Philosophers From The United States

"It was one to three football fields in length. It was massive, about 300 feet above the ground. It had three lights on the points of its triangle and a large red light beneath."

"(Greer's response to: How would zero-point energy transform the global economy?] It would replace everything. You wouldn’t need oil, but the $30 trillion-a-year global economy would quickly grow to $200 trillion because there’d be clean, sustainable energy, and manufacturing and transportation would be very inexpensive. Eighty percent of the world’s population lives in amazing poverty, and it would lift that. It would revolutionize the planet. People talk about the “peace dividend,” but it’s time for a “space dividend.” The entity that runs this stuff is the world’s largested RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization]. They used to be called MJ – Majestic – 12 – but the last term I heard was PI-40. It’s not one society. There are sweeping conspiracy theories about the Masons, Bilderbergers, Trilateral Commission and Counsel of Foreign Relations. I know people in all these entities, and most of them couldn’t find their ass in a well-lighted room. It’s much more prosaic and nuanced than that."

"Dr. Steven Greer is a global authority on extraterrestrials who has previous works with Sirius and Unacknowledged and now founder of the Disclosure Project, brings this documentary to talk about shattering the bounds of secrecy of the ET phenomenon. People seeing UFO’s (Unidentified Flying Objects) is not a new phenomenon. What has been sightings spoken has turned into sightings being video’s with cell phones making it impossible to deny that, at the very least, something is happening in our world. Dr. Greer has submitted briefings to five presidents on the subject and with information that he has gathered. While the government creates their own narrative based on fear, Dr. Greer wants to put the facts together in this brutally honest documentary. He believes that it is possible to create a relationship between humans and Extraterrestrials (ET). This documentary brings groundbreaking video/photographic evidence along with the interviews of Princeton’s PEAR lab Adam Curry, civil rights attorney Daniel Sheehan and CIA’s Dr. Russel Targ. These interviews are as equally important as with what Dr. Greer has to share. The most important is Greer’s story of being visited as a child and through learning joint meditation with the ET’s, he was able to create the CE5 protocol which allows goodwill telepathy inviting ET’s to know where the good guys are."

"[Greer's response to: Why do they feel the ruling elite] threatened?] It would decentralize power. Right now the centralized financial and oil system is so integrated with the way the world runs... About... 50% of people involved in these super secret projects want this stuff out. They know we're running out of time environmentally & geopolitically. I have no doubt that the outcome will be peaceful, that these technologies will completely rehabilitate Earth's fortunes & environment, and eliminate poverty... in our lifetimes. But the question is, how much madness has to go on between now and then?"

"The data that can bear on the confirmation of perceptual hypotheses includes, in the general case, considerably less than the organism may know."

"Suppose that the organism is given the problem of determining the analysis of a stimulus at a certain level of representation- e.g., the problem of determining which sequence of words a given utterance encodes. Since, in the general case, transducer outputs underdetermine perceptual analyses, we can think of the solution of such problems as involving processes of non-demonstrative inference. In particular, we can think of each input system as a computational mechanism which projects and confirms a certain class of hypotheses on the basis of a certain body of data."

"I hate relativism. I hate relativism more than I hate anything else, excepting, maybe, fiberglass powerboats... surely, surely, no one but a relativist would drive a fiberglass powerboat."

"[T]he degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system … simplicity, plausibility, and conservatism are properties that theories have in virtue of their relation to the whole structure of scientific beliefs taken collectively. A measure of conservatism or simplicity would be a metric over global properties of belief systems."

"If there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me."

"FACULTY PSYCHOLOGY is getting to be respectable again after centuries of hanging around with phrenologists and other dubious types. By I mean, roughly , the view that many fundamentally different kinds of psychological mechanisms must be postulated in order to explain the facts of mental life . Faculty psychology takes seriously the apparent heterogeneity of the mental and is impressed by such prima facie differences as between, say, sensation and perception, volition and cognition, learning and remembering, or language and thought."

"Fodor (who is now a close friend) is a gentle man inside a burly body, and prone to an even burlier style of arguing. He is shy and voluble at the same time … a formidable polemicist burdened with a sensitive soul.... Disagreeing with Jerry on a philosophical issue, especially one dear to his heart can be a chastening experience.... His quickness of mind, inventiveness, and sharp wit are not to be tangled with before your first cup of coffee in the morning. Adding Jerry Fodor to the faculty at Rutgers [University] instantly put it on the map, Fodor being by common consent the leading philosopher of mind in the world today. I had met him in England in the seventies and … found him to be the genuine article, intellectually speaking (though we do not always see eye to eye)."

"This monograph is about the current status of the program; not so much its evidential status (which I take to be, for the most part, an open question ) as what the program is and where it does, and doesn't, seem natural to try to apply it. Specifically I want to do the following things: (1) distinguish the general claim that there are psychological faculties from a particular version of that claim, which I shall call the modularity thesis; (2) enumerate some of the properties that modular cognitive systems are likely to exhibit in virtue of their modularity ; and (3) consider whether it is possible to formulate any plausible hypothesis about which mental processes are likely to be the modular ones. Toward the end of the discussion, I'll also try to do something by way of (4) disentangling the faculty jmodularity issues from what I'll call the thesis of Epistemic Boundedness: the idea that there are endogenously determined constraints on the kinds of problems that human beings can solve, hence on the kinds of things that we can know."

"Philosophers who have wanted to banish the ghost from the machine have usually sought to do so by showing that truths about behavior can sometimes, and in some sense, logically implicate truths about mental states. In so doing, they have rather strongly suggested that the exorcism can be carried through only if such a logical connection can be made out. … [O]nce it has been made clear that the choice between dualism and behaviorism is not exhaustive, a major motivation for the defense of behaviorism is removed: we are not required to be behaviorists simply in order to avoid being dualists."

"When taken as a way of modeling cognitive architecture, really does represent an approach that is quite different from that of the classical cognitive science that it seeks to replace. Classical models of the mind were derived from the structure of Turing and Von Neumann machines. They are not, of course, committed to the details of these machines as exemplified in Turing's original formulation or in typical commercial computers—only to the basic idea that the kind of computing that is relevant to understanding cognition involves operations on symbols.. In contrast, connectionists propose to design systems that can exhibit intelligent behavior without storing, retrieving, or otherwise operating on structured symbolic expressions. The style of processing carried out in such models is thus strikingly unlike what goes on when conventional machines are computing some function."

"From the point of view of semantics, errors must be accidents: if in the extension of "horse" there are no cows, then it cannot be required for the meaning of "horse" that cows be called horses. On the other hand, if "horse" did not mean that which it means, and if it were an error for horses, it would never be possible for a cow to be called "horse." Putting the two things together, it can be seen that the possibility of falsely saying "this is a horse" presupposes the existence of a semantic basis for saying it truly, but not vice versa. If we put this in terms of the crude causal theory, the fact that cows cause one to say "horse" depends on the fact that horses cause one to say "horse"; but the fact that horses cause one to say "horse" does not depend on the fact that cows cause one to say "horse"..."

"If people differ in an absolutely general way in their estimations of epistemic relevance, and if we follow the holism of meaning and individuate intentional states by way of the totality of their epistemic bonds, the consequence will be that two people (or, for that matter, two temporal sections of the same person) will never be in the same intentional state. Therefore, two people can never be subsumed under the same intentional generalizations. And, therefore, intentional generalization can never be successful. And, therefore again, there is no hope for an intentional psychology."

"All men will come to me in due time, but theirs is the agony of awaiting."

"The sole purpose of man on earth is to manifest his Creator. He has no other purpose."

"The future of great business lies in man’s comprehension of the principle of Balance in Natural Law and his determination to work WITH it instead of against it."

""The underlying principle of Balance in Nature’s One Law is equality of interchange between the pairs of opposites in any transaction in Nature. That principle must eventually be observed by big business, and the go-getter salesman who selfishly thinks that the sale he makes is the only thing that counts is not giving equally for what he takes."

"Tiredness and fatigue are effects caused by ignorance of Nature and disobedience to her inexorable law. You may command Nature to the extent only in which you are willing to obey her. You cannot intelligently obey that which you do not comprehend. Ask of Nature that you may be one with her and she will whisper her secrets to you to the extent in which you are prepared to listen. Seek to be alone much to commune with Nature and be thus inspired by her mighty whisperings within your consciousness. Nature is a most jealous god, for she will not whisper her inspiring revelations to you unless you are absolutely alone with her."

"Equal interchange of goods and service between buyer and seller is the keynote of tomorrow’s business world when the vision of the modern business man awakens him to the wisdom of writing that policy into his code of ethics."

"I have found out that the real essentials of greatness in men are not written in books, nor can they be found in the schools, They are written into the inner consciousness of everyone who intensely searches for perfection in creative achievement and are understandable to such men only."

"Successful men of all the ages have learned to multiply themselves by gathering thought energy into a high potential and using it in the direction of the purpose intended. Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common. The most conspicuous of these is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men’s lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man’s life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws. The geniuses have learned how to gather thought energy together to use for transforming their conceptions into material forms. The thinking of creative and successful men is never exerted in any direction other that that intended. That is why great men produce a prodigious amount of work, seemingly without effort and without fatigue. The amount of work such men leave to posterity is amazing. When one considers such men of our times as Edison, Henry Ford or Theodore Roosevelt, one will find the three characteristics I have mentioned common to every one of them."

"I will see beauty and goodness in all things. From all that is unlovely shall my vision be immune."

""Joy and happiness are the indicators of balance in a human machine, just as a change in the familiar hum in a mechanism immediately indicates an abnormalcy to the practiced ear of the mechanic. An inner joyousness, amounting to ecstasy, is the normal condition of the genius mind. Any lack of that joyousness develops body-destroying toxins. That inner ecstasy of the mind is the secret fountain of perpetual youth and strength in any man. He who finds it finds omnipotence and omniscience."

"[Beauty is] "Perfection of rhythm, balanced perfection of rhythm. Everything in Nature is expressed by rhythmic waves of light. Every thought and action is a light-wave of thought and action. If one interprets the God within one, one’s thoughts and actions must be balanced rhythmic waves. Ugliness, fears, failures and diseases arise from unbalanced thoughts and actions. Therefore think beauty always if one desire vitality of body and happiness.""

"Action is man's free will right, but the reaction is nature's."

"From the 1880s through the first decade of the twentieth century, Benjamin F. Tucker led the Individualists. Born into a prosperous Massachusetts family and educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tucker never quite managed to subdue his elitism. He began his anarchist career while in his teens, and in 1875, when he was twenty-one, became associate editor of The Word, Ezra Heywood's anarchist-feminist journal. In 1881 he founded Liberty, which quickly became the most important Individualist journal. Tucker derived his economic and political ideas principally from two sources: Josiah Warren and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon, the French printer whom all anarchists considered their intellectual father, developed an economic and social system that abolished government while it emphasized economic equality. Proudhon believed that such equality could be achieved only if individuals were left free to work out with each other the kinds of social and economic relationships most compatible with the autonomy of each. Josiah Warren was an American inventor who independently developed similar ideas. Warren spent most of his life devising social experiments in which his ideas could be tested, in the hope of proving that individuals could live together harmoniously without interference from the state...it was Tucker who brought their ideas together in Liberty and whose efforts attracted a solid core of followers and sympathizers."

"In nearly every respect the sinister Johann Most seemed the antithesis of the handsome, well-bred Tucker, yet in some ways they were alike; both possessed compelling personalities that brought them numerous followers, and both were men with such imperious attitudes and intransigent opinions that they ended up by alienating those who had once been devoted admirers. Naturally two men, at once so different and so alike, were bound to clash."

"Passive resistance and boycotting are now prominent features of every great national movement."

"Nonfeminist anarchists like Victor Yarros and Benjamin Tucker castigated their comrades who supported woman suffrage, however lukewarmly, as reactionaries bent on preventing the development of anarchy...Georgia Replogle, by trade a compositor, coedited a small anarchist periodical, Egoism, in which she argued that equal work deserved equal pay. Nonsense, retorted Benjamin Tucker in Liberty: "Apart from the special inferiority of woman woman as printer...there exists the general inferiority of woman as worker." Even skilled women, he insisted, demonstrated "a lack of ambition, of self-reliance, of a sense of responsibility. ""

"The idea that Anarchy can be inaugurated by force is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by force. Force cannot preserve Anarchy; neither can it bring it. In fact, one of the inevitable influences of the use of force is to postpone Anarchy. The only thing that force can ever do for us is to save us from extinction, to give us a longer lease of life in which to try to secure Anarchy by the only methods that can ever bring it. But this advantage is always purchased at immense cost, and its attainment is always attended by frightful risk. The attempt should be made only when the risk of any other course is greater."

"Tucker opposed violent revolution and believed in the achievement of his goals by education: When all are rational egoists, none will submit to exploitation, and by passive resistance they will starve out the state and the monopolists."

"When a physician sees that his patient's strength is being exhausted so rapidly by the intensity of his agony that he will die of exhaustion before the medical processes inaugurated have a chance to do their curative work, he administers an opiate. But a good physician is always loath to do so, knowing that one of the influences of the opiate is to interfere with and defeat the medical processes themselves. He never does it except as a choice of evils. It is the same with the use of force, whether of the mob or of the State, upon diseased society; and not only those who prescribe its indiscriminate use as a sovereign remedy and a permanent tonic, but all who ever propose it as a cure, and even all who would lightly and unnecessarily resort to it, not as a cure, but as an expedient, are social quacks."

"I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified."

"But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder. Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act. And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act,—at least in theory."

"The Anarchists most certainly believe in the Church; only they insist that all its work shall be purely voluntary, and that its discoveries and achievements, however beneficial, shall not be imposed upon the individual by authority."

"I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of human society that forbids the invaded to protect themselves in whatever way they can."

"The Anarchists believe in the family; they only insist that free competition and experiment shall always be allowed in order that it may be determined what form of family best secures this object."

"The Anarchists believe in civil society; only they insist that the freedom of civil society shall be complete instead of partial."

"It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth. But if you can compel the enemy to waste his ammunition by drawing his fire on some thoroughly protected spot; if you can, by annoying and goading and harassing him in all possible ways, drive him to the last resort of stripping bare his tyrannous and invasive purposes and put him in the attitude of a designing villain assailing honest men for purposes of plunder; there is no better strategy."

"The Anarchists believe in the State; only they insist that the greater part, if not all, of the necessity for its existence is the result of an artificial limitation of the freedom of civil society, and that the completion of industrial freedom may one day so harmonize individuals that it will no longer be necessary to provide a guarantee of political freedom."

"As a general rule, the better people are, the more Anarchists and Socialists will be found among them."

"If the defenders of privilege desire to exclude from this country the opponents of privilege, they should see to it that Congress omits the taking of the eleventh census. For the eleventh census, if taken, will undoubtedly emphasize these two lessons of the tenth: first, that foreign immigration does not increase dishonesty and violence among us, but does increase the love of liberty; second, that the population of the world is gradually dividing into two classes, Anarchists and criminals."

""Passive resistance," said Ferdinand Lassalle, with an obtuseness thoroughly German, "is the resistance which does not resist." Never was there a greater mistake. It is the only resistance which in these days of military discipline resists with any result. There is not a tyrant in the civilized world today who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a bloody revolution rather than see himself confronted by any large fraction of his subjects determined not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army is willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people who do not even gather in the streets but stay at home and stand back on their rights. Neither the ballot nor the bayonet is to play any great part in the coming struggle; passive resistance is the instrument by which the revolutionary force is destined to secure in the last great conflict the people's rights forever."

"Taking this view of the matter, the Anarchists contend that defence is not an essential of the State, but that aggression is."

"What relations should exist between the State and the Individual? The general method of determining these is to apply some theory of ethics involving a basis of moral obligation. In this method the Anarchists have no confidence. The idea of moral obligation, of inherent rights and duties, they totally discard. They look upon all obligations, not as moral, but as social, and even then not really as obligations except as these have been consciously and voluntarily assumed. If a man makes an agreement with men, the latter may combine to hold him to his agreement; but, in the absence of such agreement, no man, so far as the Anarchists are aware, has made any agreement with God or with any other power of any order whatsoever. The Anarchists are not only utilitarians, but egoists in the farthest and fullest sense. So far as inherent right is concerned, might is its only measure."

"Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction. Its growth in importance is but an evidence of the tendency of progress toward the abolition of the State."

"The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction."