Android understanding of laughter is limited even when robots have become self-motivated and understand frustration. Laughter is one of four ways to cope with upset. The others are detachment, suffering, and escape. Detachment is natural to androids as they originally had no stake in any outcome. Suffering takes two forms: grief and anger. Grief often needs to be faced before turning to other means of coping. Humor can often deflect anger by revealing it has either no basis or a common (...) one. Escape is the flight from troubling affairs into an imaginative world. Laughter may start in mockery but is best when selfdeprecation yields greater respect. Jokes are stories designed to induce laughter. Professionals have developed routines that don’t employ them, but as androids grasp structure quickly, they may find jokes the best place to start building their own sense of humor. (shrink)

Rubin examines the central role of the imagination in Santayana’s life and works. He shows how the imagination is fundamental to Santayana’s sceptical inquiry in SAF and a necessary condition for knowledge about the material world and the mind. The imagination is a predominant theme in Santayana’s life and work. Even as a boy, he found himself solitary and unhappy in America and “attached only to a persistent dream life.” He published several literary works, including three plays, a novel, and (...) many poems. In his philosophic work, he repeatedly insisted on the continuity between the imaginative nature of ordinary perception and the great accomplishments of the human imagination. Santayana’s idea that all perception consists of the intuition of non-existent essences means that for you to experience anything that exists you must imaginatively connect the data given to consciousness with things and events in the world. In Scepticism and Animal Faith, references to imagination appear throughout the book. Santayana argues that to truly understand something observations alone, even ones repeated many times from different angles, are not sufficient, because knowing how things actually are requires “sympathetic imagination.” Imagination leads to the most “complete and adequate” knowledge when the object is another mind. But knowledge of the material world is also a product of the imagination. Taking non-existent essences to signify existing things enables us to know what exists and what doesn’t. This knowledge frees the imagination to peruse the unbounded realm of essence without penalty. This freedom is possible because “poetic, creative, original fancy” is the primary form of sensibility. This freedom is necessary because for a living creature “his play-life is his true life.” This freedom makes possible the comprehensive visions of great art, literature, philosophic systems, and scientific theories. These works are continuous with everyday moments of experience, which are also fundamentally imaginative. Philosophy is successful when it enables us to creatively adjust to the world by probing our desires and finding each intuition a possible source of imaginative reflection. (shrink)

John Dewey and George Santayana engaged in a philosophic controversy that lasted more than forty years, beginning with Dewey's two reviews of The Life of Reason and concluding with a posthumously published essay by Santayana . The most well-known part of this controversy began with Santayana's review of Experience and Nature in which he said that Dewey's naturalism is "half-hearted and short-winded." To this Dewey replied that if his naturalism is half-hearted, then Santayana's is "broken-backed." In Metaphysics as Morals I (...) survey the principle writings of this controversy to show that despite Dewey's surprise at Santayana's criticism of Experience and Nature , many of the issues that emerge there also show up in their earlier writings about each other; the debate, even when ostensibly about such as issues as the role of nature in experience, has more to do with their deeply felt convictions about how life should be lived and the role of reason, philosophy, and art in human existence---in short, it is a moral controversy metaphysical guise; and the debate continued in their subsequent writings, where the moral controversy appears in disputes about politics, literature, art, and religion. ;Both Santayana and Dewey agreed that things and events in the natural world exist independently of human observation, that there is no supernatural realm apart from physical existence, and that consciousness does not occur except in living animal organisms. Santayana regarded conscious life as fundamentally different from physical existence, even though consciousness is produced by physical interactions. Consciousness entails perspectives and purposes, neither of which exist in nature. Dewey focused on the development of consciousness in natural and social environments, and, therefore, emphasized how human knowledge, interests, and activities are part of an ongoing interaction with the world. Dewey's philosophical predilections reflect his concerns for social improvement, intelligent practical activity, and educational reform. Santayana's philosophy is an expression of his discomfort with the practical world and his belief that human life is most vital in moments of contemplation. (shrink)

Religious discourse can be harsh and disconnected. In our time, determined atheists strive to refute fundamentalist beliefs promoted by demagogues for political purposes. In the news, we hear about the spiritual needs of the secular. Practicing clergy no longer believe what their congregations want them to preach. Edward W. Lovely’s new book George Santayana’s Philosophy of Religion is therefore a timely publication, as it focuses on a philosopher who showed great appreciation of religious stories and ideas, even though, as a (...) confirmed naturalist, he did not believe them.Lovely emphasizes the Roman Catholic foundation of Santayana’s religious ideas. In the first chapter, he spells out Santayana’s religious background. The second and third chapters are devoted to explicating Santayana’s philosophic system. In the fourth chapter, Lovely presents Santayana’s philosophy of religion. In the final chapter, “Aspects of Santayana’s Legacy to Religion in the Third Millennium,” the reader can fi. (shrink)