Spock or Sherlock?
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
— Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Allusions Within an Illusion — The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Spock or Sherlock?
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
— Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
The titled responsion pits the half-human rationality of Commander Spock against the deductive sleuth sayer of one Detective Sherlock Holmes.
A story within a story or blended characters scattered across popular culture? The influence is manifest, Vulcan and inductive reasoning persist with the outcomes predictive and the crime solved. Episodic epistemology!
Arthur Conan Doyle
Is there a difference between Spock and Sherlock Holmes? Can one be considered to be superior to the other? This can be a very difficult question to answer. Both men were great detectives, both made many discoveries, and both had similar characters.
To begin with, the first thing that people who are considering making the choice between Spock or Sherlock Holmes should do is take a look at both characters. Both were brilliant scientists. They also had some very similar personalities. Both were extremely clever. And while they both did not seem to have any emotions, both had a great deal of admiration for the things that were extraordinary.
So, why is it that Spock was so much more intelligent than Sherlock? In order to understand the answer to this question, you must understand the two characters. The main difference between them is that in order to be able to make such an amazing discovery, either character would need a whole team. They would also have to keep a close watch on all the important details to make sure that nothing happened to their discovery. And, of course, they would need to make sure that the other person did not discover their discovery first.
That does not mean that Spock or Sherlock was less talented. In fact, both men have very large imaginations. They often worked with more than one person in order to create the discoveries that they made. They would often create theories and predictions. This included everything from the theory that the Earth was flat to the theory that aliens were visiting the planet from another planet. They would also try to figure out the laws of science that might have something to do with their findings.
Of course, with a much smaller amount of imagination, they could just as easily come up with a theory that would fit perfectly with the evidence that they already had. This is not the case when you consider the ability that both men had. They were able to come up with many different ideas based on what they already had. They were able to put these ideas into practice.
Worldly not Wordy
The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.
— Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
The titled responsion is simple, to the point, and a monism of sorts. In itself, there is no other world, or is there?
Wordy is what you may say this is turning into. Although that's not my intention, the exploration with words is how we do things at planksip. Considered a sandbox of sorts by some, a platform to display your portfolio, or a way to develop a writer's voice as unique as you, planksip is here to say, stay and offer the world wide web an economic model that sustains!
Did I butcher the wisdom of Wallace? I hope not, he happens to be my favorite poet. Who is your favorite poet? It's alright if you don't have one favorite poet; perhaps you have several poets you return to regularly. On the other hand, maybe poetry isn't your thing. And that's okay as well.
Wherever your muses lie, I hope that they are not "lying" to you. Inspiration is the form from which they often emerge, the outcomes of which should be a creative expression for the gods.
Back to Wallace's world and the simplicity of the most beautiful thing. In itself, there is no other substrate from which we collectively emerge. The problem is, it's not always apparent from one's experience how that reconciles or scales across populations. Of course, there are social contracts, rules of thumb, and best practices.
Christine de Pizan
Plato positioned a well-thought-out story as the foundation for a national identity, forced on the people if necessary, the binding and blinding acts of faith would unite a population towards a common purpose.
This is the part of the Platonic tradition that I find perverse, yet not quite an opposite to Goodness in itself because it could turn out that some good may emerge from the prescriptive and programmatic dissemination of dogma.
Again, I am not advocating for deceptive, half-truths hidden behind metaphorical structures; I am exploring the idea that human nature isn't a binary truth function. We lie, convince and deceive. Accepting this may be another forme of accepting the world we live in and appreciating the beauty for what it is — an ordered arrangement of sorts.
Noam?
When one convinces oneself that that one knows the soul of an alien culture from its workings in actuality, the soul-image underlying the knowledge is really one’s own soul-image. New experiences are readily assimilated into the system that is already there, and it is not surprising that in the end, one comes to believe that one has discovered forms of eternal validity.
— Oswald Spengler (1880-1936)
The titled responsion rings the Chomsky alarm. Yes, Oswald's lengthy quote is definitely a little more metaphysical as he uses "soul" a lot. Noam, on the other hand, is much more of an empirical anti-Imperialist.
At long last, the human psyche faces its own inclination. By broadening the data hypothetical worldview, the instructive idea of what it means to think is revealed, discovered, and integrated into culture as we know it.
Some use the idea of transcendence to parse the beauty of something bigger than the individual. Others refer to the nature of knowledge itself. In my opinion, I feel that IF (and that's a big if) we are headed towards a global economic and social collapse, we must take precautions to prevent the kind of madness, inhumanness, and suffering that will inevitably result from such a catastrophe.
I realize this is fundamentally a Liberal position, and I also recognize that I have chosen the "progressively" more difficult position to argue. Chances are, I am wrong in any, possibly all predictions that I am asserting. That is why I will not assert possible outcomes. Suffering is suffering, subjective and adaptive.
Cicero
The idea of otherworldliness is crawling again into science. Moving towards a more exact investigation, the puzzler of insight is examined, emerging in decentralized frameworks and even in lifeless structures. At that point, the amazing restorative impacts of hallucinogens are found, close to a horde of supernatural planes of being, available to unadulterated reflective thought.
Those are my thoughts. What are yours?
Pleasant Allusions of the Will
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
— Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
The titled responsion positions "the Will" in an imagined forme particular to the individual, without fear.
I have no idea if Walter had this in mind when he used the freedom of fear as the pathway to happiness. And by "this," I mean a spectrum of felt experiences, good and bad, related to oneself in order to achieve this state of overall happiness.
The reason why I point out the subjective nature of happiness is that it [happiness] is fleeting – it dissipates with time. The trick, life hack or virtue in itself, is to return to happiness in a way that confronts the obstacles one is confronted with, solves the problems that emerge on a daily basis, and returns to the homeostasis of happiness. Here Markov blankets are worthy of further investigation.
Ovid
Self-awareness should be coupled with knowledge. If you recall, my use of should is a watchword for an ethical claim, and in this case, my ethical claim has origins in the Socratic dictum of knowing thyself! Indifference to this knowledge is a perversion, a hatred of self brought to us by the indifferent perspective of Elie Wiesel.
Reductio Ex Nihilo
People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
— Thomas Sowell (1930-present)
Reduced from out of nothingness is the responsion of Thomas's observation that meeting connoisseurs are only exercising catharsis or something akin to therapy when enjoyment is the prime descriptive takeaway of a meeting.
Jonathan Swift
"Nothing originates from Nothing" is an announcement numerous Christians make to demonstrate that God exists. No one but God can make something from Nothing in their brains. In any case, I like to bring up that if nothing originates from nothing, where did God get the material he expected to make things? In the event that nothing originates from nothing, at that point, even God needed to have something!
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Daniel Sanderson