sign of equality)" but that its meaning is not its use. That is to
say, "is" has not one complex use (including both "Water is
clear" and "Water is H2O") and therefore one complex meaning,
but two quite distinct uses and meanings. It is an accident that the same word
has these two uses. It is not an accident that we use the word "car"
to refer to both Fords and Hondas. But what is accidental and what is essential
to a concept depends on us, on how we use it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">This is not completely arbitrary, however. Depending on one's
environment, one's physical needs and desires, one's emotions, one's sensory
capacities, and so on, different concepts will be more natural or useful to
one. This is why "forms of life" are so important to Wittgenstein.
What matters to you depends on how you live (and vice versa), and this shapes
your experience. So if a lion could speak, Wittgenstein says, we would not be
able to understand it. We might realize that "roar" meant zebra, or
that "roar, roar" meant lame zebra, but we would not understand lion
ethics, politics, aesthetic taste, religion, humor and such like, if lions have
these things. We could not honestly say "I know what you mean" to a
lion. Understanding another involves empathy, which requires the kind of
similarity that we just do not have with lions, and that many people do not
have with other human beings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When a person says something what he or she means depends not only on
what is said but also on the context in which it is said. Importance, point,
meaning are given by the surroundings. Words, gestures, expressions come alive,
as it were, only within a language game, a culture, a form of life. If a
picture, say, means something then it means so to somebody. Its meaning is not
an objective property of the picture in the way that its size and shape are.
The same goes of any mental picture. Hence Wittgenstein's remark that "If
God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we
were speaking of." Any internal image would need interpretation. If I
interpret my thought as one of Hitler and God sees it as Charlie Chaplin, who
is right? Which of the two famous contemporaries of Wittgenstein's I mean shows
itself in the way I behave, the things I do and say. It is in this that the
use, the meaning, of my thought or mental picture lies. "The arrow points
only in the application that a living being makes of it."<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">6. Rules and
Private Language<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Without sharing certain attitudes towards the things around us, without
sharing a sense of relevance and responding in similar ways, communication
would be impossible. It is important, for instance, that nearly all of us agree
nearly all the time on what colors things are. Such agreement is part of our
concept of color, Wittgenstein suggests. Regularity of the use of such concepts
and agreement in their application is part of language, not a logically
necessary precondition of it. We cannot separate the life in which there is
such agreement from our concept of color. Imagine a different form or way of
life and you imagine a different language with different concepts, different
rules and a different logic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">This raises the question of the relation between language and forms or
ways of life. For instance, could just one person have a language of his or her
own? To imagine an individual solitary from birth is scarcely to imagine a form
of life at all, but more like just imagining a life- form. Moreover, language
involves rules establishing certain linguistic practices. Rules of grammar
express the fact that it is our practice to say this (e.g. "half past
twelve") and not that (e.g. "half to one"). Agreement is essential
to such practices. Could a solitary individual, then, engage in any practice,
including linguistic ones? With whom could he or she agree? This is a
controversial issue in the interpretation of Wittgenstein. Gordon Baker and
P.M.S. Hacker hold that such a solitary man could speak his own language,
follow his own rules, and so on, agreeing, over time, with himself in his
judgements and behavior. Orthodoxy is against this interpretation, however.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Norman Malcolm has written that "If you conceive of an individual
who has been in solitude his whole life long, then you have cut away the
background of instruction, correction, acceptance--in short, the circumstances
in which a rule is given, enforced, and followed." Mere regularity of
behavior does not constitute following rules, whether they be rules of grammar
or any other kind. A car that never starts in cold weather does not follow the
rule "Don't start when it's cold," nor does a songbird follow a rule
in singing the same song every day. Whether a solitary-from-birth individual
would ever do anything that we would properly call following a rule is at least
highly doubtful. How could he or she give himself or herself a rule to follow
without language? And how could he or she get a language? Inventing one would
involve inventing meaning, as Rush Rhees has argued, and this sounds
incoherent. (The most famous debate about this was between Rhees and A.J. Ayer.
Unfortunately for Wittgenstein, Ayer is generally considered to have won.)
Alternatively, perhaps the Crusoe-like figure just does behave, sound, etc.
just like a native speaker of, say, English. But this is to imagine either a
freakish automaton, not a human being, or else a miracle. In the case of a
miracle, Wittgenstein says, it is significant that we imagine not just the
pseudo- Crusoe but also God. In the case of the automatic speaker, we might
adopt what Daniel Dennett calls an "intentional stance" towards him,
calling what he does "speaking English," but he is obviously not
doing what the rest of us English-speakers--who learned the language, rather
than being born speaking it, and who influence and are influenced by others in
our use of the language--do.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The debate about solitary individuals is sometimes referred to as the
debate about "private language." Wittgenstein uses this expression in
another context, however, to name a language that refers to private sensations.
Such a private language by definition cannot be understood by anyone other than
its user (who alone knows the sensations to which it refers). Wittgenstein
invites us to imagine a man who decides to write 'S' in his diary whenever he
has a certain sensation. This sensation has no natural expression, and 'S'
cannot be defined in words. The only judge of whether 'S' is used correctly is
the inventor of 'S'. The only criterion of correctness is whether a sensation
feels the same to him or her. There are no criteria for its being the same
other than its seeming the same. So he writes 'S' when he feels like it. He
might as well be doodling. The so-called 'private language' is no language at
all. The point of this is not to show that a private language is impossible but
to show that certain things one might want to say about language are ultimately
incoherent. If we really try to picture a world of private objects (sensations)
and inner acts of meaning and so on, we see that what we picture is either
regular public language or incomprehensible behavior (the man might as well
quack as say or write 'S').<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">This does not, as has been alleged, make Wittgenstein a behaviorist. He
does not deny the existence of sensations or experiences. Pains, tickles,
itches, etc. are all part of human life, of course. At Philosophical
Investigations Sect. 293 Wittgenstein says that "if we construe the
grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation'
the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." This suggests not
that pains and so on are irrelevant but that we should not construe the grammar
of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation'. If we
want to understand a concept like pain we should not think of a pain as a
private object referred to somehow by the public word "pain." A pain
is not "a something," just as love, democracy and strength are not
things, but it is no more "a nothing" than they are either (see
Philosophical Investigations Sect. 304). Saying this is hardly satisfactory,
but there is no simple answer to the question "What is pain?"
Wittgenstein offers not an answer but a kind of philosophical 'therapy'
intended to clear away what can seem so obscure. To judge the value of this
therapy, the reader will just have to read Wittgenstein's work for herself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The best known work on Wittgenstein's writings on this whole topic is
Saul A. Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke is struck
by the idea that anything might count as continuing a series or following a
rule in the same way. It all depends on how the rule or series is interpreted.
And any rule for interpretation will itself be subject to a variety of
interpretations, and so on. What counts as following a rule correctly, then, is
not determined somehow by the rule itself but by what the relevant linguistic
community accepts as following the rule. So whether two plus two equals four
depends not on some abstract, extra-human rule of addition, but on what we, and
especially the people we appoint as experts, accept. Truth conditions are replaced
by assertability conditions. To put it crudely, what counts is not what is true
or right (in some sense independent of the community of language users), but
what you can get away with or get others to accept.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Kripke's theory is clear and ingenious, and owes a lot to Wittgenstein,
but is doubtful as an interpretation of Wittgenstein. Kripke himself presents
the argument not as Wittgenstein's, nor as his own, but as "Wittgenstein's
argument as it struck Kripke" (Kripke p.5). That the argument is not
Wittgenstein's is suggested by the fact that it is a theory, and Wittgenstein
rejected philosophical theories, and by the fact that the argument relies
heavily on the first sentence of Philosophical Investigations Sect. 201:
"This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule,
because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule."
For Kripke's theory as a reading of Wittgenstein, it is not good that the very
next paragraph begins, "It can be seen that there is a misunderstanding
here..." Still, it is no easy matter to see just where Wittgenstein does
diverge from the hybrid person often referred to as 'Kripkenstein'. The key
perhaps lies later in the same paragraph, where Wittgenstein writes that
"there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation".
Many scholars, notably Baker and Hacker, have gone to great lengths to explain
why Kripke is mistaken. Since Kripke is so much easier to understand, one of
the best ways into Wittgenstein's philosophy is to study Kripke and his
Wittgensteinian critics. At the very least, Kripke introduces his readers well
to issues that were of great concern to Wittgenstein and shows their
importance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">7. Realism and
Anti-Realism<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wittgenstein's place in the debate about philosophical Realism and
Anti-Realism is an interesting one. His emphasis on language and human
behavior, practices, etc. makes him a prime candidate for Anti-Realism in many
people's eyes. He has even been accused of linguistic idealism, the idea that
language is the ultimate reality. The laws of physics, say, would by this
theory just be laws of language, the rules of the language game of physics.
Anti-Realist scepticism of this kind has proved quite popular in the philosophy
of science and in theology, as well as more generally in metaphysics and
ethics.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">On the other hand, there is a school of Wittgensteinian Realism, which
is less well known. Wittgenstein's views on religion, for instance, are often
compared with those of Simone Weil, who was a Platonist of sorts. Sabina
Lovibond argues for a kind of Wittgensteinian Realism in ethics in her Realism
and Imagination in Ethics and the influence of Wittgenstein is clear in Raimond
Gaita's Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception. However, one should not go too
far with the idea of Wittgensteinian Realism. Lovibond, for instance, equates
objectivity with intersubjectivity (universal agreement), so her Realism is of
a controversial kind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Both Realism and Anti-Realism, though, are theories, or schools of
theories, and Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the advocacy of theories in
philosophy. This does not prove that he practiced what he preached, but it
should give us pause. It is also worth noting that supporters of Wittgenstein
often claim that he was neither a Realist nor an Anti-Realist, at least with
regard to metaphysics. There is something straightforwardly unWittgensteinian
about the Realist's belief that language/thought can be compared with reality
and found to 'agree' with it. The Anti-Realist says that we could not get
outside our thought or language (or form of life or language games) to compare
the two. But Wittgenstein was concerned not with what we can or cannot do, but
with what makes sense. If metaphysical Realism is incoherent then so is its
opposite. The nonsensical utterance "laubgefraub" is not to be
contradicted by saying, "No, it is not the case that laubgefraub," or
"Laubgefraub is a logical impossibility." If Realism is truly
incoherent, as Wittgenstein would say, then so is Anti-Realism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">8. Certainty<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wittgenstein's last writings were on the subject of certainty. He wrote
in response to G.E. Moore's attack on scepticism about the external world.
Moore had held up one hand, said "Here is one hand," then held up his
other hand and said "and here is another." His point was that things
outside the mind really do exist, we know they do, and that no grounds for
scepticism could be strong enough to undermine this commonsense knowledge.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wittgenstein did not defend scepticism, but questioned Moore's claim to
know that he had two hands. Such 'knowledge' is not something that one is ever
taught, or finds out, or proves. It is more like a background against which we
come to know other things. Wittgenstein compares this background to the bed of
a river. This river bed provides the support, the context, in which claims to
know various things have meaning. The bed itself is not something we can know
or doubt. In normal circumstances no sane person doubts how many hands he or
she has. But unusual circumstances can occur and what was part of the river bed
can shift and become part of the river. I might, for instance, wake up dazed
after a terrible accident and wonder whether my hands, which I cannot feel, are
still there or not. This is quite different, though, from Descartes's pretended
doubt as to whether he has a body at all. Such radical doubt is really not
doubt at all, from Wittgenstein's point of view. And so it cannot be dispelled
by a proof that the body exists, as Moore tried to do.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">9. Continuity<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wittgenstein is generally considered to have changed his thinking
considerably over his philosophical career. His early work culminated in the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with its picture theory of language and
mysticism, according to this view. Then there came a transitional middle period
when he first returned to philosophical work after realizing that he had not
solved all the problems of philosophy. This period led to his mature, later
period which gave us the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There certainly are marked changes in Wittgenstein's work, but the
differences between his early and late work can be exaggerated. Two central
discontinuities in his work are these: whereas the Tractatus is concerned with
the general form of the proposition, the general nature of metaphysics, and so
on, in his later work Wittgenstein is very critical of "the craving for
generality"; and, in the Tractatus Wittgenstein speaks of the central
problems of philosophy, whereas the later work treats no problems as central.
Another obvious difference is in Wittgenstein's style. The Tractatus is a
carefully constructed set of short propositions. The Investigations, though
also consisting of numbered sections, is longer, less clearly organized and
more rambling, at least in appearance. This reflects Wittgenstein's rejection
of the idea that there are just a few central problems in philosophy, and his
insistence on paying attention to particular cases, going over the rough
ground.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">On the other hand, the Tractatus itself says that its propositions are
nonsense and thus, in a sense (not easy to understand), rejects itself. The
fact that the later work also criticizes the Tractatus is not, therefore, proof
of discontinuity in Wittgenstein's work. The main change may have been one of
method and style. Problems are investigated one at a time, although many
overlap. There is not a full-frontal assault on the problem or problems of
philosophy. Otherwise, the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations
attack much the same problems; they just do so in different ways.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">10. Wittgenstein
in History<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wittgenstein's place in the history of philosophy is a peculiar one. His
philosophical education was unconventional (going from engineering to working
first-hand with one of the greatest philosophers of his day in Bertrand
Russell) and he seems never to have felt the need to go back and make a
thorough study of the history of philosophy. He was interested in Plato,
admired Leibniz, but was most influenced by the work of Schopenhauer, Russell
and Frege.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">From Schopenhauer (perhaps) Wittgenstein got his interest in solipsism
and in the ethical nature of the relation between the will and the world.
Schopenhauer's saying that "The world is my idea," (from The World as
Will and Idea) is echoed in such remarks as "The world is my world"
(from Tractatus 5.62). What Wittgenstein means here, where he also says that
what the solipsist means is quite correct, but that it cannot be said, is
obscure and controversial. Some have taken him to mean that solipsism is true but
for some reason cannot be expressed. H.O. Mounce, in his valuable
Wittgenstein's Tractatus: An Introduction, says that this interpretation is
surely wrong. Mounce's view is that Wittgenstein holds solipsism itself to be a
confusion, but one that sometimes arises when one tries to express the fact
that "I have a point of view on the world which is without
neighbours." (Mounce p.91) Wittgenstein was not a solipsist but he
remained interested in solipsism and related problems of scepticism throughout
his life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Frege was a mathematician as well as a logician. He was interested in
questions of truth and falsehood, sense and reference (a distinction he made
famous) and in the relation between objects and concepts, propositions and
thoughts. But his interest was in logic and mathematics exclusively, not in
psychology or ethics. His great contribution to logic was to introduce various
mathematical elements into formal logic, including quantification, functions,
arguments (in the mathematical sense of something substituted for a variable in
a function) and the value of a function. In logic this value, according to
Frege, is always either the True or the False, hence the notion of truth-value.
Both Frege and Russell wanted to show that mathematics is an extension of logic.
Undoubtedly both men influenced Wittgenstein enormously, especially since he
worked first-hand with Russell. Some measure of their importance to him can be
seen in the preface to the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein says that he is
"indebted to Frege's great works and to the writings of my friend Mr
Bertrand Russell for much of the stimulation of my thoughts." For some
insight into whether Frege or Russell had the greater influence one can
consider whether one would rather be recognized for his or her great works or
for simply being a friend.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In turn Wittgenstein influenced twentieth century philosophy enormously.
The Vienna Circle logical positivists were greatly impressed by what they found
in the Tractatus, especially the idea that logic and mathematics are analytic,
the verifiability principle and the idea that philosophy is an activity aimed
at clarification, not the discovery of facts. Wittgenstein, though, said that
it was what is not in the Tractatus that matters most.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The other group of philosophers most obviously indebted to Wittgenstein
is the ordinary language or Oxford school of thought. These thinkers were more
interested in Wittgenstein's later work and its attention to grammar.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Wittgenstein is thus a doubly key figure in the development and history
of analytic philosophy, but he has become rather unfashionable because of his
anti-theoretical, anti-scientism stance, because of the difficulty of his work,
and perhaps also because he has been little understood. Similarities between
Wittgenstein's work and that of Derrida are now generating interest among
continental philosophers, and Wittgenstein may yet prove to be a driving force
behind the emerging post-analytic school of philosophy.</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-17445485663604140832023-10-26T18:31:00.003-07:002023-10-26T18:31:38.721-07:00A shortlist of the most influential contemporary philosophers <p> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Alain Badiou</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Alain Badiou studied at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand and the École Normale
Supérieure in Paris, and is a key figure in French philosophy and Marxist and
Communist thought in the last half-century. He holds the title of the René
Descartes Chair and Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School, is
the former Chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, and a founder
of the faculty of Philosophy at the Université de Paris VIII, along with such
major names as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard.
Badiou, who has always been known for being politically active and outspoken,
was involved in militant leftist groups as a young man, such as the Union des
Communistes de France Marxiste-Léniniste, and is a founding member of the
Unified Socialist Party in France. Badiou’s work combines mathematics,
political theory, and ontology, to focus on issues of truth, being, and
subject. Having studied under Louis Althusser, Badiou’s philosophical approach
has been influenced by Althusserian Marxism, and the psychoanalysis of Jacque
Lacan. His most famous work is Being and Event (1988), which presents a shift
away from these initial influences, establishes and brings together many of his
key ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Jurgen Habermas<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Born in 1929, Jurgen Habermas. The most prominent philosopher, and also
public intellectual, of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Germany and
perhaps the whole of Europe, Habermas’s corpus of work is extensive and
comprehensive, combining philosophers as disparate as Austin and Derrida, or
Gadamer and Putnam. He is an adherent of the glorious Critical theory of the
erstwhile Frankfurt school whose main attitude is, well, critical of the
current socio-political human condition. Hence, his daring criticisms of such
colossal figures like the Enlightenment folk, Marx, or Foucault. His major
work, “The Theory of Communicative Action”, is a brilliant attempt to settle
questions of meaning, language, and an optimal moral framework for
communication.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Martha Nussbaum<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In a field severely dominated by men, even more so than hardcore
sciences, Martha Nussbaum compensates for this in two ways. Born in 1947, in
New York, she is now a professor at the University of Chicago, she is a
passionate and fervent advocate of women’s rights and her views on feminism are
elaborate, bold, and always fruitfully controversial. Her open confrontation
with another feminist philosopher of a different school of thought, Judith
Butler, in the later 90s made history and, in the end, promoted the feminist
cause to new heights. Moreover, the sheer volume of her output makes her one of
the most laborious and productive philosophers in ethics and political science,
with significant work on animal rights, emotions, and gay rights.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Gianni Vattimo<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Gianteresio Vattimo, also known as Gianni Vattimo (born January 4, 1936)
is an internationally recognized Italian author, philosopher, and politician.
Many of his works have been translated into English.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">His philosophy can be characterized as postmodern with his emphasis on
"pensiero debole" (weak thought). This requires that the foundational
certainties of modernity with its emphasis on objective truth founded in a
rational unitary subject be relinquished for a more multi-faceted conception
closer to that of the arts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Judith Butler<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Judith Butler earned her Ph.D. from Yale in 1984, and currently holds
the title of Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative
Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California,
Berkeley, and the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School. She is
primarily known as a major proponent of gender theory and criticism, and her
work has been influential to many areas of critical thought, both in and out of
philosophy, including ethics, political philosophy, feminist theory, queer
theory, and literary theory. Butler has seen influence and sparked controversy
as a globally vocal advocate of LGBTQ rights and as a critic the politics and
actions of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">With many books published to her name, Butler is probably most famous
for her 1990 work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Much
of her work has been focused on developing the ideas of gender performativity
and construction, which are significantly addressed in this text. Essentially,
Butler argues that sex, gender, and sexuality are all culturally constructed
normative frameworks, and as such, the individual uses their body in the
performance of identifying with or against these norms. This book has been very
influential in feminist and queer theory, as well as in political discourse of
gender and identity issues.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Noam Chomsky<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Noam Chomsky may be the “father of modern linguistics,” and Institute
Professor Emeritus at MIT, but his interests and influence extend into
philosophy, cognitive science, history, logic, social criticism, and political
activism. His work is widely cited (making him one of the most cited scholars
in history), and he has encountered more than his fair share of controversy,
both in academia, and in his public life. As a child, Chomsky took trips to New
York City, where he found (and was encouraged to read) books that introduced
him to ideas of resistance and anarchism. In 1945, at just 16 years old,
Chomsky began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, from where he
would study linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, and eventually earn a Ph.D.,
before being appointed to Harvard University’s Society of Fellows.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Chomsky’s work in linguistics challenged the school of thought that
dominated linguistics at the time, structural linguistics, and helped establish
the field as a natural science, by approaching the study of linguistics through
the lens of cognitive science, such as in his book Syntactic Structures (1957).
In the process, Chomsky developed the ideas of universal grammar,
transformational grammar, and generative grammar, giving rise to the
“linguistics wars” with his critics. Besides generating academic controversy,
Chomsky is well known for his political views and publications, which are
anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-war, with his essay “The
Responsibility of Intellectuals” (1967) being a prime example. For his
political activism, Chomsky has been arrested multiple times, and was even on
President Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Jean-Luc Nancy<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Jean-Luc Nancy received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1973 from the
Institut de Philosophie in Strasbourg, studying under Paul Ricouer. He
eventually became a Professor at the University of Strasbourg, and, though he
is now retired, continues to add publication credits to his already lengthy
bibliography. His approach is associated with continental philosophy and
deconstructionism, and his work is primarily focused in ontology and literary
criticism. Much of his early work focused on commenting on and interpreting the
work of [Book Image]other major thinkers, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, and Martin Heidegger, but he is best
known for his writings that apply deconstructionist thought to issues of
freedom, existence, and community. His most influential work, The Inoperative
Community (1986) presents and explores this focus, arguing that much of
society’s problems result from designing society around pre-conceived
definitions of what society should be, and failing to understand it for how it
actually is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Michel Onfray<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Michel Onfray is a French philosopher. Born to a family of Norman
farmers, he graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy. He taught this subject to
senior students at a technical high school in Caen between 1983 and 2002,
before establishing what he and his supporters call the Université populaire de
Caen, proclaiming its foundation on a free-of-charge basis, and the manifesto
written by Onfray in 2004 (La communauté philosophique). However, the title
'Popular University' is misleading, although attractive, as this 'University'
provides no services other than the occasional delivery of lectures - there is
no register of students, no examination or assessment, and no diplomas. After
all, 'ordinary' French University lectures are open to all, free of charge. Nor
is the content of the Université populaire de Caen radical in French terms, it
is in its way, a throwback to less democratic traditions of learning. Both in
his writing and his lecturing, Onfray's approach is hierarchical, and elitist.
He prefers to say though that his 'university' is committed to deliver
high-level knowledge to the masses, as opposed to the more common approach of
vulgarizing philosophic concepts through easy-to-read books such as
"Philosophy for Well-being".<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Onfray writes obscurely that there is no philosophy without
psychoanalysis. Perhaps paradoxically, he proclaims himself as an adamant
atheist (something more novel in France than elsewhere - indeed his book,
'Atheist Manifesto', was briefly in the 'bestsellers' list in France) and he
considers religion to be indefensible. He instead regards himself as being part
of the tradition of individualist anarchism, a tradition that he claims is at
work throughout the entire history of philosophy and that he is seeking to
revive amidst modern schools of philosophy that he feels are cynical and
epicurean. His writings celebrate hedonism, reason and atheism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He endorsed the French Revolutionary Communist League and its candidate
for the French presidency, Olivier Besancenot in the 2002 election, although
this is somewhat at odds with the libertarian socialism he advocates in his
writings.[citation needed] In 2007, he endorsed José Bové - but eventually
voted for Olivier Besancenot - , and conducted an interview with the future
French President, who he declared was an 'ideological enemy' Nicolas Sarkozy
for Philosophie Magazine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Onfray himself attributes the birth of a philosophic communities such as
the université populaire to the results of the French presidential election,
2002<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Mario Bunge<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Mario Augusto Bunge is an Argentine philosopher, philosopher of science
and physicist mainly active in Canada.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Bunge began his studies at the National University of La Plata,
graduating with a Ph.D. in physico-mathematical sciences in 1952. He was
professor of theoretical physics and philosophy, 1956–1966, first at La Plata
then at University of Buenos Aires. He was, until his recent retirement at age
90, the Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at McGill University in
Montreal, where he had been since 1966.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Mario Bunge has been distinguished with sixteen honorary doctorates and
four honorary professorships by universities from both the Americas and Europe.
Bunge is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(1984– ) and of the Royal Society of Canada (1992– ). In 1982 he was awarded
the Premio Príncipe de Asturias (Prince of Asturias Award), in 2009 the
Guggenheim Fellowshipand in 2014 the Ludwig von Bertalanffy Award in Complexity
Thinking<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Slavoj Žižek<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Slavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He
received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and
studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain
Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal
Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary
institution, abolished in 1992). <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences
and Arts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on
many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance,
political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth,
cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and
Alfred Hitchcock. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described
himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy
Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a
"Communist.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Giorgio Agamben<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Giorgio Agamben, born 22 April 1942 is an Italian philosopher best known
for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life
(borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and homo sacer. The concept of biopolitics
(borrowed and adapted from Michel Foucault) informs many of his writings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Agamben was close to the poets Giorgio Caproni and José Bergamín, and to
the Italian novelist Elsa Morante, to whom he devoted the essays "The
Celebration of the Hidden Treasure" (in The End of the Poem) and
"Parody" (in Profanations). He has been a friend and collaborator to
such eminent intellectuals as Pier Paolo Pasolini (in whose The Gospel
According to St. Matthew he played the part of Philip), Italo Calvino (with
whom he collaborated, for a short while, as advisor to the publishing house
Einaudi and developed plans for a journal), Ingeborg Bachmann, Pierre
Klossowski, Guy Debord, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Negri,
Jean-François Lyotard and others.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">His strongest influences include Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and
Michel Foucault. Agamben edited Benjamin's collected works in Italian
translation until 1996, and called Benjamin's thought "the antidote that
allowed me to survive Heidegger". In 1981, Agamben discovered several
important lost manuscripts by Benjamin in the archives of the Bibliothèque
nationale de France. Benjamin had left these manuscripts to Georges Bataille
when he fled Paris shortly before his death. The most relevant of these to Agamben's
own later work were Benjamin's manuscripts for his theses On the Concept of
History. Agamben has engaged since the nineties in a debate with the political
writings of the German jurist Carl Schmitt, most extensively in the study State
of Exception (2003). His recent writings also elaborate on the concepts of
Michel Foucault, whom he calls "a scholar from whom I have learned a great
deal in recent years".</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-90816914714039955572023-10-21T10:54:00.000-07:002023-10-21T10:54:00.135-07:00Sartre - Existence<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">An analysis</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">of No
Exit by Sartre</span></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="Standard" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b>Introduction</b></span></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">No Exit (Huis Clos in french) is one
of the most beautiful play of Sartre. It is also the most played of
Sartre’s Works. Sartre deals with the question of the relationship with others
(or intersubjectivity), translating his philosophical essays (<span style="color: #1c1c1c;">Beign and Nothingness </span>in particular) on the
question.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The action takes place in hell, a
hell very similar to the real world. Three characters are found in this
microcosm. At first glance, unconnected, it turns out that their stories are
intimately linked, some alienating others, leading to the famous conclusion of
one of the characters (Garcin): hell is other people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><a name="Characters"></a><span style="line-height: 150%;">Characters<o:p></o:p></span></span></h2>
<p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 35.35pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -14.15pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">•<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Garcin is a journalist. He was shot for his
pacifism. He believes himself a hero, the play will reveal him rather
perfidious and harmful.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 35.35pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -14.15pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">•<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Inès is a lesbian. She committed suicide by gas.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 35.35pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -14.15pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">•<span style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Estelle is a mundane, married to a wealthy old
man. She was the mistress of a young man and committed an infanticide, before
dying of pneumonia. She is also a pathological liar.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><a name="Summary"></a><span style="line-height: 150%;">Summary<o:p></o:p></span></span></h2>
<p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The room opens with Garcin and a
valet in a Second Empire style lounge. But it is not an ordinary drawing-room:
it represents hell just after his death. Garcin quickly discovers that
this hell has only the appearance of normal life: it does not have its everyday
objects and will not need to sleep. In fact, there is only one possible
activity: to live without interruption. We see at the beginning of the play the
Sartrean themes: the need of others to define oneself (Garcin depends on the
answers of the valet), the criticism of religion (which makes the hell down) in
No Exit life is ‘down’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Then comes Ines, the second
character introduced into hell. This is the torture of Garin, his penance;
Their relationship is from the outset based on mistrust and distance, each
thinking that the other is the cause of his presence in hell. Finally comes
Estelle. All three, evoking the circumstances of their death, understand little
by little why they have been reunited: the role of each is to be the
executioner of the other two. They scaffold unsuccessful plans, such as trying
to ignore themselves, but their mere presence is enough to make themselves
unbearable. Here again, we find the Sartrean theme of chosification: another,
by his look, gives me an outside, imprisons me in an essence (the label of
“coward”, “lesbian” or “mundane”) short ‘objective. Estelle even tries to stab
Ines, without success: they are eternal, eternally together, for the worse.
Hell is the others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><a name="Conclusion"></a><span style="line-height: 150%;">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></span></h2>
<p class="Textbody" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Others can try to objectify me, but
can not steal my freedom: No Exit is at the center of Sartrian
existentialism. The anguish we feel when confronted with the immense and
meaningless universe is something Sartre calls “nausea.” To combat this
“nausea”, man can use his freedom – freedom of thought, choice and action. But
once the man has chosen, backtracking possible: each choice leaves an imprint.
In No Exit, Sartre pushes this idea to its extreme: contemplating his life is a
form of torture. For all that, to read No Exit as a pessimistic piece would be
a mistake: man must choose, and make choices that he can assume for eternity
(which is not unrelated to the theme of the eternal return At Nietzsche). No
Exit thus invites more to do something of his life than to undergo it.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-24746274760512985572023-09-05T07:45:00.006-07:002023-09-05T07:45:43.892-07:00The Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire <p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Treatise on Tolerance is a work by French philosopher
Voltaire, published in 17631. In this work, Voltaire calls for religious
toleration and targets religious fanaticism, especially that of the Jesuits.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The treatise was written in response to the trial of Jean
Calas, a French Protestant merchant accused of murdering his son Marc-Antoine
to prevent his supposed conversion to the Catholic Church. Despite a lack of
evidence, Calas was executed largely due to the reaction of an angry mob and
the zealousness of some local magistrates.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Voltaire was struck by the extreme injustice of the case and
undertook a campaign to exonerate Jean Calas, putting Catholic prejudice and
fanaticism on display. In 1765, after Louis XV of France fired the chief
magistrate and the case was retried by another court, Calas was posthumously
exonerated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Voltaire’s argument in the treatise is illustrated in
several passages where he questions the logic of condemning those who are not
members of the Church of Rome and highlights the absurdity of eternal
punishment for virtuous individuals who are not Christian.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The book was finished by January 2, 1763, and it was printed
by the Cramer brothers in Geneva in April 17631. Despite being quickly banned,
it still made its way to the public, becoming extremely popular in Paris and
throughout Europe.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">More on Voltaire and religions<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, and
historian known for his criticism of Christianity, especially the Roman
Catholic Church, and his advocacy for freedom of speech, freedom of religion,
and separation of church and state.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Voltaire’s critical views on religion led to his belief in
the separation of church and state and religious freedom. He was not a fan of
the Bible and was vigorously against the Catholic Church. He believed that the
Church was gaining from being involved in politics by pocketing a religious
tax, which is why Voltaire thought they had no place in politics.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In his work Candide, Voltaire depicts all religions as ‘evil
superstitions’, which can be dangerous to society and people. For instance,
Voltaire argues that people live in the “best of all possible worlds” by
criticizing Leibniz’s ideas.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-30082815367043456792023-08-19T16:10:00.006-07:002023-08-19T16:10:39.903-07:00Enchiridion by Epictetus <p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The Enchiridion or Handbook of Epictetus is a short manual
of Stoic ethical advice compiled by Arrian, a 2nd-century disciple of the Greek
philosopher Epictetus. The Enchiridion, or “Manual,” is a collection of Epictetus’
teachings that were compiled by his student Arrian around 108 AD2. Only four of
the original eight books have survived. Epictetus’ philosophy is intensely
practical. He directs his students to focus on their opinions, anxieties,
passions, and desires so that they "never fail to obtain what they desire
nor fall into what they avoid". True education consists in learning to
distinguish what is ours from what does not belong to us and in learning to
correctly assent or dissent from external impressions. The purpose of his
teaching was to make people free and happy. The “Discourses” have been
influential since they were written. Marcus Aurelius refers to them and quotes
them. Since the 16th century, they have been translated into several languages
and have been reprinted many times.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Epictetus (c. 50 – c. 135 AD) was a Greek Stoic philosopher.
He was born into slavery at Hierapolis, Phrygia (present-day Pamukkale, in
western Turkey) and lived in Rome until his banishment, when he went to
Nicopolis in northwestern Greece for the rest of his life. His teachings were
written down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses and
Enchiridion. Epictetus taught that philosophy is a way of life and not simply a
theoretical discipline. To Epictetus, all external events are beyond our
control; we should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. However,
individuals are responsible for their own actions, which they can examine and
control through rigorous self-discipline.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-47221708436455995032023-08-02T14:53:00.008-07:002023-08-02T15:57:33.436-07:00Ecce Homo and Nietzsche’s influence in Western culture<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">“Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is” is a book by the
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1888. It is one of
Nietzsche’s last works and is considered one of the sharpest and most desperate
autobiographical portraits in modern literature. In this book, Nietzsche
reviews his entire life and the development of his philosophical thought. The
title “Ecce Homo” is Latin for “Behold the man,” which is a phrase from the New
Testament, spoken by Pontius Pilate when he presents a scourged Jesus Christ to
a hostile crowd shortly before his Crucifixion. Nietzsche uses this title
ironically, as he considered himself to be the antichrist.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In Nietzsche’s philosophy, the concept of the “Antichrist”
refers to a rejection of Christianity and its values. Nietzsche wrote a book
called “The Antichrist” (German: Der Antichrist), originally published in 1895,
in which he criticizes Christianity as a whole, as well as modern concepts such
as egalitarianism and democracy, which he sees as a persistent consequence of
Christian ideals.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nietzsche opposes the Christian concept of God because he
believes that it degenerates into a contradiction of life. Instead of being its
transfiguration and eternal affirmation, God becomes the negation of life.
Nietzsche’s view of Jesus in “The Antichrist” follows Tolstoy in separating
Jesus from the Church and emphasizing the concept of “non-resistance,” but uses
it as a basis for his own development of the “psychology of the Savior.”
Nietzsche does not demur of Jesus, conceding that he was the only one true
Christian.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nietzsche constructed his own history of Christianity with
its roots in Judaism. It is framed not so much by the historical Jesus as by
the distortions of him imposed by the early Christians, Paul in particular. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nietzsche’s influence<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>in Western culture<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nietzsche<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic
whose philosophy has exerted an enormous influence on Western philosophy and intellectual
history. Nietzsche’s philosophy is complex and multi-layered, but at its core
lies a belief in the power of the individual to create their own values and
lead a fulfilling life. In his works, he rejected traditional morality and
religion, arguing that they limit individual freedom and creativity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nietzsche’s influence on modern thought is difficult to
overestimate. He was, in a sense, the first modern philosopher — the first to
break with the Aristotelian tradition and explore new avenues of thought. His
ideas on power, knowledge and the human condition have been enormously
influential in the 20th and 21st centuries. Some of his most famous ideas
include the concept of the “Übermensch” or “Superman”, which has been
enormously influential in 20th-century thinking about human potential; the idea
of the “Will to Power”, which has been taken up by existentialists and
post-modernists; and the doctrine of “eternal recurrence”, which suggests that
life is a cycle of constant repetition.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nietzsche’s influence can be seen in many areas of modern
society, including culture, politics, and art. His ideas have helped to break
down traditional barriers between high and low art, and his ideas about
creativity and “the will to power” continue to be explored by artists today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-43941253561662793202023-08-02T14:52:00.001-07:002023-08-02T14:52:04.605-07:00Beyond Good and Evil<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Beyond Good and Evil is a book by philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche, first published in 1886. It draws on and expands the ideas of his
previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but with a more critical and polemical
approach. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with
its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">tries to demonstrate that the Christian world
is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Slave morality is a term coined by Friedrich Nietzsche to
describe a value system that is based on the guilt and fear that comes from the
inferior individual’s awareness of their own inferiority. According to
Nietzsche, masters create morality; slaves respond to master morality with their
slave morality. Unlike master morality, which is sentiment, slave morality is
based on ressentiment —devaluing what the master values and what the slave does
not have.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nietzsche characterizes slave moralities as being
“fundamentally anti-life”. This morality does not promote creativity and
striving for excellence by the individual. Instead, it encourages
self-sacrifice and putting the interests of others ahead of your own. For
Nietzsche, slave morality is life-denying instead of life-affirming, and hence
completely unnatural. Slave morality, as portrayed by Islamic, Christian or
Judaic moralities, is all about a separation of the mind and body, and hate and
contempt for the meek physical body.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Master morality is a term coined by Friedrich Nietzsche to
describe a value system that is based on the pride, wealth, fame, and power of
the individual. Nietzsche defined master morality as the morality of the
strong-willed. He criticizes the view that good is everything that is helpful,
and bad is everything that is harmful. For strong-willed men, the “good” is the
noble, strong, and powerful, while the “bad” is the weak, cowardly, timid, and
petty. The essence of master morality is nobility.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Other qualities that are often valued in master morality are
open-mindedness, courage, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and an accurate sense
of one’s self-worth. Master morality begins in the “noble man”, with a
spontaneous idea of the good; then the idea of bad develops as what is not
good. In master morality, people define the good based on whether it benefits
them and their pursuit of self-defined personal excellence.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-984014640869963272023-07-22T12:26:00.003-07:002023-07-22T12:26:46.495-07:00 The philosophy of George Berkeley<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">George Berkeley (12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753), also
known as Bishop Berkeley, was an Anglo-Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop of
Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland. He is best known for his empiricist
and idealist philosophy, which holds that reality consists only of minds and
their ideas; everything save the spiritual exists only insofar as it is
perceived by the senses. Berkeley’s primary philosophical achievement is the
advancement of a theory he called “immaterialism” (later referred to as
“subjective idealism” by others). This theory denies the existence of material
substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are
ideas perceived by the mind and, as a result, cannot exist without being
perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important
premise in his argument for immaterialism.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In 1709, Berkeley published his first major work, An Essay
Towards a New Theory of Vision, in which he discussed the limitations of human
vision and advanced the theory that the proper objects of sight are not
material objects, but light and color. This foreshadowed his chief
philosophical work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, in
1710, which, after its poor reception, he rewrote in dialogue form and
published under the title Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in 1731.
In this book, Berkeley’s views were represented by Philonous (Greek: “lover of
mind”), while Hylas (“hyle”, Greek: “matter”) embodies the Irish thinker’s
opponents, in particular John Locke. Berkeley argued against Isaac Newton’s
doctrine of absolute space, time and motion in De Motu (On Motion), published
1721. His arguments were a precursor to the views of Ernst Mach and Albert
Einstein.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Immaterialism was Berkeley’s name for his theory of the
perceived world. This theory consists of two parts: a negative thesis that
there are not, and could not be, material substances or substrata, and a
positive thesis that the existence of bodies consists in their being perceived
(as Berkeley says: their esse is percipi). In other words, Berkeley’s
immaterialism denies the existence of material substance and instead contends
that familiar objects like tables and chairs are ideas perceived by the mind
and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Berkeley’s immaterialism is often described as a form of
idealism, which holds that reality consists only of minds and their ideas. This
view is in contrast to materialism, which holds that reality consists of
material objects independent of perception. Berkeley’s immaterialism is also
sometimes referred to as subjective idealism, to distinguish it from other
forms of idealism that allow for the existence of objective, mind-independent
reality.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Berkeley’s ideas were met with a range of responses from
other philosophers. Some, like David Hume, were influenced by Berkeley’s
empiricism and idealism, and developed their own philosophical systems based on
similar principles. Others, like Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, developed their own idealist systems in response to Berkeley’s ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Berkeley’s critique of abstraction was also met with a range
of responses. Some philosophers agreed with Berkeley that abstract ideas were
impossible, while others argued that abstract ideas were necessary for certain
kinds of reasoning and knowledge. For example, according to Berkeley,
philosophers maintain that a general name must stand for a single general idea
that represents all members of a kind. To do that, they say, an idea needs to
abstract the qualities that are shared by all members of a kind and exclude all
those in which they differ.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Overall, Berkeley’s ideas had a significant
impact on the development of philosophy, and his critique of abstraction
continues to be an important topic of discussion in the field </span></span>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-6142725124133211722023-07-22T12:24:00.003-07:002023-07-22T12:24:13.459-07:00 The philosophy of Edmund Husserl - Phenomenology <p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was a German philosopher who is
considered the “father” of the philosophical movement known as phenomenology.
Phenomenology can be roughly described as the sustained attempt to describe
experiences (and the “things themselves”) without metaphysical and theoretical
speculations. Husserl suggested that only by suspending or bracketing away the
“natural attitude” could philosophy become its own distinctive and rigorous
science, and he insisted that phenomenology is a science of consciousness
rather than of empirical things. Indeed, in Husserl’s hands, phenomenology
began as a critique of both psychologism and naturalism.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Husserl argued that transcendental consciousness sets the
limits of all possible knowledge, and redefined phenomenology as a
transcendental-idealist philosophy. His thought profoundly influenced
20th-century philosophy, and he remains a notable figure in contemporary
philosophy and beyond.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Phenomenology<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Phenomenology is a philosophical movement that focuses on
the direct investigation and description of phenomena as consciously
experienced, without theories about their causal explanation and as free as
possible from unexamined preconceptions and presuppositions. In its most basic
form, phenomenology attempts to create conditions for the objective study of
topics usually regarded as subjective: consciousness and the content of
conscious experiences such as judgments, perceptions, and emotions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">An example of phenomenology in practice is the study of
dreaming. The phenomenological approach to dreaming would involve describing
the experience of dreaming as it is consciously experienced, without attempting
to explain its causes or make assumptions about its nature. The focus would be
on the content of the dream, how it is experienced by the dreamer, and the
structures of consciousness that are involved in the experience. This approach
differs from other approaches to dreaming, such as those that focus on the
neurological or psychological causes of dreaming.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There are other forms of phenomenology that have developed
since Husserl’s time, and these forms differ from Husserl’s phenomenology in
various ways. For example, some phenomenologists have focused more on the study
of intersubjectivity, or the ways in which we experience and understand other
people, while others have emphasized the importance of embodiment and our
physical interactions with the world2. Additionally, some phenomenologists have
developed their own methods for studying consciousness and experience that
differ from Husserl’s phenomenological reduction2.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In summary, while Husserl’s phenomenology is considered the
original form of phenomenology, there are other forms of phenomenology that
have developed since his time that differ from his approach in various ways</span><o:p></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-70205966269595739982023-07-22T12:23:00.001-07:002023-07-22T12:23:06.497-07:00 China and Russia<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Russia,
China Promote "Unprecedented" Cooperation Despite Western
"Illegitimate Sanctions"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Moscow and
Beijing strengthen their ties, despite China's insistence on showing itself as
a neutral actor in the conflict ordered by Vladimir Putin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Today,
relations between Russia and China are at an unprecedented high level according
to the Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin after signing a series of
economic pacts on May 24 in Beijing, where he was received with honors and held
meetings with his counterpart Li Qiang and Chinese President Xi Jinping.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Among the d
eals signed is an agreement to deepen investment cooperation in commercial
services and the export of agricultural products to China.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Beyond
maintaining a diplomatic ally in the midst of the international isolation in
which it finds itself submerged, Moscow relies on the Asian giant in an attempt
to come out of the financial sanctions imposed from the West for the invasion
of its neighboring country.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In
addition, a 40% increase in Russian energy exports to Chinese territory is
expected, according to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">China is
willing to work with Russia to promote their pragmatic cooperation in various
fields and bring it to a "new level."<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Moscow
seeks to challenge the West in the face of the "pressure of illegitimate
sanctions"<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">With the
war in Ukraine dragging on and Russia increasingly feeling the brunt of Western
sanctions, Moscow is leaning on Beijing far more than its ally, feeding off
Chinese demand for oil and gas. Chinese influence grows as Moscow's
international isolation deepens.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">After
Russian gas exports plummeted under a spate of sanctions from Europe and the
United States, China became Russia's biggest energy customer last year. A
strong dependence on Moscow towards its new ally, after decades of mistrust
between the two governments.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Given
sanctions against Russia provide new opportunities for China, it is not
surprising that China is happy to actively and proactively engage economically
with Russia, as long as the relationships they forge do not trigger secondary
sanctions against China.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES-MX" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-MX;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And it is
that Beijing is Moscow's largest trading partner with bilateral trade that
reached a record of 190,000 million dollars in 2022, according to Chinese
customs data.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-13411890022001360562023-07-10T13:53:00.007-07:002023-07-10T13:53:46.207-07:00 Democritus <p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Democritus of Abdera (c. 460-370 B.C.) was a Greek
philosopher, also known as the "laughing philosopher" or
"laughing philosopher," for having a tendency to laugh at the world
and its problems. One of his main contributions to philosophy and science was
atomism, understanding that the universe is made up of millions of tiny
particles.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">According to Democritus, there are two first principles in
things: atoms and emptiness. Atoms are indivisible particles of matter,
immutable, eternal and are in constant motion in the most varied directions.
Democritus' philosophy is inspired by the need to combine the permanence of
being with the explanation of change.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">For Democritus, what we call generation and corruption is
nothing more than mixing and separating the original elements. Logic and
physics are the foundation of morality, which should provide happiness, freeing
from the fear of the gods.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Democritus also explained sensations in a mechanistic way,
defended hedonistic ethics and cosmopolitan democratic politics. Traditionally
he is considered a Presocratic philosopher, although it is a chronological
error, since he was a contemporary of Socrates, but from the philosophical
point of view he is associated with the Presocratics due to his physical theme
(physis), while Socrates and the philosophers who followed him they addressed
an ethical-political issue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Furthermore<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Leucippus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of the 5th
century BC. C. and founder of atomism. He moved to Elea, where he would have
been a disciple of Zeno and a teacher of Democritus 1. Democritus developed the
“atomic theory of the universe”, conceived by his mentor, the philosopher
Leucippus 2.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Democritus's exact contributions are difficult to separate
from those of his mentor Leucippus, as they are often mentioned together in
doxographers' texts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Doxography is a branch of philosophy that includes those
works dedicated to collecting the views of philosophers and scientists of the
past on philoso</span>phy, science and other subjects.<o:p></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-72302306667346683482023-07-09T15:47:00.006-07:002023-07-09T15:47:40.042-07:00 How to enjoy everything that life offers you.<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Reading more of Dyer Wayne´s</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">texts .</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">First of all, and this will be the most obvious, you will
see that they are people who enjoy virtually everything that life offers them;
people who are comfortable doing anything and don't waste time complaining or
wishing things were different. They are enthusiastic about life and want
everything they can get out of it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">They like to go hiking, go to the movies, read, play sports,
attend concerts, visit cities, farms, see animals, mountains and really almost
everything. They like life. When you are around people like this, you will
notice the absence of laments and even passive sighs. If it rains, they like
it. If it's hot they enjoy it instead of complaining. Whether they are in a
traffic jam, or at a party, or all alone, they just do the best they can. It is
not a question of enjoying everything that happens, but of a wise acceptance of
what is, of a rare ability to delight in reality. Ask them what they don't like
and they'll have a hard time giving you an honest answer. They don't act
sensibly that sheltering from the rain would mean taking shelter, because they
find the rain beautiful, exhilarating and something worth experiencing. They
like. The mud doesn't make them angry: they watch it, splash around in it, and
accept it as part of what it means to be alive. Do you like cats? Yes. Bears?
Yes. Worms? Yes. And although inconveniences such as diseases, droughts,
mosquitoes, floods and other calamities do not bring them pleasure or accept
them with enthusiasm, they are people who do not spend their present moments
complaining about them or wishing that they were not so. If certain situations
have to be destroyed, they will try to destroy them. And they will enjoy doing
it. No matter how hard you try, you will have a hard time discovering something
that they do not like to do. They really love life and really immerse
themselves in it enjoying all that it gives them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Healthy and fulfilled people are free from the feeling of
guilt and all the anxiety that occurs when present moments are used
immobilizing themselves for events that happened in the past. They can
certainly acknowledge that they have made mistakes and can promise themselves that
they will avoid repeating certain behaviors that backfired in some way, but
they don't waste their time regretting something they did that they wish they
hadn't done, or upset because they disliked something they did at some point.
of his past life. Total lack of guilt is one of the characteristics of healthy
people. No regrets about what happened and no efforts to get others to take
blame by asking idle questions like "Why didn't you do it
differently?" or "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" They give the
impression of who know how to recognize that life already lived is that, and
that no matter how bad one feels about it, nothing can be done to change what
happened.They themselves feel free of guilt without any effort: because it is
natural, they never help others. others to choose blame. They realize that
feeling bad in the present moment only reinforces a person's poor self-image
and that it is much better to learn from the past than to protest the past. You
will never see them manipulating others. others telling them how bad they have
been, nor can you manipulate them with the same tactics. They will not get
angry with you, they simply will not listen to you, they will ignore you.
Instead of being angry with you, they will prefer to leave or change the
subject. The strategies that they work so well with most people they completely
fail with these very healthy beings. Instead of making themselves or others
miserable with guilty feelings, they quietly, without much ceremony, put guilt
aside when they find it in their way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Healthy and fulfilled people are free from the feeling of
guilt and all the anxiety that occurs when present moments are used
immobilizing themselves for events that happened in the past. They can
certainly acknowledge that they have made mistakes and can promise themselves
that they will avoid repeating certain behaviors that backfired in some way,
but they don't waste their time regretting something they did that they wish
they hadn't done, or upset because they disliked something they did at some
point. of his past life. Total lack of guilt is one of the characteristics of
healthy people. No regrets about what happened and no efforts to get others to
take blame by asking idle questions like "Why didn't you do it
differently?" or "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" They give the
impression of who know how to recognize that life already lived is that, and
that no matter how bad one feels about it, nothing can be done to change what
happened.They themselves feel free of guilt without any effort: because it is
natural, they never help others. others to choose blame. They realize that
feeling bad in the present moment only reinforces a person's poor self-image
and that it is much better to learn from the past than to protest the past. You
will never see them manipulating others. others telling them how bad they have
been, nor can you manipulate them with the same tactics. They will not get
angry with you, they simply will not listen to you, they will ignore you.
Instead of being angry with you, they will prefer to leave or change the
subject. The strategies that they work so well with most people they completely
fail with these very healthy beings. Instead of making themselves or others
miserable with guilty feelings, they quietly, without much ceremony, put guilt
aside when they find it in their way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Likewise people free from erroneous zones do not torment
themselves with worries. Some circumstances that could drive other people crazy
hardly affect these individuals. They are neither future planners nor future
savers. They refuse to worry about what will happen in the future and remain
free of the anxiety that accompanies worry. They don't know how to worry. It is
not part of his way of being. It is not that they are necessarily calm all the
time but they are not willing to spend their present moments suffering for
things that may happen in the future and over which they have no control. They
are oriented mainly towards their present moments, and they have an internal
signal that seems to remind them that all worries must happen in the present
moment, and that this is a very foolish way to live your present. These people
now live in the present and not in the past or future. They do not feel
threatened by the unknown and seek new experiences that are not familiar to
them. They love ambiguity. They enjoy the now at all times convinced that it is
all they have. They do not make plans for a future event allowing long periods
of inactivity to pass while waiting for this event. The moments between events are
as liveable as the events themselves, and these people have an uncanny ability
to extract as much joy as possible from their daily lives. They are not
"procrastinators" or savers for bad times, and while our culture may
not condone their behavior, they are not threatened by self-reproach! They
appreciate and enjoy their happiness now and when the future comes and becomes
the present they appreciate and enjoy it too. These individuals always enjoy
because they simply realize the absurdity of waiting to enjoy. It is a very
natural way of living life, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>like a
child.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Carpe Diem </span><o:p></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-4000433290176816152023-07-09T11:18:00.001-07:002023-07-09T11:18:07.871-07:00 Turkey and Russia: geopolitical balance and anti-Western stancce <p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The pace and depth of events in the Turkey-Russia relations
since 2016 have been interesting. Discontent with the West has been a major
factor in rapidly improving ties. In fact, it was arguably anti-Westernism that
created Turkey's policy of geopolitical balance between Russia and the West,
along with the interpretation that a multipolar global order was in the making.
The close relationship with Russia has caused new rifts between Turkey </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">and the West. However, despite their shared
discontent with the West, Russian and Turkish anti-Westerni stance differ in
their nature, origin and manifestation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Turkish anti-Westernism tends to be selective and
policy-focused, while the Russian version is more structural and
all-encompassing. For example, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated
that the central objective of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was to end
American and Western dominance in the international system. Unlike Russia,
Turkey benefits from the Western-centric international system that it
criticizes. These differences have important political consequences. The
invasion of Ukraine has also introduced a number of new dynamics to the
Turkey-Russia-West triangle. Ankara's policy of geopolitical balance is
entering difficult, if not unfeasible terrain, as the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) and the West explicitly treat Russia as an enemy. The cost
of such a policy is likely to increase. But even if the balance were to become
unworkable, Ankara would strive to maintain some form of functional bilateral
relationship with Moscow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Geopolitical balance policy and functional bilateral
relations<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The main difference between Turkey's policy of geopolitical
balance and the goal of maintaining functional bilateral relations with Russia
is the scope of cooperation. Establishing a functional bilateral relationship
meant cultivating economic, energy and political ties, but it did not extend to
the strategic fields of geopolitical cooperation and the defense industry. The
geopolitical balance, for its part, involves strategic cooperation, acquisition
of military material (purchase of the Russian air defense system s-400) and
geopolitical engagement in conflictive areas in Syria, Libya and Nagorno
Karabagh. The balancing policy is driven by discontent with the West and is
based on a particular reading of global politics, which Ankara sees as
increasingly multipolar and less Western (if not post-Western) centric. Also contributing
was the fact that Ankara considers that the West lacks internal cohesion, given
certain signs of fragmentation between Europe and the United States (especially
during the presidency of Donald Trump) and within Europe after Brexit. On the
contrary, even Turkey's most pro-Western leaders, such as Süleyman Demirel and
Turgut Özal, have sought to maintain and improve functional bilateral relations
with Russia. Throughout Turkey's modern history, Ankara has repeatedly sought
Moscow's help in developing its heavy industry, for example in the case of the
Iskenderun steel plant.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Functional bilateral relations with Moscow and the
geopolitical balance between Russia and the West are not mutually exclusive,
but they certainly differ. The pursuit of functional bilateral relations puts
the functioning Turkish government in line with much of Turkey's political
history, while its current policy of geopolitical balance constitutes an
experiment in breaking with tradition. The Ottoman and Russian empires fought
13 wars, making the Ottoman and Turkish elites acutely aware of Russia's
geopolitical ambitions and power projection. As a result, these elites have
always sought alliances with Western powers to counter them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The era around 1919, to the mid-1930s is the only period in
which Turkey sought a comparable geopolitical or strategic balance between
Russia/Soviet and the West. The Bolsheviks gave significant financial aid
during those troiblesome times for Turkey, and, later, to the young republic.
In 1921, the USSR returned to Turkey three eastern provinces that had come
under the control of the Russian Empire in 1878. A friendship and neutrality
treaty was signed in 1925, from which the USSR unilaterally withdrew in 1945.
Anti-imperialism discourses and politics shaped the general framework of the
relationship during this period. The young Republic of Turkey, as a
post-imperial state that had recently waged a war of independence against the
European imperial powers, was well aware of the latter's geopolitical ambitions
and their propensity to interfere in the internal affairs of weaker states.
This early policy of balance lasted more or less until the preparations for the
Montreux Convention of 1936, which gave Turkey control of the Dardanelles and
Bosphorus straits.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">No Turkish government before that of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
had established such deep strategic, military and geopolitical relations with
Moscow. However, it is necessary to distinguish nuances. Both moments
(Atatürk/Lenin and Erdoğan/Putin) are similar, in part, in the sense that they
contain a high degree of functional bilateral relations, as well as a policy of
geopolitical balance. However, they also differ in important ways. NATO did not
exist before World War II; Ankara joined the Atlantic Alliance in 1952,
anchoring Turkey in the Western security structure. In addition, leaving aside
the USSR , during the first experience of rapprochement there were no other
important alternative power centers (to the West). Now, instead, there are
multiple centers of power in world politics: the West, Russia and China, to
name the main ones. In addition, regional powers are increasingly relevant.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-78628642408110134282023-06-27T17:22:00.004-07:002023-06-27T17:22:39.808-07:00Skepticism <p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> A brief summay </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Skepticism as a philosophical doctrine arose in the period
of crisis in ancient Greek society (4th century BC) as a reaction to previous
philosophical systems that through speculative reasoning tried to explain the
sensible world, often contradicting each other. Skepticism is a current of
philosophical thought that suspends the possibility of knowing the truth and,
in some cases, denies it. This current flourished in Greek antiquity with the
thought of Pyrrho (360-270 BC), which was based on doubt. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The arguments of skepticism vary according to the
philosophical current that is being considered. However, some of the most
common arguments include the idea that human knowledge is limited and that we
cannot be sure of anything. Another common argument is that we cannot trust our
senses to provide us with accurate information about the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Skepticism is related to other philosophical currents such
as dogmatism and empiricism. Dogmatism is a philosophical current that
maintains that the truth can be known by reason and that there is an objective
reality. Empiricism is a philosophical current that maintains that knowledge is
acquired through experience and observation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Criticisms of skepticism are mainly within moral realism.
The moral realist holds that there are, in fact, good reasons to believe that
there are objective moral truths and that we are justified in holding many
moral beliefs. Other criticisms of skepticism include the idea that skepticism
can be self-destructive and can lead to paralysis of action.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-92064106241975508592023-06-27T17:18:00.004-07:002023-06-27T17:18:28.235-07:00Determinism<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Philosophical determinism is a doctrine that holds that
every event, decision, and action is causally determined by an unbroken chain
of prior occurrences. That is, everything that happens in the universe is
predetermined by prior causes and there is no room for freedom of choice or
chance.. It tells us that the universe is rational since absolute knowledge of
a situation could reveal its future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forms of determinism<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Psychological determinism: maintains that man always acts in
his own interest and for his own benefit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Biological determinism: tells us that human instincts and
behaviors are defined by the nature of our genetics.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Cultural determinism: explains that culture determines the
actions that people perform.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Logical determinism: states that the truth value of any
proposition is timeless.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Epistemic determinism: maintains that in the case of knowing
any future event in advance, it must inevitably occur.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Causal determinism: holds that all events are the result of
preconditions and the laws of nature. Causal determinism holds that all events
are the result of preconditions and the laws of nature. That is, everything
that happens in the universe is predetermined by prior causes and there is no
room for freedom of choice or chance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Main representatives of determinism<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Gottfried Leibniz: German philosopher, mathematician, and
politician who wrote "The Principle of Sufficient Reason," a work
considered the root of philosophical determinism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Pierre-Simon Laplace: known as the Marquis de Laplace, he
was a French astronomer, physicist, and mathematician who worked on classical
Newtonian mechanics and introduced determinism into science using the scientific
method.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Friedrich Ratze: German geographer, exponent of geographical
determinism in the 19th century.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Paul Edwards: great Austrian-American moral philosopher.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Sam Harris: American-born philosopher and one of the most
influential leading thinkers alive.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-51293223107174944712023-05-08T16:33:00.001-07:002023-05-08T16:33:10.202-07:00Living under suspicion, appearances.<p> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">F. Nietzsche maintains, "appearance is the living reality
itself acting that, ironically with itself, had come to make me believe that
here there is nothing more than appearance, will-o'-the-wisp, dances of goblins
and nothing else."</span></span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The installation of a 'truth', by whatever group it is,
solely by the use of the power that they tend to exercise, leads to produce an
incongruous situation, on the one hand the enlightened believers of possessing
the truth and on the other the total skepticism of not consider that it is
possible to reach a certain degree of veracity.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the first case, the enlightened, José Rafael Herrera, expresses:
“As is known, all senteces– is made up of a verb and a predicate. In Spinoza's
key, verb is principle, substance. Predicate is attribute and mode. Preaching
is the action of someone who pre-says, of someone who is empowered to
anticipate what is imminent and says-it-before. He is, then, the one who warns,
because his function consists precisely in preaching the verb, the truth that
he already knows, because it has been revealed to him. The "bearer of the
truth" anticipates the event, warns what is coming and, therefore, must
take the forecasts and act accordingly. He is, all of him,
"enlightened" by the effect of the spark, by the splendor of divine revelation.
He is the radiance itself of the flash in the face of the bearer of the
"philosophy of the pistol shot". And that was what Queen Isabella the
Catholic of <span> </span>Spain,could see in
Torquemada's sullen countenance – and still smudged by the abrasive flashes of
truth –: at the request of the queen, and by means of a bull from Pope Sixtus
IV, the bruciante is appointed general inquisitor, directly dependent on the
Spanish Crown. His cruelty and fanaticism against the “enemies of the Christian
faith” –particularly against the Jews– are still an object of astonishment.
Spain has paid dearly – and with it a good part of the Western world – the
hatred spread by that sinister character, in the name of truth”. How many
'bruciantes', 'torquemadas', exist and are imposing their truths on the rest of
society, as holders, illuminated by a superior being, of absolute truth.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the other extreme, skepticism, which leads us to think
that nothing is true, and that even this itself is not true either, leaves us
unable to know, that knowledge, not even as a form of adaptation and mastery of
nature is useless.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In antiquity, Plato already warned of the need to respond to
this dilemma and in the "Allegory of the Cave" he expressed that the
world we observe, which we call reality, is appearance. The true, the truth is
beyond what we see, in another dimension, it is not in this world. If the truth
is absolute, lack does not fit, it cannot be a part, it has to be the whole. So
he solves it by creating a world of 'Archetypes', today we would say in another
dimension, of which what we see are more or less similar copies.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Darío Sztajnszrajber, maintains “the question of truth moves
between two poles: it exists and it is impossible, or it does not exist.
Although it doesn't exist, you can't stop looking for it, but if it exists,
it's not for us."</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Aristotle maintained that 'the truth is hidden behind
appearances, so it must be revealed'. Plato's archetypes were located in
things, in reality, in essences, which must be apprehended, made conscious.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">You have to look for the truth, it slips away from our gaze
like a wild animal that feels the danger of being found and devoured.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“Doing philosophy is the permanent construction of an
existential insecurity; we flee when we fight with the assurances of that
numbness that we provoke at the same time, because we are looking for a
knowledge that we know we will never reach”</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Which means living in the appearance, in the shadows.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“The penumbra has the property of not allowing us to
perceive where the darkness ends and where the light begins. Its gloomy
circular presence does not allow us to accurately specify the beginning of one
and the end of the other. Not without a certain risk - which, led by the hand
by the temptation of its singular beauty, may well seem divine, like almost all
risks - it is possible to read in the semi-darkness. The enchantment of the
risk in question is saved by the fact of being able to perceive a certain magic
in the blurred characters that suddenly come to life and that allow surprising,
for the daring gaze, and behind the dead letter, nothing less than the Spirit:
the Logos re-acquiring immanent reality, exercising the purity of the fire that
is his being and that, at the same time, is not. Philosophy itself, that is,
the one that carries an emphatic meaning, undoubtedly lives between lights and
shadows for the sake of ideas. Only those who have penetrated the densest
darkness can conquer the light of truth: "in the circle the beginning and
the end coincide", observe, in the penumbra, the dark Ephesus
(Heraclitus)."</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For his part, Darío Sztajnszrajber said that currently
"the real-apparent dichotomy is an archaic category, it makes no sense in
the digital age" and that "technology does not destroy or improve
human beings, it transforms them." , problematized the concepts of truth
and lie in today's society”. “Post-truth has to do with lying, with lying to
oneself. The opposite of the truth is not a lie, it is fiction, appearance, ”he
said. In relation to what we conceive as reality, he assured that it is a
social construction. “The most interesting thing is that the show of the show
convinces. Everyone knows it's not like that, but it doesn't seem to matter."</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">J. A. López maintains that “perhaps this absent life that we
lead, where the virtual gains ground on reality, is not so bad, deep down. We
lose a dimension, yes, but we gain another. Perhaps we are not very present in
the place where we are, but the photos and comments that we post about it build
another that is similar to it. Isn't that, for better or worse, what we've
always done? We create our own imaginary world - built with our perceptions,
our impressions, our expectations... - and we develop in it as if it were real.
In this game of "as if..." resides meaning, which is complete in
itself, and is closer to us than the always fragmentary reality".</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The search for a way to return to an objective reality,
independent of the observer, is an effort that even scientists have to toil. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Thus S. Hawkins says: "Philosophers, from Plato to now,
have argued over the centuries about the nature of reality. Classical science
is based on the belief that there is an external real world whose properties
are defined and independent of the observer who perceives them. According to
classical science, certain objects exist and have physical properties, such as
velocity and mass, with well-defined values. In that view, our theories are
attempts to describe such objects and their properties, and our measurements
and perceptions correspond to them. Both the observer and the observed are
parts of a world that has an objective existence, and any distinction between
the two is of no significant importance."...however "Different theories
may describe the same phenomenon through frames different conceptual concepts”…
and “David Hume (1711-1776) wrote that although we do not have rational
guarantees to believe in an objective reality, we have no other option but to
act as if said reality were true.” That is why he proposes “There is no image
—or theory— independent of the concept of reality. Thus, we will adopt a
perspective that we will call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical
theory or picture of the world is a model (usually of a mathematical nature)
and a set of rules that relate the elements of the model to the observations.
It provides a framework in which to interpret modern science."</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">About this we can say: “We have always lived in a parallel
world: that of our fantasies, our fears and our hopes. Now we've made it faster
and bigger. If this ends up dragging our life, and making it
"liquid", as Zygmunt Bauman reflects, perhaps it is because we do not
want to be in it, because we do not dare to stay and we prefer to run and run...
Life was already an illusion, sometimes happy and others terrible.”</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“The denial of the truth leads us towards a life devoid of
facts. Which also denies knowledge, where there is no truth there is no
knowledge. To later sink into ignorance of a reality, which ends up denying the
facts. While the present is diluted between desires and illusions, which feed a
life of collective unconsciousness. This is one of the realities in which the
social masses develop. Domesticated and chained to an existence of darkness,
which runs through the corridors of the labyrinths of shared ignorance. The
truth will always be denied by the unconscious crowds, because the truth
destroys their useless illusions and unfulfilled desires."</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We are here faced with the loss of meaning of the category
error.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There can no longer be truth, there is no possibility of
confronting it with reality, since reality is illusion.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Everything is mere illusion, desire, penumbra, which hides
the truth from us. Affirming something is taken as an attempt to install a lie,
pass it off as the truth, without understanding that in order to lie it is
necessary to know the truth. For lying is a moral concept. On the other hand,
from a epistemological perspective, the error, the misunderstanding, are the
opposite of the truth.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> And the
possibility of 'conspiracy theory' comes to us. "The truth does not
matter, but who can install it."</span></span></p>
<p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-4691707539740206412023-05-08T16:31:00.006-07:002023-05-08T16:31:33.514-07:00Reading of Jean Dubuffet in “Suffocating culture”.<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Jean Dubuffet was an art theoretician, a dedicated worker of
creative attitudes and a trusting observer of a multitude of individuals: the
sick, the mad, simple people without culture, workers and farmers. Below
expresses a disagreement -in his opinion- enormous, how much creative spirit
are the teachers capable of granting the students? And because of what
incapacity the process is interrupted?</span></span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“The teachers are perpetual schoolchildren, schoolchildren
who, once their school stage is over, leave the school through one door to
enter through the other, like the soldiers who are re-enlisting. They are
schoolchildren who, instead of aspiring to an adult activity, that is,
creative, have clung to the condition of students, that is, passively
receptive, as if they were sponges. The creative spirit is as opposed as possible
to the condition of a teacher. There is more kinship between artistic (or
literary) creation and all other forms of creation (in the most common fields,
trade, crafts or any manual work or not) than between creation and the purely
normalizing attitude of the teacher , which by definition is not animated by
any creative taste and must indiscriminately give its approval to everything
that, during the long development of the past, has prevailed. The teacher is
the cataloger, the homogenizer, the confirmer of what predominates, where and
at the moment in which that which predominates has taken place.</span></span></p>
<p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-10765036073915374902023-05-07T11:38:00.003-07:002023-05-07T11:38:33.027-07:00Brazil geopolitics <p></p><p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Lula in China: "We are trying to balance world
geopolitics"</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva assured this Friday that
he wants Brazil and China to associate to "balance global
geopolitics" and warned that "no one is going to prohibit" the
deepening of relations between the two countries, during the official visit
made to his Chinese peer, Xi Jinping, in Beijing, who received him with the
largest official State ceremony not recorded since before the pandemic.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The summit raised the level of the alliance between China
and Brazil after Lula's return to the presidency on January 1, and resulted in
the signing of 15 agreements between governments, 20 between companies from
both countries, and a push to reduce dependence on the US dollar from bilateral
trade and to form a peace club to stop the war in Ukraine, the Télam news
agency reported.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Trade agreements</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"No one is going to prohibit Brazil from perfecting its
relationship with China," Lula said upon arriving at the People's Palace,
where he was received by Xi for a bilateral meeting in which 15 agreements were
signed in which, according to the Brazilian side, in the long term Chinese
investments in Brazil for some US$ 10,000 million.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Lula made the statement when recalling that yesterday, in
Shanghai, he visited the factory of the telecommunications giant Huawei, leader
in the fifth generation internet (5G), objected to by the US.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For his part, Xi gave a boost to the figure of the leader of
the Workers' Party that governs the largest Latin American economy for the
third time. "China places relations with Brazil at the top of our foreign
relations. You are our old friend and a good friend. It was with your attention
and support that relations between China and Brazil achieved a great
leap," the host praised.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">According to Xi, "the Communist Party is leading the
nation in a concerted effort to transform China into a great modern socialist
country in all respects and promote national rejuvenation on all fronts through
a path of modernization. This will unlock new opportunities for Brazil and
other countries of the world".</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The summit was interpreted by the Brazilian media as a
strong message to the United States, displaced in 2009 by China as Brazil's
main partner: Joe Biden's administration at the summit held with Lula in
February in Washington did not secure investment and hardly offered US$ 50
million for the Amazon fund to encourage regional economies.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Geopolitics</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Before seeing Xi, Lula met with the leader of the People's
Assembly (Parliament), Zhao Leji. There he assured that world geopolitics must
change supported by both China and Brazil, within the framework of his speech
for the reform of international institutions and the need to trade in local
currencies, leaving aside the dollar.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"It is together with China that we have been trying to
balance world geopolitics, discussing the most important issues," said
President Lula. "We want to raise the level of the strategic association
between our countries, expand trade flows and, together with China, balance global
geopolitics," said the Brazilian.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Lula was received by Xi at the People's Palace with military
honors and by a group of children waving Brazilian flags to the rhythm of the
song "New Time" by Brazilian musician Ivan Lins. This detail of a
song made in 1980 that predicted the end of the military dictatorship was
interpreted in Brazil as the closing of the controversial Bolsonaro chapter.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the 49-point joint declaration, Brazil ratified the
recognition of only one China, with Taiwan. Both countries also supported their
initiatives to seek a negotiated solution to the war in Ukraine, although they
did not detail the plans.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In 2009, during Lula's second consecutive term, China
displaced the US as Brazil's main trading partner, and since then the relationship
has grown with the export profile of raw materials, which is why Lula said he
was looking for investments to create innovations with value. aggregate in
Brazilian soil.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the speech open to the press, which preceded the private
meeting, Lula spoke of intensifying Brazil-China relations in areas such as
science and technology, exchange of university students, cultural relations,
strategies to combat climate change, clean energy, production electric cars and
buses.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“I think my government's understanding of China is that we
must work hard to create a Brazil-China relationship that is not just a
relationship of purely commercial interest. Although the commercial interest is
very important," said Lula, who even called for China's commitment to the
energy transition and the reduction of polluting emissions.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the South American level, China confirmed that it wants
to deepen relations with Mercosur as a bloc, without reference to possible
unilateral agreements that the Uruguayan government had encouraged.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Caring for the
environment</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“We are counting on China in our fight to preserve planet
Earth, advocating for a healthier climate policy where people can breathe
cleaner air and drink cleaner water. For this, an energy transition is
extremely important so that we can produce cleaner energy, especially wind,
solar, biomass," Lula said.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“Brazil has 80% of its energy totally clean and is committed
at this moment, in my government, to achieve zero deforestation in the Amazon
by 2030 to make our contribution to the preservation of the planet,” she
continued.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Lula also took advantage of the speech to thank China for
its support for the election of former president Dilma Rousseff as head of the
New Development Bank (NBD), the bank of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China
and South Africa), a tool for the corporation of the global south that seeks to
be an alternative to the World Bank to finance development actions. This is
Lula's third official visit to China.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Brazilian Economy Minister, Fernando Haddad, said at a
press conference that betting on China does not take away the importance that
the US has for Brazil. However, he assured that there is a "divestment of
American companies" on Brazilian soil, alluding to the departure of the automaker
Ford, whose abandoned plant intends to be used by the Chinese electric car
manufacturer BYD</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"Lula wants Chinese investment to reindustrialize and
the agreements are in that direction," said Haddad, who insisted that
Brasilia works to encourage the use of local currencies in trade with both
China and Mercosur. China also granted Brazil a US$1.5 billion credit line for
the powerful National Bank for Economic and Social Development (Bndes).</span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><br /><p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-65483932247446050712023-04-11T13:49:00.006-07:002023-04-11T13:49:59.994-07:00Geopolitics, Religion, Economy and Energy in Syria <p> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The armed conflict in Syria has left one of the worst
humanitarian crises since World War II, which has lasted in time since the Arab
Spring in 2011, which brought with it a wave of social protests in the Middle
East and was violently repressed by the authoritarian government of Bashar Al
Assad. It is a complex conflict with a multiplicity of international, regional,
state and non-state actors "putting in" for the variety of interests
(geopolitical, economic and religious influence in the region, strategic exit
points, energy, etc.) that surround the territory. In this context, several
questions are generated. Is a regime change possible? How long can this
conflict continue over time? Has it lost relevance for the West to intervene?</span></span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This article intends to make an analysis of the armed
conflict in Syria, from an International Relations perspective, taking into
account variables: geopolitical, religious, economic and energetic, and to
propose possible future scenarios for the conflict based on the questions raised
above.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Background</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In order to have a little more clarity on the panorama, it
is necessary to make a historical account of the region, and the consequences
that are reflected today in Syria. During the Ottoman Empire and until World
War I the concept of the Nation-State did not exist, nor did Syria, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait or Palestine; in the Middle
East there were only clans grouped according to religious beliefs and ethnic
groups, separated by geography</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These States were born after the breach of the Sykes-Picot
Agreements by France and England after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. France
and England used the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 as a reference for
International Law, betrayed the promises to the leaders of the tribes to grant
them a Unified Arab Kingdom and drew lines on the map of the Middle East to
divide the territory, thus forcing clans and opposing religions to come
together under the same territory, Syria ended on the mandate of the French
government</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In 1971 when Hafez Al Assad positioned himself as Syrian
president (with the ideal of building a Unified Arab), a position he held for
30 years and after his death he succeeded his son Bashar Al Assad. It should be
noted that Syria is a country in which more than 70% of the population is
Muslim and, like any monotheistic religion, it is divided into different
branches, Sunnis and Shiites in the case of Islam, which do not mutually
recognize themselves as Muslims; In this sense, the political caste of Al Assad
is Shiite and represents only 11% of the population, while 76% of the
population identifies as Sunni (The Global Economy, 2013). In other words, the
leader does not represent the majority of his population in a region where
religion plays a key role when it comes to making politics, not to mention that
although the transition of power from father to son took place through voting,
these they were not transparent nor did the majority of citizens get to vote.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As mentioned above, in 2011, after a decade since Bashar Al
Assad took power, a wave of protests called the "Arab Spring" began
in Tunisia and spread throughout the Middle East, from which Syria was not
exempt. . Bashar Al Assad's response was violent and repressive, and this is
how the Free Syrian Army, terrorist groups, armies of the Bashar Al Assad
regime, alliances and counter-alliances that began the armed conflict that
today turns 10 years old and that is unknown how long will it last.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Armed conflict</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> Any confrontation
carried out by groups of different kinds (such as regular or irregular military
forces, guerrillas, armed opposition groups, paramilitary groups, or ethnic or
religious communities that, using weapons or other destructive measures, cause
more than 100 victims in a year</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is a concept that is applied to classify the Syrian
conflict as an armed conflict since the UNHCR (2021) counts as of March 2021
6.7 million internally displaced persons, 6.6 million refugees in In addition,
according to the DW (2021) in the world, in these 10 years there have been more
than 400,000 deaths and 200,000 missing. On the other hand, we find a diversity
of actors, their connections and external support in the logic of alliances,
which explains the duration of the conflict and the failure of all resolution
attempts, as well as the decision of Western governments not to intervene,
which which are classified as follows:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">International.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;"> </b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span>Supporting the regime:</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">China is mainly a supplier of arms to the regime, but also
has strong economic relations with it </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Russia, a strategic ally of Iran and the regime, also
benefits from the energy wealth of the territory</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Iran, because it is a Shiite majority, is in its interests
to establish itself as hegemon and maintain its influence in the region. Not
counting his strong economic ties.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Against the Regime:</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">During the Obama and Trump administrations, US interests in
Syria were based on obtaining oil and maintaining their influence in the
region, but recently Biden has decided to continue intervening in favor of the
humanitarian crisis. The first of his intentions is to prevent Russia and
China, backers of the Syrian government in the UN Security Council, from
carrying out his plan to close all access points for food and medicine to
northern opposition areas.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Turkey finds itself in both a warlike and a diplomatic
confrontation, due to the position that the Turkish government acquired in the
Syrian civil war, since despite having different interests they have identical
ambitions that can be observed since the civil war, when Turkey provided
material, support and training for opposition Islamist groups such as the Free
Syrian Army against the Assad regime; similarly, Ankara's both political and
military approach to the Assad regime made the Syrian Kurds its enemies.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Saudi Arabia, unlike Iran, is a Sunni monarchy, which also
seeks to maintain its position of influence in the region and reduce Iran's, it
is also a strategic ally of the United States</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Israel, a strategic ally of Saudi Arabia and the United
States, is constantly threatened by Iran, Syria and the Lebanese jihadist group
Hezbollah, who do not recognize it as a State</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">The ONU.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The international community wonders if the UN will be able
to peacefully end the armed conflict in Syria, but the truth is that its hands
are constantly tied by Russia and China using their veto power in the Security
Council to stop any resolution that is mandatory and has teeth for the Syrian
regime. Until 2019, Russia has vetoed 17 resolutions on the conflict in Syria,
especially those that punish the use of chemical weapons during the conflict.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Terrorists.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Islamic State or Daesh, an organization seeks the
achievement of the United Arab Kingdom that was taken from them by the West
with the Treaty of Versailles, and was consolidated in 2014 after the Arab
Spring in Iraq and Syria. Although they have lost prominence, they control much
of the territory of both countries and have contributed greatly to the number
of humanitarian victims. It should be noted that they are not supported by the
Syrian regime or by the countries of the East or the West.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hezbollah is a Lebanese jihadist terrorist group that has used
Syrian territory over the years to carry out attacks on the Israel.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Kurdistan</b><span style="font-family: arial;">.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Although the government of Iraq views the Kurdish population
as terrorists, in this analysis we will understand them as a nation without a
state. Most of its population is distributed between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and
Iran, however, its case in Syria is particular because they have a "state
attempt" called Rojiva in the northeast of the country, here the Kurdish
people have autonomous control over the territory. It could be inferred that
this town simply pursues its interests of establishing itself in a territory
beyond being influenced by any faction.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Nationals.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The military army of the Syrian regime, violently protects
and maintains the government of Bashar Al Assad, is financed and armed by its
strategic partners (China, Russia and Iran).</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Free Syrian Army, born in response to the repression of
the Bashar Al Assad dictatorship in the midst of protests and seeks to protect
civil society, is mainly supported in arms and financing by Western countries
such as the United States, some European countries and Saudi Arabia</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Civil Society is not generally considered an actor in the
conflict, but the truth is that they have been the victims of crossfire,
repression and the political, economic and religious interests of the
previously mentioned actors.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This dynamic of the actors evidently reflects their
intentions to maintain political, economic, religious and energy power and also
shows us the residue of the bilateral world during the cold war, but no longer
between capitalism and socialism but between the West and the East. It is not
only Iran that uses the conflicts of other countries in the region to stay in
power and weaken the enemy, this is an act of the majority of the regional,
international and terrorist actors involved; Saudi Arabia, being the other side
of the coin, works in conjunction with its Western allies. Syria has become a
stage in which foreign powers look out for their own interests. Arab countries
back the opposition, but not all the same groups: the Saudis and the Qataris,
for example, are vying for influence, each helping different sides to do so.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;"> </b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">The game of
geopolitics, energy and religion in the conflict</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We must keep in mind that Syria is very attractive to
regional and international players due to its geostrategic position and the
richness of its territory. Turkey, that is, with the main players in the
region; it also has a strategic exit point to the Mediterranean Sea and a large
part of the Euphrates River.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Energy is another of the reasons that make Syria attractive,
although it is known that Syria does not have large amounts of resources
oriented to oil reserves, it has a territory that has been coveted by many
since it is rich in gases and hydrocarbons. It should be reiterated that the
fact that Syria has direct access to the Mediterranean Sea makes the country a
strategic point and this privilege gives it the power to have the last word
when deciding which of the gas export route projects will be carried out. :
Qatar-Turkey-Syria or Iran, Iraq and Syria</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Let's remember that Qatar and Turkey are allies and are
against the Bashar Al Assad regime (which is the one that can make a decision
up to now); On the other hand, we have Iran and Iraq, partners since the
beginning of the Syrian regime, but that is not the only thing, these States
are Shiite governments, not monarchists, and, moreover, allies of Russia and
China. Without a doubt, a strategic gas export route that connects the Persian
Gulf with the Mediterranean Sea and that passes through Iraq, Iran and Syria
would be destabilizing and would completely change the balance of power in the
region, and would send a direct message to their enemies (Saudi Arabia, Israel,
United States, Turkey, etc).</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Therefore, in order to understand the different aspects of
the armed conflict in Syria, it is necessary to refer to both the control and
distribution of hydrocarbons in the Middle East, since due to its geostrategic
position it has made its conflicts due to interests This implies that they are
coveted by the great powers, which is why, although we know that Syria does not
have large amounts of oil reserves, it has a territory that has been coveted by
many, because it is also a communication bridge between the Persian Gulf and
the Mediterranean Sea make it easier to send hydrocarbons to the European
market</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">On the other hand, the first explorations in search of oil
deposits in Syria occurred in the second half of the 20th century, but
large-scale extractions began in the late 1970s based on the Syrian Petroleum
Company, where they began to discover new oil wells; even so, compared to other
places such as the United Arab Emirates, which have reserves in larger
quantities of oil, Syria has reserves that can only satisfy its internal
demand, it is now that we ask ourselves why there are conflicts around oil when
Syria does not Do you have so many reserves of it?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What happens is that, as has already been stated, Syria is
at a key strategic point for the export of oil, it has 2,500 million barrels of
crude compared to the 300,000 million barrels that Saudi Arabia has or Iran's
150,000. and Iraq and although compared to the other countries it does not
produce as much oil, its control is symbolic from a political perspective,
while from an economic perspective the loss of control of the deposits has
impacted the Al Assad regime since its exploitation represented a quarter of
the income of Damascus, and which is exported mainly to countries like Russia,
China. In 2014, the Islamic State, due to its advances in the control of Syrian
territory, took over a large part of the oil business in the region, from which
previously the Bashar Al Assad regime mainly benefited. Later, due to the
weakening of the Islamic State, it is the Kurdish population that acquired
control of the oil fields located in the Raqqa region.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the same way, it is important to remember how this energy
resource directly affects the social conflict in the region, since after the
uprising against the Bashar al Assad regime, the European Union imposed
sanctions and among them is the prohibition Syrian oil imports. This
effectively affected the economy of oil in Syria dramatically, causing an
economic downturn due to the fact that, after Russia and China, most of its
potential customers were members of the European Union.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Conclusion</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Syrian conflict should not be tried to be understood in
a disjointed or simplistic way since, due to the dynamism that characterizes
the region, the geopolitical, religious and energy variables complement each
other to give us a broader and more complete panorama of what that it is a
conflict as complex as the one that Syria has been experiencing for ten years.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Religious sectarianism, together with a governance crisis
and a lack of citizen representation, gave way to a series of demonstrations
that were met with a repressive state response and the rise of extremist groups
such as the Islamic State. Add to this Syria's important geographical position
for gas and oil export routes, its hydrocarbon wealth and its quest to maintain
a balance of power in the Middle East region and we have the perfect recipe for
a conflict fraught with alliances and against regional and international
alliances that seek to be able to "get their hands on" and get the
most out of it. But above all, a conflict with devastating humanitarian
consequences.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is striking, but not surprising, that the humanitarian
and migration crisis is not the main concern of most of the intervening actors,
however, during the Biden administration, the United States put the issue on
the table again, showing the intention of wanting to push harder to weaken
Bashar Al Assad's government; A US intervention that intends to contemplate
more issues on the agenda regarding the Syrian conflict would not necessarily
be linked to energetic motivations, but rather to maintain its influence and
counteract Russian influence over the region.</span></span></p>
<p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-12381157642109003232023-04-02T17:27:00.006-07:002023-04-02T17:27:35.666-07:00Refutation of the thesis "Being is one" by Aristotle.<p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Reading of Aristotle, in Physics, chapter 3: Refutation of
the thesis "Being is one".</span></span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">If we proceed in this way, it seems impossible that all
entities are one, and the arguments used to prove it are not difficult to
refute. Because both Parmenides and Melisso make eristic reasoning (since they
start from false premises and their conclusions are not followed; Melisso's is
rather crude and presents no problems, but if one absurdity is allowed to pass,
one reaches others without difficulty).</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The multiple being of Aristotle. It is clear that Melisso
commits a fallacy, since he thinks that if "everything that has come to be
had a beginning", then "what has not come to be does not". And
it is also absurd to suppose that everything has a beginning, not of time, but
of the thing, and that there must be a beginning not only of an absolute
generation, but also of the generation of a quality, as if there could be no
instantaneous changes. . Furthermore, why does the All, if it is one, have to
be immobile? If a part of the Whole that is one, like this part of water, can
move in itself, why shouldn't the Whole be able to do it? And why can there be
no alteration? On the other hand, the Being cannot be one in terms of form, but
only in terms of matter —some physicists speak of this unity, but not of the
other—; for a man and a horse are different in form, and so are the opposites
of each other. The same objections can be made to Parmenides, although there
are also others that can be applied more appropriately. He is refuted by
showing that his premises are false and his conclusions do not follow. His
premises are false because he supposes that "being" is only said in
an absolute sense, since it has many senses. And his conclusions do not follow,
because if there were only white things, and if "white" had only one
meaning, what is white would nevertheless be multiple and not one. What is
white would not be one either by continuity or by definition. Because the being
of the white is different from the being of that which receives it, even though
the white does not exist separately, outside of what is white; for the white
and that to which it belongs are not distinguished by being separate but by
their being34. This is what Parmenides did not see. Indeed, Parmenides is
necessarily assuming not only that "is" has a single meaning,
whatever it is attributed to, but also that it means "what properly
is", and "is one" > "what properly is". one»,
because an attribute is that which is predicated of a subject; therefore, if
"being" were an attribute, that to which it is attributed would not
be, since it would be something other than what it is; then something that is
not. Therefore, "what properly is" cannot be predicated of something,
since that of which it is predicated would not be an entity, unless it is
admitted that "is" has more than one meaning, in such a way that each
thing is a certain thing. be. But it has been assumed that "is" has
only one meaning. But, on the other hand, if "what properly is" is
not an attribute of something, but something else is attributed to it, why
should "what properly is" mean "is" rather than
"not"? is"? Because on the assumption that "what properly
is" not only "is" but is also "white", what is white
would not be "what properly is" (since being cannot belong to it,
because what is not it is "that which properly is", is not);
therefore white is not, and it is not that it is not in a particular sense, but
that it is not at all. Therefore "what properly is" is not, because
if one truly says that it is white, this means saying that it is not.
Consequently, also "white" will have to mean "what properly
is"; but then "is" would have more than one meaning.
Furthermore, if being is "what it properly is", then it will not have
magnitude, because in such a case the being of each of its parts would be
different.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">On the other hand, that "what properly is" is
divisible into others that "properly are" is also evident from the
point of view of definition. For example, if "man" were "what it
properly is", "animal" and "biped" would also have to
be "what it properly is". Because, if they were not, then they would
be attributes of man or of some other subject. But both alternatives are
impossible. By attribute is understood: either what may or may not belong
<to a subject>, or that in whose definition it is present of which it is
an attribute or that to which the definition of the subject of which it is an
attribute belongs. For example, "to be sitting" is a separable
attribute, but "flat" cannot be defined without the definition of
"nose," to which we say it belongs as an attribute. Furthermore, the
definition of the whole is not present in the definition of each of the parts
or elements of what is defined; for example, the definition of "man"
is not included in that of "biped," nor that of "white man"
in that of "white." If this is so, and if "biped" is the
attribute of "man", then either "biped" will have to be
separable from "man", so that there could be men who are not bipedal,
or else the definition of "man" will have to be present in the
definition of "biped"; but this is impossible, because
"biped" is contained in the definition of "man." And if
"biped" and "animal" were attributes of something else, and
if neither were "what it properly is", then "man" would
also be an attribute of something else. But "what properly is" cannot
be an attribute of anything, and that of which both and each one in particular
are predicated ("biped" and "animal") must also be that of
which the compound is predicated (" bipedal animal"). Will we have to
say, then, that the Whole is made up of indivisibles? Some have transmitted
both arguments to us: a) the one that affirms that all things are one, because "being"
only means one thing, which means that non-being is, and b) the dichotomy
argument, which supposes indivisible magnitudes . But obviously it is not true
that if "being" only means one thing and contradiction is not
possible at the same time, then non-being is not. Because nothing prevents
there being, not absolute non-being, but a certain non-being. On the other
hand, it is absurd to say that All is one because there can be nothing outside
of Being itself. For what is to be understood by Being itself if not "what
properly is"? But if this is so, nothing prevents things from being
multiple. It is evident, then, that the being cannot be one in this sense.</span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><br /><p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-8544850463873304632023-04-02T17:19:00.001-07:002023-04-02T17:19:04.473-07:00Zizeck. Crisis, ideology, capital and freedom<p> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What is a crisis?
Ignoring the fact that the cause of the crisis is found in the very germs of
the economic system that produces it, Zizeck tries to address this question by
analyzing the behavior of the individual and of capitalist society as a whole
in the face of the consequences of an economic collapse. In this way, without
focusing so much on the causes already known to all, he analyzes how these
behaviors drive the impregnable perpetuation and justification of the system,
so that the capitalist system is perpetuated while the lower classes can only
abide by the consequences.</span></span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> One of the
fundamental pillars with which the capitalist machine works in this sense, is
the greatest of the sponsors concepts, freedom. For the lower class individual
it represents the freedom to vote, while for the bank agent it represents the
freedom of growth and development. It is well known that the freedom that the
capitalist system preaches is the freedom to act, beyond having previously
stopped to think about the consequences of actions, the famous prerogative:
don't think, act! In this way, in capitalist societies everything must be
practical, useful, and profitable, so that bank agents allow themselves to
speculate on the risk that a society as a whole really assumes. Risk societies
defend themselves in this way against an economic collapse: while risk imposes
itself as an unavoidable destiny for the lower class individual, those who know
the risk, the bank agents, withdraw, taking responsibility for the economic collapse.
.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Politically, the capitalist network also has its own
methods. One of the great capitalist inventions of political liberalism was to
socialize the banking system in order to stabilize the system. Said in more
everyday terms, to pay the debt that the banks left because of their
destructive behavior, with public money. If we reflect a little, we can see
that this political behavior is even more serious when it comes to acting in
the face of collapse and crisis because it adds a moral hazard: if the
capitalist machine is saved, things can continue to go well. The banking system
then has an advantage, a priori, the beliefs that whatever it is, money should
be managed and distributed by the political-banking system and not by the one
that has generated wealth. What we can conclude from all this behavior is that
state interventionism exposed in this way is not healthy, in such a way that
the question that should ultimately concern us is not whether there should be
intervention, that is taken for granted, but rather what type of intervention
is. necessary.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Of all the attitudes that drive the great capitalist machine
in the face of crises, it is that of naturalizing behaviors that are above all
cultural realities, the one that most justifies the foundations of a system,
just as fascism does. For example, by naturalizing history, the idea that
capitalism should continue as a natural law is perpetuated. In this sense, the
idea of Naomi Klein is relevant: the crisis as shock therapy. The history of
the free market is written based on instilling fear with the possibility of a
destabilization of what "is natural", so that the establishment
allows itself more repressive and radical measures that imply more control over
the population, especially over the classes lower and segregated. The system
must allow itself to "keep dreaming", on the one hand it will provide
the necessary means for "structural or creative adjustments" and all
kinds of "technical measures" while on the other, it will not face
the problem face to face (what to produce or consume, or what energy to lean
on). In this way, the lower classes are convinced that the crisis shows the
possibility of progress within the system while ignoring that the only thing it
reveals is its contradiction.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We see that the situation that capitalism tries to
perpetuate is impregnated with pure ideology, later being confused with
theology because according to Zizeck, "it defends the existing order
against any serious criticism, since it is legitimized as a direct expression
of human nature." In this way, all classes ignore the imperfection of the
system, taking it as "the best of all possible worlds". Having
reached this point, it is worth asking, what is the role of propaganda in all
this? First of all, propaganda tries to annihilate the inadvertent possibility
of the situation (a potential revolution), relying if necessary on technical or
structural adjustments as we have already said, creating what is known as the
"subject of the supposed knowledge" that acts self-interestedly. for
his own benefit, the one who is called in the propaganda “creative capitalist”.
In this way, liberal cynicism develops a double standard: in private it knows
that the subject of the supposed knowledge does not exist while publicly it
defends its perpetuation, thus ensuring that the lower classes trust the system
more. Finally, the culture war becomes a class war, so it is important to
reflect on the new forms of charity (ecocapitalism); When analyzing this
situation, keep in mind the difference between legitimate investments and wild
speculation, since the latter borrows everyone's future.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The consequences, as seen, are always collective, so
individual subjects should not be blamed for economic collapses due to their
greed or excess consumption, since this would amplify the spiritual strength of
the capitalist machine. Rather, it is about being aware that individual and
collective behavior within the system is doubly irrational: on the one hand,
the system works without taking into account the consequences, and on the
other, the lower class votes against its own interests, influenced by the
material power of ideology. This fact is conclusive proof that the society that
defines itself as post-ideological, however, is immersed in the complete
ideology. The fact that the common people consider current rights as natural
consequences of the development of capitalism shows us the ideological
humanization that has taken place in the system itself. The relationship
between capitalism and democracy is neither natural nor contemporary in its
birth. In this way, the wealth of the inner world of the capitalist is useless
if it is in contrast with the responsibilities of public life, in the same way
that the wealth of the inner life of the fascist or of war does not exist.
History also has no inner richness if what must be faced humanistically is
faced as a threat and is solved with a kind of "responsible
anti-Semitism." This ideological humanization reveals how the ideology
itself works: nobody takes justice and democracy seriously, we just assume that
the system works even if we don't believe in it.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The fact that ideological humanization triumphs has a lot to
do with postmodernism, the new spirit of capitalism. Now the ethics of the
product is bought, the so-called "cultural capitalism" covers the
construction of its super ego with the image of a happy and post-ideological
community, approving permits that are disguised as rights, thus blurring the
line between power and knowledge, establish their experts, judges over the fate
of the lower class, forcing them to live as if they were free. In this
condition, the subject acts thinking he is asking what I want, while in reality
he acts asking what others want from me. This is literally the fetishistic society,
not the repressed society, as it clings to its repression through cynicism and
fundamentalism, choosing slavery as its true freedom.</span></span></p>
<p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7846627842548419226.post-36759106780831393702023-04-02T13:38:00.000-07:002023-04-02T13:38:06.307-07:00Iran, Saudi Arabia and China: new geopolitical triad in the Middle East?<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Iran and Saudi Arabia have large hydrocarbon reserves while
China imports 70% of the energy inputs it consumes. Joe Biden's foreign policy
failed in the Gulf, while Xi Jinping reconciled two great rivals.</span></span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In recent weeks, China has stood out as a mediating country
in the normalization of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia,
suspended since 2016.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Meanwhile, the Joe Biden administration fails to get the
Iran nuclear deal back on track and, after years of sponsoring a network of
alliances between Israel and the Gulf monarchies against that country, Xi
Jinping's foreign policy has reconciled two great rivals. .</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The main motivation of the Chinese government to intervene
is to guarantee stability between interconnected regions where it has invested
in infrastructure such as highways, ports, hydroelectric, nuclear, gas and oil
pipelines that allow China to articulate markets and consolidate areas of
influence.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This New Silk Road crosses the Middle East, where its main
energy exporters are located. China imports 70% of the energy inputs it
consumes.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Before the Russo-Ukrainian war, 47% of this volume came from
the Middle East; since 2022, the figure has risen to 54% as it is forced to
diversify its suppliers.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Since 2021, Chinese diplomacy promotes this agreement.
Unlike the United States, its interests go beyond the objective of guaranteeing
its own security and that of its allies as the axis of its strategy for the
region.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;"> </b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">China between Iran
and Saudi Arabia</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Chinese tactic to give stability to the Middle East
consists of introducing incentives for cooperation based on blasé terms and on
the advantages derived from integrating a network of alliances, probably,
however, weaker.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">China shakes hands
with Iran.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The relevance of China is indisputable, but the agreement
today constitutes a first step between two actors with an unstable relationship
and with their own interests.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Saudi Arabia is seeking to diversify the alliances it forges
with the great powers, but this does not indicate that it will compromise its
relationship with the United States. Furthermore, although the agreement
suggests a rosy outlook for regional cooperation, Iran remains plagued by severe
US sanctions that limit its trade.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The beginning of the month of Ramadan featured a promising
conversation between the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia, who agreed
on the early reopening of embassies and consulates. Furthermore, the Saudi king
himself invited the Iranian president to visit his country.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The complicated relationship between the two countries is
part of a competition to lead the Middle East, since the Islamic Revolution of
1979.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This relationship shows multifaceted features: periods of
cooperation colored by a latent tension. The conflicts that involve them raise
geopolitical and identity issues (it is worth considering the schematic
Sunni/Shiite division in its articulation with tribal, ethnolinguistic,
partisan affinities, etc.).</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">By supporting warring actors within other states, Iran and
Saudi Arabia have indirectly fought each other.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;"> </b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;"> </b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">New geopolitical
triad in the Middle East?</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In geopolitical terms, both States have large hydrocarbon
reserves, one of the main factors that allows them to exert influence inside
and outside the region and to be seen as strategic partners.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">While Saudi Arabia heads the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),
Iran is an ally of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and
various actors in Iraq.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Protests in Tehran and in the capital of Saudi Arabia.</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The 2011 Arab Spring uprisings presented new opportunities
for this competition: soon, both were involved in conflicts such as the civil
wars in Syria and in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia supports the internationally
recognized Yemeni government and has carried out attacks against
militarily-backed Houthi rebels. by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Other incidents that strained this relationship were the
stampede in Mecca in 2015, the execution of the Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in
2016, and the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, events that cemented the
eventual rupture of diplomatic ties.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Iran and Saudi Arabia: what can be expected?</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is prudent to relativize its potential impact. We cannot
deduce that China is today the main foreign power in the region, replacing the
United States.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is true that Iran finds here a respite from prolonged
isolation while dealing with a series of internal economic, social and
political crises, given the redoubled conservatism defended by the government
of Ebrahim Raisi.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The protests against gender violence grew and articulated,
in an intergenerational and intersectional way, demands of heterogeneous groups
among themselves that face the police repression exercised by the government.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The agreement will not resolve this situation: it could have
a relative positive impact if there is a gradual opening to new markets,
alleviating an inflationary climate and growing unemployment, but it would not
necessarily neutralize the popular mobilization described against not only the
government but also the political regime. same.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This agreement augurs other similar ones between Iran with
the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Iran's foreign policy was rewarded without
compromising its interests, and thus its position could become more
intransigent in nuclear negotiations with the United States.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">However, Iran is also committed to the International Atomic
Energy Agency and its discussion with the entity is independent of such
antagonism.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Potentially, the Revolutionary Guards would cease to equip
the Houthis in Yemen, but it is hard to believe that they would decisively
influence their agenda. That is why it is exaggerated to think that, as a
result of the agreement, the Saudi crown will stop seeing the Houthis as a
threat.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Persian Gulf, Arabian
Gulf or Chinese Gulf?</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Let us remember that there are no reconciliation processes
in Yemen that call for dialogue and that the United Arab Emirates intervenes
with its own agenda in the conflict.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Thus, the agreement is far from dismantling the logic of a
civil war: it simply neutralizes the reciprocal threat between the Saudis and
the Houthis and, by extension, between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The latter
country will continue to support Hezbollah, of which the Saudi crown is
particularly suspicious, and al-Assad, which is a cause for concern.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Yes, the recent tension between Lebanon and the GCC could
dissipate and stop the process of economic and political destabilization that
has affected the country for years. But it is necessary to be moderate, since
the presidential acephaly, the economic crisis and that of his political system
are due to multiple causes, not all of them directly affected by regional
dynamics.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The agreement neutralizes the reciprocal threat between the
Saudis and the Houthis and, by extension, between Saudi Arabia and Iran.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Syria is still ruled de facto by al-Assad. The agreement
could reverse the isolation of the country, reinsert it in the Arab League and
relaunch commercial exchanges that facilitate the institutional reconstruction
from the central power. But this does not have to be immediate, nor does it
mean Saudi approval of al-Assad's legitimacy.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Saudi Arabia seeks a new reputation. For this reason, it
diversifies its production and calls for a transition to clean energy. Its
policy of modernizing values and expanding rights for women and minorities is
not consistent with supporting a pariah regime, ravaged by sanctions and too
closely linked to Russia.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In itself, the agreement inaugurates or increases potential
for cooperation between actors with defined interests and reflects more a
gesture of tactical pragmatism than submission to a new power.</span></span></p>
<p></p>Rodolfo Jardónhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02934442029865325968noreply@blogger.com0