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Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21St Century Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Articles and Reviews 2006-2019

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Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21St Century Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd Edition Michael Starks The saddest day in US history. President Johnson, with 2 Kennedy’s and ex-President Hoover, gives America to Mexico - Oct 3rd 1965 Reality Press Las Vegas, Nevada Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd revised Edition Michael Starks Copyright © 2019 by Michael Starks All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without the express consent of the author. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Third revised Edition January 2019 ISBN-13: 978-1545490624 “At what point is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.” Abraham Lincoln (1838) “I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.” John Adams (1814) The Letters of John and Abigail Adams TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .............................................................................. I THE DESCRIPTION OF BEHAVIOR WITHOUT DELUSION 1. The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in the Writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle ................................ 2 2. Review of Making the Social World by John Searle (2010) 114 3. Review of ‘Philosophy in a New Century’ by John Searle (2008) 139 4. Review of Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy by Paul Horwich 248p (2013) 160 5. Review of The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker (2008) 185 6. Review of “Are We Hardwired? by Clark & Grunstein Oxford (2000) 199 THE DIGITAL DELUSION --COMPUTERS ARE PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE IS MATH AND HI- TECH WILL SAVE US 7. Is JK Rowling more evil than me? ................................... 202 8. Review of Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett (2003) 208 9. Review of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (2007) 224 10. Another cartoon portrait of the mind from the reductionist metaphysicians--a Review of Peter Carruthers ‘The Opacity of Mind’ (2011) ........................................... 240 11. Will Hominoids or Androids Destroy the Earth? —A Review of How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil (2012) ................................................................................... 270 12. What Do Paraconsistent, Undecidable, Random, Computable and Incomplete mean? A Review of Godel's Way: Exploits into an undecidable world by Gregory Chaitin, Francisco A Doria, Newton C.A. da Costa 160p (2012) ................................................................................... 283 13. Wolpert, Chaitin and Wittgenstein on impossibility, incompleteness, the liar paradox, theism, the limits of computation, a non-quantum mechanical uncertainty principle and the universe as computer—the ultimate theorem in Turing Machine Theory ............................... 299 14. Review of 'The Outer Limits of Reason' by Noson Yanofsky 403p (2013) 305 THE RELIGIOUS DELUSION – A BENEVOLENT UNIVERSE WILL SAVE US 15. Review of Religion Explained-- The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer (2002) ............................................................................................. 323 16. Review of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber 2nd ed 851p (2001) 337 17. The most profound spiritual autobiography of all time? - a review of "The Knee of Listening" by Adi Da (Franklin Jones) (1995) ...................................................... 355 18. Do our automated unconscious behaviors reveal our real selves and hidden truths about the universe? -- A review of David Hawkins ‘Power vs Force--the hidden determinants of human behavior –author’s official authoritative edition’ 412p(2012)(original edition 1995).359 THE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY DELUSION-- DEMOCRACY, DIVERSITY AND EQUALITY WILL SAVE US 19. The Transient Suppression of the Worst Devils of our Nature—a review of Steven Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined’(2012) 364 20. The Dead Hands of Group Selection and Phenomenology -- A Review of Individuality and Entanglement by Herbert Gintis 357p (2017) ............................................... 370 21. Altruism, Jesus and the End of the World—how the Templeton Foundation bought a Harvard Professorship and attacked Evolution, Rationality and Civilization. A review of E.O. Wilson 'The Social Conquest of Earth' (2012) and Nowak and Highfield ‘SuperCooperators’(2012) 383 22. A Review of The Murderer Next Door by David Buss (2005) 398 23. Suicide by Democracy-an Obituary for America and the World 410 (2019) PREFACE This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and edited to bring them up to date (2018). All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy is inevitable. The first group of articles attempt to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of theoretical delusions. In the next three groups, I comment on three of the principal delusions preventing a sustainable world— technology, religion and politics (cooperative groups). People believe that society can be saved by them, so I provide some suggestions in the rest of the book as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers. It is critical to understand why we behave as we do and so the first section presents articles that try to describe (not explain as Wittgenstein insisted) behavior. I start with a brief review of the logical structure of rationality, which provides some heuristics for the description of language (mind, rationality, personality) and gives some suggestions as to how this relates to the evolution of social behavior. This centers around the two writers I have found the most important in this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. No neurophysiology, no metaphysics, no postmodernism, no theology. Since philosophical problems are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put it, due to the lack of perspicuity of language, they run throughout human discourse and behavior, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness." (BBB p18) The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that leads millions of smart educated people
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