“Is music a reflection of society? Or does it lead society? Or both? If so then what does this tell us about our own society?
“Most of the popular music nowadays is either: “1) people rapping about sex and drugs. 2) people singing about sex and drugs. 3) people singing about crashing cars into bridges. 4) people rapping or singing about partying.
“Of course most of these people have little to no talent and dress like sluts or "gangsters". There are some artists that are talented and write good music, but those are not as popular and numerable.
“So what say you?” - Ascendant606
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Music must surely reflect society and also influence society. It depends. You can't be talking about society as a whole because not all the members of any society listen to the same kinds of music. It seems, from the rest of your post, that you mean, specifically, young people and pop music.
The use of the word "society" is always suspect. Are you on about old grannies in a old folks' homes or members of a Muslim gang in Alum Rock? They are both part of British society but I doubt they listen to the same music.
I think you are correct about 'most' pop music being about sex, drugs and stuff. Then again, that's been the case since the 1950s or even before that. (Not sure about people crashing cars into bridges though. Though there was a lot of car-driving and crashing cultures in the 1950s - think of James Dean.)
Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect pop music to be about other things such as quantum mechanics, abortion and 18th century Kantian philosophy. One point of pop music, surely, is that it's not about these kinds of thing. If you want to think about other things, then don't listen too much to pop music. Then again, I suppose that in theory pop music could be about quantum mechanics or daffodils and there is, for example, a lot of Christian pop/rock music and also intellectual and political rock, etc.
In other words, if you truly want something different, go look for it because it exists.
“Have you tried meditation? That will reveal far more to you than any philosopher.”
Of course there are many other quotes which might have been used to open this short essay. And all of them would have shown us how many of the people who advocate meditation or “spiritual but not religious” positions (or lifestyles) have a deep problem with the “logic-chopping” nature of (Western) philosophy.
( I know of many academic/professional philosophers who practice meditation. See here too.)
Yet in order to have come to these negative conclusions about philosophy (or philosophers), these meditators or spiritual-but-not-religious people must have already done at least some philosophy — however basic. How could they have known that their conclusions are true (or correct/right) otherwise? This isn’t to say that their philosophising needed to have been profound, deep or technical. The point is that their anti-philosophy position must be philosophical in whichever way.
In addition, the road to meditation — and the positions which some meditators uphold — are also philosophical; just not philosophical in an (as it were) argument-based way.
In any case, what did the person whose quotes opened this piece mean by his claim that meditation “will reveal far more to you than any philosopher”? More specifically, what does he mean by “reveal”? Of course it may be the case that I’m digging myself deeper into the philosophical shit here by being so damn “semantic”. Perhaps I should simply accept my emotional and/or spiritual responses to his — and other people’s — spiritual and/or emotional words. But what if my emotional — and even spiritual - responses are negative too? In other words, if it is good — as Hitler and Heidegger argued — to“think with the blood”, or, as others have argued, to “think with the spirit” or to “think with one’s emotions”, then what if those who do so reach diametrically-opposed positions? Are such conclusions still equally good? And are the solutions to such — often aggressive or even violent — oppositions also brought about by thinking with the blood/spirit/emotions?
Despite all that, it can still be accepted that philosophy reveals certain things and meditation may reveal other things. In fact it depends which philosophy or philosopher (as well as which meditator and which kind of meditation) we’re talking about.
Transcending the Ego?
On a personal note. I’ve met meditators who are outright egotists. For example, some Western Buddhists (of whichever type — I’m not an expert) are actually “full of the self”. (I’ve also noted many Buddhists, etc. on film, in books, etc. who are vain and arrogant beyond belief.) One way this shows itself is by virtue of the fact that such people keep on telling everyone else that they’ve “cleansed themselves of their selves”. In other words, their “egos” are still fully in place — it’s just the words (and sometimes their behaviour) of such people are different to the “average person” (whoever he or she is).
(Here’s an article which argues that Buddhism teaches us that we should “hold onto our egos”. )
I don’t believe that simply because you meditate a lot that you automatically “transcend the ego”, transcend philosophy, or transcend thought itself. You may simply adopt another philosophy and say different things - allwith an equal amount of ego. In fact the meditators I’ve met (as stated) have often been more — not less — egotistical than most other people. Again, it’s just what they say and do that’s different — their egos are still fully in place. Put basically, such people are egotistical about their supposed lack of ego. And, therefore, they can’t have “erased their egos” at all.
How a person’s politics can determine his or her positions on scientific theories.
This is my reply to a group of comments I discovered on the Online Philosophy Club’s Discussion Forums. In those comments, a DarwinX articulates views which many people held about Albert Einstein — and what was called “Jewish science” — in the 1920s and beyond. Indeed, as DarwinX will show, some people still hold these views today (see here).
DarwinX’s reasons for arguing that “Einstein was a fraud” are entirely to do with politics and the fact that Einstein was Jewish. That is, his criticisms aren’t in the least bit scientific. However, in order to advance political positions on scientific theories, certain seemingly scientific claims will often need to be advanced — even if in very crude forms. This is as true of certain people on the Left as it is true of certain people on the Right. However, in the case of DarwinX at least, it just happens to be someone on the (Far) Right who’s discussed in this respect.
Some people on both the Left (usually on the Far Left) and Right (usually on the Far Right) argue that this complete separation of science from politics is not only “naive” and “simplistic”: it’s also “dangerous”! I’m willing to accept that in certain respects, it may well be so. However, when people’s prime (or only) concern is politics and various social causes, then such people will hardly consider (even for a single second) a scientific theory without viewing it through their powerful and all-encompassing political prisms. And, I believe, that too is dangerous — as history has shown (e.g., from the Nazis in Germany to the Communists in the Soviet Union to what often still happens today).
In any case, the discussion below can be found here. My own comments can be seen under the name PAM (i.e., Paul Austin Murphy).
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This was DarwinX’s first comment:
“The main reason Einstein was chosen to be the ambassador of physics is because he was Jewish and it would have be considered racist to criticize any of his theories. This is how the system uses political correctness to protect corrupt and deviate theories and ideas. Einstein completely obliterated the use of logic in science by introducing his his crazy ideas of relativity and curved space time which has destroyed logical science to this day.”
I don’t believe that today’s kind of political correctness existed when Albert Einstein first made his name as a great physicist in the early 1920s. However, it can of course be said that some kind of political correctness might have existed — even then.
[The video DarwinX links to mentions Antonio Gramsci, whose work didn’t become known outside Italy until the 1930s and it didn’t become widely influential until much later than that. As for the Frankfurt School, which is also mention: it’s main impact was felt post-1945. Einstein, on the other hand, first became a public figure in 1921 when he won the Nobel Prize.]
So this entirely depends on what the words “political correctness” mean.
Anyway, the idea that people — especially scientists — didn’t criticise Einstein’s theories because he was Jewish is incredible. Science simply doesn’t work like that on the whole — or even at all.
For example, what would have happened if another Jewish scientist produced theories which directly contradicted Einstein on relativity and “curved spacetime”? One can almost guarantee that this happened! (Jewish people are very good at criticising… Jewish people. Then again, non-Jewish people are good at criticising non-Jewish people too.) Would that have meant that, for reasons of “political correctness”, scientists would have had to accept both Einstein’s theories and their contradictions because both scientists were Jewish?
In addition, Einstein based a lot of his theories on previous scientific theories and mathematical work (which he freely admitted) which was created by mathematicians and scientists who weren’t Jewish. Does this mean that these non-Jewish bits of Einstein's work aren’t “corrupt” and the Jewish remainder is (to use your word) “corrupt”?
In any case, what’s intrinsically Jewish about relativity theory?
In 20th century philosophy, for example, Jewish philosophers — from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Thomas Nagel— have advanced theories which directly contradicted each other. Does that mean that both a Jewish theory and its direct contradiction are corrupt and therefore equally Jewish?
And I doubt there have been any scientists — except in someone’s imagination — who would have refrained from criticising Einstein’s theories simply because he was Jewish (especially in the 1920s and before). The stronger possibility is in the reverse direction: that Einstein’s theories would have been criticised simply because they were advanced by a Jewish person... Indeed Einstein’s theories were, in fact, criticised for precisely that reason by Adolf Hitler [see here], the National Socialists [see here] and others.
How can scientific theories be corrupt anyway? They can be false, misguided, not based on good theory or evidence, etc. — but corrupt?
If science isn’t a communal activity, then it’s not science at all. And, as a communal activity, science, on the whole, accepts relativity theory and the Einsteinian spacetime - if under suitable conditions. (This doesn’t mean that they will be accepted — as they are — for all time or that they won’t be adapted in some way.)
As for my own position, I simply don’t know enough about physics myself to offer anything new or original on relativity and Einsteinian spacetime. I certainly don’t know enough to criticise these theories. You would need to be a higher mathematician, an advanced physicist or a cosmologist to offer any justifiable criticisms of relativity theory and spacetime — never mind to offer theories which attempt to “refute” them outright.
DarwinX went on to say:
“Science is not a matter of opinion or consensus. There is only truth and reality. A consensus has nothing to do with truth or reality. Organizing science according to the dictates of consensus leads to corruption and bogus science.”
Saying that science is a communal activity isn’t the same thing as saying that scientific truths (or accurate theories about the world) are determined by the vote or by mindless agreement. The point about a scientific community is that it’s better to trust many workers in the field than to trust some individual scientist (or pseudo-scientist) who comes up with a theory he simply believes to be true.
Science is so complex and intricate that one person could rarely have the whole truth on a single theory or position. Even great and original scientists — such as Newton and, yes, Einstein — worked largely within scientific traditions and communities even if their new theories were indeed original and even revolutionary. (Therefore they weren’t immediately accepted by most scientists.) In any case, despite the originality of such scientists, that originality and accuracy still had to be accepted and agreed upon by the scientific community as a whole — and that happened.
So why should anyone accept the views of a lone scientist if he’s working in complete isolation and with no back up from anyone else other than those who already agree with him (perhaps for political reasons)? This is especially true if those people who agree with a lone “scientist” (on, say, the contradictions of relativity theory) aren’t themselves scientists. This simply leads to the question:
Why are people accepting the theories of these lone (or eccentric) scientists when they aren’t themselves scientists and when most other scientists reject their theories?
All I can say is that there are non-scientific (e.g., political) reasons — not reasons of what DarwinX calls “truth and reality” — which are motivating these agreements with these (as it were) alternative scientists or theories.
Then there was more from DarwinX:
“Don’t be intimidated by science theory. Real science is not difficult to understand. Bogus science tends to be over complicated and confusing, mainly because its main objective is to confuse and complicate simple matters.”
I’ve never heard that said before. Does this mean that science as it’s presented in popular-science books or science as it’s done by scientists themselves? There’s a massive difference between the two.
True; some popular-science writers do a marvellous job of clearly expressing scientific ideas. However, even they wouldn’t argue that “real science is not difficult to understand”. The basics aren’t difficult, sure; though that’s because all the mathematics, specialised technical theory and detail are simply missed out of (most) popular-science books. So popular science books are easy to understand. However, popular (or simplified) expositions of science aren’t themselves science. They are about science.
Everything said about science by DarwinX about Einstein is deeply imbued with his political and racial views on things. (Whether his general political positions are acceptable is irrelevant to that point.) His politics is in the driving seat and it’s completely determining his positions on science. Now that may not be a bad thing in itself. It depends on how much DarwinX really knows about science — not about the popular expositions of science by non-scientists and even sometimes by scientists. Again, his primary concern is politics and race; not science. His politics is being applied across the board so that he even sees politics in everything scientific — and, no doubt, in all things non-scientific too. This means that DarwinX is as ideologically and politically driven and fixated as the “politically correct” people he’s arguing against — perhaps more so.
"The reality of the external world to which science points has no psychic depth, no depth of being. It is a plastic mass of events. When scientists study Man, they want to prove that the mind, the psyche, the being of Man, is the effect of bodily existence and thus an effect of matter. They conclude that if the mind is caused by matter, then it is basically unreal, secondary, not a primary reality." - Granth
I'm not sure if there is such a consensus in science on the mind. Even in the limited domain of 'materialist' philosophers of mind, I don't think that there is such a consensus.
Granth refers to "no psychic depth, no depth of being" of science. These technical terms seem to be taken from a specific philosophical tradition so it will be hard for people unfamiliar with that tradition to know what such locutions mean.
Granth also says that scientists (all of them?)
"want to prove that the mind, the psyche, the being of Man, is the effect of bodily existence and thus an effect of matter. They conclude that if the mind is caused by matter, then it is basically unreal, secondary, not a primary reality".
It doesn't follow that if a scientists argues, or shows, that "the mind is caused by matter" that he also believes that it is "unreal, secondary". A forest fire can be caused by a discarded cigarette but the fire is still real even if it has other causes. The mind and brain can even be acceptably different domains, according to scientists, and it still be the case that the brain, or something larger, is the "cause" of the mind. Scientists, on the whole, are no longer interested in erasing mind or consciousness from the equation. In fact, only a few scientists ever were completely that way inclined.
As for "the Being of man" - that seems to be the technical language of a specific philosophical tradition which, presumably, not all posters on this website will be aware of even if they know much philosophy. What is "the Being of man"?
Although Frank Ramsey's proof isn't exactly a paradox, it is worth mentioning anyway. Ramsey set out to prove that there were exactly two Londoners with exactly the same number of hairs on their heads.
How did he prove that?
Firstly, when Ramsey was writing he noted that there were more than a million Londoners. He also noted - though God knows how - that there were less than a million hairs on any one Londoner's head.
So how do we move from those two truths to the truth that there are at least two Londoners who have exactly the same number of hairs on their heads?
Well, for a start, there are more Londoners than hairs on any single Londoner’s head. That is, there are more than a million Londoners; though no person has more than a million hairs on his or her head. So what? This has been expressed in the following way:
“If there are more pigeons than pigeonholes, then at least two pigeons must share a hole.”
This means that because there are more Londoners than there are hairs on any one individual's head, then at least two Londoners must share the same number of hairs. How does that prove what it claims to prove? And doesn't it depend on how many more (than a million) Londoners there are?
For example, will this proof still work if there were only one million and one Londoners? In addition, what about the possibility of massive coincidence or high proportions with large numbers of hairs or very small numbers of hairs? Doesn't the proof depend on a certain level of statistical balance?
The argument seems to be:
i) Because there are over a million Londoners,
ii) though only a maximum of a million hairs on any one person's head,
iii) and since there are a million hairs to share between over a million people [eh? that's wrong],
iv) then two persons or more must share the same number of hairs.
Put it this way: if there are ten people in a room who have to share 9 or less apples, then two people will need to share an apple.
Put it another way: if there were a million Londoners and a maximum number of a million hairs on a Londoner’s head, then each Londoner could have hairs ranging from one to one million.
In theory at least, every Londoner could have a different number of hairs on his and her head. But what happens when there are more than a million Londoners but still only a maximum of one million hairs on any one Londoner’s head? It can't be the case that every Londoner will have a different number of hairs – even in theory. This will mean, then, that at least two Londoners will have the same number of hairs.
But there's still something suspect about this proof.
In any case, this doesn't seem to be a paradox, or that complex, or even that interesting; though perhaps I've missed the profound or complex bit.
