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Thread: Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson

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    Quote Originally Posted by evince View Post
    Jesus was one of the great philosophers


    How I wish the people who claim him as a religion would follow his teachings


    "Why Thomas Jefferson Rewrote the Bible Without Jesus' Miracles and Resurrection"
    https://www.history.com/news/thomas-...igious-beliefs

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    Jefferson wrote that slavery was a moral evil, it was a violation of the natural rights of Africans, that slavery impaired the moral character of the slave owner, and he made efforts to prevent the spread of slavery into new states incorporated from the northwest territories.

    At the same time he was a virulent racist slave owner who only ever freed five of his own slaves.

    That is what you call a tortured and conflicted soul.


    "Years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson fathered at least six of Sally Hemings’s children. Four survived to adulthood and are mentioned in Jefferson’s plantation records: Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings. Sally Hemings worked for two and a half years (1787-89) in Paris as a domestic servant and maid in Jefferson’s household. While in Paris, where she was free, she negotiated with Jefferson to return to enslavement at Monticello in exchange for “extraordinary privileges” for herself and freedom for her unborn children. Decades later, Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings’s children – Beverly and Harriet left Monticello in the early 1820s; Madison and Eston were freed in his will and left Monticello in 1826. Jefferson did not grant freedom to any other enslaved family unit."
    https://www.monticello.org/thomas-je...brief-account/

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    Quote Originally Posted by BidenPresident View Post
    Absolutely agree with you. Well said.
    Our presidents used to be a lot smarter.

    I am trying to envision George Dumbya Bush and Donald Trump striking up a correspondence and debating philosophical questions, and I am just not seeing it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BidenPresident View Post
    Too bad Jefferson is not more influential. Too many religious fundamentalists in America.
    That's because all the Liberals spit on him for being a slave rapist.
    God bless America and those who defend our Constitution.

    "Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    In Jefferson's seminal correspondence with John Adams, the two debated philosophical questions.

    Jefferson espoused a type of strict, reductionist materialism.

    Adams countered with a George Berkley-inspired idealism: that the material world is an illusion and reality is constructed by ideas in our minds.


    Since I grew up in the age of Bedtime for Bonzo, Dan Quayle, George Dumbya Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump, it is weird to think about former presidents corresponding and musing with peers about philosophy and history.
    Link on Jefferson and Adams? Usually I side with Jefferson against Adams but in this case, as stated, I'm leaning with Adams.


    https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Reductive_materialism
    Reductive materialism (Identity theory) claims that there is no independent, autonomous level of phenomena in the world that would correspond to the level of conscious mental states. It also states that the level of conscious phenomena is identical with some level of purely neurological description. Conscious phenomena are nothing over and above the neural level, thus it can be reduced to that level.

    Similar reductions have taken place in the history of science:

    • water = H2O
    • visible light = EM-radiation at certain wavelengths
    • temperature = kinetic of energy molecules
    • pain = neural impulses in C-fibers
    • seeing red = synchronization of neural activity at 40Hz in V4


    A major criticism of this theory is that it leaves out qualia--what it is actually like to see red, or feel pain, or experience anything.
    Qualia (from the Latin, meaning "what sort" or "what kind"; Latin and English singular "quale", pronounced KWAHL-ay) are most simply defined as qualities or feelings, like redness, as considered independently of their effects on behavior.

    In more philosophical terms, qualia are properties of sensory experiences by virtue of which there is something it is like to have them.

    Whether qualia actually exist is a hotly debated topic in contemporary philosophy of mind. The importance of qualia in contemporary philosophy of mind comes largely from the fact that they are often seen as being an obvious refutation of physicalism. Much of the debate over their existence, however, hinges on the debate over the precise definition of the term, as various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain properties.
    God bless America and those who defend our Constitution.

    "Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Phantasmal View Post
    I’m just in the process of discovering it. Yes! Check it out.
    I did not know about this! It sounds like it has serious potential! Can you stream courses and lectures?

    I have been old school, using streaming audio and video content from the socialist public library.
    Yes. Unfortunately, it appears Apple is dumping ITunesU in favor of just the Podcast area, but the classes should still be available. I mostly like ones I can listen to while working.

    One of my favorites was this one: https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-116 25 50-min classes.

    Prof. Freeman is a little giggly, but I enjoyed her enthusiasm and knowledge.


    This one on the Early Middle Ages is good too: This is another good one: https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-210
    God bless America and those who defend our Constitution.

    "Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Phantasmal View Post
    I’m just in the process of discovering it. Yes! Check it out.
    I will be interested to know what courses you take.

    If only real college were this enjoyable -- no homework, no grades, no tests
    https://www.insidehighered.com/quick...e-itunes-u-app
    The iTunes U app will be shut down at the end of 2021, Apple announced this week.

    The app, founded in 2007, is credited with playing a central role in opening up higher education to the public. Institutions such as Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; Duke University; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all shared free educational content on the app in audio, video or ebook format.

    Some university courses shared on the app were so popular that they were downloaded millions of times. Stanford’s iPhone Application Programming course, for example, reached one million downloads in under seven weeks in 2009.

    In recent years, however, the app was not regularly updated by Apple, leading some users to theorize that it would soon be shut down. This week that theory was confirmed.

    Access to the app and all its content will continue until the end of 2021. The company has provided detailed instructions on how users can save their materials or transfer them over to the Schoolwork app, which is used predominantly by teachers in K-12 and has been a focus of recent investment in education apps from Apple, alongside the Classroom app for iPads and Apple School Manager.

    Apple also announced this week that its publishing platform iBooks Author will no longer be updated and won’t be available to new users after July 1. Users are encouraged to transition to newer publishing platform Pages.
    God bless America and those who defend our Constitution.

    "Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dutch Uncle View Post
    Link on Jefferson and Adams? Usually I side with Jefferson against Adams but in this case, as stated, I'm leaning with Adams.


    https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Reductive_materialism
    I do not have a link to share because I am listening to audio from the library about Jefferson's life.

    The correspondence between Jefferson and Adams is considered seminal epistolary literature in American history.

    The strict reductionist materialism Jefferson was attracted to does not have a lot of credibility anymore. At one time there was hope that biology and life could be reduced down to the laws of physics. That we would be able to explain everything by invoking first principles of physical laws.

    It has become abundantly clear that the standard model of physics cannot explain emergent biological properties like consciousness, intelligence, creativity.

    You cannot throw together a collection of quarks and electrons and explain life. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dutch Uncle View Post
    Yes. Unfortunately, it appears Apple is dumping ITunesU in favor of just the Podcast area, but the classes should still be available. I mostly like ones I can listen to while working.

    One of my favorites was this one: https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-116 25 50-min classes.

    Prof. Freeman is a little giggly, but I enjoyed her enthusiasm and knowledge.


    This one on the Early Middle Ages is good too: This is another good one: https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-210
    Good times!

    I say it is just as important to excercise the brain as it is the body.

    That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    I do not have a link to share because I am listening to audio from the library about Jefferson's life.

    The correspondence between Jefferson and Adams is considered seminal epistolary literature in American history.

    The strict reductionist materialism Jefferson was attracted to does not have a lot of credibility anymore. At one time there was hope that biology and life could be reduced down to the laws of physics. That we would be able to explain everything by invoking first principles of physical laws.

    It has become abundantly clear that the standard model of physics cannot explain emergent biological properties like consciousness, intelligence, creativity.

    You cannot throw together a collection of quarks and electrons and explain life. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
    Which audio book? I'd seen where the two correspond quite frequently.

    I enjoyed another audio book about Jefferson: The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 by Richard Zacks.
    God bless America and those who defend our Constitution.

    "Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dutch Uncle View Post
    Which audio book? I'd seen where the two correspond quite frequently.

    I enjoyed another audio book about Jefferson: The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 by Richard Zacks.
    I have an audio CD : "Thomas Jefferson: American Visionary", by Professor Darren Staloff.

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    From what I gather, the transition from classical liberalism to modern liberalism coincided with the evolution of the industrial revolution and oligarchy.

    Thomas Jefferson and the 18th century liberals believed the greatest threat to freedom was government, when it became despotic.

    The 19th and early 20th century liberals became convinced that the greatest threat to freedom was big business, large corporations, and monopoly.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    Our presidents used to be a lot smarter.

    I am trying to envision George Dumbya Bush and Donald Trump striking up a correspondence and debating philosophical questions, and I am just not seeing it.
    Jefferson was our most mathematically-inclined president, and the Enlightenment tradition was that mathematics and science were the purest forms of reason and logic.

    Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in the form of a Euclidean proof because the assumption was that mathematical argument was the most convincing and credible form of persuasion.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    From what I gather, the transition from classical liberalism to modern liberalism coincided with the evolution of the industrial revolution and oligarchy.

    Thomas Jefferson and the 18th century liberals believed the greatest threat to freedom was government, when it became despotic.

    The 19th and early 20th century liberals became convinced that the greatest threat to freedom was big business, large corporations, and monopoly.
    Corporate Capitalism rules America.
    What day is Michaelmas on?
    When is the Mass on Michael?
    AM I ,I AM's,AM I
    I AM,I AM's, AM I

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    Jefferson was our most mathematically-inclined president, and the Enlightenment tradition was that mathematics and science were the purest forms of reason and logic.

    Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in the form of a Euclidean proof because the assumption was that mathematical argument was the most convincing and credible form of persuasion.
    Jefferson had a taste for black ladies!
    What day is Michaelmas on?
    When is the Mass on Michael?
    AM I ,I AM's,AM I
    I AM,I AM's, AM I

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