text:
New Sculpture
Petersen at Chandler
The Artist at Home and at Work
"Honor" – Randolph Center, Vermont
"Guardian" – Suzhou, China
Home › Information & Contact
To download a complete resume, click here.
ONE-PERSON SHOWS: Chandler Center for the Arts,Randolph, VT, University of Connecticut, Storrs; Steuben Glass, New York City; University of Hartford, Hartford, CT; Paris New York Kent Gallery, Kent CT; Bonifas Art Center, Escanaba, MI; Franconia College, New Hampshire; Cedar Crest P College, Allentown, PA; Sailor's Valentine Gallery, Nantucket MA; Bell Gallery, Birmingham, MI; Pump House Gallery, Hartford, CT and eight others.
OTHER SHOWS: The Biennial Project 2019, Biennial 2019 Venice; JUXTAPOSITIONS, Hadwen House Nantucket, MA, June-October 2018; EXPOSED, Helen Day Art Center, Stowe, VT, 2017; MODELS to MONUMENTS, Chandler Center for the Arts, Randolph, VT, 2017; Grounds for Sculpture Museum, Hamilton, NJ; New Britain (CT) Museum of American Art; Connecticut Commission on the Arts; Stamford (CT) Museum and Nature Center; Wadsworth Atheneum Lions Gallery, Hartford, CT; Silvermine Guild Arts Center, CT; Bradley International Airport, CT; Greater Hartford Arts Festival, Hartford, CT; Cavalier Galleries, Greenwich, CT, and NYC; Chapel Street Gallery, New Haven, CT; Art 54, New York City; University of Connecticut, Waterbury, CT; Mary Roy Gallery, Watch Hill, RI; and c 33 others.
PUBLIC COMMISSIONS: Vermont Arts Council, 'Honor', bronze Morgan Horse in the Veterans Cemetery, Randolph Center, VT, 2018; Sculpture purchased for public sites by Grounds for Sculpture Museum, Hamilton, NJ; 'The Listener'; The Greater Hartford Arts Council (The Hartford Children's Theatre, 'Hana Luna MaMa'; Kinney Park, Hartford, CT, 'The Family', Elizabeth Park, Hartford, CT, 'Sedna') The Hartford Christian Activities Council (Deerfield Avenue) 'Sunshine'; City of Escanaba, MI,(Escanaba Public Library and Town Hall) 'Friends'; Hartford College for Women, Hartford, CT; 'Maiden Flight' Landev Corporation (Cob tail Way, Simsbury, CT) 'Stallion' ;The Sard Corporation, Farmington, CT; 'Inner Peace'; Westfield Nursing Home (Westfield, MA) 'Indian Love Dance'.
PRIVATE COMMISSIONS: Roy Machinery, Hartford, CT, 'Untitled'; Cynthia and Leo Harris, Albuquerque, NM, 'Chanticleer'; Atty. Tom and Sabine Haythe, Paris, France, 'Sedna', 'Sisters', 'Dawn' and 'Woman', Steffan Family, Harbor Springs, MI, 'Sedna'; Dr. Robert Painter and Nancy Macy, Pomfret, CT, 'Mother and Child', (marble); Zulie – Suzhou, China, 'Guardian', monumental Travertine, 2018.
PUBLIC INSTALLATION: University of Hartford, 'Maiden Flight' installation. Abstract Flower 'The Gift' front plaza of Chandler Center for the Arts, Randolph, VT, 2011. Three life size bronze horses, 'Three Gentle Spirits'. Memorial Drive, Blue Back Square, West Hartford, CT. 2008-2009
PRIVATE COLLECTIONS: Purchases by clients throughout the United States. Also, in Canada, Turkey, China, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, England, Ireland, and more.
CORPORATE COLLECTIONS: University of Hartford Women's Advancement Center, University of Connecticut Health Center, United Technologies Corporation, Hartford, CT; Emhart Corporation, Farmington, CT; The Manufacturers' Life Insurance Company of Toronto; Hartford National Bank and Trust Company, Hartford, CT; Mechanics Savings Bank, West Hartford, CT; Corporate Air, Inc, Hartford, CT; Jack Dollard, Architect, Occohcca, Mexico; Culboro Corporation, Bloomfield, CT; Brown Rudnick Freed & Gesmer, P.C., Hartford, CT; and ten others.
GALLERY REPRESENTATION: Colm Rowan Fine Art, East Hampton, NY; Palm Beach Art and Antiques, Lake Worth, FL; The Gallery at 4 India Street, Nantucket MA; Philippe Staib Gallery, Beijing Shanghai Taipei; West Branch Gallery, Stowe VT; Morrison Gallery, Kent, CT; Guy Flichy Gallery, Greenwich, CT, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Clarke Galleries, Stowe, VT; Sailor's Valentine Gallery, Nantucket, MA; G&O Art LLC., NYC, NY; Cavalier Galleries, Greenwich, CT, Nantucket, MA, and NYC; WARD Gallery, Harbor Springs, MI; Munson Gallery, New Haven, CT; Dana Reich Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Ella Lerner Gallery, Lenox, BA; Shippee Gallery, NYC; White Light Gallery, NYC; The Bell Gallery, Harbor Springs, MI; Birmingham, MI, Memphis, TN, Paris New York Kent Gallery, Kent CT; Carol Peck Gallery, Woodbury, CT.
FABRICATION: Cavalier Foundry, Bridgeport, CT, Antognazzi Studio, Pietrasanta, Italy, New Haven Art Fabricators, New Haven CT, Paul King Foundry, Johnston, RI, Asia Fine Art, Ayutthia, Thailand, Argos Foundry, Brewster, NY, China Fine Art Foundry, Shanghai, China, Custom Castings, Randolph Center, VT.
EDUCATION: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, Bachelor of Science and Design (Sculpture with Paul Suttman); Parsons School of Design, NYC; Parsons School of Design, NYC, (Sculpture with Chaim Gross); Central Connecticut State College, New Britain, CT; University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI.
TEACHING AND CURATORIAL EXPERIENCE: Associate Professor of Art, Hartford College for Women, University of Hartford, Hartford, Ct; Master Teacher of Sculpture, Greater Hartford Arts Council six-week summer course for 14-16 year old apprentices; visiting artist in Hartford area schools; founder and curator of Miriam Butterworth Gallery, Hartford College for Women, Hartford, CT; Chair, Visual Arts Department, Greater Hartford Arts Festival.
COMMUNITY SERVICE: Artist-in Residence, St. Francis Hospital; Executive, Board of Directors, My Sisters' Place (Homeless Women's Shelter and Service Center); Knox Parks, Arts Curator and Chair of Art Committee; Board of Directors, Charter Oaks Cultural Center; Board, Mary Seymour Enterprises; Consultant, Upper Albany Redevelopment Committee, New Britain Museum of Art, Lions Gallery, Wadsworth Atheneum, Juror of local exhibitions. Chair, Housing Committee: working to establish a Turning Point Program and Sober House in Randolph.
TRAVEL: Europe, China, Tibet, Nepal, Kenya, Tanzania, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Mexico, Canada, United States, Israel and Jordan.
© 2021 Karen Petersen


I recently moved to Scotland and still have my money in a TD Bank in the US. How do I wire money to my new bank in Scotland?
Thank you for reaching us on TD Helps, Michael. We'd be happy to help. At this time, wire transfers can only be completed by visiting a TD Store for security reasons. We recommend checking with your financial institution in Scotland for a couple solutions. You may be able to schedule an ACH or direct debit from your TD account via your new financial institution's services. If you have TD checks for your account, you can also write a check for the remaining balance of your account and make a deposit. Please note that the check will be subject to your institution's foreign check policies. Keep in mind that TD makes it easy to bank while you're away! Your TD VISA Debit card can be used anywhere you see the VISA or PLUS logos to make transactions and withdraws. You can also continue to utilize Online and Mobile Banking even though you are overseas. If you are not enrolled for online banking, you can do so for free here: http://bit.ly/1lU2qfY . You will need your Social Security number, TD Bank ATM/Visa Debit Card, your account number, and your e-mail address. Once you have successfully enrolled, you will have immediate access to your account(s). Since you are now overseas, we recommend contacting us to place a notification on your account and update your address. You can do so by calling our Customer Service Line 24/7 at 856-751-9000 or call collect from an international phone by dialing 215-569-0518. You can also update your address by using Online Banking. You can update your information while signed in by following the steps listed. · Click on the Customer Service tab · Select "Change Address, Phone, E-mail Address" link · Select the desired bank account(s) from the list shown · Enter your new information into the corresponding text boxes · Click the "Submit Change" request button A confirmation screen will appear indicating the changes that will be made to your contact information. We hope the information helps, Michael and have a great day!


text:
Thailand begins mass Covid-19 vaccine rollout using shots made by royal-owned company
By Helen Regan and Kocha Olarn, CNN
Updated 12:44 AM EDT, Mon June 14, 2021
Thailand's Covid-19 surge dampens hopes for tourism reopening
Bangkok CNN —
Thailand began its mass Covid vaccination program Monday, following criticism of delays and concerns over health authorities relying on AstraZeneca shots produced by a company owned by the country's king.
The Southeast Asian nation is battling a third coronavirus wave with the highest number of daily cases and deaths reported since the start of the pandemic, raising public concerns of adequate access to vaccines.
On Tuesday, Thailand reported 2,662 new Covid-19 cases and 28 deaths, according to its Covid-19 task force (CCSA).
Thailand plans to administer 6 million shots in June using the AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines, according to the country's Public Relations department.
In the capital, Bangkok, on Monday, 25 vaccination stations were set up outside hospitals, malls, subway stations, gymnasiums, gas stations and university campuses.
In a letter to CNN on June 11, Thailand Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Tanee Sangrat said in the first three days of the mass inoculation drive, the country had administered more than one million doses.
"Thailand has always been committed to and acknowledged for providing timely disease control measures since the beginning of the pandemic," Tanee said.
Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha last month set a target of 100 million vaccine doses to be administered by the end of the year. Most of those – 61 million – are expected to be AstraZeneca doses produced locally by royal-owned company Siam BioScience.
The country has faced criticism from opposition leaders for being overly reliant on one supplier and over concerns of a lack of supply. Thailand wants to vaccinate 70% of the population by the end of the year, but so far only about 4% of its 69 million people have received at least one dose.
Reuters reported last week some hospitals had postponed vaccination appointments citing lack of doses, with one medical group saying the delay would affect nearly 40,000 people.
A nurse administers a dose of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine at the Narathiwat Hospital compound in the southern province of Narathiwat on June 7.
Madaree Tohlala/AFP/Getty Images
Meanwhile, the Philippines said on June 1 delivery of the first batches of an order of 17 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by Siam BioScience was delayed and reduced, according to Reuters.
"The struggle to secure vaccines is not uniquely Thai, but a global one, particularly for developing countries," foreign ministry spokesperson Tanee said. "No stones are left unturned to ensure Thailand has access to a diverse and sufficient supply of vaccines in coordination with the ministry of public health."
AstraZeneca is working with Siam BioScience to produce and distribute vaccines across Southeast Asia. The vaccine will be ready for export to other countries in the region in July, a news release said.
Observing the rollout outside Bangkok's Bang Sue Grand Station, Prime Minister Prayut sought to reassure the public there would be enough vaccines.
"People are concerned about Covid-19 vaccine arrangement. The government has not been ignoring that, concerned offices have been instructed to urgently negotiate to find more vaccines to every willing Thai," he said.
Negotiations are ongoing for 20 million doses from Pfizer/BioNTech and 5 millions doses from Johnson & Johnson, according to a post on the government's Facebook page.
But questions over public transparency and whether Siam BioScience can meet its production targets is a sensitive issue in Thailand. Founded in 2009, the biopharmaceuticals manufacturer is solely owned by King Maha Vajiralongkorn and has not made vaccines before.
Thailand has some of the strictest lese majeste laws in the world where criticizing the king, queen, or heir apparent can result in a 15-year prison sentence.
In January, opposition politician Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit was charged with defaming the monarchy by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society and later by a representative of the prime minister. In a Facebook Live stream, he questioned the government for moving slowly to secure enough vaccine doses. He also criticized the government for relying on just one vaccine supplier, AstraZeneca, which subsequently selected Siam BioScience, owned by King Maha Vajiralongkorn, to be their main producer in Southeast Asia last year.
A Thai court dropped the legal case against Thanathorn in January saying his comments about the royal-owned company were based on fact. However, another legal case against Thanathorn is still ongoing. Police Lieutenant Colonel Athich Donnanchai, of the Nang Loeng Metropolitan Police station, told CNN authorities are interviewing witnesses and aim to forward the case to the public prosecutor by the middle of June. Donnanchai confirmed to CNN that Thanathorn has been charged with lese majeste and under the computer crimes act based on the same Facebook Live video.
CNN has reached out to Siam BioScience for comment. Speaking to local media the Standard, Nualphan Lamsam, honorary director of corporate communications at Siam BioScience defended the company and said there was no delay in delivering the vaccine.
Thailand's disease control department said as of June 7 there were 2.04 million AstraZeneca doses and 1.5 million Sinovac doses available in the country.
The department said it expected to receive 3.43 million more doses by the end of June.
Though it began its mass rollout on Monday, Thailand started vaccinating medical staff and frontline workers on February 28. As of June 4, more than 4 million doses were administered, including 1 million doses in Bangkok, it said.
Thailand has managed to keep overall Covid-19 cases low until the most recent outbreak emerged in early April from a Bangkok entertainment district, before infections spread to prisons, factories, migrant worker dorms and slum areas.
As of June 12, Thailand had reported a total of 193,105 Covid-19 cases and 1,431 deaths, according to the country's health ministry.
This story has been updated to include statements from the Foreign Ministry and the Bangkok Metropolitan Police.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Tag: reality
What the Self-Esteem Movement Got Disastrously Wrong – Article by Dan Sanchez
May 31, 2017 Dan Sanchez Comments 0 Comment
Dan Sanchez
One of Saturday Night Live's most popular skits in the early 90s was a mock self-help show called "Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley." Smalley, played by now-Senator Al Franken, would begin each show by reciting into the mirror, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me."
This was a spoof of the "self-esteem movement," which in the 80s had been all the rage. In that decade, self-esteem became a hot topic for motivational speakers and almost a book genre unto itself. In 1986, California even established a self-esteem "State Task Force." But by the next decade, the movement had degenerated into an easy late-night punchline. Even today, Smalley's simpering smile is the kind of image that the term "self-esteem" evokes for many.
Generation Barney
The self-esteem movement is also widely blamed for its influence on American schools and families. In the name of building self-esteem, teachers and parents showered children with effusive, unconditional praise. In the name of protecting self-esteem, kids were sheltered from any criticism or adverse consequences. The sugary rot spread to children's television as well. Many of today's young adults were raised on Barney the Dinosaur, who gushed with "feel-good" affirmations just as sappy as Smalley's.
I am reminded of a moment from my own education career in the early 2000s. I had designed a classroom game for preschoolers, and one of my colleagues, a veteran early childhood educator, objected that my game involved competition and winners. "Your game can't have a winner, because that means other kids will be losers," she explained.
According to critics, this kind of mollycoddling has yielded a millennial generation full of emotionally fragile young adults who, in the workplace, expect praise and affirmation simply for showing up, and who can't cope with (much less adapt to) constructive criticism. It is also partially blamed for the rise of politically-correct university "snowflakes" (aka "crybullies") and their petulant demands for "safe spaces" on campus.
An Unknown Ideal
Ironically, these criticisms would be heartily endorsed by the father of the self-esteem movement. The whole thing was kicked off by an influential 1969 book titled The Psychology of Self-Esteem, written by Nathaniel Branden (1930-2014), a psychotherapist and one-time colleague and lover of Ayn Rand. It was the first of a long series of books by Branden about self-esteem, which included The Disowned Self (1971), Honoring the Self (1983), How To Raise Your Self-Esteem (1987), and The Power of Self-Esteem (1992).
In The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (1994), his definitive book on the subject, Branden expressed deep dissatisfaction with prevailing discussions of the concept, especially after the movement became an explosive fad in the 80s. In that period, the concept of self-esteem was distorted by what Branden called "the oversimplifications and sugar-coatings of pop psychology." Branden declared that:
"I do not share the belief that self-esteem is a gift we have only to claim (by reciting affirmations, perhaps). On the contrary, its possession over time represents an achievement." [Emphasis added here and below.]
As Branden understood and explained it, self-esteem was an action-oriented, tough-minded concept. If Branden had been Stuart Smalley's therapist, he would have advised him to stop mouthing empty self-compliments into the mirror and instead to start building real self-esteem through deep reflection and concrete action.
Branden especially deplored how badly education reformers were getting self-esteem wrong. He wrote:
"We do not serve the healthy development of young people when we convey that self-esteem may be achieved by reciting "I am special" every day, or by stroking one's own face while saying 'I love me'…"
He elaborated that:
"I have stressed that 'feel good' notions are harmful rather than helpful. Yet if one examines the proposals offered to teachers on how to raise students' self-esteem, many are the kind of trivial nonsense that gives self-esteem a bad name, such as praising and applauding a child for virtually everything he or she does, dismissing the importance of objective accomplishments, handing out gold stars on every possible occasion, and propounding an 'entitlement' idea of self-esteem that leaves it divorced from both behavior and character. One of the consequences of this approach is to expose the whole self-esteem movement in the schools to ridicule."
Branden further clarified:
"Therefore, let me stress once again that when I write of self-efficacy or self-respect, I do so in the context of reality, not of feelings generated out of wishes or affirmations or gold stars granted as a reward for showing up. When I talk to teachers, I talk about reality-based self-esteem. Let me say further that one of the characteristics of persons with healthy self-esteem is that they tend to assess their abilities and accomplishments realistically, neither denying nor exaggerating them."
Other-Esteem
Branden also criticized those who:
"…preferred to focus only on how others might wound one's feelings of worth, not how one might inflict the wound oneself. This attitude is typical of those who believe one's self-esteem is primarily determined by other people."
Indeed, what most "self-esteem" advocates fail to understand is that other-reliant "self-esteem" is a contradiction in terms. Far from building self-esteem, many of the counselors, teachers, and parents of yesteryear obstructed its growth by getting kids hooked on a spiritual I.V. drip of external validation. Instead of self-esteem, this created a dependence on "other-esteem."
It is no wonder then that today we are faced with the (often exaggerated) phenomenon of young, entitled, high-maintenance validation-junkies in the classroom and the workplace. Their self-esteem has been crippled by being, on the one hand, atrophied by the psychic crutches of arbitrary authoritarian approval, and, on the other hand, repeatedly fractured by the psychic cudgels of arbitrary authoritarian disapproval.
Almost entirely neglected has been the stable middle ground of letting children learn to spiritually stand, walk, and run on their own: to build the strength of their self-esteem through the experience of self-directed pursuits, setting their own standards, and adapting to the natural consequences of the real world.
Branden also noted that self-esteem is not promoted by:
"…identifying self-worth with membership in a particular group ("ethnic pride") rather than with personal character. Let us remember that self-esteem pertains to that which is open to our volitional choice. It cannot properly be a function of the family we were born into, or our race, or the color of our skin, or the achievements of our ancestors. These are values people sometimes cling to in order to avoid responsibility for achieving authentic self-esteem. They are sources of pseudo self-esteem. Can one ever take legitimate pleasure in any of these values? Of course. Can they ever provide temporary support for fragile, growing egos? Probably. But they are not substitutes for consciousness, responsibility, or integrity. They are not sources of self-efficacy and self-respect. They can, however, become sources of self-delusion."
This helps to explain the emotional fragility of young people obsessed with "identity politics," especially the perverse pride in group victimhood that pervades the campus left. It also speaks to the agitation and resentment of today's crop of white nationalists and other right-wing "identitarians." As Ayn Rand wrote:
"The overwhelming majority of racists are men who have earned no sense of personal identity, who can claim no individual achievement or distinction, and who seek the illusion of a "tribal self-esteem" by alleging the inferiority of some other tribe."
Authentic self-esteem promotes, not codependency and fragility, but independence, enterprise, resilience, adaptability, and a growth mindset: exactly the character traits that individuals, young and old, need more of in today's economy and political climate.
It is nothing short of tragic that the confusions of the so-called self-esteem movement have turned an indispensable concept into an object of ridicule and blame. Far from being the source of our problems, self-esteem is the missing solution.
Dan Sanchez is Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writings are collected at DanSanchez.me.
This article was originally published on FEE.org and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author. Read the original article.
Our Media-Driven Epistemological Breakdown – Article by Bill Frezza
August 18, 2016 Bill Frezza Comments 0 Comment
Bill Frezza
How do we know what we know? Philosophers have pondered this question from time immemorial. Julian Jaynes, in his classic book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, speculates that before the development of modern human consciousness, people believed they were informed by voices in their heads. Today, an alarming number of people are responding to voices on the Internet in similarly uncritical fashion.
As Jesuit scholar John Culkin pointed out in his seminal 1967 Saturday Review article, "A Schoolman's Guide to Marshall McLuhan," "We shape our tools and, thereafter, they shape us." Examining history through this lens, one can identify seven great epochs in mankind's intellectual and social evolution. Each is characterized by the way a new technology changed not only how we think about the world, but our actual thought processes. These are:
1) Spoken language, which first led to the primacy of mythology;
2) Written language, which bequeathed to us holy books and the world's great religions;
3) The printing press, which spread literacy to the elites who went on to birth the nation state, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the U.S. Constitution;
4) The telegraph, which transformed pamphlets and broadsheets into modern newspapers, whose agenda-setting influence goaded America to "Remember the Maine" and become an imperialist power;
5) Radio, which placed broadcast propaganda at the service of central planners, progressives, and tyrants;
6) Television, which propelled the rising tide of the counterculture, environmentalism, and globalism; and
7) The Internet, a nascent global memory machine that puts the Library of Alexandria to shame, yet fits in everyone's pocket.
Reason's primacy is a fragile thing.
At each transition, the older environment and way of thinking does not disappear. Rather, it adopts an extreme defensive crouch as it attempts to retain power over men's minds. It is the transition from the Age of Television to the Age of the Internet that concerns us here, as it serves up an often-toxic brew of advocacy and click-bait journalism competing to feed the masses an avalanche of unverifiable information, often immune to factual or logical refutation.
Rational epistemology holds that reason is the chief test and source of knowledge, and that each of us is not just capable of practicing it, but is responsible for doing so. Reason flowered when the Enlightenment overturned the ancient wisdom of holy books, undermining the authority of clerics and the divine right of kings. Wherever reason is widely practiced and healthy skepticism is socially accepted, error becomes self-correcting (rather than self-amplifying, as under a system based on superstition), as new propositions are tested, while old propositions get reexamined as new facts come to light.
So now that the voices have returned to our heads, we are inadequately prepared to defend against them.
Yet, reason's primacy is a fragile thing. As increasingly potent electronic media confer influence on new voices, formerly-dominant media and governing elites fight a rearguard action to regain their status as ultimate arbiters of knowledge and what matters. Goebbels proved that a lie repeated loudly and frequently in a culture that punished skepticism became accepted as truth. We all know how that turned out.
Revulsion at the carnage of the Second World War crested with the counterculture revolution driven by the first TV generation. By the time the dust settled, its thought leaders had grabbed control of the academy, reshaping it along postmodern lines that included an assault on language that critics dubbed political correctness. This was intentionally designed to constrain what people can think by restraining what they can say. The intention may have been to avert a repeat of the horrors of the 20th century, but the result was to strip much of the educated populace of the mental tools needed to ferret out error.
So now that the voices have returned to our heads, we are inadequately prepared to defend against them. Digitally streamed into every nook and cranny of our ubiquitously connected lives, these voices are filtered by our own self-reinforcing preferences and prejudices, becoming our own in the process. The result is an ongoing series of meme-driven culture wars where the shouting only gets louder on all sides.
So we come back to the question: How do we know what we know?
What causes crime? Is autism linked to vaccines? Should GMOs be banned? Is global warming "settled science"? These are more than factual questions. Responses to them signal identification with an array of ever more finely differentiated identity groups set at each other's throats. For those who wish to divide and rule, that's the whole point.
In a cruel irony, this global outbreak of media-induced public schizophrenia has even empowered jihadists bent on taking the world back to the 10th century using the idea-spreading tools of the Internet to challenge a Western Civilization rapidly losing its mojo.
So we come back to the question: How do we know what we know? At the present time, we don't. And therein lies the problem.
Bill Frezza is a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the host of RealClear Radio Hour.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
Now If Someone Could Just Invent Actual Reality Goggles – Article by Bradley Doucet
January 15, 2016 Bradley Doucet Comments 1 comment
Bradley Doucet
It seems like virtual reality goggles are the hottest tech gadget at the moment. I mean, they've been around for a while, but I guess they're really coming into their own. But allow me to put on my grumpy-old-man hat for a second and say that what the world could really use in 2016 and beyond are some actual reality goggles. You know, so that wearers could see reality as it actually is, instead of as they imagine or wish it to be.
The value of such a tool would be incalculable. Of course, if you were wearing a pair and looking at another pair, then you would instantly know the true value of this invention, measured in dollars, or ounces of gold if you prefer, or even (leaving out the middleman altogether) in utils of happiness. But for now, I think we can safely assume that it would be worth a lot.
For instance, say you were reading an opinion piece arguing that the minimum wage should be bumped up to $15 an hour. A little display in the upper right corner of your actual reality goggles might pop up, with a tiny graph illustrating how, as long as they are allowed to fluctuate freely, prices are determined by supply and demand. Raise the price of labour artificially with a legislated price floor, though, and the amount supplied will become greater than the amount demanded. In other words, while some workers will benefit from higher wages, others will become unemployed. This illustration might be followed by suggestions of better ways to help the less fortunate.
Or say you were watching a certain Nobel Peace Prize winner condemn the politics of fear in his State of the Union address. Your goggles might remind you that politicians of all stripes use fear to manipulate you, whether it's fear of immigrants or fear of markets, fear of recreational drugs or fear of guns (unless held by police, soldiers, or politicians' bodyguards). They might give you a quick lesson on how realistic different fears are, how statistically likely or unlikely they are to come true, and whether you might be exaggerating the dangers posed by immigrants, markets, drugs, or guns, while underplaying their potential benefits.
Or again, imagine that you're wearing these goggles while seeing an ad for a really big lottery. Your goggles might point out to you that your chances of winning are infinitesimal, that you're more likely to get hit by a bus or a lightning bolt, and that a $10-million jackpot and a $1.6-billion jackpot would be almost identically life-changing. And if they caught you nodding your head when you saw that Internet meme proposing that $1.6 billion was enough to wipe out poverty in a nation of 300 million, it would administer a mild electrical shock to your temples and send you back to primary school.
Of course, the real question is whether anyone would want to buy such a useful gadget. Do we want to see the world as it really is, or are we content to misperceive it? Are we happier believing that we are already wise and well-intentioned, or do we want to learn what kinds of actions would actually be of benefit to ourselves, our loved ones, and the wider world? As I don't have a pair of actual reality goggles on hand to tell me the answer, your guess is as good as mine.
Bradley Doucet is a writer living in Montreal. He has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also is QL's English Editor.
Ayn Rand and Friedrich A. Hayek: A Side-by-Side Comparison – Article by Edward W. Younkins
August 1, 2015 Edward W. Younkins Comments 2 comments
Edward W. Younkins
Ayn Rand and Friedrich A. Hayek did more than any other writers in the Twentieth Century to turn intellectual opinion away from statism and toward a free society. Although they are opposed on many philosophical and social issues, they generally agree on the superiority of a free market. Rand's defense of capitalism differs dramatically from Hayek's explanation of the extended order. In addition, Hayek approves of state activity that violates Rand's ideas of rights and freedom. The purpose of this brief essay is to describe, explain, and compare the ideas of these two influential thinkers. To do this, I present and explain an exhibit that provides a side-by-side summary of the differences between Rand and Hayek on a number of issues.
In their early years of writing, both Hayek and Rand were dismissed by intellectuals, but they were heralded by businessmen. Hayek began to gain some respect from intellectuals when he published The Road to Serfdom in 1944. He wrote a number of scholarly books, attained formal academic positions, and earned the Nobel Prize for economics in 1974. Rand never did write scholarly works or hold a formal academic position. Her philosophy must be extracted from her essays and her fiction.
Hayek was read in college classes sooner, and to a much greater extent, than was Rand. He was viewed by intellectuals as a responsible and respected scholar, and Rand was not. His vision of anti-statism was more acceptable to intellectuals because he called for some exceptions to laissez-faire capitalism. In his writings he permitted concessions for some state interventions. In his immense and varied body of work, he touched upon a great many fields, including anthropology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, philosophy, economics, linguistics, political science, and intellectual history. During the last 25 years or so, Rand's works have been increasingly studied by scholars. There is now an Ayn Rand Society affiliated with the American Philosophical Association and a scholarly publication devoted to the study of her ideas—The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. In addition, her writings are now being covered in college classes.
A Summary Comparison
Exhibit I provides a summary comparison of Rand and Hayek based on a variety of factors and dimensions. With respect to metaphysics and epistemology, Rand holds that "A is A" and that reality is knowable. Contrariwise, Hayek argues that reality is unknowable and that what men see are distorted representations or reproductions of objects existing in the world. The skeptic Hayek goes so far as to state that the notion of things in themselves (i.e., the noumenal world) can be dismissed. Whereas Rand's foundation is reality, the best that Hayek can offer as a foundation is words and language.
Hayek supports the view that the human mind must have a priori categories that are prior to, and responsible for the ability to perceive and interpret the external world. He adds to this Kantian view by making the case that each individual mind's categories are restructured according to the distinct experiences of each particular person. Each person's neural connections can therefore be seen as semi-permanent and affected by his or her environment and experiences. The mind's categories evolve as each specific person experiences the world. According to Hayek, there is pre-sensory knowledge embedded in the structure of the mind and the nervous system's synaptic connections which can be further created and modified over time. For the neo-Kantian Hayek, knowledge always has a subjective quality.
Reason for Rand is active, volitional, and efficacious. It follows that she sees rationality as man's primary virtue. She sees progress through science and technology as the result of the human ability to think conceptually and to analyze logically through induction and deduction. Rand also contends that people can develop objective concepts that correspond with reality.
In his philosophy, Hayek relegates reason to a minor role. He argues for a modest perspective of people's reasoning capabilities. He contends that reason is passive and that it is a social product. Hayek's message of intellectual humility is primarily aimed at constructivist rationalism rather than critical rationalism. As an "anti-rationalist," he explained that the world is too complex for any government planner to intentionally design and construct society's institutions. However, he is a proponent of the limited potential of critical rationalism through which individuals use local and tacit knowledge in their everyday decisions. Hayek views progress as a product of an ongoing dynamic evolutionary process. He said that we cannot know reality but we can analyze evolving words and language. Linguistic analysis and some limited empirical verification provide Hayek with somewhat of an analytical foundation. His coherence theory of concepts is based on agreement among minds. For Hayek, concepts happen to the mind. Of course, his overall theory of knowledge is that individuals know much more than can be expressed in words.
Rand makes a positive case for freedom based on the nature of man and the world. She explains that man's distinctive nature is exhibited in his rational thinking and free will. Each person has the ability to think his own thoughts and control his own energies in his efforts to act according to those thoughts. People are rational beings with free wills who have the ability to fulfill their own life purposes, aims, and intentions. Rand holds that each individual person has moral significance. He or she exists, perceives, experiences, thinks and acts in and through his or her own body and therefore from unique points in time and space. It follows that the distinct individual person is the subject of value and the unit of social analysis. Each individual is responsible for thinking for himself, for acting on his own thoughts, and for achieving his own happiness.
Hayek denies the existence of free will. However, he explains that people act as if they have free will because they are never able to know how they are determined to act by various biological, cultural, and environmental factors. His negative case for freedom is based on the idea that no one person or government agency is able to master the complex multiplicity of elements needed to do so. Such relevant knowledge is never totally possessed by any one individual. There are too many circumstances and variables affecting a situation to take them all into account. His solution to this major problem is to permit people the "freedom" to pursue and employ the information they judge to be the most relevant to their chosen goals. For Hayek, freedom is good because it best promotes the growth of knowledge in society. Hayek explains that in ordering society we should depend as much as possible on spontaneous forces such as market prices and as little as possible on force. Acknowledging man's socially-constructed nature, he does not view individuals as independent agents but rather as creatures of society.
According to Rand, the principle of man's rights can be logically derived from man's nature and needs. Rights are a moral concept. For Rand, the one fundamental right is a person's right to his own life. She explains that rights are objective conceptual identifications of the factual requirements of a person's life in a social context. A right is a moral principle that defines and sanctions one's freedom of action in a social context. Discussion of individual rights are largely absent from Hayek's writings. At most he says that rights are created by society through the mechanism of law.
Whereas Rand speaks of Objective Law, Hayek speaks of the Rule of Law. Objective laws must be clearly expressed in terms of essential principles. They must be objectively justifiable, impartial, consistent, and intelligible. Rand explains that objective law is derived from the rational principle of individual rights. Objective Law deals with the specific requirements of a man's life. Individuals must know in advance what the law forbids them from doing, what constitutes a violation, and what penalty would be incurred if they break the law. Hayek says that the Rule of Law is the opposite of arbitrary government. The Rule of Law holds that government coercion must be limited by known, general, and abstract rules. According to Hayek certain abstract rules of conduct came into being because groups who adopted them became better able to survive and prosper. These rules are universally applicable to everyone and maintain a sphere of responsibility.
Rand espouses a rational objective morality based on reason and egoism. In her biocentric ethics, moral behavior is judged in relation to achieving specific ends with the final end being an individual's life, flourishing, and happiness. For Hayek, ethics is based on evolution and emotions. Ethics for Hayek are functions of biology and socialization. They are formed through habits and imitation.
Rand advocates a social system of laissez-faire capitalism in which the sole function of the state is the protection of individual rights. Hayek, or the other hand, allows for certain exceptions and interventions to make things work. He holds that it is acceptable for the government to supply public goods and a safety net.
For Rand, the consciousness of the individual human person is the highest level of mental functioning. For Hayek, it is a supra-conscious framework of neural connections through which conscious mental activity gains meaning. He states that this meta-conscious mechanism is taken for granted by human beings. The set of a person's physiological impulses forms what Hayek calls the sensory order. Perception and pattern recognition follow one's sensory order which is altered by a person's own perception and history of experiences
Aristotle is Rand's only acknowledged philosophical influence. They both contend that to make life fully human (i.e., to flourish), an individual must acquire virtues and make use of his reason as fully as he is capable. Hayek was influenced by Kant and Popper in epistemology, Ferguson and Smith in evolutionary theory, Hume in ethics, and Wittgenstein in linguistics.
Although Rand and Hayek are opposed on many philosophical questions, they generally agree on the desirability of a free market and are among the most well-known defenders of capitalism in the twentieth century. The works of both of these intellectual giants are highly recommended for any student of liberty.
Exhibit I
Foundation Reality Words and Language
Knowledge Reality is knowable. Skepticism – The idea of things in themselves can be dismissed.
Reason Reason is active, volitional, and efficacious. Reason is passive and a social product.
Progress Based on power of human reason and conscious thought Evolution and social selection
Analytic Method Logical analysis, including induction and deduction Linguistic analysis and empiricism
Theory of Concepts Objective concepts that correspond with reality Coherence or agreement among minds
Freedom Positive case for freedom Negative case for "freedom"
Free Will Man has free will. Man is determined but acts as if he has free will.
Subject of value and unit of social analysis Individual happiness Perpetuation of society (i.e., the group)
The Individual Independent Dependent—man is socially constituted
Rights Based on the nature of the human person Created by society through law
Law Objective Law Rule of Law
Ethics and Morality Rational objective morality based on reason and egoism Evolutionary and emotive ethics based on altruism which is noble but cannot be implemented because of ignorance. Established through habits and imitation
Desired Social System Laissez-faire capitalism Minimal welfare state that supplies public goods and safety net
Highest level of understanding and mental functioning Consciousness of the Individual Meta-conscious framework—neural connections
Philosophical influences Aristotle Ferguson, Smith, Kant, Hume, Popper, Wittgenstein
Ontological Realism and Creating the One Real Future – Video by G. Stolyarov II
August 24, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment
G. Stolyarov II
An ongoing debate in ontology concerns the question of whether ideas or the physical reality have primacy. Mr. Stolyarov addresses the implications of the primacy of the physical reality for human agency in the pursuit of life and individual flourishing. Transhumanism and life extension are in particular greatly aided by an ontological realist (and physicalist) framework of thought.
– "Ontological Realism and Creating the One Real Future" – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
– "Objective Reality" – Video by David Kelley
– A Rational Cosmology – Treatise by G. Stolyarov II
– "Putting Randomness in Its Place" – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
– "Putting Randomness in Its Place" – Video by G. Stolyarov II
Ontological Realism and Creating the One Real Future – Article by G. Stolyarov II
An ongoing debate in ontology concerns the question of whether ideas or the physical reality have primacy. In my view, the physical reality is clearly ontologically primary, because it makes possible the thinking and idea-generation which exist only as very sophisticated emergent processes depending on multiple levels of physical structures (atoms, cells, tissues, organs, organisms of sufficient complexity – and then a sufficiently rich history of sensory experience to make the formation of interesting ideas supportable).
One of my favorite contemporary philosophers is David Kelley – an Objectivist but one very open to philosophical innovation – without the dogmatic taint that characterized the later years of Ayn Rand and some of her followers today. He has recently released a video entitled "Objective Reality", where he discusses the idea of the primacy of existence over consciousness. Here, I seek to address the primacy of the physical reality in its connection with several additional considerations – the concepts of essences and qualia, as well as the implications of the primacy of the physical reality for human agency in the pursuit of life and individual flourishing.
Some ontological idealists – proponents of the primacy of ideas – will claim that the essence of an entity exists outside of that entity, in a separate realm of "immaterial" ideas akin to Plato's forms. On the contrary, on essences, I am of an Aristotelian persuasion that the essence of a thing is part of that very thing; it is the sum of the qualities of an entity, without which that entity could not have been what it is. The essences do not exist apart from any thing – but rather any thing of a particular sort that exists has the essence which defines it as that thing – along with perhaps some other incidental qualities which are not constitutive to it being that thing.
For instance, a chair may be painted blue or green or any other color, and it may have three legs instead of four, and it may have some dents in it – but it would still be a chair. But if all chairs were destroyed, and no one remembered what a chair was, there would be no ideal Platonic form of the chair floating out there somewhere. In that sense, I differ from the idealists' characterization of essences as "immaterial". Rather, an essence always characterizes a material entity or process performed by material entities.
Qualia are an individual's subjective, conscious experiences of reality – for instance, how an individual perceives the color red or the sound of a note played on an instrument. But qualia, too, have a material grounding. As a physicalist, I understand qualia to be the result of physical processes within the body and brain that generate certain sensory perceptions of the world. It follows that different qualia can only be generated if one's organism has different physical components.
A bat, a fly, or a whale would certainly experience the same external reality differently from a human. Most humans (the ones whose sense organs are not damaged or characterized by genetic defects) have the same essential perceptual structures and so, if placed within the exact same vantage point relative to an object, would perceive it in the same way (with regard to what appears before their senses). After that, of course, what they choose to focus on with their minds and how they choose to interpret what they see (in terms of opinions, associations, decisions regarding what to do next) could differ greatly. The physical perception is objective, but the interpretation of that perception is subjective. But by emulating the sensory organs of another organism (even a bat or a fly), it should be possible to perceive what that organism perceives. I delve into this principle in some detail in Chapter XII of A Rational Cosmology: "The Objectivity of Consciousness".
Importance of Ontological Realism to Life, Flourishing, and Human Agency
Some opponents of ontological realism might classify it as a "naïve" perspective and claim that those who see physical reality as primary are inappropriately assigning it "ontological privilege". On the contrary, I strongly hold that this world is the one and that, certainly, events that happen in this world are ontologically privileged for having happened – as opposed to the uncountably many possibilities for what might have happened but did not. Moreover, I see this recognition as an essential starting point for the endeavor which is really at the heart of individual liberty, life extension, transhumanism, and, more generally, a consistent vision of humanism and morality: the preservation of the individual – of all individuals who have not committed irreparable wrongs – from physical demise.
I am not an adherent of the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, which some may posit in opposition to my view of the primacy of the single physical reality which we directly experience and inhabit. Indeed, to me, it does not appear that quantum mechanics has a valid philosophical interpretation at all (at least not until some extremely rational and patient philosopher delves into it and tries to puzzle it out); rather, it is a set of equations that is reasonably predictive of the behavior of subatomic particles (sometimes) through a series of probabilistic models. Perhaps in part due to my work in another highly probability-driven area – actuarial science – my experience informs me that probabilistic models are at best only useful approximations of phenomena that may not yet be accessible to us in other ways, and a substantial fraction of the time the models are wildly wrong anyway. As for the very concept of randomness itself, it is a useful epistemological idea, but not a valid metaphysical one, as I explain in my essay "Putting Randomness in Its Place".
In my view, the past is irreversible, and it happened in the one particular way it happened. The future is full of potential, because it has not happened yet, and the emergent property of human volition enables it to happen in a multitude of ways, depending on the paths we choose. In a poetic sense, it could be said that many worlds unfold before us, but with every passing moment, we pick one of them and that world becomes the one irreversibly, while the others are not retained anywhere. Not only is this understanding a necessary prerequisite for the concept of moral responsibility (our actions have consequences in bringing about certain outcomes, for which we can be credited or faulted, rewarded or punished), but it is also necessary as a foundation for the life-extension premise itself.
If there were infinitely many possible universes, where each of us could have died or not died at every possible instant, then in some of those hypothetical universes, we would have all already been beneficiaries of indefinite life extension. Imagine a universe where humanity was lucky and avoided all of the wars, tyrannies, epidemics, and superstitions that plagued our history and, as a result, was able to progress so rapidly that indefinite longevity would have been already known to the ancient Greeks! This would make for fascinating fiction, and I readily admit to enjoying the occasional retrospective "What if?" contemplation – e.g., what if the Jacobins had not taken over during the French Revolution, or what if Otto von Bismarck had never come to power in Germany, or what if the attacks of September 11, 2001 (a major setback for human progress, largely due to the reactionary violation of civil liberties by Western governments) had never happened? Unfortunately, from an ontological perspective, I do not have that luxury of rewriting the past. As for the future, it can only be written through actions that affect the physical world, but any tools we can create to help us do this would be welcome.
This is certainly not the best of all possible worlds (a point amply demonstrated in one of my favorite works, Voltaire's Candide), but it is the world we find ourselves in, through a variety of historical accidents, path-dependencies, and our own prior choices and their foreseen and unforeseen repercussions. But this is indeed our starting point when it comes to any future action, and the choice each of us ultimately faces is whether (i) to become a passive victim of the "larger forces" in this world (to conform or "adapt", as many people like to call it), (ii) to create an alternate world using imagination and subjective experience only, or (iii) to physically alter this world to fit the parameters of a more just, happy, safe, and prosperous existence – a task to which only we are suited (since there is no cosmic justice or higher power). It should be clear by now that I strongly favor the third option. We should, through our physical deeds, harness the laws of nature to create the world we would wish to inhabit.
The Destructive Nature of the Mystical Rebellion Against Reason in Lisel Mueller's "Monet Refuses the Operation" (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
July 30, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment
Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2003 and published on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007. The essay received over 1,200 views on Associated Content / Yahoo! Voices, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time.
~ G. Stolyarov II, July 29, 2014
"Monet Refuses the Operation" by Lisel Mueller, though unintentionally, reveals an intriguing insight; that mystical rebellion against reason is primarily fueled by physical shortcomings and defects.
In the poem, Claude Monet, the aging artist heading inexorably toward blindness, rejects a doctor's offer to restore his vision. He extols his present incapacitated state by discarding as purportedly insignificant all that had been previously accessible to him. He rejects artistic principles necessary for conveying a realistic three-dimensional perspective, such as the horizon line and even the entire objective of creating a three-dimensional portrayal.
Moreover, the fictional Monet seeks to abolish "fixed notions of top and bottom" and the essential characteristics of Euclidean regularity, identity, and consistency which ubiquitously dominate actuality. Instead, he, with his link to reality (his sight) severed, reverts to the dazed, bumbling, confused notion of Heraclitean flux, which in itself incapacitates man's reason, understanding, and cognitive capacity. The absolutes, which he has departed from, he disdainfully dubs "youthful errors."
But what, in fact, is senescence but a departure from an optimal link with reality? With senescence, the body decays, as do the physical aspects of consciousness. The senses are no longer as keen, nor one's insights as adaptable to the attainment of fresh, innovative, yet still firmly grounded and objective discoveries, as they had once been. This deterioration in Monet is amplified by the decay of his sight and causes him to lapse from clarity to delusion. The old, blind, sick Monet is fomenting a reaction against youth, health, certainty, and forthrightness.
Descriptions of the habits of the blind in Annie Dillard's "Seeing" also suggest a direct link between physical incapacity and mystical tendencies. For example, many of the blind, having no knowledge of the appearance of their gestures and exterior to the receptacles of sight, do not groom themselves properly and mar their undertakings by aesthetically awkward movements. Despite their knowledge that a world of the seen and objectively perceptible exists, many nevertheless continue to act in utter disregard of it.
This belief in the irrelevancy of reason is an instance of mysticism. The disease, is, however curable along with its physical symptoms. Once cataract operations are performed on these unfortunate individuals, they reform their habits and begin to distinguish objects instead of viewing random and indeterminate color patches. They become conscientious about their appearances and gradually renounce their former abhorrence of the visual world. A girl who spends her first two weeks of sight in denial, a spillover remnant of mysticism, later on admits the beauty of her new endowment and thereby gains access to a tool of empowerment.
While blindness is a physical defect, mysticism is a defect of the mind. It is not curable automatically, as the fictional Monet's actively resisting example proves. However, a removal of the physical obstacles between one and the absolute enable an exposure to the world of truth, to which delusional untruth can then be compared. The inclinations of a man's reason and common sense are evident, and it takes extensive self-deceit to subvert them. Thus, he whose physical state is sound is dependent solely on his volition to cure his mysticism. Will he choose darkness and flux, like the fictional Monet, or light, color, and proportion, like the newly-sighted girl?
Immanuel Kant's Ideas on Knowledge, Science, Morality, and Rational Free Will (2002) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2002 and published in three parts on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007. The essay earned over 23,000 page views on Associated Content/Yahoo! Voices, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time. The essay should be read as a factual exposition, not an endorsement, of Kant's views.***
Immanuel Kant's Early Life and Ideas on Knowledge
Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in the East Prussian city of Konigsberg (modern Kaliningrad, although the post-Communist leadership of the Russian Federation is considering an alteration of its name to "Kantgrad"), in the middle-class family of a manufacturer of saddles. He lived on a moderate income, sufficient for him to attend the university within the city and display the reputation of a formidable student.
Kant was a man of rather fragile health and a "late bloomer", and thus spent the better portion of his youth slowly obtaining knowledge sufficient to gradually ascend the hierarchy within the university. His early years were spent constantly engaging in social activities and exposing himself to both the mundane and the ideological worlds. However, his contemporaries perceived that despite his insightful mind and abundance of ideas, Kant would never emerge as a leading philosopher due to the worldly distractions that he faced.
The young Kant became determined to prove his doubters wrong. He altered his routine, beginning in his late twenties and intensifying as he neared old age, into a rigid, nearly mechanical working discipline, forfeiting most interpersonal interactions other than those with his students (he was a private tutor earning a meager income prior to having earned his doctorate in 1755). He resolved never to marry nor acquire a family that would divert him from the task of becoming the prominent thinker who revolutionized Western thought.
Kant's first work was composed in 1746, and titled Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces. His ideology developed from that point into the formidable and thought-provoking philosophical doctrine that one would encounter in Critique of Pure Reason (First Edition published in 1781, the Second Edition in 1787).
Kant argues that there exists a difference between individual perception of the world and the absolute reality in which the human species dwells. He refers to the external world as "things-in-themselves," of which every person possesses a varying and inaccurate understanding due to the unique manner in which an individual's mind would process this information. This activity is known as synthesis, and involves the assimilation of data into the mind, after which it is blended with and connected to previous experiences to thus add to one's perception.
Kant rejects the existence of a priori intuitive postulates within the human mind, claiming that so-called "intuition" is a product of having received information, then engaged in discourse on or analysis of the topic that the information concerns, and, at last, forged a conclusion, a point where synthesis forms the understanding that becomes a portion of our perception. Kant divides intuition into two categories, "sensible," which is presented with material after which it undergoes synthesis and extracts an "insight" from it, and "intellectual," which actually "creates" truth. Only God, according to Kant's doctrine, would possess intellectual intuition.
Immanuel Kant's Ideas on Science and Morality
According to Immanuel Kant, no person may possess inherent wisdom about reality. This is best summarized in the philosopher's famous expression, "Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without data are blind."
Indeed, Kant believes that in order for us to utilize our sensible intuition, we must possess two stimuli, "physical sensation" and "moral duty." The first of the two addresses a portion of Kantian thought known as "empirical realism," a reasoning that defines that absolute reality as the entire universe in which all human beings dwell. Every time we acquire external data from that absolute reality, our perception of it assumes a greater degree of accuracy. And what would be the optimal way of acquiring such data with only minimal if any contact with other persons' perceptions (which are, like ours, inaccurate, only in different ways, since each human being possesses a unique arsenal of experiences)?
Scientific exploration is, therefore, the key to an ultimate comprehension of things-in-themselves. Kant was a fervent admirer of Newtonian thought and the Scientific Method, which permitted scientists to ascend to unprecedented heights in their understanding of and control over nature.
The second stimulus to action, moral duty, provides the explanation for the purpose of all human actions toward the comprehension of the universe. This portion of Kant's doctrine has been dubbed by the philosopher as "transcendental idealism," since it establishes a framework outside the natural world upon which correct actions are based. Kant sees the ultimate virtues to be the attempts to reach three goals which are not yet found in reality, God, freedom, and the immortality of individuals. God, the Creator and Supreme Being of the universe, must be fathomed, properly interpreted, and obeyed in accordance with his true desires. Freedom, the individual liberty to act as one wishes and to grant all others this right, must be instituted through societal reforms and a development of ideology to understand the proper order that would establish such an atmosphere. And, at last, every human being must rise to possess the right to exist for an indefinite length of time that he may obey the commandments of God and practice his freedoms. Kant states that all which is right and moral must be based upon those three principles.
As such, Kant separates the scientific realm (which describes what is) from the moral realm (which explains what ought to be), but he considers these two realms to go hand-in-hand — ultimately advocating putting the scientific realm in service to moral one.
Immanuel Kant's View of Rational Free Will and Its Implications for Criminal Justice
In the view of Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), all individuals possess a "rational free will" and are capable of recognizing the three pillars of morality – God, freedom, and immortality – and acting accordingly with them. Kant recognizes that every intended deed is purposeful and selected by the person who commits it.
According to Kant, no set of circumstances, no matter how great their severity, can force a person to abandon the three moral virtues unless the individual himself selects to do so. And this selection, then, permits for punishment to be distributed to an individual based on the action undertaken. Thus, every deed committed with the intention of being so done implies a moral accountability within the human responsible.
This model of thought is of immense help to understanding what actions Kant saw as necessary for the creation of justice within the real world, since, once again, every individual's worldview is based upon that individual's own set of experiences. Thus, any judgment by one individual of another's set of "data" will be subjective and skewed, which perverts any prospect for objective justice. That is, unless an objective framework such as one of "God, freedom, immortality" is used to evaluate a deed and not the person responsible, while properly rewarding or punishing the latter.
A Kantian justice system would thus solely focus on what was done, rather than on the character of the person who did it. No excuses regarding a criminal's genome, upbringing, history of mental illness, or socioeconomic status can exonerate him from receiving punishment for the criminal act. The fact that a man was abused during his childhood does not justify his infliction of similar abuse on others later in life. The fact that a mother who drowned her five children was suffering from post-partum depression does not nullify her responsibility for the act and the need to punish her to the utmost extent possible.
Indeed, a court organized on Kantian lines might be able to exercise its functions using purely objective, factual considerations. Evaluating the evidence in a specific case, the court could conclusively determine what was done, and who did it, from which the punishment for the perpetrator would follow algorithmically, being already stipulated in the law. Whether the criminal is a "nice person" or has a history of past troubles would have no bearing on the outcome – thus eliminating the need for subjective opinions entering the analysis. Neither aloof nor passionate behavior on the part of the defendant in the courtroom would have the ability to sway the court's decision one bit.
Philosophy Lives – Contra Stephen Hawking – Video by G. Stolyarov II
January 5, 2013 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment
Mr. Stolyarov's refutation of Stephen Hawking's statement that "philosophy is dead."
In his 2010 book The Grand Design, cosmologist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking writes that science has displaced philosophy in the enterprise of discovering truth. While I have great respect for Hawking both in his capacities as a physicist and in his personal qualities — his advocacy of technological progress and his determination and drive to achieve in spite of his debilitating illness — the assertion that the physical sciences can wholly replace philosophy is mistaken. Not only is philosophy able to address questions outside the scope of the physical sciences, but the coherence and validity of scientific approaches itself rests on a philosophical foundation that was not always taken for granted — and still is not in many circles.
– "Philosophy Lives – Contra Stephen Hawking" – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
– "The Grand Design (book)" – Wikipedia
– "Stephen Hawking" – Wikipedia
Philosophy Lives – Contra Stephen Hawking – Article by G. Stolyarov II
January 2, 2013 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 2 comments
Hawking writes, "Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time. Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge."
I hesitate to speculate why Hawking considers philosophy to be "dead" – but perhaps this view partly arises from frustration at the non-reality-oriented teachings of many postmodernist philosophers who still prevail in many academic and journalistic circles. Surely, those who deny the comprehensibility of reality and allege that it is entirely a societal construction do not aid in the quest for discovery and understanding of what really exists. Likewise, our knowledge cannot be enhanced by those who deny that there exist systematic and specific methods that are graspable by human reason and that can be harnessed for the purposes of discovery. It is saddening indeed that prominent philosophical figures have embraced anti-realist positions in metaphysics and anti-rational, anti-empirical positions in epistemology. Physicists, in their everyday practice, necessarily rely on external observational evidence and on logical deductions from the empirical data. In this way, and to the extent that they provide valid explanations of natural phenomena, they are surely more reality-oriented than most postmodernist philosophers. Yet philosophy does not need to be this way – and, indeed, philosophical schools of thought throughout history and in the present day are not only compatible with the scientific approach to reality, but indispensable to it.
Contrary to the pronouncements of prominent postmodernists, a venerable strain of thought – dating back to at least Aristotle and extending all the way to today's transhumanists, Objectivists, and natural-law thinkers – holds that an objective reality exists, that it can be understood through systematic observation and reason, and that its understanding should be pursued by all of us. This is the philosophical strain responsible for the accomplishments of Classical Antiquity and the progress made during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the Information Revolution. While such philosophy is not the same as the physical sciences, the physical sciences rely on it to the extent that they embrace the approach known as the scientific method, which itself rests on philosophical premises. These premises include the existence of an external reality independent of the wishes and imagination of any observer, the existence of a definite identity of any given entity at any given time, the reliance on identical conditions producing identical outcomes, the principles of causation and non-contradiction, and the ability of human beings to systematically alter outcomes in the physical world by understanding its workings and modifying physical systems accordingly. This latter principle – that, in Francis Bacon's words, "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" – was the starting point for the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century, which inaugurated subsequent massive advances in technology, standards of living, and human understanding of the universe. Even those scientists who do not acknowledge or explicitly reject the importance of philosophy nonetheless implicitly rely on these premises in the very conduct of their scientific work – to the extent that such work accurately describes reality. These premises are not the only ones possible – but they are the only ones that are fully right. Alternatives – including reliance on alleged supernatural revelation, wishful thinking, and unconditional deference to authority – have been tried time and again, only to result in stagnation and mental traps that prevented substantive improvements to the human condition.
But there is more. Not only are the physical sciences without a foundation if philosophy is to be ignored, but the very reason for pursuing them remains unaddressed without the branch of philosophy that focuses on what we ought to do: ethics. Contrary to those who would posit an insurmountable "is-ought" gap, ethics can indeed be derived from the facts of reality, but not solely by the tools of physics, chemistry, biology, or any others of the "hard" physical sciences. An additional element is required: the fact that we ourselves exist as rational, conscious beings, who are capable of introspection and of analysis of external data. From the physical sciences we can derive ways to sustain and improve our material well-being – sometimes our very survival. But only ethics can tell us that we ought to pursue such survival – a conclusion we reach through introspection and logical reasoning. No experiment, no test is needed to tell us that we ought to keep living. This conclusion arises as antecedent to a consistent pursuit of any action at all; to achieve any goal, we must be alive. To pursue death, the opposite of life, contradicts the very notion of acting, which has life as a prerequisite. Once we have accepted that premise, an entire system of logical deductions follows with regard to how we ought to approach the external world – the pursuit of knowledge, interactions with others, improvement of living conditions, protection against danger. The physical sciences can provide many of the empirical data and regularities needed to assess alternative ways of living and to develop optimal solutions to human challenges. But ethics is needed to keep the goals of scientific study in mind. The goals should ultimately relate to ways to enhance human well-being. If the pursuit of human well-being – consistent with the imperative of each individual to continue living – is abandoned, then the physical sciences alone cannot provide adequate guidance. Indeed, they can be utilized to produce horrors – as the development of nuclear weapons in the 20th century exemplified. Geopolitical considerations of coercive power and nationalism were permitted to overshadow humanistic considerations of life and peace, and hundreds of thousands of innocents perished due to a massive government-sponsored science project, while the fate of human civilization hung in the balance for over four decades.
The questions cited by Hawking are indeed philosophical questions, at least in part. Aspects of these questions, while they are broadly reliant on the existence of an objective reality, do not require specific experiments to answer. Rather, like many of the everyday questions of our existence, they rely only on the ubiquitous inputs of our day-to-day experience, generalized within our minds and formulated as starting premises for a logical deductive process. The question "How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves?" has different answers based on the realm of focus and endeavor. Are we looking to understand the function of a mechanism, or the origin of a star? Different tools are required for each, but systematic experimentation and observation would be required in each case. This is an opening for the physical sciences and the scientific method. There are, however, ubiquitous observations about our everyday world that can be used as inputs into our decision-making – a process we engage in regularly as we navigate a room, eat a meal, engage in conversation or deliberation, or transport any object whatsoever. Simply as a byproduct of routine living, these observations provide us with ample data for a series of logical deductions and inferences which do not strictly belong to any scientific branch, even though specific parts of our world could be better understood from closer scientific observation.
The question "How does the universe behave?" actually arises in part from a philosophical presupposition that "the universe" is a single entity with any sort of coordinated behavior whatsoever. An alternative view – which I hold – is that the word "universe" is simply convenient mental shorthand for describing the totality of every single entity that exists, in lieu of actually enumerating them all. Thus, while each entity has its own definite nature, "the universe" may not have a single nature or behavior. Perhaps a more accurate framing of that question would be, "What attributes or behaviors are common to all entities that exist?" To answer that question, a combination of ubiquitous observation and scientific experimentation is required. Ubiquitous observation tells us that all entities are material, but only scientific experimentation can tell us what the "building blocks" of matter are. Philosophy alone cannot recommend any model of the atom or of subatomic particles, among multiple competing non-contradictory models. Philosophy can, however, rightly serve to check the logical coherence of any particular model and to reject erroneous interpretations of data which produce internally contradictory answers. Such rejection does not mean that the data are inaccurate, or even that a particular scientific theory cannot predict the behavior of entities – but rather that any verbal understanding of the accurate data and predictive models should also be consistent with logic, causation, and everyday human experience. At the very least, if a coherent verbal understanding is beyond our best efforts at present, philosophy should be vigilant against the promulgation of incoherent verbal understandings. It is better to leave certain scientific models as systems of mathematical equations, uncommented on, than to posit evidently false interpretations that undermine laypeople's view of the validity of our very existence and reasoning.
After all – to return to the ethical purpose of science – one major goal of scientific inquiry is to understand and explain the world we live in and experience on a daily basis. If any scientific model is said to result in the conclusion that our world does not 'really' exist or that our entire experience is illusory (rather than just occasional quirks in our biology, such as those which produce optical illusions, misleading us, in an avoidable manner, under specific unusual circumstances), then it is the philosophical articulation of that model that is flawed. The model itself may be retained in another form – such as mathematical notation – that can be used to predict and study phenomena which continue to defy verbal understanding, with the hope that someday a satisfactory verbal understanding will be attained. Without this philosophic vigilance, scientific breakthroughs may be abused by charlatans for the purpose of misleading people into ruining their lives. As a prominent example of this, multiple strains of mysticism have arisen out of bad philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics – for instance, the belief, articulated in such pseudo-self-help books as The Secret, that people can mold reality with their thoughts alone and that, instead of working hard and thinking rationally, they can become immensely wealthy and cure themselves of cancer just by wanting it enough. Without a rigorous philosophical defense of reason and objective reality, either by scientists themselves or by their philosopher allies, this mystical nonsense will render scientific enterprises increasingly misunderstood by and isolated from large segments of the public, who will become increasingly superstitious, anti-intellectual, and reliant on wishful thinking.
The question "What is the nature of reality?" is a partly philosophical and partly scientific one. The philosophical dimension – metaphysics – is needed to posit that an objective, understandable reality exists at all. The scientific dimension comes into play in comprehending specific real entities, from stars to biological organisms – relying on the axioms and derivations of metaphysics for the experimental study of such entities to even make sense or promise to produce reliable results. Philosophy cannot tell you what the biological structure of a given organism is like, but it can tell you that there is one, and that praying or wishing really hard to understand it will not reveal its identity to you. Philosophy can also tell you that, in the absence of external conditions that would dramatically affect that biological structure, it will not magically change into a dramatically different structure.
The questions "Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator?" are scientific only to a point. When exploring the origin of a particular planet or star – or of life on Earth – they are perfectly amenable to experimentation and to extrapolation from historical evidence. Hence, the birth of the solar system, abiogenesis, and biological evolution are all appropriate subjects of study for the hard sciences. Moreover, scientific study can address the question of whether a particular object needed to have a creator and can, for instance, conclude that a mechanical watch needed to have a watchmaker, but no analogous maker needed to exist to bring about the structure of a complex biological organism. However, if the question arises as to whether existence itself had an origin or needed a creator, this is a matter for philosophy. Indeed, rational philosophy can point out the contradiction in the view that existence itself could ever not have existed, or that a creator outside of existence (and, by definition, non-existent at that time) could have brought existence into being.
Interestingly enough, Hawking comes to a similar conclusion – that cosmological history can be understood by a model that not include a sentient creator. I am glad that Hawking holds this view, but this specific conclusion does not require theoretical or experimental physics to validate; it simply requires a coherent understanding of terms such as "existence", "universe", and "creator". Causation and non-contradiction both preclude the possibility of any ex nihilo creation. As for the question of whether there exist beings capable of vast cosmic manipulations and even the design of life forms – that is an empirical matter. Perhaps someday such beings will be discovered; perhaps someday humans will themselves become such beings through mastery of science and technology. The first steps have already been taken – for instance, with Craig Venter's design of a synthetic living bacterium. Ethics suggests to me that this mastery of life is a worthwhile goal and that its proponents – transhumanists – should work to persuade those philosophers and laypeople who disagree.
More constructive dialogue between rational scientists and rational philosophers is in order, for the benefit of both disciplines. Philosophy can serve as a check on erroneous verbal interpretations of scientific discoveries, as well as an ethical guide for the beneficial application of those discoveries. Science can serve to provide observations and regularities which assist in the achievement of philosophically motivated goals. Furthermore, science can serve to disconfirm erroneous philosophical positions, in cases where philosophy ventures too far into specific empirical predictions which experimentation and targeted observation might falsify. To advance such fruitful interactions, it is certainly not productive to proclaim that one discipline or another is "dead". I will be the first to admit that contemporary philosophy, especially of the kind that enjoys high academic prestige, is badly in need of reform. But such reform is only possible after widespread acknowledgment that philosophy does have a legitimate and significant role, and that it can do a much better job in fulfilling it.


From July 12, 2000, through September 18, 2001, a total of 21 cases of poliomyelitis (including two fatal cases) were reported from the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (1,2). In the Dominican Republic, 13 of 168 reported cases of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) were confirmed as polio by isolation of poliovirus type 1 from either patients or their healthy contacts. The median age of the patients was 3 years (range: 9 months--14 years). None was vaccinated adequately. The most recent confirmed case-patient in the Dominican Republic had paralysis onset on January 25, 2001. In Haiti, eight of 40 AFP cases were confirmed virologically; seven of the confirmed cases occurred during January--July 2001. The median age of the patients was 7 years (range: 2--12 years). One patient had received at least 3 doses of oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV). The most recent confirmed case occurred in Haiti and the patient had paralysis onset on July 12, 2001. Eighteen AFP cases from the Dominican Republic and three from Haiti are pending final classification.
This outbreak was the first in the Americas since 1991 and was associated with the circulation of a type 1 OPV-derived virus, having substitutions affecting 1.8% to 4.1% of nucleotides encoding the major capsid protein (VP1). The circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus associated with the outbreak recovered the capacity to cause paralytic disease and widespread person-to-person transmission and was biologically indistinguishable from type 1 wild poliovirus. Contemporary vaccine-derived poliovirus isolates from persons with AFP cases in other countries of the Americas are more closely related (>99.5% VP1 sequence similarity) to the respective OPV strains, are unrelated to the Hispaniola outbreak viruses, and show no evidence of extensive person-to-person transmission. The outbreak in Hispaniola occurred in areas of very low OPV coverage.
In response to the outbreak, health authorities in both countries conducted house-to-house vaccination with OPV. Three rounds of mass vaccination campaigns were conducted in the Dominican Republic in December 2000, and February and April 2001. In each round, approximately 1.2 million OPV doses were administered to an estimated population of 1.1 million children aged <5 years. Haiti conducted two rounds of mass vaccination in February and March 2001. However, these campaigns were hampered by logistic difficulties and heavy rains and reached an estimated 40% of the 1.2 million children aged <5 years. During May--July 2001, a door-to-door and school-based campaign among all 2.3 million children aged <10 years was conducted sequentially in all of the country's departments. Preliminary results suggest that 2.4 million OPV doses were administered, and a second door-to-door campaign is under way.
Travelers to the Dominican Republic and Haiti who are not vaccinated adequately are at risk for polio. Travelers should have received poliovirus vaccination according to national vaccination policies (3).
Reported by: Ministry of Health, Pan American Health Organization, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Ministry of Health, Pan American Health Organization, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Caribbean Epidemiology Center Laboratory, Pan American Health Organization, Trinidad and Tobago. Div of Vaccines and Immunization, Pan American Health Organization, Washington, DC. Respiratory and Enteric Viruses Br, Div of Viral and Rickettsial Diseases, National Center for Infectious Diseases; Vaccine Preventable Disease Eradication Div, National Immunization Program, CDC.
CDC. Outbreak of poliomyelitis---Dominican Republic and Haiti, 2000. MMWR 2000;49: 1094--103.
CDC. Outbreak of poliomyelitis---Dominican Republic and Haiti, 2000--2001. MMWR 2001;50:147--8.
CDC. Poliomyelitis prevention in the United States: updated recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). MMWR 2000;49(no.RR-5).
References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content of pages found at these sites.


text:
Shizuishan () ist eine bezirksfreie Stadt am Westufer des Gelben Flusses im Autonomen Gebiet Ningxia der Hui-Nationalität in der Volksrepublik China. Shizuishans Verwaltungsgebiet nimmt den gesamten Nordzipfel des Autonomen Gebiets ein. Es grenzt im Westen, Norden und Osten an das Autonome Gebiet Innere Mongolei und im Süden an die Yinchuan, die Hauptstadt Ningxias.

Die Stadt wurde am 7. Januar 1960 gegründet und ist für ihren Bergbau (Kohle) bekannt.

Administrative Gliederung
Auf Kreisebene setzt sich Shizuishan aus zwei Stadtbezirken und einem Kreis zusammen. Das sind:
 Stadtbezirk Dawukou (大武口区), 1.007 km², 230.000 Einwohner, Zentrum, Sitz der Stadtregierung;
 Stadtbezirk Huinong (惠农区), 1.088 km², 200.000 Einwohner;
 Kreis Pingluo (平罗县), 2.608 km², 290.000 Einwohner, Hauptort: Großgemeinde Chengguan (城关镇).

Ort in Ningxia
Bezirksfreie Stadt

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Cynthia Tucker is a remarkable woman. Born in Alabama in 1955, her formative years were racially segregated ones. But that didn't prevent her from becoming a successful, influential, and renowned journalist. In 2007 her newspaper columns earned her a Pulitzer Prize.
It is, therefore, distressing to read her latest blog post. Because she believes the climate debate is over, she advises those with alternative points-of-view that they shouldn't "bother to comment." No other perspectives are welcome. The case is closed.
Tucker's post is less than 400 words long but (when one includes the headline) she uses the phrases "know-nothing" and "flat-earth" three times each and the term "anti-science" twice. Anyone who sees the fiendishly complicated topic of climate change differently than she does is, in her opinion, not only ignorant of the facts, but against science.
The anti-science insult is all too common these days. Joe Romm, over at Climate Progress, hurls it with abandon. Indeed, he barely seems capable of writing anything that doesn't deploy this accusation.
The anti-science smear appeared in a Romm blog post yesterday and in one authored the day before. It appeared in a post dated Sept. 11th, in two posts dated Sept. 10th (see here and here), in two on Sept. 9th (here and here), two on Sept. 8th (here and here), and in two others on Sept. 7th (here and here). He used the term in two blog posts dated Sept. 5th (here and here), in a Sept. 2 post, and in two on Sept. 1 (here and here).
During the first half of this month alone, therefore, Romm described other people as anti-science on 16 separate occasions. Which, let's be honest, renders the term pretty much meaningless. This is the equivalent of a toddler calling everyone from the babysitter to grandad a poopy head.
Romm featured Tucker's piece prominently and approvingly on his blog yesterday. He said it was sad and painful that people with alternative points-of-view had expressed their opinions in the comments section.
This, therefore is my personal plea to Cynthia Tucker: Please open your that fine mind of yours to other voices. Many of us who doubt, who have questions, are emphatically not anti-science. Neither are we know-nothings. We are independent thinkers who give our allegiance only to causes that make sense to us. In the finest activist tradition, we believe it's important to question authority. We have learned, via both direct experience and the study of history, that even people with the best of intentions sometimes pursue paths that are unwise.
We therefore deserve to be treated with respect. We have a right to be persuaded by arguments that are sound and evidence that is convincing. Calling us names and insulting our intelligence isn't the least bit helpful. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't sway a nation by dismissing those with whom he disagreed as flat-earthers. Instead, he argued his case patiently and politely.
The anti-science claim doesn't stand up for the obvious reason that one of Australia's most prominent climate skeptics, geologist Ian Plimer, has twice been the recipient of that country's highest science honour – the Eureka Prize (in 1995 and 2002). Please note that he is also a vocal critic of creationism.
I'm finding myself beginning to doubt the whole human induced climate change hypothesis. To me, a real red flag is when the proponents try to suppress debate, or refuse to allow alternative views to be heard, or resort to ad hominem attacks to bully opponents into silence. Why would they feel the need [to] do this if they were 100% confident about the validity of their own views/theories? When they engage in this behavior it leads me to not trust or believe what they have to say, and seek alternative views.
I think anyone genuinely interested in the search for knowledge about anything should welcome debates. I agree with someone who said that we always profit from debating our opponents, as the act of responding to one another propels everyone closer to finding the ultimate truth.
Why, indeed, would smart people even consider stifling debate?
This entry was posted on September 17, 2010 by Donna Laframboise in activist scientists, ethical & philosophical, free speech, media and tagged activist scientists, Cynthia Tucker, free speech, Ian Plimer, intellectual freedom, Joe Romm, media.


text:
Sales spaces
All sales spaces
Paris : Montmartre showroom
Paris place Vendôme – Tournaire store
Set of three Totems by Georges Pelletier
height: 150 cm, 165 cm et 180 cm
Set of three Totems floor lamps by Georges Pelletier.
The three Totems are made at the same time so that they are enamelled in the same way.
White enamelled ceramic pieces.
Signed work.
Comes with a certificate of authenticity from the artist.
Height: 150 cm, 165 cm and 180 cm
Creation can be made to order.
Price : Contact me
Learn more about the artist
Georges Pelletier.
Georges Pelletier is a ceramist and French artist born on October 9, 1938 in Brussels in the municipality of Schaerbeek
His beginnings:
Georges Pelletier began his ceramist training at the age of fourteen at the Pioulier School in Vence, founded by Célestin Freinet. This school teaches a free and modern art for its time. This training allowed him from a very young age to build a unique artistic identity.
His learning period:
He arrived in Paris in 1953 at the age of 15. Very happy to discover many art exhibitions, he learns a lot by visiting museums and various galleries. From 1954 to 1956 he trained in drawing at the Charpentier Academy and prepared the competition of the School of Crafts. Very curious, he listens attentively to the artistic advice of his older friends. Occasionally, he goes to the studio of the artist Fernand Léger, where he presents his work to the studio director and trains himself in drawing. At the age of sixteen, in 1956, he returned to the craft school. To perfect his know-how, he goes to Claude Pantzer's studio. During the school holidays he integrates the poteries of Accolay. He created new models that were very successful and met the ceramist Raphael Giarusso with whom he later shared a workshop for a year.
In 1961 he opened his first studio in Paris, where he created his first unique pieces. He is spotted by Bobois House for his talent. That's why he became a supplier of Bobois lighting collections from 1961 to 1973. He dedicates his studio to the creation of lighting for this large house and for living rooms where he exhibits his sculptures and lamps that are sold with lampshades made by Pierre Ménard from fabrics of the House Roche Bobois.
Cannes:
In 1973 he decided to go south to Cannes, where he set up a new workshop where he is still active and continues to work. Today Georges Pelletier is a world renowned artist.
Exhibitions and showroom:
– KNOKKE – Exhibition "Originally" in Belgium, in Knokke from August 4 to September 30 at Passe Simple Vintage Gallery: Zandstraat 18, 8300 Knooke. – LOS ANGELES – Permanent showroom of the creations of Georges Pelletier and the furniture we make together, at Studio Van Den Akker in Los Angeles in the PDC Building, since June 2021. – NEW YORK – Permanent showroom of the creations of Georges Pelletier and the furniture we make together, at Studio Van Den Akker in New York on Third Avenue in the DDB Building, since June 2021.
– ATLANTA – Permanent exhibition of Georges Pelletier's creations at The Drawing Room ATL Gallery in Atlanta since the end of December 2020. The first exhibition of Georges Pelletier's creations in the United States.
– IBIZA – Permanent exhibition of Georges Pelletier's creations since August 6, 2020 at the Galeria Tambien, in Ibiza.
– BRUXELLES – On the occasion of the 25th edition of the Brussels Design Market, Georges Pelletier is the guest of honor of this event; an exhibition of his works is dedicated to him.
– CONSORTIUM MUSEUM – From February 21, 2016 to June 5, 2016, exhibition at the Consortium Museum in Dijon where he presents various works: The almanac 16 Georges Pelletier.
Discover also.
Pair of flower wall lights by Georges Pelletier.
Georges Pelletier Wall light.
H 1,40 / (cm)
Luminaire Georges Pelletier.
H 50 / L 95 (cm)
Totem Georges Pelletier floor lamp
A question, a quote?