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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?for...ilosophy&show=0&cid=74040

Sitaram's preface: "Today, 10/7/03, a physician in his residency made
a profound observation to me in conversation, saying 'It is not the
particular hand (of cards in this existential poker game) which we
are dealt in life (whether fortunate or difficult) but the manner and
spirit in which we play out that hand in life."

==================================

I have singled out this sentence from the following post as being of
great importance

http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?for...ilosophy&cid=74034&show=0

The deeper I go, I end up asking myself this- What is out there to
want if I myself wont last?

================

Sitaram comments:

From a Buddhist/Hindu perspective, it is the samskaras and karma of
unfulfilled desires which draws us again and again to a womb for
rebirth into the world of Samsara (the 10,001 things). It is the
exhaustion of such samsakras and karma, the realization that there is
nothing to be desired, which grants us entrance to the Nibbana of no
more rebirth."

Desires give rise to Being.

==============

I am currently reading a wonderful book about the mathematician Kurt
Gödel entitled:

"Gödel , A Life of Logic"

by John L Casti and Verner DePauli,

published by Perseus Publishing

(paperback)

ISBN 0-7382-0274-6

Copyright 2000

(excerpts):

pg. 27 "There is an eternally unbridgable gap between what can be
proven true and what is true."

The first chapter is entitled "Forever Incomplete"

It occurs to Sitaram that Incompleteness itself is a form of
perfection, in that it makes possible perennial quest, striving,
improvement, motion, goal....

"The unanswerable question is the unmoved mover of the soul" -
Sitaram (circa 1968)

=========

NECESSARY DEMONS

pg. 34 "What Gödel demonstrated was that there is simply no way to
erect a barrier (as Hilbert desired to do) between mathematics and
the demons of undecidability --- even in the pristine, crystal-clear
world of pure numbers."

Wallace Stevens wrote an essay on the place of Imagination in Poetry
entitled "Necessary Angel"

"I (imagination) am the necessary angel of the world.

Through my eyes you see the world again (anew)."

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sitaram/message/874

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sitaram/message/906?source=1

http://www.zen-forum.com/a23/b2002/c04/d2/e257/z7

http://www.zen-forum.com/a23/b2002/c06/d4/e1824/z7

Socrates often made reference to his good "daimon"

(eudaimonia)

http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/foldop/foldoc.cgi?eudaimonia

This is the word that Aristotle uses for "happiness"
or "flourishing." It comes from the Greek "eu," which means "happy"
or "well" or "harmonious," and "daimon," which refers to the
individual's spirit. It is a crucial term in virtue ethics .

See also eudaimonism

http://www.eudaimonia.com/

1. The translation of "eudaimonia" should be compatible not only with
Aristotle's theory but also (at first blush) with theories which
identify eudaimonia with a life of pleasant amusements, a life
devoted to the acquisition of wealth, a life devoted to the pursuit
of honor, a life of public service in which one exercises civic
virtues, and so on. The translation should make plausible the claims
which Aristotle says everyone accepts about eudaimonia: that it is
that for the sake of which a human being does everything that they
do, that it is not pursued for the sake of some further goal, that
the life of someone who is eudaimon is a pleasant life, etc.

2. "Eudaimonia" in Greek - Literally 'having a good guardian spirit',
the Greek term "eudaimonia" has a much more objective meaning. To be
eudaimon is to be successful, to have what is most desirable, to
flourish. There is some disagreement about what sort of life is most
flourishing. Some say it is a life of pleasure, others of honor, some
a wealthy life, others a virtuous one.
www.altesprachen.de/heureka/eudaimonia.htm

(what follows is a crude babelfish translation of the German)

EUDAIMONIA

For which values are humans to strive?

The question about the true luck (Eudaimonia)

and its accessibility did not release the Greek philosophers since
the death of the Sokrates:

Diogenes (approx. 330 v. Chr) for example was the joker and
Aussteiger among the philosophers. When once Alexander the large one
in Korinth visited it, the approximately following discussion
developed:

I am Alexander, the Grokoenig!

I am Diogenes, the dog!

Legend me, Diogenes: What makes unfortunate?

To lose dear become things.

What protects against it?

To possess only few.

How would it be with a house?

For what? A ton tut's also!

A desire I release to you.

Go to me out of the sun!

==================

http://www.imperium.org/games/smac/eudaimonia.html

========

Sitaram continues with excerpts from the book on Kurt Gödel

pg. 41 Gödel's magnificent achievement has been described by some as
being akin to a religious or mystical experience.

pg. 70
".. we come to one of the most famous statements in all of
philosophy, with which Wittgenstein concluded in the Tractatus: 'That
whereof we cannot speak, we must pass over in Silence.' "

pg. 73 " What can be proved within and through language is less than
the capacity of human thought. This, in turn, is les (weaker) than
what is possible in the world."

Chapter Ten: "Window on the Soul"

pg. 194 "Such mathematical objects must then exist outside of space
and time, and it is thus not surprising that Gödel later came to be
inteested in ESP, transmigration, and occultism in all its variants."

pg. 195 "Gödel's famous theorem is an appeal to the inexhaustibility
not only of mathematics but of human intelligence in general. For
this reason, the theorem also has a powerful kind of ambivalence. On
the one hand, it is our century's most important limitation result,
dashing the human dream of complete, contradiction-free knowledge ---
a dream that had persisted for over two millenia. In setting limits
on the human fantasy of omnipotence, Gödel stands in the tradition of
Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud. On the other hand, through his
discovery of the relative nature of human knowledge, Gödel confirms
the triumph and necessity of the human spirit and of human intuition."
" Let us conclude our account of Gödel's magnificent achievement by
quoting Gödel's view of the unlimited nature of the human mind:
The human spirit is incapable of formulating (or mechanicizing) all
its mathematical intuitons. That is, it is when it has succeeded in
formulating a portion of them, precisely this fact needs a new
intuitive knowledge, for example the consistency of this formalism."

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