(Full Notes)
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
It is a choice or is it automatic? When is it a choice and when is it not?
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Remember Jordan Peterson’s two true perspectives? The one is like a right-wing point of view. And the second is like a left-wing point of view. Surely this is the same as the objective vs subjective I kept seeing as an undergraduate philosophy student.
Thursday, May 28, 2020
I’m thinking of the two sacrament meeting talks I heard in New York that one day – both on finding peace. One person said how the only way to find real peace was through Jesus Christ. The other person said how you might need to go on a walk, etc. – whatever you need to do for you to find peace. And I believe both speakers were right.
But you can see, can’t you, how one perspective seems a little opposed to the other. How do you heal mental illness? Or address it, at least? One person might say pray and read the scriptures – in other words, strengthen yourself spiritually. This is the perspective that mental illness is a spiritual thing and needs to be addressed spiritually. Someone else might say to take medication and exercise and sleep and eat right. This is the perspective that mental illness is a physical thing. You know what I’m going to say next, right? That it’s both? It’s ok, then, to say it’s one or the other, as long as you don’t exclude the other, and say that it’s just one. Surely this is the case.
But why not better to just say right off the bat that it’s both? (Have I said that it’s just spiritual? Maybe. I’ll correct it.)
Friday, May 29, 2020
And this is how philosophy can help psychology. How many people are out there saying it’s one of the other, and not both!
When God gave us the account of the Earth being created, why didn’t he give us something that matches more what we see? It is not because it’s the spiritual account, from the spiritual perspective? Doesn’t preclude the natural, it’s just the spiritual? This I don’t know – have to think about it.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
This pattern is all throughout philosophy – seeming paradoxes, that aren’t really paradoxes of course because there’s no such thing as a real paradox, only seeming paradoxes. All throughout life. Meant to be that way. It’s a pattern where two ways of looking at things seem incompatible, and people will fight wars over it, but really both sides have their valid points, and you don’t have to make the other side ridiculous in order to maintain your side as true.
For psychology at least one of these patterns is “whether” anxiety and depression are spiritual or natural. Chosen or caused. Psychological or physical. The spirit or the brain.
I have made the differentiation between spirit and matter, that is, spiritual matter and physical matter (because that’s what they are…) But I wonder if I shouldn’t be talking about intelligence in the place of spirit, at least sometimes. Our spirit body is directed by our intelligence, or the germ in us that knows and that is conscious, and that acts upon everything else, including our bodies. Should I admit that there are three types of things – intelligence, spirit, and physical matter? The latter two are matter, the first, I don’t know exactly how to describe it except how I have. It is our intelligence – that which knows and is conscious and acts. It has existed from all eternity, and will for all eternity, only because of God it takes on a spirit body and then a physical body as it progresses to become more like God, the literal Father of our spirits. Maybe I should be talking about our intelligence more, not just our spirit. More specific.