"Other than your living a loving and compassionate life, I wish for you more than anything that you become autonomous. Be fully informed on all important matters and apply critical thinking before making choices. Regard no one as an authority, challenge all beliefs, but listen to others before reaching decisions. Before offering criticism, know an opposing position so well that you can argue it better than the opponent proposing it. In so doing, you may risk your own position. Challenge even well founded beliefs. Reject indoctrination, even from the sciences. Theories never become facts. Not even the earth can be shown to orbit the sun! Once in a while, give Santa's beard a tug."
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| Cyd's brother, Bill Puett, Ph.D. |
I was one of your brother's students!! I took 2-3 of his philosophy classes back in the day and he became one of my favorite professors during my college days.
ReplyDeleteI recently read his book, Conversations With Black: 13 People, 1 Body, which I enjoyed. I'm currently in the process of writing a review of it for my book blog.
Bless your heart! So glad you're reviewing Bill's book. Also so glad you found this article on my blog! Thank you!
DeleteThank you! Here's a link to my review of My Conversations With Black: 13 People, 1 Body if you care to read it! https://captivatedreader.blogspot.com/2020/06/conversations-with-black-13-people-1.html
DeleteI had his class in Miramar college. My recently publicly released insights that led to my success was a result on his study of idealism and the mind. I discovered the nature of haunted houses and the nature of sanity and gravity. The hypothesis was if one assumes a sane physical world as a human being and assume that values and the physical world both exist, then the world is a loving and friendly place that produces reliable consistent information, but if one assumed a physical world without values or a spiritual world that started with the assumptions that the physical senses couldn't be trusted, then one would either experience an exploitive unfriendly physical world or a hostile broken hearted spiritual world.
ReplyDeleteThe real issue was that radical assumption of ethical materialism that prioritized personal survival that completely dismissed consensus on what was real is the sacrifice emotionally speaking to discover a personally reliable method for acting with reliable real world data acquired through the senses, because dependent on consensus that avoided issues pertaining to individual survival by joining groups for consensus and protection then the senses were corrupted and were incapable of providing reliable information.
Good to hear from you, Sam! Bill will love hearing from you, too. I'll pass this along.
ReplyDeleteSounds as though you were a good student, to have remembered this philosophical material so many years later!
Yes, what you say is so very applicable today, I hope you can tell. I do sometimes wonder if Bill's students and my students are putting their critical thinking skills to good advantage, as well as that elevated ethical thinking you just evidenced. Thank you for that.