ハオは保育園での自由時間にはいつもキッチンセットで遊んでいるらしい。
これをやめさせ他の遊びをさせるようにすると保育園の先生が言う。

「ほっとけ。
  凡人レベルの考えで子供を鎖で縛ろうとするな。
  無知が余計なことをするな。」

と正直、私は思っている。

子供は好きなことだけやればいいのだ。
他の事はやりたくなれば自然にやる。

しかし、私は保育園に文句を言ったりはしない。
学校とはそういう場所だからだ。
そういう場所にあってハオは自力で自分自身を見つける訓練ができると思うからだ。

同時に家では決してああいう絵をかけ、こういう遊びをしろ、
とハオやヒナに決して言うな、と夫にはきつく言っておいた。

----

どうやって他者と同じになるか、平均になるか、人の言いなりになるか、それしか学校では教えない。

無意味な競争をさせる学校教育は即座に改善するべきだとMITの人々も言っている。
学校は楽しい場所であるべきだ、と。

しかし、学校と言う欺瞞に満ちた場所にあって、他の誰も欺瞞を見破ることが出来ない中でも自力でその欺瞞を見破るんだぞ。大人が何でも知ってるツラして、何も知らないのに、知ってるつもりになっているという事を自力で見破るんだ。

学校を欺瞞を見破る練習の場にしたらいい。学校はあれこれとバカらしいことをさも道徳だの正しいことだの教えて君たちを鎖に繋ごう檻に入れようとするけれども・・・君たちは自由だ。

今日はハオの保育園の面談だった。先生は彼が生徒であることはとても喜ばしいとのこと。
 チェック項目がいくつもあり、全てクリア。申し分ない。

が、そのチェック項目の内容にビックリした。何の意味もない事ばかり。それをクリアしてなかったとしてそれが何か？って内容だ。

バカらしい・・。しかし、これらを自分の子がクリアしていないからといって、慌ててしまう親とかいるんだろうな。

そして何とかさせようとして子供に不必要なことを強要し、結果的には子供に自分自身でいてはいけないと思わせる。物事に素直な心で感動する心を麻痺させてしまう。それを牢獄と言わずに何と言うのだろうか？

 これが憎しみを無垢な子供の心に芽生えさせるプロセス。
 
しかし、無理解は世の常だ。今のところ。そんなのに流されずに、だまされずに生きるんだ。

My name is / good night

今朝、起きたばかりの息子が「ぼくの名前はソーバインリージェンツメェンだよ。好きなんだ、これ。」と。ほぉ、自分で自分に名前つけたのか。カッコイイ名 前だぁねぇ～。ママも好きだよ、これ。早速ミドルネームとして採用。同時に私がつけた名前も好きだから残してくれるそうだ。


後半月で2歳になる娘は最近、ベッドに1人で仰向けに寝て毛布を胸まで引き上げ、胸の上に両手をおき、「ナーイ（グッナイ）」と言うようになった。そして、目をギューッと閉じて寝ようとする。近くに寄ろうとすると、手で私を制止し、「NO」と優しく言う。

しかし、2分もするともそもそ身体を起し、横になっている私のおなかの上に移動。

息子は3歳で自分ひとりで寝ると言い出した。さて、娘はいつ言い出すだろうか？多分、3歳には1人で寝たいと言うだろうと思う。専用ベッドを作ってプリンセスキャッスル仕様にすれば。息子の時はサバイバルメェン野外テント仕様。

愛の機関車トーマス

ヒナは私が家にいると、私の手を握って放しません。

私の手を引いて、歩き回ります。

ベッドと窓の間の隙間とかへも、
新しいおもちゃを取りに行く時も、

繋いだ手ははなしません。

時々、手をもちかえて。

そして、手を繋いだまま
私を中心にぐるぐる回って走り回ります。

目が回ります。
すぐ気持ち悪くなってしまいます。

なので

たおれる～

と言いながら、彼女をダッコしてベッドに倒れこみ
笑いをとってごまかします（笑）

これで少し時間を稼ぐことができます。

何の時間？

体力回復の時間です。



先週末、激務を果たし家に帰り私は眠っていました。

ヒナが眠っている私の手に

そっとお気に入りのオモチャ

機関車トーマス

を握らせ、そのまま私を起さずに、
ベッドから降り、離れていきました。

The reality is shaped by people's wrath and hatered and sorrow.

苦しみ悲しむ心ができる事はただひとつで、それは苦しみと悲しみを自分の外にまき散らかすこと。
ニーチェも同じことを言っている。私はニーチェがそう言っていることを知らずに自分の実体験からそう思った。
ニーチェも相当に苦しんでいたようだな・・。

人間とは自己に都合よく現実を作り出す。そして、それを道徳だの、正義だの、皆のためだのということにでっち上げる。 でも、本当は全て自分自身の正当化のため、自分自身をよりいいポジションに位置させるためでしかない。時にドグマ化して他人を犠牲することもいとわず、時に利害関係の一致する他の人々と結託して自己に都合よく現実を作り出す。そして、全てを自分の「怒り」によって定義する。自分の怒りを発散するために、自分の怒りの対象を世間一般の「悪」に仕立て上げようとする。

人の世は人々の怒りと悲しみと憎しみによって形成されている。

ただ・・人は原因がなければ怒ったり、悲しんだり、憎んだりはしない。

でも、ここで「そりゃ差別だろう。」といわれることを承知でいうと、遺伝子的な要因、生理的な意味でのでのサディストというものがこの世には存在している点を指摘しなければいけない。

人々はこのサディストをも利用して世の中を暴力によって支配してきた。確かに、人の世でもっとも確かなのは「弱肉強食」である。

でも、人間はそれ以上の何かに触れることができる「目覚めたもの」でもある。半分寝てるかもだけれど・・。

このサディストってなんだ？を少し考えてみたい。

そして、今思う。世の中をよくしようという試みも自分の欲でしかないのかもしれない。怒りと悲しみしかその裏にはない。

日々、空を見上げ、風を感じて生きていったほうが良さそうだ。

世の中の憎しみを減らそう。なんのドグマも持たず宗教も持たず道徳も持たず・・。それらは自分の怒りから世の中をゆがめるための道具でしかないから。まず自分の憎しみから減らそう。それが、もしかすると多くの人に伝染するかもしれない。多分、その方がいい結果でそうだ。

Chocolate math

I use M&M chocolate to teach my 4 year old son addition and subtraction.

Yesterday morning, I thought a pie would be useful to teach him fraction.
But I have a second thought. Well, we cannot make a pie every day.

My husband called me the afternoon saying that my son have something to tell me.

"Mama, I made a pumpkin pie. If you eat all you lunch, you can have one piece of it."

He had never made a pie before. This is the first pie he's ever made.

Wow!!!
This is definitely a synchronicity.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Hina, my 22 month old daughter, is a night owl. 
No matter how we try to make her sleep earlier, she stays up until around 11:00 pm.

She sleeps good during the day. So, I think this is not a big issue. 
By the time she will become 3, her sleep pattern will be much more stable.

Every night, she watches footage of children songs. 
She likes "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". She smiles, giggle when she watch this. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvsQ9hYKq7c

Lala kahle    [Sleep well]

In the jungle, the mighty jungle
The lion sleeps tonight
In the jungle, the mighty jungle
The lion sleeps tonight

(Chorus)
Imbube

Ingonyama ifile    [The lion's in peace]
Ingonyama ilele    [The lion sleeps]
Thula     [Hush]

Near the village, the peaceful village
The lion sleeps tonight
Near the village, the peaceful village
The lion sleeps tonight

(Chorus)

Ingonyama ilele    [The lion sleeps]

Hush, my darling, don't fear, my darling
The lion sleeps tonight
Hush, my darling, don't fear, my darling
The lion sleeps tonight

He, ha helelemama   [He, ha helelemama]
Ohi'mbube    [lion]

(Chorus)

Ixesha lifikile    [Time has come]
Lala     [Sleep]
Lala kahle    [Sleep well]

Near the village, the peaceful village
The lion sleeps tonight
Near the village, the peaceful village
The lion sleeps tonight

(Chorus)

My little darling
Don't fear, my little darling
My little darling
Don't fear, my little darling

Ingonyama ilele    [The lion sleeps]

Philosophy - Part 1 Chapter 4

These are just my personal notes. I am studying Philosophy as a hobby.
The information shown on this blog may not be accurate.
(I may misunderstand what books say.)
Don't read my blog to learn about philosophy.


Part 1: The Nuts and Bolts of Philosophy

Chapter 4: How to Act



A moral act and ethical act is the right thing to do.
An immoral or unethical act is wrong.


Should judicial punishiments be meted out based on someone's personal circumstances?
Or regardless of differing situations, are there ideal standards and judgments that can be handed out across the board?


Are people born with traits tha cause them to act differently - maybe even immorally by some standards - than others?


Philosophers approach these and other questions of morality based on their assumptions about reality and their priorities as philosophers.




Me vs. US


Confucius
A Chinese philosopher (500 B.C.E)


Good Harmony

Confucius taught that people should act in accordance with what he called "the Way." The way is the harmonious unfolding of life, especially - as far as Confucius was concerned - social life.If your actions are in harmony with the rest of society, then they are moral actions and you are a good person. Society, to Confucius, is like music. All the different parts should work together.

According to Confucius, whether your actions fit in with society depends on what everyone else is doing. You are not alone, but are deeply connected to your group. Other people, then, determine how you should act.


Confucius also recognized that people can fill various roles in society. Not only did people perform different jobs, but some people were more important than others in making society work harmoniously. He was thinking of a society that is hierarchical.


For a peasant to act like a ruler would make for an inharmonious situation, sort of like if the drummer in an orchestra tried to play the part of the violinist. How to act right, then, depends on how you fit in with the rest of the group. By understanding how your group works, you can figure out how to "play your part."




The "We" Culture


Confucius philosophy, with its emphasis on social harmony, has been tremendously influential for centuries. The belief that social harmony is more important than individual desires is at work in many Asian cultures today. It also helps explain the focus on teamwork found in Japanese auto manufacturing and other companies.


Confucius's ideas are in step with a broad spectrum of Eastern culture, just as Judeo-Christianity plays a major role in Western thinking, even for people who don't consider themselves religious.

People in the West tend to be more individualistic; they tend to think about themselves as free, independent individuals rather than as holding sharply defined social positions. People in the East, on the other hand, are more collectivistic in general: they tend to think o themselves in terms of their relationships with others.


lexicon
Individualism
is the view that individual rights and freedoms should form the basis of sciety.

Collectivism
is the view that the stability of society is more important than individual rights and freedoms.

A number of philosophers have thought about individualism. One of them is 19th century Frenchi political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville said that individualism is expecially prominent in the United States where there is a democratic political system.

Democratic values like "freedom" and "equality" reflect Western individualism. These values suggest that people should be able to do what they want and not worry too much about what society expects them to do. This means they don't try to look to other people to figure out how to "play their part," but instead look inside themselves to find what they want. They also look at rules that they think should apply equally to everybody.




Me first


The downside of individualism is that individualists sometimes forget how important other people are in their live. We all need help from other people whether we realize it or not, even if we think we are independent. For example, a person becomes successful partly because of opportunities resulting from personal connections. If this person is an individualist, she is likely to overlook the social connections involved and take the full credit for her success. Not only might this person be ungrateful, she is likely to be unsympathetic tward people who don't have the right connections themselves.










not done yet

Birthday Party

ハオはクラスの女の子の誕生日会に招待されました。


場所はテディベア専門店
招待した子供たち全員にテディベア をプレゼント。
子供たちは自分で人形を選び、服を選ぶ。

ひとつ35ドル。


見栄っ張りな家族だ・・

とニヤリとしてしまうのですが（笑）


マンハッタンは確かに金持ちが多いのです。


本当にお金持ちであれば州立の保育園に子どもは入れません。

不動産関係の仕事についているようですから
人脈を広げようとかそういう目的もあるかもしれません。

しかし、ハオは楽しんだようです。

まず、ハートを山に、海に、洞窟に探しに行き
そのハートを選んだ人形に宿したのだそうです。

うっとりとその様子を話すハオの姿を見ているとこの家族には感謝したくなります。

そう思うと見栄っ張りと思われるかもという気がしても
お金をかけて子供の誕生日パーティーをするのも悪くないような気がします。

私個人的にはお金だけかければできることはあまり趣味ではないのです。
しかし、この家族の例もあるとちと視野が広がりました。

さて、ウチはどうしようか？
ゲームとか考えたりはもとより、少しお金をかける事も考えようか・・？

お持ち帰りプレゼントは植物とか、後に子供たちの情操教育によいものがいいかな。
皆、コンクリートジャングル育ちのスーパーシティボーイ＆ガールだから。

Ana, Ana, AnaAna

My 22 month old daughter, when she wants to be picked up in my arms,
she pushes her belly onto my legs, open her arms widely, looks up straight at my face, stands up on her toes, takes steps up and down, up and down as if she is trying to fly up.
And she say..

"Ana, Ana, AnaAna"

Her beautiful voice will be in my heart forever.

The memory of the day he was born.

The other day, my 4 year old son asked me: "Mama, do you remember when I was a baby?"

I replied: "Yes, I do. I remember well."

Then, he started describing, with a gentle smile on his face, what happened back then.

What he described was..what exactly happened in the hospital room when he was just born.

WOW!!!

English proverbs

この日記のエントリーは増えます。

A little learning is a dangerous thing.
生兵法は大怪我の元。

-----
A bad penny always comes back.
悪しきペニーはいつも戻ってくる。

-----
A bad workman always blame his tools.
ヘタの道具しらべ

-----
A bargain is a bargain.
約束は約束

-----
A bellowing cow soon forget her calf.
大声で鳴く雌牛はすぐに仔牛を忘れる。

-----
A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.
明日の百より今日の五十

Leaning English with my children

この日記はどんどん増えます。
英語のリズムを覚えるのにいいかな、と。


Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down,  
Hickory, dickory, dock.

-----
Baa, Baa, Black sheep
have you any wool?
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Three bags full.
One for my master and one for his dame.
One for the little boy who lives down the lane.


-----

Rain on the grass. Rain on the trees.
Rain on the house top, not on me.

-----
Twinkle, twinkle little star.
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle little star.
How I wonder what you are.

 -----
Jack, be nimble. Jack, be quick.
Jack, jump over the candle stick.
Jack jumped high and Jack jumped low.
Jack jumped over and burned his toe.

-----
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king;s horses and all the king's men
couldn/t put Humpty together again.

Like floting in the air

I've kept the blind of my office open.
I can do so as I am using this room alone.
It is a glass-walled building and I sometimes feel as if I am floating in the air.


オフィスの窓、ブラインドを上げておくことにしてみた。
１人部屋だからできる技。
ガラス張りのビルだから空に浮いてるみたいな感覚が時々する。

They are growing.

ヒナは眠りに落ちる直前に私から３０cmほど離れるようになった。

はじめは私にしがみ付いているが、眠る直前に

ころん

と寝返りを打って離れていく。
ほんの少し。

そして、離れた時にはもう眠っている。

これまではオッパイをチクチク吸いながら眠っていたのに。

ハオは１歳で完全に離乳したが、夜寝るときは私にびったりとくっついて寝ていた。
おなかの上で寝たり。ぴったりとくっついて眠っていた。

が、やはり同じで生後２２ヶ月を過ぎた頃から、眠る直前に

ころん

と寝返りをうって私からほんの少し離れた場所で眠るようになった。

そして、この変化が訪れた後は子供は夜もより深く長く眠るようになる。

夜中に目を覚ますという事が急激に減る。

３歳になる頃には眠りが安定し、
だいたい同じ時間に眠りに落ちて朝までぐっすりと眠るようになる。

もうすぐ赤ちゃんではなくなる。
今のこのヒナが赤ちゃんの日々は残り少ない。
余すことなく、味わって過ごしたい。

ハオももうすぐ小学生となる。
今の時期、一日一日を共に過ごしたい。

と言うわけで早起きして仕事をし、なるべく早く帰りたい。
フレックス制にしてもらえてよかった。

私はめっぽう朝に弱いけれども、がんばりたい。

Halloween

ハオは朝から

今日はtrick or treatだよー。

と大興奮だった。

お家（アパート）の絵を描いて、ゴーストや骸骨を書き込み

お化けだよ～

と言って私に見せてくれた。

外が暗くなってから、コスチュームを着て外に出た。
ハオはトイストーリーのバズライティア。

道行く人々が

バズ！！

と声をかけてくれた。

NY市では個人宅を訪れるという事はできない。
しかし、お店やレストランが代わりをしてくれている。

ハオは大きな声で「Trick or Treat!」も「Thank you！」も言えた。

コスチュームを着た人々を見て喜んだり、驚いたり。

4歳、まだこの歳だとマジカルエイジ、
コスチューム着てる人と認識しつつお化けがいたと同時に思う。

モンスターいたよ～

と喜んでいた。




ヒナは去年のハオのコスチューム。
ピエロのコスチュームをあちこち安全ピンで留めたり、
帽子の下に毛糸の帽子をかぶったりして着た。

来年は自分で選ぶだろう。

プリンセスかな？
何をヒナは選ぶだろう？
楽しみだ。


夫の手につかまって歩き、もう片方の手にはお菓子を入れるかぼちゃのバケツ。

時々、地面にバケツの底が当たり、

カカカカカッ

と音がする。

持ち方を変えさせようと、一度、彼女の手からバケツを取ろうとするとものすごい抵抗を見せる。

うあうあうあううううう
ひぃーーーーん

と大声で泣き始める。

返すとぴたりと泣き止む。

最後までバケツを落とす事もなく、しっかり持ち続けていた。

そのうちにハオのマネをして

トリートリー

と言い出した。
まだ単語をいくつか話し始めたばかりの幼い娘だ。

何が起こっているのか完全にはまだわからないかもしれないが
彼女もハロウィーンをとても楽しんでくれた様子。

来年はパレードにみんなで参加しようか。
ハロウィーンは寒くなることが多い。特に夜は。
そこも考えてコスチューム選ばないといけない。

We live together.

I will stop saying "I am raising my children", or "How should I raise them?".

My children and I,
we will just live each precious day and each precious moment together
until the day they leave my nest comes.

It will be a totally new life I've never had before.

I want to see their faces more.
I want to hear their voices more.

They are my reason to live.
They are the reason for my smile.


「子供達を育てている」とか「どう育てるべきか」と言うのはもうやめる。
子供達と私、私達は一日、一日をただ共に一緒に生きよう。
彼らが巣立つその日が来るまで。

それは私が今まで全く知らない生き方になるだろう。

もっと子供達の顔を見たい。
もっと子供達の声を聞きたい。

Philosophy - Part 1 Chapter 3

These are just my personal notes. I am studying Philosophy as a hobby.
The information shown on this blog may not be accurate.
(I may misunderstand what books say.)
Don't read my blog to learn about philosophy.


Part 1: The Nuts and Bolts of Philosophy

Chapter 3: What These Is to Know About Knowing

Epistemology is the study of knowledge - what knowledge is, what we can know, and how we know it. Epistemology has been amajor concdrn of philosophers ever since Descartes called attention to its imporance in the 17th century.


A Time of Crisis

In Descartes's day, people's believe were changing drastically. The printing press had been around long enought that books wer widely available and more people than ever before could read and write. As people were more informed, they could more easily challenge old ideas, especially religious ideas. In additon, science told eople the shocking news. Earth is not the center of the universe. The traditional idea that the commoners work and the nobility spend the money the commoners made was challenged was also being challenged.

Christopher Hill
A historian. In his words, the world was being turned upsid down.


Descartes's Reason

Then along came Descartes, who wanted a solution for this problem of no knowing what to believe. He attempted to figure out what we can know for certain without relying on tradition, on outside authority, or even on what our senses tell us.

He said we can trust our reason if we settle down quietly and block out the world and all its craziness. Reason, for Descartes, could be relied upon to tell us waht is true and what isn't.

 "Cogito ergo sum." = "I think therefore I am."Descartes reasoned that the very fact that he could think told him for certain that he existed.


Look Ma, No Senses!

Descartes's certainty that he existed led him to feel certain about other things, too, such as the existence of God, the fact that the sky is blue and ants have six legs, and so forth.

Descartes's solution to the epistemological preblem of what we can know is called rationalism.

lexicon
Rationalismis the belief that we can have knowledge without experience.

Empiricism
is just the opposite - it's the belief that we can only be sure of something once we've tested it - once we've experienced it, so to speak.


Getting Testy

While Descartes was philosophizing about rationalism in France, philosophers in England wer thinking up a different solution to waht we can know. This alternative solution is known as empiricism.

Empiricism is the belief that the best way to be certain of something is to test it with your senses - through actual experiences. Empiricism became a major aspect f what we now call science - figuring things out by running tests and experiments.

During the Middle Ages, empiricism was not the obvious, common sens idea that it has become today. People tended to confuse how things worked and what things actually did with what things menat and how people felt about them. Gold, for instance, was not just a mineral you could make jewelry out of. People gave gold special meanings and thought it had special power, spiritual properties. Their feelings about gold actually kept them from studying gold empirically, through actual experience. In fact, before the empiricists came along, people tended to think the whole world and everything in it worked more or less by magic.

Francis Bacon
John Locke
During and after the 17th century, empiricists like Francis Bacon and John Locke were rejecting the old, magical ideas and arguing that physical (empirical) reality works according to machanical principles. By studying things empirically, these philosophers believed that they could figure out waht these principles were.

To a degree, they were right. Still, empiricism alone can't tell us everything we want to know about reality and is far from the last word in philosophy.


Can We Get There from Here? 

Logic
Both rationalism and empiricism rely on logic to get from one idea to the next.
Logic is a tool for figuring out everything that can truthfull be said, based on what is already known to be true.

Logic can be very slippery. It works great when applied to math, but when you substitue ideas for numbers, all kinds of funny things can happen.

1) Words can have more than one meaning.
2) You usually have to start with at least one set of assumptions.
    Even if your logic is good, you assumptions may be mistaken,
    which can lead to false conclusions.
3) People's personalities come into play.
    Someone may use slippery words and mistaken assumptions
    for the sole purpose of deceiving someone else.

Logis works best when people are left out of it and it is applied only to mathematics.

Still, there are a number of ways we can use logic to deal with ideas. Among the most important of these to philosophers are induction and deduction.


Going Down: Deduction

Deduction is the process of figuring out things that are necessarily ture, provided that the assumptions we start with, called the premises, are true.

A premise is an assertion that begins an argument and leads to a conclusion.

A syllogism is a logical statement with three parts that presents a conclusion deduced from two related premises. Aristotle provided a famous example of a kind of deduction that he called a syllogism. It consists of three statements: two premises and a conclusion.

The conclusion is only certain if the premises are in fact true.


Going up: Induction

Induction is a way of making generalizations about things. Induction, like deduction, moves from premises to conclusions. But unlike deduction, induction leads to conclusions that may not be true even if the premises are true. Inductive conclusions are only probable, not certain. Induction is drawing conclusions from particular evidence; if certain things are true, we can induce that other things of the same kind will probably be true.

For example, we go out and find a good number of crows and all of them are black, it's a pretty good bet that all crows are black. But can we be sure? Even seeing a million black crows doesn't mean for certin that there isn't a crow out there somewhere that is lime green. The best we can do is say that all crows are probably black.

Induction is, in some ways, less certain than deduction, but induction can do a lot that deduction can't. Induction, for example, can help generate hypotheses.

A hypotheses is a generalization that we think might be true, but that might not actually be true.
A hypotheses is a theoretical statement that explains things but that may be disproved or confirmed by new evidence.


Double-Checking Your Hypothesis

Hypotheses are useful things to have in mind while trying to figure out new things. One way philosophers and scientists learn is by constantly testing their hypotheses with new ideas and information. If you information supports the hypothesis, it is just that much more likely that it's true. But what if the new information proves the hypothesis wrong?

An example is the discovery of x-rays. X-rays did not make sense at first, since then-current ideas about how molecules worked were not capable of explaining them. To explain x-rays, scientists had to throw out the old ideas about molecules and come up with new ones able to explain the new evidence. As a result, people developed all kinds of new knowledge about radioactivity that their old hypotheses had prevented them from considering.

The idea what we learn the most when we discover how much we don't know is a key idea in modern science, where people are looking for ways to challenge each other's hypotheses about how reality works.

Karl Popper
An Austrian philosopher argued that science depends on the principle of falsifiability. We can't every prove that general statements are always true, but we may be able to prove they are false. We can't ever prove all crows are black, since there may be a green crow hiding somewhere out there. But if someday we do find a green crow, then we have falsified the general claim that all crows are black.


The Ping-Pong Ball Called Dialectic

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates became famous for his ability to poke holes in other people's philosophies. He believed that learning how little we know for certain was the best way to gain knowledge.

Socratic method - Socrates asked people questions in order to get them to think about the limits of their knowledge. Eventually, he led them to conclusions that howed them how they were mistaken. This procedure of teaching by asking questions is called the Socratic method - after Socrates. The Socratic method involves the logical testing of propositions or premises.

Socrates tested ideas logically by seeing if they held up next to other ideas. Moving back and forth between ideas helped him to see how accurate they were. This back-and-forth movement, called dialectic, has become important to philosophers ever since.

lexicon
Dialectic
is movement back and forth between an idea and something that the idea isn't. This may involve thinking about an idea in terms of another idea or comparing and contrasting two or more ideas.


Pro and Con?

Dialectic is the Greek word meaning "discussion." This kind of discussion may take the sonewhat rambling form of the Socratic method, or it can be more rigidly structured as in Aristotle's Topics in which he considers the pros and cons of a number of stated subjects.



Both Sides Now

Dialectic can be useful not only in deciding specific questions. The idea is that it can be easier to understand something when you are able to see it in relation to what it isn't. Can you really understand chocolate ice cream if you've never tried vanilla? Of course not.

Dialectic not only helps us understand opposing ideas, it can also lead to a new way of combining opposed ideas into a new unity. For instance, rationalism and empiricis. These methods of studying knowledge were in conflict for over a century. Both of them had different strengths and weaknesses. Rationalism could do things empiricism could not and vice versa.

The rationalist said that empiricism doesn't tell us anything about things that have been of major importance to philosophers, like whether Gods exists or whether human nature is basically good or evil.

The empiricists, on the other hand, complained that the rationalists had no hard evidence for the theories. Rationalist philosophy was an extremely speculative enterprise. The rationalists may have been just fooling themselves into believing that their minds were capable of obtaining metaphysical knowledge.

Although you could say that one approach makes up for the weaknesses of the other, you can't just combine the wo into a bigger, stronger philosophy, because they're in conflict. The work of one perspective undoes the work of the other.

But if you think dialectically, hitting the Ping-Pong ball of your ind back and forth between empiricism and rationalism, you may be able to see each perspective as a part of the other.


Can he or Kant He? Combining Reason and Experience

Immanuel Kant
A German Philosopher brought rationalism and empiricism together in two ways. First, he looked at rationalist ideals as empirical conditions of the mind. In other words, he reasoned that the fact that philosophers seem to want to believe in God (a rational ideal) shows us wha the mind is like (an empirical fact). Rationalist thought, that is, is an empirical fact of the mind. 

Next, he looked at empirical things and reasoned that we can only know them with our minds. As a result, there is a lot about "the world as it is" that depends on how our minds work. This view is called idealism.


lexicon
Idealism
is the belief that reality is largely dependent on the mind.

The dialectic is not only good for little things like deciding whether to have cake or pie for dessert, but also for deep, trippy stuff like seeing the relationship between the mind and reality. It can be a whole way of knowing and of seeing what knowledge is.


Can History Think?

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
A German philosopher, a follower of Kant.
For Hegel, dialectic is not just something the mind does in order to think about reality; it is something reality does to the mind. Hegel believed that human consciousness develops and changes through history, and that this historical process is dialectical.

Hegel would say not that Kant worked out this dialectical relationship, but that it worked itself out within human consciousness. For Hegel, individuals are less important than what everybody thinks. What everybody thinks is influenced by the conflict of opposing ideas that takes shape in history.

Hegel's use of dialecic puts a whole new sin on the study of knowledge by suggesting that what we know andhow we know it depends on where we stand in history.  The reason that figures things out is not the individual's reason, as it was for Descartes, but the shared human consciousness at work in history. Hegel believed that everyone's knowledge if part of a bigger knowledge. In place of "I thing there fore I am," hegel might sya, "History works the same way thinking does, therefore a shared human consciousness exists."

Hegel viewed ideas both as ways of understanding reality and as giving shape to reality as it changes trough history.

Hegel = the shared, universal human consciousness

 
Marx on the Mind

Marx argued that the dialectic of history was not evidence of a universal human consciousness as Hegel described it. Instead, dialectical movement in history involved changes in the ways society takes care of people's material needs.

This means Marx was more interested in the dialectical, or contrasting the dialectical relationship between industrialism and farming than rationalism and empiricism. Marx believed that history was structured by changes in economic relationships. These economic relationships, he argued, influenced the way people think.

Like Hegel, Marx thought the mind of the individual was only part of the larger picture. For Marx, the larger picture was picture was the economic forces that determined people's social relationships.

Since, for Marx, social relationships influence the way people thin, "knowledge" is limited and structured by the way we see to our material needs. Marx called this structured knowledge ideology.

lexicon
Ideology
is a system of beliefs or ideas that reinforce the values of a particular class or group of people.

To see knowledge as ideology is very different from seeing knowledge as reason. Thus Marx's veiw of knowing is very different from Descartes's. For Descartes, we can get knowledge by reasoning independently of worldly experience. For Marx, ideology develops in response to economic forces. Descartes if thinking about knowing from inside the mind, asking what the mind can do entirely on its own; Marx is thinking about knowing from outside society, asking how economic forces shape the way people think.


■ Different views of knowing include rationalism (for example, Descartes),
   empiricism (Bacon and Locke), idealism (Kant and Hegel), and ideology (Marx)
■ Rationalism is the view that knowledge is possible without experience.
■ Empiricism is the view that knowledge comes from experience.
■ Ideology is a system of beliefs or ideas that reinforce the values of a particular class or
   group of people.
■ Different logical techniques for acquiring and testing knowledge are
    induction, deduction, and dialectic.

The first Pop-up book

ハオの飛び出す絵本です。

砂漠の動物というタイトルでナショナルジオグラフックが出版。
本を開くとサボテンとか動物とかが立体になると言うあれです。

なぜかヒナの手に届く本棚に置いてあり彼女はもちろんのことそれを選びました。
 初めてヒナがこの本を読むことになります。
 
ああ・・破いてしまう

と思いました。
 これは傍についていなくては、と。

 なのにハオとお風呂に入っている夫が私を呼びます。

今はいけないよ

と言ってもどうしても来て、と言うので行きました。

もうびりびりに違いないと思い急いで戻ってくると・・

床に本

立体のサボテン群のページ
高さ25ＣＭくらい。

ヒナがいない

あれ？
 
ヒナどこ？

と呼ぶと

ヒナはＴＶとピアノの隙間から半身を出し私を見つめています。

ん？
どうした？

あ、そうか。
飛び出す絵本、始めてみたから驚いて逃げて隠れてたのか。

我が娘よ・・
おマイさんはラブリーすぎる・・

ママはおマイさんを愛している。
クレイジーフォーユー

嫁には出さないことに決めた！

MTVのペアレンタルコントロールどころじゃすまさないぞ。
（息子や娘の彼氏、彼女を追っ払おうとする親の番組）

とかママは思うのでした。

 怖くないよ。

と声をかけて私が本を開くとすぐに傍に寄ってきました。
 怖くて逃げても興味はあって見たいのです。

すぐになれて動物をひっぱり、サボテンをひっぱりでした（笑）
 レバーを引くことを教えると夢中になってレバーを動かしていました＾＾

Philosophy - Part 1 Chapter 2

These are just my personal notes. I am studying Philosophy as a hobby.
The information shown on this blog may not be accurate.
(I may misunderstand what books say.)
Don't read my blog to learn about philosophy.


Part 1: The Nuts and Bolts of Philosophy

Chapter 2: Being There


The Myth-Math of Existence

Before formal schools of philosophy got started, people were inventing myths to help explain reality. These myths usually portrayed natural forces as people or gods. By thinking about natural forces in human terms, people made sense of the strange and mysterious things going on around them: rain, thunder, sunshine, the seasons, birth, death.

These myths did not attempt to explain what reality is physically made of, they were concerned with explaining how reality affects human activities and relationships.

The first philosophers differed from the mythmakers by explaining reality in more general, less familiar terms.

Thales
624BC - 546BC
This ancient Greek philosopher, (sometimes is considered the first philosopher) said the all things were made out of water - everything that exists is really water in a more or less complicated form.

Other early philosophers believed that everything was made of four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Others thought the world was made of a single substance that could be broken down into tiny, indivisible particles called atoms.

These early theories about reality are not scientific as the word is used today - that is, they do not result from experimental tests or controlled observation. But they are impersonal and suggested rules for the makeup of reality and how it is organized. They wanted to know not only what reality is, but also how it is shaped and how it works.

To Order is to understand

Technological developments helped philosophers learn to think about reality in terms of impersonal rules of order.

Practical arts like geometory, navigation, and medicine, for example, were developing in ancient Greece at about the time of the first philosophers.

Pythagoras
is also know as an important mathematician.

Math and other technological arts helped people stop thinking about reality as a big family of gods and start seeing the world as being made of things you can use to make more things, arranged according to mathmatical rules. Craftmen and artisans started it all by inventing technical temrs for their work. Philosophers went further. Many of these terms refer to physical reality, like atoms and the elements.


Enter metaphisics

Metaphysical terms
refer not to what relality is physically made of, but to how it is organized and how it works.
ex) forms, substance, essence, categories, spirit, monads and moumena are metaphysical terms.
God, too, is a metaphysical concept.

Metaphysics
is a branch of philosophy that studies the makeup, function, and organization of reality in general.
is also used more specifically to refer to those aspects of reality that cannot be observed and measured, such as God and virtue.

Is There a God?

Throughout the middle Ages in Europe and the Middle east, a philosophical battle was waged between religious authorities, who felt doctorine should be accepted on faith alone, and philosophers who were interested in combining religious ideas with the teaching of the Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle.

Meister Eckhart
Germany
God is nothing more than nature itself and that this God/nature created itsels.
His attempt  to square philosophy with religion resulted in charges of heresy.


Perfection Is Truth

One argument goes that because the world exists, it must have a cause, namely, God. Might the whole thing have been an accident? No, reasoned the medieval philosophers, because reality seems so well organized and able to support life that God must have planned it.

But maybe what seems planned was still just accidental, and maybe the organization that seems to indicate the existence of God is really due to the way people think. Maybe order is just an idea in people's minds.

To this objection the medieval philosophers offered their most imaginative idea of all: They reasoned that the idea of God is the most perfect idea possible. They also argued that one characteristic of perfection is existence. God must therefore exist. This argument is known as the "ontological proof" of God's existence.


Being Leads to Knowing

Whether of not you accept any one explanation of reality depends partly on the question of how you know things, and how the ability to know things fits in with the question of being.


Being and Thinking

Some said human beings are not capable of understanding God, so we have to take his existence on faith. Others said that knowledge reveals God's nature.

Baruch Spinoza
Portuguese-Dutch philosopher. A vialist. He said matter itself could think, all of reality are alive and capable of knowing, reality itself is God. god and nature, for Spinoza, are two sides of the same coin.

Vialism
A vialist. Everything that makes up reality is alive and capable of thinking.

Dualism
A dualist. Everything can be separated into two components: material and spiritual. The spiritual part of reality makes thinking and knowledge possible. Material aspect cannot think.


Dualism vs. Materialism

Rene Descartes
French philosopher, the most famous dualist of the 17th century.
He believed that a spiritual portion of the mind allows us to understand perceptions that are conveyed to us phisically by our senses. Spiritual portion of reality was confined to God and the human mind alone. the rest of reality was simply physical.

Descartes's dualism made a neat separation between physical and metaphysical reality. An important result of this separation was that it allowed philosophers and scientists to study the natural world without having to worry about supernatural questions.

Since Descartes's time, many philosophers have argued that we should stop asking metaphysical questions - questions about God and anything else that we cannot verify through observation.

Even so, other philosophers continued to see knowledge itself as metaphysical, much as Descartes did. Starting Descartes's time - the seventeenth century - philosophers began arguing for or against two distinct ways of relating being to knowing. These ways are known as rationalism and empiricism.

Rationalism
sees knowledge as metaphysical, existing independently of physical reality.

Empiricism
sees knowledge as based on observable, physical reality.

-----
Plato
Perfect, unchanging, ideal forms lend order and understanding to physical reality.

Aristotle
Each identifiable thing has an essence that supplies it with a purpose culminating in the prime mover.

Thomas Aquinas
Reality ws created by God according to his plan (confirmed by the "ontological proof").

Spinoza
Reality is all one substance, including God and nature; everything taht exists is a part of this one substance, which is capable of thought (vialism).

Decartes
Physical reality works according to mechanical principles. In addition, there is spiritual reality, including God and the mind, that can think (dualism).
-----

 

■  The first ancient Greek philosophers made a distinction between physical reality and human social reality.

■  Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies how reality functions. The term is also used to refer to whatever cannot be verified through observation, including God.

■  Idea about God often depend on ideas about knowing.　

■  Descartes theorized a clear separation of physical and metaphysical reality in the 17th century.

Philosophy - Part 1 Chapter 1

These are just my personal memo. I am studying philosophy as a hobby.

The information shown on this blog may not be accurate.

(I may misunderstand what books say.)

Don’t read my blog to learn about philosophy.

Part 1: The nuts and Bolts of Philosophy

Chapter 1: The Big Picture

Why ask Why

The fact is, philosophy is unavoidable. You live you life according to idea and assumptions about what the world is like that you picked up along the way.

If you are not satisfied with the way things are as you think you should be – and who is? – you might want to rethink your idea about what reality is all about. This rethinking is precisely what philosophers have been doing over the centuries.

For example, many people used to think that whenever anything bad happened, the gods must be angry. They thought their gods wanted them to show their loyalty and obedience by making big sacrifices, even of their own children. Gradually, however those people with more philosophical turn of mind began questioning this assumption. Maybe the gods would be just as happy if we let our children live? Such and idea involved a whole rethinking of what life, God, and human nature are all about – just the kind of rethinking  philosophers do.

“Know yourself” by Plato

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Bu Socrates

You Are What You Think

The Thinker, it can do some pretty important things. In particular, it can help you think about thinking.

A Slice of Life

Philosophy consists of all kind of thinking, including the social sciences, natural science, math, and religious thinking.

Is You Ism or Is You Ain’t My Philosophy?

Lexicon: a lexicon is a specialized vocabulary, or group of words, used by a particular group of people and not shared by most every one else (jargon).

An Ism: an ism is a system of belief, or a way of thinking that considers certain ideas to be true or important while, inevitably, leaves our other ideas.

Some popular isms within philosophy:

Sophism, skepticism, stoicism, scholasticism, mysticism, Taoism, empiricism, rationalism, idealism, naturalism, materialism, pragmatism, existentialism, antidisestablishmentarianism, to name a few.

What’s more, philosophers have developed subdivisions within philosophy to deal with the deep questions they like to ask.

The main subdivisions have to do with being, knowing and acting.

Lexicon:

Ontology is the study of being or existence.

Ontologists want to now what we mean when we say something exists.

Epistemology is the study of knowing.

Epistemologists want to know what we mean when we say we know something.

Ethics is the study of moral and social behavior.

Ethical philosophers want to know what it means to be a person and how people can and should act.

How the Parts Fit Together

Ontology (being), epistemology (knowing), ethics (acting), you can think these three different subjects separately. But they all work together to make philosophy want it is. Different philosophies place different emphasis on these subjects.

For example, Plato’s epistemology and ethics are derived from his ontology. This simply means that his ideas about knowing and about how we should act are based on his ideas about existence.

Rene Descartes bases his ideas about being and acting on his ideas about knowing

Both Plato and Descartes are different from a post-structuralist philosopher like Michel Foucault, who believes that being and knowing depend on how people act.

These three branches (subdivisions) of philosophy work together and it has taken some philosophical thinking to see them as separate. For example, one of the main things that distinguished the earliest philosophy from the myths the Greeks used to explain reality was the philosophical awareness that ontology, or existence, is not simply a cosmic reflection of ethics, or how people act. Whereas the myths presented reality as completely involved in, and centered around, human behavior, the first philosophers saw ontology, or existence, independently from human action.

This insight had led to new questions and answers about how people fit in with the rest of reality, and how human knowledge affects this relationship.

■  Whether you know it or not, you’ve got a philosophy. This is because you can’t help but define reality for yourself.

■  Sort out your ideas as well as those of others, and decide which of them have meaning for you.

■  Philosophy consists of all kinds of thinking, including the social sciences, natural science, math, and religious thinking.

■  Three main branches of philosophy are ontology (being), epistemology (knowing), and ethics (acting).

Betta

My 4 year old son has got his first pet, fish, since the last weekend.
Betta B Splendent
Habitat: Southeast Asia
Color: opaque


4歳になる我が息子は始めてのペットを手に入れました。
闘魚、白、原産地 東南アジア