Central to Task Domination and the necessary neutralization of undue influence is ' thinking the world's as Carnap put it, understanding the conditions of existence sufficiently to be able to make responsible successful behavioral hypotheses intended to further the aggrandizement of the milieu of benign social existence, the philosophical exercise in practice. This is the Intellectual Duty of civilizing humans. It requires intellectual talent, intellectual curiosity, and the personal mastery of paradigms and their databases.
The sum of doing one's civilized duties, engaging in iterative attempts at a civilized life with some success, is the possession of Meaning in that life. It is to have an expected and desired tomorrow to which one is competent in a society with an expected and desired tomorrow to which it is competent to the limit of the possible. That is the Light of civilization that beckons. The opposite of that quest for meaning is the denial of the possibility of meaning, not a different basis of meaning but a total absence of it. That defines what is traditionally termed the barbaric.
The catastrophe of Meaning which befell Western Civilization in the Twentieth century had its origins in the Science of the Eighteenth century. I am not denying the value of science. I am saying that it changed our conditions of existence. Prerequisites of paradigm and database and, yes, talent were suddenly necessary to participate fully in the political economy. Then came 1905 and Relativity and intellectual talent became paramount in social status. That bar to being a socioeconomic actor is now coming down with powerful AI systems promising to open rewarding venues to normal intelligence. This is a gain for civilization and the whole of humankind. We should glory in it.
Do Well and Be Well.
The sum of doing one's civilized duties, engaging in iterative attempts at a civilized life with some success, is the possession of Meaning in that life. It is to have an expected and desired tomorrow to which one is competent in a society with an expected and desired tomorrow to which it is competent to the limit of the possible. That is the Light of civilization that beckons. The opposite of that quest for meaning is the denial of the possibility of meaning, not a different basis of meaning but a total absence of it. That defines what is traditionally termed the barbaric.
The catastrophe of Meaning which befell Western Civilization in the Twentieth century had its origins in the Science of the Eighteenth century. I am not denying the value of science. I am saying that it changed our conditions of existence. Prerequisites of paradigm and database and, yes, talent were suddenly necessary to participate fully in the political economy. Then came 1905 and Relativity and intellectual talent became paramount in social status. That bar to being a socioeconomic actor is now coming down with powerful AI systems promising to open rewarding venues to normal intelligence. This is a gain for civilization and the whole of humankind. We should glory in it.
Do Well and Be Well.
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