14.6.16
Interest on loans
In Bava Metzia there is the היתר עיסקא. I forget the exact arrangement.From what I recall in Bava Metzia ch 8 it is you give a fellow a certain amount of money to buy goods and to sell at a profit. Half is a loan that must be paid back.The other half is a partnership. if a loss is incurred both share the loss. If profit then both share the profit.
Where there are Muslims. you can expect they will kill infidels pretty much on a continuous basis.
I tend to be not surprised when I hear abut a Muslim killing people. In the USA this was unknown expect in international terror incidents that were in the news.There were not Muslims except for Iranians fleeing from the Islamic revolution over there. But then I was in a country where there were Muslims. Then it was common to hear about Muslims blowing up buses all the time. At least a few times per week. To I got used to hearing about this. I guess it was a shock to me the first times I heard about it but eventually i got used to the idea. Where there are Muslims. you can expect they will kill infidels pretty much on a continuous basis. No surprises here.
Dark Side [the Sitra Achra סטרא אחרא]
There has been a tendency in academia to deny numinous reality.
This can be traced to different sources. I could go through a list, but that would not be helpful.
The problem that I see is that numinous reality has two sides to it. The closer and more seductive Dark Side [the Sitra Achra סטרא אחרא]which mimics holiness. This is what people fall into without being aware of it when they get involved in mystical practices.
The best solution to this problem was decided a long time ago by Lithuanian yeshivas. Learn Ethics and the Oral Law and avoid any and all mystical business. The idea here is that (1) There is numinous reality. (2) The Dark Side is close. (3) Therefore anything beyond learning the Law of Moses,the Oral and written Law is fraught with danger and thus should be avoided.
This is not to say there were no people that by means of their fasting and personal service towards God were able to get a close connection to numinous reality from the side of holiness. Rather it is considered that it is so dangerous as to not be worth it.
In some groups, they think that their sanctioned leader was able to get beyond the danger zone. These are usually the people that are the most deep into the Dark Side.
"Whom the gods would destroy, first they make insane." The first step of the Dark Side is to set up sanctioned accepted leaders that people think are holy.
This can be traced to different sources. I could go through a list, but that would not be helpful.
The problem that I see is that numinous reality has two sides to it. The closer and more seductive Dark Side [the Sitra Achra סטרא אחרא]which mimics holiness. This is what people fall into without being aware of it when they get involved in mystical practices.
The best solution to this problem was decided a long time ago by Lithuanian yeshivas. Learn Ethics and the Oral Law and avoid any and all mystical business. The idea here is that (1) There is numinous reality. (2) The Dark Side is close. (3) Therefore anything beyond learning the Law of Moses,the Oral and written Law is fraught with danger and thus should be avoided.
This is not to say there were no people that by means of their fasting and personal service towards God were able to get a close connection to numinous reality from the side of holiness. Rather it is considered that it is so dangerous as to not be worth it.
In some groups, they think that their sanctioned leader was able to get beyond the danger zone. These are usually the people that are the most deep into the Dark Side.
"Whom the gods would destroy, first they make insane." The first step of the Dark Side is to set up sanctioned accepted leaders that people think are holy.
13.6.16
Mind Body Problem. Beyond the Veil of Perception.
. But my own impression is "empirical realism" excludes a simulation. But your question has lots of different aspects to it. And I am not sure how to condense a simple answer. Mainly we know reality even on the most physical plane is radically different than what we see. We have intellect that enables us to survive, not to perceive reality. So we have to deduce it. On the quantum level things in fact are just possibilities until perceived. So there is no preferred frame of reference. Schopenhauer put it in the best way: representation is half subject and half object. So the simulation is a bit too simplistic. What is going on is the observer depends for his character on the observed, and the observed depends for its character on how it is observed or measured.
Evolution of the mind came about because of the need for reproduction and survival. The mind is good at that. It would not be good if what it perceived was unrelated to what is really there. In any case your question is along the lines of two things: How do we know things? What is really there?
These are objects of discussion in Plato. And in fact he has two areas of reality like Kant. What are called the "world ideas." To Kant that is called unconditioned reality. Still there is a connection.
I would like to take the liberty of of quoting the PhD thesis of Dr Ross (ch 3 sec 4):
"Since Descartes it has been a serious dilemma why a representation caused by an external object need bear any resemblance to the object or tell us anything about it. Any cause is only sufficient to its effect, and sensations as effects conceivably could have any number of possible causes, including God, the deceiving demon, etc. Kant sought to circumvent this problem by proposing that the forms of objectivity of external objects are not conveyed to us causally from without but are actually imposed by the subject from within. This "Copernican Revolution"[76] stood the traditional relation on its head. " He finds this unsatisfactory and thus comes up with a new system. One great advantage of this is he is quite aware of Quantum Mechanics and yet has not fallen into scientism. His answer is knowledge that we know not by thought and not by sensation.
eruditeknight.
I should admit I am personally involved in the answer to this. I felt deeply in Israel that there was some kind of coming into being of a new level of consciousness into the world. I found the world not ready for it so I pushed it away from my self. Probably a mistake. But i was not able to go back and correct it later.
Evil is contagious. Do not hang out with the wrong crowd.
An example of how there are hidden influences from one person to another is purely biologicl temrs is a woman's period.
Sapolsky {Stanford} says people girls can make their periods simultaneous.
That is when girls live at home they have a certain time frame when they do not see and then a time frame in which seeing blood is possible. anywhere from 30 to 40 days.
When they live together one girl can affect the others so that their periods coincide. This is so well known to biology students that he heard one girl bragging to another that in the summer camp she was at she had all the girls synchronized with her after a very short time.
If you have listened to Sapolsky a little you would know where he is going with this.
That there are lots of hidden biological things that affect people and cause them to act in certain ways.
So what you learn is you have to be very careful with whom you hang out.
If you hang out with bad people or insane people be sure this will get into you eventually.
That is to say evil is contagious.
Sapolsky {Stanford} says people girls can make their periods simultaneous.
That is when girls live at home they have a certain time frame when they do not see and then a time frame in which seeing blood is possible. anywhere from 30 to 40 days.
When they live together one girl can affect the others so that their periods coincide. This is so well known to biology students that he heard one girl bragging to another that in the summer camp she was at she had all the girls synchronized with her after a very short time.
If you have listened to Sapolsky a little you would know where he is going with this.
That there are lots of hidden biological things that affect people and cause them to act in certain ways.
So what you learn is you have to be very careful with whom you hang out.
If you hang out with bad people or insane people be sure this will get into you eventually.
That is to say evil is contagious.
Kant
I spent a good deal of time in philosophical and religious searching. The thing I settled on as representing the most accurate picture of reality is the Kant school . That is in terms of question like "How do we know things?" and in terms of questions on meaning and in terms of the ultimate nature of things. Mainly this was process of excluding nonviable options. That is going through a lot of different thinkers and trying to evaluate if what they said made sense to me.
So I do not take a religious fanatic approach to Torah. Hard to explain what that means. Mainly that only sanctioned religious leaders have the truth. That seemed to me to be utterly false. But on the other hand I felt there is a deep truth in the Law of Moses and in the Oral Law. So I needed some way of making sense of things.
I could go through the whole list of philosophers and thinkers that I went through but their names would not mean much. [Some more thoroughly than others.]
A lot of philosophers hit on some deep aspect of truth. But in many of their systems I found flaws. So that is my basic approach in terms of the question of meaning.
How did I go about this? Here are some of the factors I used: Observation of people, assuming there is some connection between what people do and their world view. Internal observation. Common sense. A good deal of learning in depth so as not to dismiss off hand anything just because at first it seems problematic. A good deal of Physics and Math and Torah.
Appendix: I like the critics of Kant very much because of the light they shed on Kant.
The intuitionists, Prichard, Michael Huemer, G.E Moore have some great ideas but in the long run I think they did not try hard enough to understand Kant. I have a great deal of respect for John Locke and the empiricists and the rationalists, but in each there are serious flaws. Both in each individual school of thought and also as general approaches. Of course Plato and Aristotle are great but still I had to find some approach that made sense to me. I was not able to just depend on ancient thinkers that were dealing with different issues.
Some critiques on Kant simply miss the point and do not understand the issues between the rationalists and the empiricists which lead him to his conclusions. A lot of modern philosophers are simply innocent when it comes to Physics, so what they say in that area and conclusions they draw by what they think they know are usually "off." Some have been overly awed by science. Some have "Physics envy." I do not want to go into it all right now. My point is my approach comes mainly came from eliminating other possibilities
So I do not take a religious fanatic approach to Torah. Hard to explain what that means. Mainly that only sanctioned religious leaders have the truth. That seemed to me to be utterly false. But on the other hand I felt there is a deep truth in the Law of Moses and in the Oral Law. So I needed some way of making sense of things.
I could go through the whole list of philosophers and thinkers that I went through but their names would not mean much. [Some more thoroughly than others.]
A lot of philosophers hit on some deep aspect of truth. But in many of their systems I found flaws. So that is my basic approach in terms of the question of meaning.
How did I go about this? Here are some of the factors I used: Observation of people, assuming there is some connection between what people do and their world view. Internal observation. Common sense. A good deal of learning in depth so as not to dismiss off hand anything just because at first it seems problematic. A good deal of Physics and Math and Torah.
Appendix: I like the critics of Kant very much because of the light they shed on Kant.
The intuitionists, Prichard, Michael Huemer, G.E Moore have some great ideas but in the long run I think they did not try hard enough to understand Kant. I have a great deal of respect for John Locke and the empiricists and the rationalists, but in each there are serious flaws. Both in each individual school of thought and also as general approaches. Of course Plato and Aristotle are great but still I had to find some approach that made sense to me. I was not able to just depend on ancient thinkers that were dealing with different issues.
Some critiques on Kant simply miss the point and do not understand the issues between the rationalists and the empiricists which lead him to his conclusions. A lot of modern philosophers are simply innocent when it comes to Physics, so what they say in that area and conclusions they draw by what they think they know are usually "off." Some have been overly awed by science. Some have "Physics envy." I do not want to go into it all right now. My point is my approach comes mainly came from eliminating other possibilities
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