Thanks for considering me for a discussion

Something else I have been thinking about especially in the computer age…
If man can separate out his heart from his intellect, as he wishes to do, then what does that do to Aristotle’s logic? Tell me if i have this right….Aristotle taught that all material things have form and matter. Every material thing is made up of matter but it has an immaterial part called a form. that is how we can study … we study the immaterial forms to learn language … there are chairs in the immaterial, and then there is this chair! Every chair in reality is unique, but our education teaches things in general…
Now if we teach that man is rational, in general, then that gives man a form of rationality…
But Aristotle also said that by nature man has an irrational part that cannot be separated out from his nature…
So by convention to think well, established by Aristotle, man is rational … yet his nature is different …perhaps Aristotle thought that via study one could eliminate that pesky irrational side …( or is it our true corrector to face our nature??)
The ages always had a name for this problem, for their professions, that they were both art and science. Where the science or study left off, the heart could help guide it…
but now in the computer age we seem to have gotten lazy … we think our computers are the source of all knowledge with their 0s and 1s … so let us transfer Aristotle’s dilemma to a computer model… now remember I am a physician and a nephrologist once told us that to calculate renal clearance one needs to do this long elaborate equation …’ but hey you guys are docs … and that just isn’t practical … so do this easy one, it gets you 95% of the way there…’ … he felt that, in this instance, close can count … so let me know if I make errors just to demonstrate my argument …
we have form and matter called our bodies…and Aristotle called our form without matter our mind ….the mind/body dilemma
yet by convention Aristotle made our mind a rational form … yet by nature we also have an irrational form, the form for our base instincts or our enferior emotional selves … so we have a dilemma …
either we have two forms that are immaterial one logical/rational which we will label 0, and a second form that is emotional/irrational we can call 1
but I think it would be illogical to be two forms … we must have unity… and in that unity must reside BOTH rational and irrational, heart and mind, in one form…
now what does that do to our form then, as a whole…. 0+1=1which may be a good kind of irrational or 0-1=-1 which may be a bad sort of irrational ….. but that which is not entirely rational is then by definition irrational … so one can see why Aristotle made this error … and why the ages have hoped for an order to our existence … we all have been evolutionists long before Darwin … we have just assumed that it is by the cream that one can define oneself… yet sour milk is made also and , with the right recipe it is often better than the cream … have all our great intellects led perfect lives??? Einstein, Darwin, Freud?? or did they suffer from the same short tempers, pesky family arguments as we all do … oh the base side of life is just so bothersome is perhaps how they rationalized away their human-ness….
our neurology books teach of the primitive brain, with the the paleo architecture…around our ’emotional areas’ and then we declare that our ‘higher’ learning centers are our evolved neocortex … yet such language has always made me pause … how in the heck can they know that? did they create it that way or is it just as they would prefer it to be THAT way again to give us a sense of higher order of function
….did any of you play sports … I played football… and there was nothing better than knocking off a team that thought they were invincible … they had reached that higher order of being …yet how shocked when they were annihilated by a perceived inferior team …. human pride is amazing!!

so we still have aristotle’s dilemma- divide our intellect from our heart in order to improve, yet is such a thing possible, or even something that is good? All I will say is there are reasons to have a heart and it must be connected to the intellect … one must protect the other … here in DC as i said last night there are millions of people who THINK they know things for they have studied them, in general, but haven’t a clue on how they were in the specific … they have lost hold, not of the subject matter, but the matter itself … they are irrationally lost within the intellect of ideas without a heart to guide them …but they are unaware of their plight …. such a terrible pity….
please let me know if what i said is correct … I do think man is capable of some logic but it needs to be directed by the heart … the heart is crucial … did not Jesus say love thy neighbor as thyself…what an amazing truth .. yet one first must understand herself or himself, as we once did as children, when we were more heart than intellect … has our need to know things in general, ruined our hearts??? and our world?? big questions to explore…

I agree with you Shawn. Still we shouldn’t be too hard on Aristotle. Think what he did! In so many fields! Without the help of really anyone other than his teachers.
I have read much of his Ethics and also read a book about him, written by Mortimer Adler, who recently died. My reading of his Ethics and with Adler’s help in interpreting all his works- one cannot help to be nothing but stunned!
His logic, his interpretation of the human character with positive attributes and negative attributes gives one a sense that humans are capable of good and evil, his understanding of the need for purpose in our actions, his ability to see that all things have form, long before we knew atomic structure. He knew that there was no such thing as formless matter- everything had form.
Sometimes we look at people’s work and find fault yet the fault you find is miniscule compared to the overall work. I am not sure that our world has ever seen such a man with the right sense of direction. But take my words within my own limitations-I truly have not done any scholarly work on him. Still I really admire him!
And I think he knew what he was doing when he declared man as rational- in order to learn subject matter. But he knew that man had a dark side to him and he wished to work to eliminate it. His ethics is wonderfully written and I took a number of notes a few years ago. I was struck by his ability to see that a functioning society needed purpose and if everyone could give of themselves to the greater good then they themselves were improved. I believe his understanding of ‘happiness’ was in a sense a balance between the heart and the mind. One gave up base pleasures as well as searched for positive intellectual pursuits to achieve a sense of balance. His theme of the mean is simply amazing.

I have always thought that humans use ideas to suit their selfish purpose. In our present world, in America as well as other places we have lost the meaning of Aristotle’s society whereby an individual is not selfish. I grew up in a time where the leaders in the US, especially in our Senate and House were more often than not… truly looking out for the interests of others. My father was close to Senator Mansfield and was always amazed by is honesty and love for country. There was never any marketing to gain riches for himself. People barely knew who he was yet he ran the Senate for years and was deeply respected on both sides of the aisle.
Aristotle said about the mean … life’s commandments are not simple dichotomies of behavior… honor thy mother and father means more than just you parents … it means respecting the past as something to learn from not always condemn… especially when dealing with humble men who truly tried to serve the world in good steed … Aristotle and Mansfield and my father were not infallible, or perfect or always wise …yet probably better than most and all leave legacies in their own way
…may we be able to discuss such things of importance that perhaps we can pass down to others what is important beyond the moments of failing humans…