from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Do things change if we change?

Dear Friends,

This Sunday we are discussing: Do things change if we change?

We also have an essay by Lola on the subject, and although I haven't
prepared an essay myself I wish to say the following on the topic.

If we change our point of view on some state of affairs, we tend to see
that situation as we say, in new light. If a politician lies to us and
we discover that they lied to us, then we have changed, buy knowing the
truth, and the politician has changed from our view by virtue of our new
knowledge. But is this virtue a causal virtue? The politician lied
before we knew the truth so by discovering that they lied nothing has
changed in the person themselves.

So, yes, at a certain level, things do change, by what has changed in
our perception of this thing. Hence the change in us is a change in the
information we have and/or our interpretation of the information we
already have about the thing. In effect it enough that we change for
things to change, it is not necessary that our change causes any
physical change in the thing itself.


Essay by Lola:
"Do things change if we change?"

This title may seem obvious, although not so much so.
In my opinion it all depends on the quality of change that is reflected
in our everyday life.

Let´s think a change comes to encourage our pattern of life in fields
like new work, partners, children, unexpected change of home, not just a
dreadful psychological change due to loss of money, someone we loved who
passed away; some cherished broken relationship, that shakes the whole
structure of our life.

In this case two possible things are possible: Either we try to keep the
boat ashore, and renew ourselves from the ashes, or try to overcome our
sorrow by looking back to the previous restored situation.

In any personal change there is possibly damage and gain.

We may be in the middle of a crisis and put ourselves under the umbrella
waiting for it to pass over. However, if we fight it out definitively
and strongly determine a course of action, something will come up from
this situation.

Whether psychological change is encountered just by need of growing up
better in terms of improvement of behaviour, and consequently on the
context of our own life, when we are not mature enough and lack some
strong personality and we need to improve in terms of resilience,
decision, need to strengthen vital horizons, we might need a
psychological advisor.

Finally, after this scarce view of how to cope with this kind of
entangled situation. Trying to be better in both psychological state and
to revert back into real life, and consequently obtain an improvement in
ourselves and living resources or at the very least a fine foreseeable
future, we need, primarily, to be touched by the will of the gods, as
ancient peoples believed, that we nowadays call : LUCK.

Man and woman provide this thrill to change, where does it come from?
One must be careful about a compelling desire for big changes.  As the
old saying says "man proposes, god disposes".

Limitation is always there. We must count on it in order not to lose
ourselves and the whole prospect of our life.

However the sky is the limit when the moment comes to a big change.

Lola, September 25, 2018.
------


Best Lawrence

tel: 606081813

philomadrid@gmail.com

Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/

MeetUp https://www.meetup.com/PhiloMadrid-philosophy-group/

Gran Clavel (Café-Bar): Gran vía 11, esquina C/ Clavel, 28013—Madrid

from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Do things change if
we change?

from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid : no meeting this Sunday 23rd Sept, sorry

Dear Friends,

This Sunday we do not have a meeting due to a personal matter. However,
if you are curious what the subject is for the following Sunday, it is:

Do things change if we change?

If you wish to write an essay to include in my email next week, please
let me have it as soon as possible by Thursday evening.

See you the 30th.


Best Lawrence

tel: 606081813
philomadrid@gmail.com
Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/
MeetUp https://www.meetup.com/PhiloMadrid-philosophy-group/
Gran Clavel (Café-Bar): Gran vía 11, esquina C/ Clavel, 28013—Madrid

from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid : no meeting this Sunday 23rd Sept, sorry

from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Real and Digital Relationships

Dear friends,

Just to remind you that this Sunday we start at 6:30pm.

This Sunday we are still discussing: Real and Digital Relationships

Just to remind you that we start at 6:30pm and please don't forget to
get your drink before you come down to the library: we don't have a
waiter service downstairs.


Real and Digital Relationships

It is well accepted that we human beings, like many other creatures, are
social animals. We need the company of others and we need the support of
others to survive. In the twenty first century we just cannot exist
without the support and services of others.

So for us the question is not whether we need relationships, but rather
is there a difference between real world relationships and virtual
relationships. Of course, we can take it that by relationships we can
include the amours types and the normal social types. This leaves us
with what are digital relationships?

There is no doubt that we understand what we mean by "digital" toady;
anything to do with social media, the internet and networking through
web portals even would more or less cover it. But just because the means
of communications is different from what happened in the past and, in
our case through a machine, it does not mean that these new virtual
relationships are somehow different from past forms relationships.

So one issue is the form and the other is the function, as in our case
the functions of relationships; either real or digital. One of the main
functions of relationships is to exchange information and the other is
to physically interact with others: we can try to find out about the
time table of a train, find the price of a book and so on. Physical
interaction might involve a kiss, buying a television set or spending
the afternoon with friends over a drink.

Virtual relationships are inevitably based on pure exchange of
information: what is the meaning of "illusion" in English, which is the
cheapest flight to Paris, is there an earlier train and so on? But of
course I cannot make a real cup of tea from my computer! For that I need
to buy the tea from the grocer; meet my beloved under the clock at the
station; take a train to the office.

The fact that real relationships and virtual relationships are uniquely
different suggests that maybe our comparison between the two is not
valid. But I submit that this is no convoluted Cartesian duality problem.

On the one hand the real problem is not the form (face to face meeting
vs computer time) but rather the degree of substance (function). Virtual
relationships generate an enormous amount of information by the very
fact that digital information is very easy to create and exchange.
Compare writing an essay on a PC and typing it on a typewriter, and then
sending it friends.

It is also very easy to start and establish virtual relationships, but
many times it is a matter of numbers game to find a decent relationship.
But real relationships are much harder to establish, least of which
because we can only physically interact with people within our
environment. But even this real world immediate environment has been
subject to expansion with such things as cable, wireless, letters,
ships, planes, faxes and so on. The virtual world is just another
extension of an evolutionary trend. We need to reach further afield and
we need to meet more people; the very same ambition Lucy in Africa might
have had.

But there are two major issues with virtual relationships, in a way to
balance some of the major benefits. The first is that we need to learn
how to assess and interpret large amounts of information which our
brains never had to contemplate. A million years ago, figuratively
speaking, our brain only had to sort out three questions: what can I
eat, how can I reproduce and will it eat me? Try to find a cheap flight
to Paris today that leaves at the time you want and the day you want,
but the basics are still the same: will they provide food on the plane,
will my partner love me more for taking them to Paris, and will the
airline company cheat me?

The second issue is that if virtual information is easier to generate
and to distribute it is also easy to intercept. Our virtual private
information is as safe as a box of chocolate left unattended on
Christmas day. Governments know what we are writing and what we are
saying, companies know our shopping habits, our faux pas on social media
are nearly open for all to see. But this has always been the case it is
just an extension of the evolutionary process.

But the Cartesian challenge has not gone away: how can our mental ideas
be converted into physical events? The answer is relatively simple, when
the brain understands certain information signals it activates the body
to act accordingly. This is why when we order a pizza from our mobile
phone it usually arrives in the expected time. Would a smartphone be a
magic box for people like Descartes, Plato or Kant?


Best Lawrence

tel: 606081813
philomadrid@gmail.com
Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/
MeetUp https://www.meetup.com/PhiloMadrid-philosophy-group/
Gran Clavel (Café-Bar): Gran vía 11, esquina C/ Clavel, 28013—Madrid


from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Real and Digital
Relationships

from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Real and Digital Relationships

Dear friends,

I hope you had a good summer and settling back in Madrid.

This Sunday we are discussing: Real and Digital Relationships

Just to remind you that we start at 6:30pm and please don't forget to
get your drink before you come down to the library: we don't have a
waiter service downstairs.


Real and Digital Relationships

It is well accepted that we human beings, like many other creatures, are
social animals. We need the company of others and we need the support of
others to survive. In the twenty first century we just cannot exist
without the support and services of others.

So for us the question is not whether we need relationships, but rather
is there a difference between real world relationships and virtual
relationships. Of course, we can take it that by relationships we can
include the amours types and the normal social types. This leaves us
with what are digital relationships?

There is no doubt that we understand what we mean by "digital" toady;
anything to do with social media, the internet and networking through
web portals even would more or less cover it. But just because the means
of communications is different from what happened in the past and, in
our case through a machine, it does not mean that these new virtual
relationships are somehow different from past forms relationships.

So one issue is the form and the other is the function, as in our case
the functions of relationships; either real or digital. One of the main
functions of relationships is to exchange information and the other is
to physically interact with others: we can try to find out about the
time table of a train, find the price of a book and so on. Physical
interaction might involve a kiss, buying a television set or spending
the afternoon with friends over a drink.

Virtual relationships are inevitably based on pure exchange of
information: what is the meaning of "illusion" in English, which is the
cheapest flight to Paris, is there an earlier train and so on? But of
course I cannot make a real cup of tea from my computer! For that I need
to buy the tea from the grocer; meet my beloved under the clock at the
station; take a train to the office.

The fact that real relationships and virtual relationships are uniquely
different suggests that maybe our comparison between the two is not
valid. But I submit that this is no convoluted Cartesian duality problem.

On the one hand the real problem is not the form (face to face meeting
vs computer time) but rather the degree of substance (function). Virtual
relationships generate an enormous amount of information by the very
fact that digital information is very easy to create and exchange.
Compare writing an essay on a PC and typing it on a typewriter, and then
sending it friends.

It is also very easy to start and establish virtual relationships, but
many times it is a matter of numbers game to find a decent relationship.
But real relationships are much harder to establish, least of which
because we can only physically interact with people within our
environment. But even this real world immediate environment has been
subject to expansion with such things as cable, wireless, letters,
ships, planes, faxes and so on. The virtual world is just another
extension of an evolutionary trend. We need to reach further afield and
we need to meet more people; the very same ambition Lucy in Africa might
have had.

But there are two major issues with virtual relationships, in a way to
balance some of the major benefits. The first is that we need to learn
how to assess and interpret large amounts of information which our
brains never had to contemplate. A million years ago, figuratively
speaking, our brain only had to sort out three questions: what can I
eat, how can I reproduce and will it eat me? Try to find a cheap flight
to Paris today that leaves at the time you want and the day you want,
but the basics are still the same: will they provide food on the plane,
will my partner love me more for taking them to Paris, and will the
airline company cheat me?

The second issue is that if virtual information is easier to generate
and to distribute it is also easy to intercept. Our virtual private
information is as safe as a box of chocolate left unattended on
Christmas day. Governments know what we are writing and what we are
saying, companies know our shopping habits, our faux pas on social media
are nearly open for all to see. But this has always been the case it is
just an extension of the evolutionary process.

But the Cartesian challenge has not gone away: how can our mental ideas
be converted into physical events? The answer is relatively simple, when
the brain understands certain information signals it activates the body
to act accordingly. This is why when we order a pizza from our mobile
phone it usually arrives in the expected time. Would a smartphone be a
magic box for people like Descartes, Plato or Kant?


Best Lawrence

tel: 606081813
philomadrid@gmail.com
Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/
MeetUp https://www.meetup.com/PhiloMadrid-philosophy-group/
Gran Clavel (Café-Bar): Gran vía 11, esquina C/ Clavel, 28013—Madrid


from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Real and Digital
Relationships