tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36903659566189182072024-02-08T02:11:47.252-08:00Big Thick GlassesSpeculations, musings, and ideasTomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-37943247943422976542019-03-15T13:47:00.000-07:002019-03-18T08:36:30.017-07:00Obituary for Tom Stringer<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-fa42c695-7fff-6521-ab40-ff010ce86f1e" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thomas A. Stringer, beloved husband, father, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend, died from metastatic prostate cancer on March 10, 2019 at home in his favorite chair with his family around him. He lived a life full of music, physics, learning, laughter, and love.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tom was born to Vivian Lawanda Stringer and William Arthur Stringer in 1943 in Austin, Texas. When his father returned from WWII, his family moved to Joplin, Missouri and eventually settled in Overland Park, Kansas, where he spent his childhood. He received a PhD in Physics from the University of Kansas in 1970 on a NASA fellowship. He met his wife Carol while he was in graduate school and they married in 1971. They moved to New Mexico where Tom worked at White Sands, moved to New Jersey where Tom worked at Bell Labs, until making a home in Colorado Springs for a job at Kaman Sciences which became ITT Advanced Engineering and Sciences, where he worked for 35 years until he retired. After “retirement,” he taught physics as a lecturer at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs until 2017. He was proud that he spent his career doing and teaching physics, something he deeply loved at both a theoretical and practical level.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tom’s family and friends were so important to him. He and his wife Carol were married for 48 years, and he loved her deeply. He loved and was so proud of his two sons Jonathan and Michael, his wonderful daughter-in-law Abbie, and delighted in his two granddaughters Ottilie and Estelle. He was the oldest child in his family — the “Ebub” — and is survived by his brothers Bill (Kozo) and Jim (Dana), his sister Nancy (Todd), and his many nieces, nephews, and cousins. He was involved in the Colorado Springs Classical Guitar Society, T&D (a philosophy discussion group), and a French conversation group. There may not be a cashier, concierge, or barista in Colorado that hasn’t been surprised when he remembered all the details of what they talked about months earlier.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tom had an innate curiosity about the world. Some of his earliest memories involved puzzling over the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” That curiosity drove him to study fundamental physics and avidly read and write about philosophy. There were so many things that he wanted to learn or master that he constantly strove to make the most of his time. Whether it was squeezing in five minutes of playing music before leaving for an appointment, writing about speculations, musings, and ideas on his blog, or writing about atomic structure in his last days.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tom could not imagine the world without music. When he was 16 years old he started playing guitar in rock and roll bands in the Kansas City area and continued playing in bands until he was in graduate school, where he became more interested in classical guitar. His interest in guitar ultimately expanded to many other instruments: lute, piano, Irish fiddle, classical violin, cittern, banjo, and mandolin. Tom was not only a lifelong student of music, but a teacher as well to both of his children and to anyone else that wanted to learn. He recorded 15 albums, including a cherished lullaby album for each of his granddaughters. Tom played in Blarney Pilgrim, Mountain Road Ceili Band, and the UCCS Physics Rock and Roll Band.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tom will be sorely missed by his family, friends, and acquaintances — but his legacy will continue with the stories, love of learning, and music that he left with us. We invite you to continue reading his blog posts here and listen to his music at <a href="http://soundcloud.com/bigthickglasses">soundcloud.com/bigthickglasses</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Memorial contributions in Tom’s name may be made to the charity of your choice. A celebration of life will be held on April, 27th 2019.</span></div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-40566841139175377882018-12-23T15:59:00.000-08:002018-12-23T15:59:04.363-08:00On the Human Soul"We are not physical beings having spiritual experiences. We are spiritual beings having physical experiences."<br />
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin<br />
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One of the things that is most rewarding to me about theological or metaphysic speculation: considering the impact or implications the speculation would have on the key issues in the various conventional areas of theology and associated theories.<br />
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This quote seems to be consistent with this rather "New Age" idea from a person named Elise Cantrell.<br />
"“You did not come here to be punished. You came by your own free will. You came for the adventure. You came for learning and growth. You came to assist and to help others up-level. You came to experience contrast, which is something that does not exist on the higher levels, especially as you near the top where only bliss is found. You wanted to know for yourself how your soul would react, respond and handle polarity, density and duality. You came to experience living in a body and taking form. A physical body is necessary to live in this density. You exist only as energy as you reach the higher levels of reality.”"<br />
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Cantrill’s idea is that there are 11 levels of reality above neutral which are increasingly positive as you ascend each one. “Many of you came from the upper levels of reality to be here in 3rd density (You are currently in the third density above neutral on the positive end of the spectrum.)”<br />
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In this second version, the perspective is such that many of the key questions in theology, especially perhaps, Christian theology become meaningless, or at least radically transformed:<br />
--Theodicy, the confounding question of, if the world was created by a perfectly good god, why then is there evil and suffering in the world? Now some plausible answers to this have been given to this conundrum, such as the "soul strengthening" idea of theologian John Hicks and others. But why would the soul need to be strengthened if the faithful are going to heaven or paradise upon death, where it seems puzzling that they would need a “stronger” soul. A sports coach doesn't usually subject his players to a grueling workout to get them in tip top shape at the end of the season.<br />
But if we momentarily assume the perspective of Ms. Cantrell', then the suffering and pain so ubiquitous in the world becomes a FEATURE of Level 3, not a mystery to be reconciled. Such suffering and pain is precisely why some souls would choose to come here.<br />
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The underlying idea in William Wordswoth’s ode seems to also imply we have an eternal soul:<br />
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Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And Cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in out infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,— He sees it in his joy: The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest. And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended: At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.<br />
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But here the idea seems to be that we were sent here either by, or from, “God”. There does not appear to be any hint of the idea that we souls have chosen to come here, as is stated explicitly in Cantrill’s version. Overall the poem does imply that our souls are eternal.<br />
The poem focuses on how as a child the world is magical and wonderful, but gradually, as we age into adults, the world increasingly seems commonplace and the magic fades.<br />
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<br />Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-69660205841444344762018-11-25T15:36:00.002-08:002018-11-25T15:36:58.814-08:00<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Blog on theories of Consciousness</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are a great many contemporary and traditional ideas afloat on the origin and nature of human( and animal) consciousness. I argue here that there are 3 major camps that can be discerned from the web.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">1. The physicalist, or mechanistic reductionist view. This is the idea that C evolved naturally from natural selection. There is nothing involved but the actions of matter and energy. While most in this camp acknowledge that it is a big puzzle exactly how and why it evolved, the assumption is that not only will it eventually be explained on purely physical grounds, but that AGI workers will at some point in the future create robotic platforms that will posses C, perhaps even far exceeding that of biological humans.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">2. A second view is that C is not generated by the brain itself, but rather the brain is a sort of antenna that picks up, or couples to, a pervading C field. This is a good analogy to a computer picking up WiFi. On this picture, it seems unlikely that AGI systems will ever acquire C. Here it would be argued that the physical world is real and deterministic, but that some kind of pervasive C field is an additional component of reality that is not part of the mechanistic universe.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">3. The third view is a modern version of the Berkeley idealism (?Bisop Berkeley, 18th c. Who claimed The World is my idea". In this model, the physical U does not even necessarily exist, and that all of us conscious animals have constructed it in our brains.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Prospero:<br />
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,<br />
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and<br />
Are melted into air, into thin air:<br />
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,<br />
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,<br />
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,<br />
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,<br />
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,<br />
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff<br />
As dreams are made on; and our little life<br />
Is rounded with a sleep.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Bishop Berkley:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Berkeley: a Treatise concerning the Principles of Human knowledge </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is an opinion strangely prevailing among men, that house, rivers, mountains, and in a word all sensible objects, have existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question,may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the fore mentioned objects but the things we perceive by sense. And what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived?</span></div>
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Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-26601012906458945422018-01-21T14:06:00.000-08:002018-01-21T14:06:41.070-08:00Knowledge and Belief<br />
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I wonder if, I suspect, I believe, I know<br />
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Every thinker must have moments where one wonders if some bizarre idea that one has never thought of before could actually be true. Sometimes the notion is quickly forgotten and dropped, perhaps sometimes it stays in her mind for a while. The possible number of metaphysical or theological ideas that are of this type must be enormous, especially to those who do not adhere to any particular religion. I recall that the late Stephen J Gould commented somewhere that anyone could think of a dozen different plausible religions “before breakfast”, and I think that is true for some people with active and questioning minds.<br />
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I want to suggest that the title of this post represents a sort of spectrum of thoughts about the absolute nature of things, ranging from the willingness to briefly consider an idea up to “knowing” that some idea is true.<br />
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Let me plunge ahead into an example that will illustrate what I mean. Take the supreme question that dogs all of serious human thought, that of whether there is a God. (Let’s not worry for the moment about whether such a question refers to a coherent being). We know that humans in the western world generally have a high degree of belief that there is such a transcendent being. Many would defend or justify their belief as being based on a “faith” that such a being exists, and many would feel that the significance of their lives is centered on this “faith”, even going so far as to say that they have an actual personal relationship with this God.<br />
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No doubt there are some---perhaps an extreme minority--that might say they only “suspect” that some kind of a being fitting the generally accepted notion of “God” exists, stopping far short of an actual belief in it. Or, some (atheists and agnostics) might at times “wonder if” there could be something to the idea.<br />
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I am pretty sure that a sizable percentage of those professing belief would even go so far as to say they “know” that such a being exists. But I want to say that they really do not “know”, while admitting that it would be reasonable for some to say that they “believe” that God exists.<br />
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In much the same way, there are those of the mirror image who (1) insist that they know that there is no such being, or (2) believe that there is no such being, or (3) suspect that there is no such being, or (4) wonder about there being no such being. This last category might refer to a person who was raised in, and continues in, some religious tradition, but has occasional doubts that flit through his or her mind.<br />
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I was in a small gathering of philosopher friends a few days ago, and I floated the idea that consciousness is so mysterious, and seemingly so deeply imbedded in the universe (e.g., as suggested by quantum mechanics), that perhaps, as far as we know, ones consciousness continues in some unimaginable manner upon death. One of my friends insisted that no, oblivion follows death of a human. Now from where I sit, this certainly could be true, and it would very likely be the belief of the majority of people in the Western world that are professional scientists or philosophers. But of course this is not an issue to be decided by majority vote.<br />
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I insist that none of them really “know” that oblivion follows death. (it is such an odd thing that they would only “know” the truth of the opposite if, when they die, they find their consciousness somehow still intact).<br />
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I think it will be clear from what I have written above that I do not deem “faith” to be a valid way of acquiring knowledge, or of validating ideas. Faith, if it has an rational meaning at all, refers to a way of trying to make ones belief a constant mental attitude in spite of the vicissitudes of happenings in actual life.<br />
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One could cite examples of things we can say we “know” are true. For example, the fact that the sun rises in the east. But this is not known only as a result of experience, but is strongly supported by the model of the earth in an orbit around the sun. In other words, there is a highly coherent model that super-cedes the mere observational fact, and makes it virtually certain. To doubt this fact would really be proof of insanity, assuming that one has some minimal level of exposure to the idea of the solar system.<br />
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So as we humans go about our lives, we necessarily have to hold certain beliefs, although with varying degrees of certainty. Without such a set of beliefs, it seems unlikely that we could act or accomplish anything. Some of these beliefs are no doubt often of a metaphysical, or a religious kind, and hence are beliefs about an unseen world. I suspect that many of these might be better described as hope or fears. Probably many of these beliefs are not essential to our lives, and perhaps not even consciously examined to any great extent. Many of them will change over the course of our lives.ß<br />
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Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-25551671237871546102018-01-14T13:57:00.001-08:002018-01-14T18:15:50.742-08:00A Set of Beliefs on Interesting Questions<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am pretty sure that each of us humans carry around with us a set of beliefs, each with varying degrees of certainty, about the truth of certain of life’s “Big Questions” (or in some cases these might be more properly called “Interesting Questions”). Is there a God?, is there an afterlife?, Are UFOs real?, and so on. In some cases, ones belief about each of these is well thought out, while there are no doubt some that have not been consciously considered. Surely, there are some that have not even been thought of at all.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In any case, one must realize that the degree of knowledge and intelligence varies to an enormous extent across the span of the human race. In some cases, a particular human might have expertise on a particular subject that allows him or her to make a highly informed opinion (however, that does not necessarily mean it is highly likely to be right).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For most of the questions considered here, nobody knows whether the answer is a definite “yes” or “no”. I thought it would be an amusing exercise to consider a set of certain “Big” questions, and muse on them myself to arrive at a qualitative and (hopefully) honest opinion about the truth or falseness of each.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I emphasize that my answers are subjective. I do not claim to have any special knowledge pertaining to most of these questions, and I offer my opinion in a spirit of humility. I do not wish to offend anyone with my takes on these.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are of course a great many additional, important questions that can be asked. I am under no delusion that these constitute a “complete set”.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In what follows, I consider UFOs, NDEs, the existence of God and/or an afterlife, Artificial intelligence, cyborgs, nuclear war, meteor impact, life on other planets, the origin of human consciousness, the odds we are living in a simulation, plus a number of other issues.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">These question are in no particular order. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I believe this is extremely unlikely. What appear to be habitable planets are too far away for the distance to be traversable by alien crafts subject to the limitations of light speed. Also, consider the likelihood that, if there were such aliens, why would they deem the human race to be worthy of such close examination? We wouldn’t depart from an expensive and important voyage of our own to investigate, say, an anthill, would we?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But lets admit that if we do have, or have had, alien life forms on Earth it would be stupendously exciting news, probably by far the biggest news of all time. Because of this, I suspect wish fulfillment inclines so many people to fervently believe in UFOs, alien visits, etc.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Furthermore, the vast percentage of humans are unreliable witnesses. This includes military and civilian pilots, and even astronauts, who testify that they have direct experience of UFOs.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Regarding the widespread belief that the US government is hiding remains of an alien craft (and associated alien bodies) that crashed near Roswell, New Mexico many years ago: as with any “conspiracy theory”, the odds that if there really was a such a crash of an alien craft, so many people would be involved in the “cover up” that it would be bound to come out into the public. And furthermore, why would the US government want to hide such an occurrence from the American people?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, I am inclined to believe the official version, namely, that the incident was a crash of a weather balloon.</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Are “Near Death Experiences” (NDEs) real?--i.e., are they an indication there is a life beyond this one?</i></span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am very skeptical that these are real, and not some illusion created by, or in, a dying brain. For one thing, I have never heard a metaphysical or theological argument explaining (or justifying) how God (or the Gods) would be motivated to give some nearly dying humans a preview, or a peek, into “heaven”. I suspect the apparently widespread belief in these, and the large amount of literature about them, is motivated by wishful thinking, since they are always offered as proof of a life beyond the present one.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The persons claiming to have experienced these transcendent events could be (1) simply lying in order to, for example, sell a book about it, or (2) imagining the event, being partly confused, unconscious, or otherwise deluded by their mental state at the time the “near death” event occurred.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In conclusion, I do not believe NDEs have any objective reality, and they are not proof of a life beyond the present one.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I do not have a strong belief here either way. Part of me is inclined to think that the answer is almost certainly “yes”. This is because we now know that life is (at least partly) a biochemical phenomena, and these or similar chemicals are bound to be richly distributed throughout the entire universe. Once life takes hold, Darwinian evolution would take place, and quite possibly, on a time scale of perhaps a billion years, result in intelligent life.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But on the other hand, we just do not have any quantitative idea as to what the probability of life forming is; this probability is a multiplicative factor in the well known “Drake equation”, which purports to estimate the probability of a planet having life. Along those lines, we could imagine this probability being sufficiently small so that there would be no life predicted to be anywhere else. So, if our planet turns out to house the only life in the entire universe (or even multiverse?), not only would that be amazing, but also a bit scary. Maybe even a bit depressing to some of us.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of course, one has to distinguish conscious, intelligent life from purely macrobiotic, non sentient life. I am restricting myself to the former, since Darwinian evolution would surely eventually lead to intelligent life.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One must also acknowledge the (remote?) possibility that life here was seeded by a supernatural, one-time, interaction with a supernatural entity. Or, as some SciFi writers (e.g., A. C. Clark in 2001) have suggested, seeded or started by some highly advanced alien civilizations.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In conclusion, I am going with a “yes” here to this question--- i.e., there is likely to be conscious life elsewhere in the universe. But we will in all likelihood never confront it, or interact with it in any way.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here the “G” refers to generalized intelligence, which would go beyond just a robot-like mechanical capability. It would involve deep understanding on the part of the AGI platform, and probably even consciousness. The character ‘Data” in Star Trek the Next Generation would represent the AGI idea quite well. (see the episode “The Measure of a Man” for an emotional and gripping depiction of the issues associated with this idea).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have no strong view either way on this question. I have several young, bright friends who strongly believe that AGI will be created “soon”. But there are highly intelligent skeptics as well.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The downside to such AGI creations is well known: these creatures might, once they attain maturity and sufficient numbers, take one look at the history and behavior of the human race, and decide that we are a huge mistake, and quickly move to eliminate us from the planet.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In effect I will take a “pass” on this one, even though I am inclined toward the skeptic side.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This one seems easy to answer, since this “bio-mechanical” phase is already well underway. Artificial limbs, and even artificial organs, are almost commonplace, and are surely bound to become even more so.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I must add that it seems unlikely that artificial brains will be installed, since, as understood at the present time, the brain is what determine individual identity.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is not clear to me that this question can be answered scientifically, partly because consciousness does not seem to be objectively observable. But it does not appear that anyone, even among the most hardened materialists, have any idea how the gray matter alone would generate consciousness (this of course does not rule out there being such a mechanism).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The internet abounds with sites claiming that the brain is an antenna, picking up consciousness from a field. Some of these sites appear to be rather “kooky” New Age sites, but that is not true for all.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I don’t know which is right. So I am going with a “tie”, even though I slightly incline to the “brain as an antenna” idea.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is surely the most important metaphysical question confronting all humans, one we must surely all begin to answer to ourselves in some early phase of adult life. Of course, we must acknowledge that many people the world over are taught, virtually from infancy, that the answer is “yes’, and quite often such people seem to retain this belief their entire life, without, it would seem, ever questioning it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now consider the term “God” (or Gods). Here there is a lot of ambiguity, or lack of clarity, as to what we mean by the concept. So let’s restrict ourselves to a God along the lines of that of the Abrahamic religions. Basically, this would be a Being (admittedly unimaginable to the human brain) infinitely good, infinitely powerful, and infinitely wise, that made the Universe.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Well, I really do not know about all of that. But I must quickly add that I do believe something of the sort in that I believe in a transcendent being that had something to do with the creation, or the existence of, physical reality, and that such a Being is on the whole good, and cares about humans (maybe even cares about all living creatures in the universe).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why? Well, I am sure it has part to do with my upbringing in a Christian family, which I radically broke from in my mid teenage years. It might have even more to do with my particular emotional makeup, whereby I do not think I can bear facing a universe where there is no transcendent realm and/or transcendent being, only the brute physical (and uncaring) materialistic, physical realm. So I admit I have a huge bias here, in that I very much want God to exist.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of course, this question has a lot to do with whether there is an afterlife. I suppose it is possible to believe there is a God, but no afterlife. But my impression is that this view is rare these days, although it seems likely that the Hebrew Old Testament writers, who definitely believed in God’s existence, had no concept or belief in an afterlife or a “heaven”. Personally, I tend to believe that if there is, in some sense, a God, then there is an afterlife for all rational beings, here and elsewhere (non human animals pose difficult issues, and I will not go into that here).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">From circumstantial evidence alone, I am inclined to agree with Scott Adam’s avatar in God’s Debris (a free book on the internet) that very few people actually do believe in God’s existence. They may say they do, but Adams’ avatar points out that there are many advantages to saying they believe (sometimes even fooling themselves).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Before leaving this issue, I must mention the controversial “Pascal’s Wager”, whereby Blaise Pascal presented an argument that you really could not lose by believing in God. I will not go into any details on this argument here, because it would take me too far afield to do so. For those especially interested in it, a vast amount of material about it can be found on the web. But I will just say here that I find Pascal’s argument completely unconvincing, and I believe there are a great many fallacies wrapped up in it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It might be noted that these are slightly different questions. For example, ones consciousness might continue on after death, but not necessarily in a form that would, in common sense terms, constitute a continuation of an individual’s life. There is a question of whether the individual’s identity is carried over in the transition, for example.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My strong suspicion is that one cannot really escape from conscious existence, even through suicide (Hamlet’s soliloquy is very insightful on this). I am strongly driven toward the idea that all individuals (not just human individuals, perhaps those in other galaxies also) have some kind of permanent soul, which has eternal existence. If this were to be true, then the answer to the question is necessarily “yes”.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This question is closely related to the question whether there is a God/Gods or not, since if there is, it would seem likely (at least if the God is anything like the traditional model) that this God/Gods has arranged for a more permanent existence of his creatures.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now this brings up the issue of whether there could possibly be some kind of judgment by God on the worthiness of an individuals life, and an associated consignment to a “bad place” (Hell) or a “good place” (Heaven). I completely reject as a lie the view that bad people go to “Hell”, a place of eternal suffering. Belief in that would be an affront to God (if he exists), because even a partially morally good Being would never subject a conscious creature to such everlasting punishment.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, if the punishing environment were of finite duration, that might be different. One can surely think of a great many people that would seem to deserve punishment for some finite time interval, perhaps with the punishment ceasing at such time that the evildoer truly repents in his/her “heart” (as would presumably be known to “God”).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Let’s buy, for the sake of argument, that there is a “heaven” (roughly in the traditional sense of the term in the Abrahamic religions) for humans. What could this be like? Could the inhabitants still do evil things (and maybe be “thrown out”?). Can natural disasters still occur that might result in the “second death” of some? What would prevent an individual from growing weary of such “blissful existence” after eons of time in heaven? Could a person who was deemed “good” upon admission eventually be corrupted and become morally bad? Would the inhabitants have “free will”?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">These are all very difficult questions, and so much so that they render the entire concept of heaven dubious and perhaps even incoherent.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In conclusion, I believe it likely that in some way a person’s identity and consciousness continue on after death, but I have no idea what kind of existence this might be.</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Are we likely to be living in a “simulated” world, as many have suggested to be the case?</i></span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is a very difficult, perhaps unanswerable question, and I warn the reader that it will not be answered satisfactorily here.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many brilliant scientists and philosophers have considered this question, many of them holding that the world as we know it is almost certainly a simulated one. Even though the arguments that lead them to that conclusion seem sound (or at least plausible), I must admit that I have a great deal of trouble imagining it to be true. What we think of as reality just seems “too real” to me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, it should be realized that the Abrahamic religions (as well as some others) argue that the world was created by a transcendent being (or beings), and that, in that view, the world would be a type of simulated world. It is my understanding that these religions imagine the world we all know will “pass away”, and perhaps be replaced by a new world (another simulated world?).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This even brings up the question of what would a simulated world even mean.?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many fictional works, both films and novels, depict convincing visions of how reality could be simulated. For example, Vanilla Sky, Total Recall, the Matrix, , the “Holideck” of Star Trek, are films that depict it. Phillip Jose Farmer’s River World and Terry Schott’s The Game (a free Kindle book) are a couple of examples of books that involve technological simulation of worlds.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hmmmm....I wonder if anyone really cares about the answer to this question except for (1) ardent religious scoffers and militant atheists, who argue that life does NOT require supernatural intervention to begin, and (2) evolutionary biologists, who, as scientists, are quite rightly are obsessed with how such an amazing phenomena such as life could have spontaneously arisen. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This seems to require that we find a way to exceed the speed of light? (such as by using wormholes, as depicted in Star Trek and other Sci Fi works.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have argued above, and elsewhere on this blog, that we do not have any way to determine if a system is conscious or not. This is because consciousness is entirely subjective, and only known to the system itself.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But if the platform (i.e., AI system) seems conscious, and for example, passes the Turing test, we will surely have to, on moral grounds, assume it is conscious, since to assume otherwise to result in evil consequences if we have assumed wrongly.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am inclined to think that no, we will not artificially create consciousness. But we may be forced to act as if we have.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I do not see how the methods of science can be used to answer this question, which is indeed one of the most perplexing questions we human can imagine. Seemingly, any plausible answer would have to assume the existence of laws of reality, thus being circular.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The psychologist William James considered this question, and felt that it was the “darkest” question that the human mind could consider. I believe that somewhere the philosopher Heidegger wrote that this question is the most important philosophical question.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">However, can I please direct my readers to my previous blog post, where I suggested an answer based an eternal, necessarily existing, abstract realm of ideas, a plausible answer that avoids any circularity.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Well, the essence of those creature in Star Trek is that they are designed to only care about “the herd”, or the collective set of all the cyborgs. That is, they do not seem to have the concept of individual identity (as I recall, there is one exception to this).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The culture of the human world, at the present time, seems to have a considerable amount of momentum in the collectivist direction, especially among those on “the Left”. It is to hoped, however, that this will soon be reversed, and the world culture will continue along the line of the individualism of the Enlightenment. So hopefully the human race will avoid the collectivism of the Star Trek cyborgs.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But the other aspect of the cyborgs is that some of their biological organs have been replaced by technological ones. As discussed above, I do feel that that will come to pass in the future of humanity.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am confident that the human race will make it past what Carl Sagan called the period of technological adolescence, and will thereby avoid a “Dr. Strangelove”-like nuclear extermination. However, some of these other dire effects are probably beyond human control, at least for the near future (we do not have any way to “steer” meteors away from a collision path with earth, for example).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is to be hoped that by the time asteroid impact becomes a threatening issue, earthlings will have the means to direct it away from earth.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The disease pandemic is of course a real concern. I do not have any idea how likely it is, on a global scale, but of course I hope it never happens.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many science pundits believe that AGI poses a huge threat to the human race. However, my personal feeling is that, unless some or all of these platforms are programmed to attack humans, they will never actually achieve consciousness, and hence will be unable to make a decision to wipe us out.</span></div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-62835781738336419702018-01-05T14:46:00.001-08:002018-01-07T08:18:04.255-08:00“Why does the the Universe Exist”?A wild speculation as to why “There is Something Rather Than Nothing”?<br />
(that is, “Why does the the Universe Exist”?, the “ultimate question)<br />
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The basic ideas in this approach:<br />
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That there is a timeless, non-physical realm of mathematical and logical relationships. These are relationships that do NOT need any kind of physical realm to be realized in. For example, the axioms and theorems of Euclidean geometry are true, and do not need any kind of a matrix of realized things to be true. “Pi” is the ratio of the circumference of a perfect circle to its diameter in any possible reality. This idea has been discussed by Roger Penrose, for example, who has called himself a “tri-alist instead of a dualist, because he believes in this third, abstract realm of ideas (the other two being (1) the materialistic universe, and (2) the realm of conscious beings. Rather along the lines of Descartes and his famous “dualism”.) . Of course, Plato also seemed to believe in this realm, and his belief would run counter to his teacher Aristotle’s view that the mathematical relations are merely abstracted from observations made in the physical world, and no have no basis or reality otherwise. <br />
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Here I am thinking along the lines of Max Tegmark, who, if I understand him, says that it is not at all odd that our mathematical concepts work to describe the physical world: It is not odd, because, in a very real sense, the physical world IS mathematics. Now what this would mean, exactly, I m not sure, but I can at least imagine that is true in some sense. After all, we are thinking loosely, creatively, and to some extent poetically. This subject can not be put in a syllogistic manner, with tied up with bows and ribbons on the package. I suppose I must confess that here I am trying to come up with a way to provide some kind of an answer, however heuristic, to the “Ultimate Question” in the title to this post, which has nearly driven me bonkers since I was a college student becoming interested in philosophy and metaphysics. Now I am old, and dammit, I want some hint of what an answer might look like! <br />
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The third piece of the meta-model is hinted at in Stephen Hawking’s famous question: “Who is it that has ‘put the fire in the equations’ to make the world based on these equations actually acquire reality”? Several possibilities can be discerned here: (a) if the realm of pure math and logic is consistent, then the world based on them MUST exist (I must, for the time being, ignore the problems brought up by Kurt Godel about mathematical consistency). This first possibility would not require any kind of agency. (b) Or, maybe there is in fact an agency: perhaps there is some kind of “gatekeeper” (God or Gods) that decides which of these equations to implement. I suppose such a gatekeeper could be viewed as a “God” or Deity of some kind, although it is not clear that the gatekeeper need be “conscious” in any way we can understand. Also it might be possible that this gatekeeper could be, along polytheistic lines, a pantheon of Gods or Deities. <br />
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Now turning to what is surely the most enigmatic aspect of all: Conscious minds that perceive the mathematically constructed physical world. Indeed, in the absence of reality-perceiving Conscious minds the Ultimate question does not even make any sense, since nothing would be perceived as existing, and the question doe not arise. My idea here is that God or the Gods have built a sort of “consciousness field” into the mathematically constructed physical universe, and once evolution has produced suitable living platforms to absorb some amount of this field, conscious individuals come to inhabit the world and ask philosophical questions such as the one under consideration here. Now there are many variations that can be imagined here. My favorite is that there is what Lord Dunsany called “The Sea of Souls”, which might consist of a large number (maybe an infinite number) of disembodied souls, or spirits, that are vying in some manner to be selected to occupy a conscious “body” in the (some) world. These souls would probably be immortal, although to sure, their realization as a physical body could be killed or terminated via interactions in the world they temporarily occupy. It would just be that they would be returned to “The Sea of Souls”, and there await there chance to be instantiated in the world (or some other world), perhaps after some kind of review, or critique, of their behavior (while they were in the world) with the God or Gods.<br />
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In summary:<br />
The idea presented above is that there is a timeless, necessarily existing, realm of abstract mathematical and logical relationships, and these are selected (by a God, Deity, or panel of Gods or “Overlords”) to be mathematically consistent to form a world. Well, there could be a great many ways (again, maybe an infinite number) that these relations could be extracted out, while remaining fully mathematically consistent, to form a great number of mathematically consistent worlds. Sentient beings are selected in some manner to occupy life within these worlds, and are carefully isolated from each other, although they all bathe in, and couple to, the consciousness field created to fill the universe.<br />
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The souls are considered to be immortal, having existed eternally before and after any of their time spent in a world. (this also solves the problem of free will, since they would not be bound by “nature or nurture" acquired while in a world.<br />
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-50155481371616222372017-09-04T20:33:00.001-07:002017-09-04T20:35:00.787-07:00<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Even though Ayn Rand would have probably have been appalled by this comparison, Toohey's advice is very similar in many ways to that of the devil-like character in C S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, wherein the devil-like character writes to his nephew, a lesser, novice devil, on how to demoralize and weaken the religious faith of his human victims.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I say Rand would have been appalled because of course she was an ostensible atheist, while Lewis was a prominent Christian. I say "Ostensible atheist" because there are places in Rand's writings that suggest some non-atheistic features of her thought. At one point in the Fountainhead someone says of Roark that though he will say he does not believe in God, he really does. Rand has also written somewhere that "God is a psychological reality". Isn't that a type of belief?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are differences between Screwtape and Toohey, however. Whereas Toohey is trying to destroy humankind's hope and spirit, Screwtape's aim is to corrupt human souls, and, ultimately, to lead them to damnation (in the Christian theology).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This brief comment was inspired by the youtube video at</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jguJM3TIehI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jguJM3TIehI</a></span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">]</span></div>
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Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-73232862564489474312017-03-04T20:57:00.000-08:002017-03-04T20:57:11.662-08:00The Problem of Identity<div>
There are a number of problems that might be termed “Identity” problems, or issues. Many of these have bothered me all of my life, and I have had trouble even framing some of them in words. But I am going to try here.<br />
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Basically, they are all related to “why is something one thing and not another”?<br />
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One question is: How does the identity of the whole depend on the identity of the parts?:<br />
I have often heard that our cells that comprise our bodies are replaced every seven years. There is the old classic “Ship Puzzle”, which was apparently posed by the ancient Greek: a ship, lets call it “The Proud Mary”, is replaced one board at a time. As the old boards are taken off, they are placed in a scrap pile. Eventually all of the boards are replaced, so that not one of the original boards is still in the ship. Since this happens gradually, the ship retains its identity as “The Proud Mary” at all times. Then one day, someone goes and puts the original boards all back together and says that one to be the true original ship “The Proud Mary”. The other one, he says, is a copy or duplicate. To some people this seems a frivolous problem, but to me it has always seemed to contain some genuine grounds for puzzlement. This puzzle would seem akin to the issue of how we maintain our personal identity in view of the fact that our individual cells are replaced.<br />
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Teleportation of bodies, such as is imagined to be possible in the Star Trek TV show, raises similar, even more daunting, paradoxes. If your molecular configuration is radiated to some other location and reconstructed there, is it really you? What if the original is not destroyed In the process of sending the molecular information? Which is the "real you"?<br />
Consider cloning, which in spite of some the popular misconceptions does not pose an identity problem, any more than does the phenomena of identical twins. A few years back, a sheep was cloned. This caused some controversy. But I do not understand why. I suspect that it threatens people’s underlying concerns about identity, though they do not know that that is the cause of their uneasiness about it. In fact, cloning, in contrast to the teleportation problem, poses no such problems. The cloned organism is a different organism, and as it grows it will have no connection with the cell donating original.<br />
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What if my leg were replaced? Would I still be me?--of course, there's no problem with anyone accepting that. What about all of my internal organs being replaced? Again, I don’t think there is any question that it would still be “me”. But what about the brain itself? It appears to be an organ, but it is the one that appears to be responsible for my thoughts, for me being who I am. So if Bob's brain is replaced by Mary’s, isn't the being in Bob’s body now really Mary? That is, the person you would perceive in Bob’s body would in fact be Mary. This would clearly argue that the real me is my brain. Just as the real nature of a computer is defined by its processor and memory. All of the organs and limbs are just “peripherals” that have little to do with the personal identity.<br />
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But can we imagine dividing the brain somehow? That is, what if the memories are Bob’s but the processor is Mary’s. Is there some reason why this is inherently a contradictory achievement? Is the person standing in front of you with Bob’s body, Bob’s memories, but Mary’s processor Bob or Mary?<br />
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Consider this question: “Can two separate or distinct entities be exactly alike?” In our everyday experience, this is of course not something that would ever occur to us, because compound or complex objects (trees, chunks of concrete, baseballs, rabbits, and so on) always have numerous traits that would allow us to label distinct members of their class. Maybe it is not always evident (as with baseballs where they all look very similar), but surely no one doubts that there are differences that could be discerned upon very close inspection. To carry it even further, we note that even if one insisted that there were no discernible differences, then differences could be added (the basketballs could be numbered, or the owners name etched on the surface somehow, etc.).<br />
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I have never heard of any set of parents, or even close friends, who have trouble distinguishing the separate identity of twins (although casual acquaintances may have a great deal of trouble telling them apart). In other words, there are always some small distinguishing characteristics that permit the distinction between them to be made.<br />
But electrons are imagined, in physics, as being fundamentally indistinguishable from each other. The same is true of other sub-atomic particles, and even all molecules or atoms of a given type are identical to each other. But, in our experience, can any entity be exactly the same as all others? What insights into the identity problem can the Pauli exclusion Principle give us? The electrons may be in different states, but in a sense the basic electron is assumed to be in every way identical as every other electron in the universe.<br />
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Reflect that physics/chemistry/biology do indeed say that our bodies are comprised of particles, atoms, and molecules. As groups of molecules string together, the possibility of distinguishing the configurations becomes possible.<br />
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Is it meaningful to imagine being someone else? Why am I me and not someone else (or how do I know I’m have not been someone else, but have just forgotten?). Maybe the question makes no sense, but why does it seem to arise in our minds? What does it mean when we refer to “being in someone else’s shoes”? We seem to be imagining, at least to some extent, what it would be like to be somebody else? Does this make sense, or can it be in any way imagined to be meaningful? While it seems relatively easy to imagine our selves being positioned somehow in another’s body, that would not really seem to be being them. As Douglas Hofstader asks in his anthology “The Minds Eye”, “What is it like to be a bat”? Does it make any sense to ask this, or related questions, that involve our self being transplanted into some other beings consciousness? Does it depend on whether the transplant involves beings of the same order of complexity and intelligence (i.e., does it make sense among humans, but not between say a bat and a human?). Is it possible that our self will really cycle through all possible people’s lives? Would this be a just eschatology? (sort of an analogy with Feynman’s one electron scattering back and forth in time).<br />
Does this have some bearing on what Christians might believe about the nature of Jesus Christ and the incarnation--that is, is it possible, consistent, or reasonable to imagine that Jesus Christ was God but was somehow limited by having to occupy a physical body?<br />
Ann Rice, in Tales of a Body Thief, simply imagines without dwelling on the difficulties, that such an exchange is possible. In fact, this very ingenious and imaginative author has depicted many variations of the mind-body switch scenario...<br />
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Aren’t such moral principles as the “Golden Rule”, and Kant’s “Categorical Imperative” based on the perception that it is possible to imagine being someone else? Maybe even on the possibility that in some sense you are or will be that someone else. You are sympathetic at least in part because you can imagine being them.<br />
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Isn’t the Marquis deSade’s arguments that he puts into his philosophical (but perversely randy) villains mouths about how morality is a ruse and that no one really has to care about anyone else base on his perception that we are all utterly removed and detached from each other, that there is no reason to care about another because you will no, can not, could not, ever be that other person.<br />
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But where does this stop? That is, how different can the being be before it is clearly impossible to imagine being the other? The old Jewish prayer of thanking God that I am not a woman springs to mind. It seems to assume that “I” could have been either. But does the “I” come into existence after my body, or was it there before? Is this just the issue of whether we have a soul or spirit? (Could this be related to the abortion arguments?)I can imagine being a woman, so it seems to be a reasonable switch. In fact, people even have sex change operations. Does a man really become a woman with such an operation? With the above example involving interchanges or transplants involving Tom’s brain and Mary’s body it seems clear that such a switch is possible or at least plausible.<br />
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But what about a being interchanged with another being of a different level of complexity? Of course, this could even be an issue within the human realm: IQs differ (but how widely in an absolute sense?)...But can I imagine being a slug, or a sheep, or any living animal.<br />
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What if I maintain that in fact you are always being interchanged with other people? That one moment ago you were John Smith, but now he is you and you are him. He has all of the memories and capabilities of me, and vice-versa. Maybe this just keeps happening, involving large numbers of people (or maybe all people). But his probably makes no sense, as it would be indistinguishable, would it not, from no interchange taking place at all.<br />
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And of course the big question: What is it like to not exist? Of course, we have in a sense all known this, as we presumably did not exist before we were born (or if we did, I for one do not remember it). Woody Allen said, “I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens”. “To be or not to be” isn’t the only question (even if that is an option, and Hamlet went on to question that)--there is also, what is it like to “not be”?</div>
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Related to this is the issue of, or the position of, solipsism, and the question of how this differs from materialism/atheism picture (where death involves annihilation and hence non-existence). In other words (and this is hard to explain, so bear with me), if we are annihilated at death, then for me the universe does not exist anymore. If it is inconceivable or meaningless for me to imagine being another conscious organism or being, then might I just as well argue that for all practical purpose, solipsism is true. At least in a practical sense. </div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-10320740233445668902016-12-31T20:53:00.000-08:002016-12-31T20:53:19.698-08:00Three short philosophical reflections as 2016 draws to an end.<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">The world as a simulation:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If the universe is a simulation for the “benefit” of earthlings, perhaps it would not be necessary for the “overlords” designing and creating the simulation, to simulate all of space time. I think this was broached in the Truman Show, where the world of the main character (played by Jim Carrey) was actually a very small region of space, perhaps the size of a small village, but surrounded by solid walls.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Following along with this idea, the seemingly distant and vastly numerous galaxies would not have to actually be objectively there, they would only have to appear to be from earth based observations. Similarly, cosmological time could be greatly truncated to merely the historical times of humans. The Big Bang and the eons of cosmological and geological evolution need only be made to have apparently occurred. The simulation would not need to actually include these eras of time.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Would all of the apparent “creatures” in the simulation need to be conscious? No, as aforementioned, some could be “zombies” (to use the term popular in consciousness writings, robots of a sort with no subjective lives). To introduce a bit of cynicism, this might explain the seeming stupidity of so many people in the world today.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The HBO series “West World” depicts this idea, where, if I am understanding it, only a tiny fraction of the beings within the simulated world are actual sentient beings, the rest being robots. Star Trek the Next Generations’s “Holideck” simulations of past epochs of human history also involve only fractional populations of conscious beings.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Robotic Consciousness:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today, many AI workers and theorists tend to talk as if this is certain to be achieved by the end of the 21st century (if not significantly earlier). But how will they know for sure that a robotic AI unit is really conscious, and not a “Zombie”? Indeed, we do not know which of our friends, relative, colleagues, and members of the human race at large possess consciousness. We assume that organic humans have it using “Occam’s Razor”: isn’t it the most straightforward assumption that they are conscious, just as we are ourselves? But it is far from certain (for example, consider the point made above in connection with us living in a simulated world).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yes, there is the Turing Test for intelligence, but this test is not for detecting consciousness. I think it is easy to imagine a platform with intelligence that does not possess subjective consciousness.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">However, as so brilliantly and poignantly illustrated in the episode of Star Trek the Next Generation (in connection with the robot known as “Data”), if a robot, or artificial human, <i>seems to be conscious</i>, it seems the only morally acceptable approach is to assume it is conscious. The opposite approach, treating such a being as not having consciousness, runs the risk of treating a conscious being as inanimate, and expendable, machinery. This would be unacceptable morally, horribly so.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Free Will:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is not only difficult to see how we humans can have free will, it is difficult to even define exactly what it means. Where did the agent supposedly having free will come from? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The first difficulty comes from “physicalism”, the idea that all motion in the universe ultimately results from causal behavior of elementary particles obeying some kind of “laws” of nature, and nothing can escape from these---certainly not the atoms comprising our brains, or the nerve impulses that seem to represent our thoughts. While quantum mechanics suggests that there is a random element in how the micro-world is realized in the macro-world of our everyday, such randomness does not really seem to be what we want free will to be.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The second sticking point is that “Nature plus Nurture”....i.e., our genetic makeup plus the effects of accumulated experiences would seem to exhaust what could determine the behavior of an individual human. Each individual human begins life as an infant with certain instinctual drives and capacities, but surely decision making invoking free will would only come later after experiences, in conjunction with the physical body, have molded the character and personality of the human person.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It would seem that a mechanism similar to this would hold even if each person has a spirit or soul that has developed in time (or something like time in some transcendent realm, what we might call “hyper-time”). As long as the decision making nature of a being is formed from some kind of a starting point plus accumulated experiences, whether in this physical realm in another, it would seem that the concept of free will in such a being becomes untenable.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Everything a person does, whether constrained by the physicalist model or the nature plus nurture model, is, at root, just due to random effects. This makes us think that such things a praise and blame, punishment and reward, admiration and condemnation, are all quite unjustified at the deepest level.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There would seem to be a way out of this trap, however---admittedly a highly speculative one, and one that I doubt very many moderns want to entertain for even a moment. But I want to proceed with it here because I firmly believe that each of us do in fact have free will. Furthermore, I think ALL of us believe we do have free will, no matter what is maintained in formal philosophical writings.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So given that I believe we all do have it, a far out idea that is almost surely impossible to prove might compel some degree of acceptance, simply because of the explanatory power of the idea. Suppose that each person has a soul of some kind that is eternal, or at least outside of any kind of time, much in that way that I believe Plato and certain other Greek philosophers imagined.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are precedents in science for entertaining, or taking seriously, ideas or models that are, at least currently, beyond empirical verification, but that have explanatory power. Examples would be string theory of elementary particles or gravity loop theory, either of which hold out hope of incorporating the gravitational force into the presently incomplete “standard model of particle physics”.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This idea of an eternal soul does suggest that a type of reincarnation might be in operation. Suppose that upon death in this world, your soul goes through some kind of review process in a temporary realm, and that you then maybe even have some say as to what realm you are going to next. Just as dreams fade rapidly upon awakening, so the soul might only very briefly recall or sense fragments of the formal life. Such an idea, if I understand it correctly, is put forth by William Wordsworth in his beautiful poem “Ode on Intimations of Immortality....”. The Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany has also toyed with similar ideas in his eschatological short story, </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">The Last Voyage of the King</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The subsequent realm does not necessarily have to be Earth, or even this galaxy or universe. It could be in a parallel universe, as some kind of a creature such as was imagined by H.P. Lovecraft, perhaps as a tentacled creature with 7 eyes or legs, or as some conscious being wholly unimaginable to us in our present human state. It would not even necessarily be represented or instantiated in an individual manner, maybe the reincarnated being could be composite of several beings, whether former Earthlings or other.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The speculations along these lines could clearly go on for a long time. but having sketched the broad outline of such a (greatly enlarged from the usual popular idea of it) reincarnation model, now want to move on to other topic, perhaps returning to this one at a later date (in 2017 or beyond).</span></div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-87223667889942502412016-10-09T23:28:00.000-07:002016-10-10T22:03:06.238-07:00<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Physician Assisted Suicide</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Should I be able to commit suicide legally? The question seems absurd. What if I am caught in the act and my attempt is aborted? What are they going to do? Execute me? Well, mission accomplished, LOL.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No, but seriously, the real crux of this issue is whether a physician should be legally allowed to help any of us who wish to painlessly “shuffle off this mortal coil”. While recognizing that there are potential dangers associated with physician assisted suicide, I think the answer should be a resounding YES!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The dicey issues and pitfalls are obvious: members of the family that are heir to the dying person’s wealth might wish, if they are bad, greedy people, to hasten the sick person’s death, even in cases where recovery might in fact be possible. So safeguards need to be put in place to prevent this. What exactly are these safeguards? I do not know, I am not a lawyer, but I am confident that such safeguards can be put in place.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Surely such safeguards would involve getting a panel of, say, three or more independent physicians to attest that there is no chance of recovery, and that the dying person has no chance for any quality of life unless a lethal medical method is employed to bring about termination of life. Perhaps as part of a person’s “living will” he/she would list the relatives or loved ones he/she trusts to be involved in the life-ending decisions.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What confuses the issue is the religious objection to suicide. Well, that is fine for religious people to choose to suffer because they believe that it is part of God’s plan for them to do so, but it is not defensible for them to impose that upon those of us who are non religious, or secular. In other words this is a “separation of church and state” issue.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is fine with me if ones religion forbids him/her to seek a painless exit from the living, but it is not OK if you force others to suffer because you feel it is God’s plan. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Would I choose to seek a physician to end my life via, for example. some kind of painless injection? I actually do not know. I may come down on the side of the religious objectors to such a procedure, in my case. Maybe I would feel, when actually in that position, that there is a meaning in my pain and suffering. But that is not for the government to decide, and I very much resent the attempts of Christians or other religious groups to deny me the right to seek such a “final solution”.</span></div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-89671284867858588662016-10-09T23:01:00.000-07:002016-12-05T21:58:19.343-08:00<div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A few random philosophical thoughts on metaphysics, consciousness, and free will.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Does consciousness originate within the brain, or is there some kind of a generalized consciousness “field” that couple to an individual that gives that individual a subjective conscious awareness? An analogy with the “Higgs field’ of the standard model of particle physics would be apt, where in that case elementary particles get their mass by coupling to the Higgs field.<br />
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It is hard to see how science, neuroscience in particular, can satisfactorily answer this, since science is based on making observations in objective realty, and consciousness is subjective. <br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many, if not most, of the questions that concern thoughtful humans are metaphysical questions that cannot be answered, or even broached, by the methods of the empirical sciences. Do we have free will? Is there a God? Does our consciousness in survive, in some form, our biological death? Why does the universe exist, or “why is there something rather than nothing?”.<br />
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This last question stands apart from the others in than I don’t think a satisfactory answer can even be imagined. As philosophers like to say, what would an answer even look like? Just imagining an answer makes us realize we would need t make use of already existent things <br />
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Now to be sure, for some of us, science can tend to suggest, or hint at, answers to some of the above questions. For example, the amazing design of the universe seems to suggest something like the “Einsteinian God” (or gods?). I think many theoretical physicists like to make reference to “God” or a deity when discussing how these physics laws were made to be consistent, and pregnant with deep complexity, although it is usually couched in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek style.<br />
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On the other hand, “New Atheist” Richard Dawkins has pointed out, somewhat plausibly to my mind, that biological evolution tends to imply that there is no God, no Designer. Natural selection seems to satisfy all the questions one might have about how life forms are so wonderfully adapted to the biosphere, and since this selection process is “nature red in tooth and claw” (as Charles Darwin famously remarked), if there is a God He/She seems unnecessarily cruel. But the most straightforward response to this is that there is , in fact, no God, no designer.<br />
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But when Dawkins goes on to say that there is no evidence of God, or Nobelist Steven Weinberg says that the “more we learn about the universe, the more pointless it seems”, they are on shaky ground. What evidence of a God, or a purpose to the universe, could possibly be found through empirical study of the universe?<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Free will is a topic much “in the news” today, at least among philosophers and neuroscientists. I am guessing that the vast majority of people working in these ares would readily say there no such thing as free will. And more often than not, they would add that “science has proved that there is not”. But of course, they cannot act on this, or even convincingly argue for it consistently, since, if their thoughts and actions are compelled, it seems there is no reason to believe what they say is true. We don’t ascribe any plausibility to the output of a puppet. Strict determinism seems to quickly undermine itself.<br />
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But let’s not be hasty here. Neuroscience aside, is seems very difficult to see how to escape from the constraints of “Nature plus Nurture” (NpN) since what an organism does would seem to be entirely dues to its “initial state” (its genetic makeup) and its experiences, which in effect add software to the organism. <br />
So, while it is easy to escape from the “physicalist” form of determinism through the inherent uncertainties of quantum mechanics of the microcosm, NpN is a real sticking point for the free willist. In fact, this is even true if the physical universe is non-deterministic.The real thrust of the NpN mechanism is that since the organism has a beginning in time, there can be no agency associated with its decisions other than what has been added onto its physical make up by its time-ordered experiences. <br />
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The fact is, it is even hard to specify exactly what free will would even mean. Free will is one of those things that we all “know”, or at least assume, that we and others have. In a sense it is axiomatic. In a way, we say, it is caused, but it is caused by our reasoning processes in our heads. And this seems correct, since the strict determinist has the onus of explaining why reason would have evolved, if it is not to allow an individual organism how to think and act. In a sense, determinism and reason seem to “over determine” the behavior of an organism. If its behavior is unfolding according to necessity, what possible purpose would reason serve from an evolutionary perspective?<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The strict physicalist determents has another problem. Recall Laplace’s argument that if he knew the positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe, then the later states of the universe would all be predictable. This is usually brought up in writings as being hopelessly naive, in view of chaos theory whereby the slightest uncertainty in these parameters would quickly lead to the universe being entirely unpredictable. But again, not so fast, chaos theory would completely render to predictability argument wrong. But a chaotic system is still a deterministic system. Conceptually, Laplace would seem to be correct, at least with the confines of “classical physics”.<br />
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Quantum mechanics,which certainly seems to well describe the micro-world, does seem to change this, although only according to some interpretations of it. For example, the “Copenhagen” interpretations involves separating the observer from the physical system, and the act of making an observation on a physical system cause it to collapse to a classically describable state. Hence, the overall deterministic nature of the physical universe is under cut by this view.<br />
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However, one might argue that if the atoms of the observer are included in the quantum state of the universe, physical determinism still holds. Following this line of argument, it would seem inescapable to infer that there really is nothing that could happen that was not preordained. But again, in this picture, what would be the “reason for reason”, and for consciousness? Truth and necessity seem to be incompatible.<br />
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(to be continued)</span></div>
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Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-71571702267731912812016-05-13T11:30:00.001-07:002016-05-13T20:47:23.828-07:00<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is my response to an Atlantic article criticizing Bill Maher’s and Sam Harris’s positions on certain aspects of Islam. The article is at <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/bill-maher-dangerous-critique-of-islam-ben-affleck/381266/"><span style="color: #0225a3; letter-spacing: 0px;">http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/bill-maher-dangerous-critique-of-islam-ben-affleck/381266/</span></a> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This article is plagued by a great deal of confusion, and in addition contains many half-truths (plus some out right baloney).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Taking Maher and Harris together, it is not so much that they want Americans to “denounce” Islam, as to have a critical discussion of it, hoping to eventually improve the lot of the muslim’s lives. In particular, they do want “liberals” in the west to denounce many of the cruel and rights-violating aspects of Sharia (such as stoning of adulteresses). And they also make a call for humans everywhere to stop believing and acting on words written in “sacred” texts long ago by people who through no fault of their own were ignorant. In his writings, Harris often makes the point that the West, where Christianity still has a significant foothold, the 18th century Enlightenment has today greatly reduced acceptance of the Old Testament’s brutal injunctions.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then to mention the infamous Ben Affleck appearance on Maher’s show as if it were some rational discussion is absurd. Anyone who watches that show (and it can still be seen on youtube) will be astonished by the idiotic, illogical ranting of Affleck. He in fact make no serious contributions whatsoever, he just rants loudly and offensively as some spoiled child might do. My suspicion is that, were it not for the undue respect Americans accord physically attractive actors, the vast majority of people would be disgusted by his behavior on the show.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The article uncritically bandies about the terms “democracy” and “Islamophobia”. Americans today, on both the left and the right, are largely ignorant regarding the distinction between a “democracy” and a “republic”. In the US, we have the latter. A strict version of the former would lead to a “tyranny of the majority”. “Islamophobia” is a bogus term that should be dropped from any discussion of Islam, because implies that those who criticize Islam are somehow “afraid” of it, or are actually bigoted against muslims, whereas usually the criticism is motivated by a desire to actually improve the lives of muslims living under theocracies that still implement Sharia. As the article actually points out in one place, Schlesinger’s term “doughfaces” could be applied to many on the American left who are quick to ridicule and reject any thing that hints of a negative attitude toward Islam, much as they did in the 19th century on the subject of balck slavery in the American south.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To say “After all, other Muslim-majority countries have elected female heads of state”, as if this shows that women’s rights are not being violated in many Islamic countries is disingenuous. Surely the author knows that women politicians can be involved in laws that violate otehr women’s rights just as much as men politicians can. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another dubious thread in this essay is that, whereas one is justified in vilifying certain implementations of communism, one cannot condemn the concept itself. I take issue with that. Surely anyone who has the slightest insight into human nature can see that joint ownership of all property is a sure road to disaster. Mr. Orwell has presented convincing fictional visions of this in </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">Animal Farm</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> and in </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">1984</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">. Of course, in a free market, free society, people who want to live in a communal way can always do so in small voluntary enclaves.</span></div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-24862986253676974842016-04-29T23:17:00.000-07:002016-04-29T23:17:26.742-07:00<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A few more thoughts regarding atheism and agnosticism:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One must distinguish a belief in one of the gods of the world’s religions from an open, and wondering attitude about there being some kind of mind behind the universe (maybe even behind the “multiverse”, if there is such). I think many of us physicists that study the strange and intricate mathematical laws that seem to underlie the material world may often entertain such speculations (though perhaps there is a tendency to not want to admit it for fear of appearing philosophically “soft”).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Maybe when one says he/she is an atheist, one must specify the particular “god” one does not believe in. As Dawkins and other “New Atheists” have often said, virtually everyone today is an atheist with regard to Zeus or Jupiter. And I agree that the Gods as portrayed in the Bible or the Koran are almost certainly inventions of the human mind, party motivated by wishful thinking about the promise of a glorious afterlife.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But beings such as the oft-heard example of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” are really off the mark, as these are presumably tangible, material creatures, in the same class as the Lochness monster, and in principle could be detected, if they did exist, via methods of investigative science. And these creatures are not, as far as I can tell, put forward to solve any metaphysical mystery.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some will argue that the miracles described in the ancient scriptures violate what we know about how the physical world works, and what its limits are. Walking on water, parting the Red Sea, turning water into wine, and so on. This is certainly true, although I suppose if the alleged miracle supported some deep metaphysical truth and was a one time event for that purpose, then perhaps we could not dismiss it with certainty. In that regard, I disagree with Hume, who wrote, if I understand him, that we should disbelieve a miraculous event if we had not observed such things happening in our experience. But it seems hard to understand what deep truths would be supported by these miraculous events. So it seems rational to view them with extreme skepticism.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But, as for miracles: There are two huge mysteries, or seeming miracles, staring us all in the face every day, (1) the fact that there is something rather than nothing (the puzzle the philosopher Heidegger was know for being obsessed with), and (2) the mysterious property of animal consciousness, in particular, human consciousness, that has apparently allowed we humans to put together at least a tentative theory of how the physical world behave at the quantum level, far below the realm of our direct sensory experience.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I continue to be puzzled by the claims of many “New Atheists” that “there is not a shred of evidence” for a God or Deity. Once one understands the claim of a believer to be about a metaphysical reality, it then seems irrational to expect the believer to produce evidence of a physical nature. By contrast, a believer in the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” would be, quite rightly, be expected to produce physical evidence if he is to be taken seriously.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I for one am humbled by the mysteries of existence and consciousness cited above, and while it is not clear that a god, deity, gods could solve or explain them, they are why I am inclined to say I am an agnostic. If there is a position that is called “agnostic theism”, it might come close to describing me.</span></div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-30832078701788812312016-04-25T11:00:00.000-07:002016-04-25T11:01:28.159-07:00<br />
In defense of Sam Harris:<br />
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I just watched a conversation between Abby Martin and her brother about the (somewhat controversial) New Atheist Sam Harris, a contemporary intellectual that I usually (though not always) to agree with. The video can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGZ98VcA9zk">here</a>.<br />
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This is just too painful to watch in its entirety. In just the first few minutes, the Martin siblings make so many assertions about Sam Harris that are wrong that my exasperation threshold is pegged. I have read a lot of Sam Harris's writings, and nowhere does he say that we should intervene in muslim theocracies. Far from "hating" muslims, as the Martins keep asserting, he is trying to enlighten them through rational discussions, and hopes to eventually convince not only muslims themselves but also misguided "multiculturalists" in the west to question and reject harmful concepts such as Sharia law.<br />
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It is true that he does, as do I, dislike many aspects of Islam. I would hope any rational person, who really cares about kindness, human freedom, and love would similarly be critical of a great many aspects of islam.<br />
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And they seem to think that criticism of Islam is somehow "racist", something I find indefensible. How many times do we have to point out that a religion is not a race?<br />
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By the Martin sibling’s logic, or, more correctly, the lack thereof, a person who criticized black slavery in the US south in the mid 1800’s would be accused of “racism”, not only against black people (for example, arguing something like “they are happy as slaves”), but also against the slave owners who were of largely different ethnic stock than those in the northern (free) states.<br />
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I wish the Martin's would give references to the insulting charges they make against Harris. From what I have read of him, almost all of their claims are either lies, or at best, based on misunderstandings of his arguments. But since Harris writes in a clear, easy to understand manner, I suspect that there is some hidden agenda of the Martins, and they deliberately lie to advance it. What would this agenda be, I wonder?<br />
<br />Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-34603818818159256462016-01-18T14:17:00.001-08:002016-01-18T14:17:57.678-08:00Reservations with Materialism, and Reflections on the Mind-Body ProblemPhysics has succeeded brilliantly in explaining many features of the inanimate universe. The basic picture involves, at the most basic level, collisions and interactions of particles and fields, with forces being the cause of how the particles and fields interact with each other, and move through space-time.<br />
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But in this picture, it is not at all clear how matter particles could clump together into objects, i.e., animals, that have seem to have some kind of self awareness and that apparently experience conscious thoughts. More ever, some of these clumped objects (e.g., human animals) that have, by the materialist hypothesis, formed from blind forces, yet have systems of thoughts--theories--that seem to go a long way toward explaining how the universe works.<br />
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In other words, we would have to imagine that the laws of physics and chemistry have somehow accidentally given rise to brains, and currents within brains, that correspond thoughts that allow us to understand these laws. There seems to a paradox, or at least an absurd circularity, in that vision of how a clumped object can generate thoughts that partly explain itself.<br />
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Bertrand Russell posed the idea of “conscious life as an accident” with great eloquence in his classic essay A Free Man’s Worship:<br />
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“<i>....Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms........A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking Mother.”</i><br />
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Hmmm…"accidental collocations of atoms". But, are there really any accidents? In the deterministic picture of reality, the universe as a whole is simply unfolding according to fixed laws that have no “wiggle room” for anything happening that is not in a sense “programmed into” the universe. In other words, there are no accidents, nor is there any novelty, in the mechanistic picture; everything unfolds deterministically, from the time of the Big Bang to the “closing seconds” of the universe. The motions and dynamics may at times be chaotic, but chaotic process are still deterministic---just not predictable.<br />
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Quantum mechanics, which is the way we humans at the moment understand the sub-microscopic world of particles and fields, suggests that only when a conscious observer interacts with a sub-system within the universe can “novelty” enter the time evolution of the universe. The cosmologist Andre Linde has written that, in effect, the quantum state of the universe as a whole, absent conscious observers, is independent of time, and hence static, or frozen, in space-time.<br />
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Consider, accepting for the moment the materialist picture of consciousness, that if thoughts result from the physics of particles interacting in a deterministic way, then our thoughts are not determined by logic and reason, because they are determined by external causes (pushes and pulls from the blind forces of nature, just as with inanimate matter). So this seems to, in turn, undermine the validity of our theories of physics because the thinking and reasoning leading to them have been just due to the actions of blind, non-rational, forces.<br />
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Maybe trying to understand consciousness is like trying to imagine how a person in a totally dark room with only a flashlight can shine the light on the flashlight to examine and understand the flashlight. In a similar way, the conscious observer may simply be forever logically prevented from objectively viewing his/her self, because his/her consciousness can only examine things outside of it.<br />
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Another analogy is imagining a person sweeping a room, and sweeping the dirt under the rug. What does he then do with the dirt under the rug? He can’t sweep that under the rug.<br />
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If reasoning in an animal brain is a pattern of billiard balls colliding and interacting, as the entire process of the universe is assumed to be in a mechanistic physics perspective, doesn’t that seem to undermine the validity of reason? Or at least make it seem to be “over determined”. By overdetermined, I refer to the situation where something is attributed to two or more incompatible causes, or an accusation is rebutted by two or more incompatible alibis. For example, suppose you say I damaged the umbrella you loaned me. I respond that not only did I never borrow it, but it was already damaged when I borrowed it. Or as in Woody Allen’s clever joke about how “Einstein said the laws of physics say that you can’t go faster than the speed of light. It is also undesirable, because at that speed your hat would keep blowing off”.<br />
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Now none of this is to say that the brain is not involved in conscious thought. Indeed, that it is seems to be true almost beyond a doubt. I think the brain is a necessary thing for thought, consciousness, and reason. It's just not sufficient by itself. Some have proposed that the brain is a type of antenna, whereby thoughts are generated through some combination of an underlying substrate of consciousness and the organic matter of the brain. It must be admitted that it is not clear how to experimentally broach this idea. It would, in any case, explain why, under surgical anesthetic, conscious thought seems to cease.<br />
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I favor a type of dualism, similar to (but different than) a model that long the philosopher Rene Descartes proposed, namely that “mind” and “matter” constitute a dual reality. Descartes’ view is called “Cartesian Dualism”, because he considered mind and matter to be fundamentally different substances.<br />
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Well, I am inclined to look at it this way: There is a "bottom up" approach to reality, which leads to trying to understand and characterize the physics of the microcosm, and attempts to explain systems larger than the microcosm in terms of that derived physics understanding. But there is a top down approach, which recognizes that high level phenomena have emerged; such things as love of friends and family, passions for various subjects, the beauty of music, painting, literature, and nature. It recognizes (or assumes) the existence and validity of values, thoughts, reason, consciousness and free will.<br />
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The duality I speak of here, based partly on my understanding of the “cognitive dualism” model of philosopher Roger Scruton, recognizes both “top up” and “bottom down” realms as both being valid and yet independent of each other. Yes, there is a powerful desire among us humans to unify the bottom up and top down approaches. But for reasons I have discussed above I do not think this is possible, because the bottom up approach, if carried all the way to its logical conclusion, undermines itself. We should just recognize the two visions of the world as being equally valid, yet irreconcilable, and neither being fully understandable in terms of the other.<br />
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Interestingly, there is a precedent for this kind of seeming paradox in quantum physics: Just like in quantum mechanics particle are paradoxically both waves or particles, depending on what kind of experiment is involved. That is, in certain contexts, a microscopic particle, e.g., a photon, is a particle, in others, it behaves like a wave. Classically, i.e., in our macro-world, the two pictures of a particle are incompatible, but apparently Nature does not care. She says, “Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. Why would you expect your macro-world evolved brains to understand how that can be?”<br />
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Does any of this mean we have to postulate a “God’ or “gods” that is responsible for the mind being partly inexplicable in physics terms? Well, that would be a possible argument, but not one that necessarily follows. And a God/Gods hypothesis raises a great many problematic questions, such as “who made God/gods?” There are plausible responses to that, but I do not wish to go into that area in the present essay.<br />
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In any case, the issues discussed herein are all tied in with the questions about why there is a universe at all, and is there any purpose to existence. No one knows the answers, but I do not think it is foolish to ask the questions (even knowing that we cannot expect to find clear cut answers).<br />
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One possibility that must be considered is that consciousness is somehow embedded in the cosmos from the get-go....i.e., present in some way in the “Big Bang”. When carried to an extreme, this kind of thinking can give rise to “Panpsychism”, which imagines that all matter, animate as well as inanimate, has some type of consciousness. (Speaking for myself, I have trouble believing that a rock, or a hunk of metal, is conscious, so I tend to give that very little weight).<br />
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Another slightly different approach--and there are many variations on this---is to insist that consciousness is actually more fundamental than the physical world. In other words, the goals of the materialist, that strive to explain consciousness from motions of matter, is turned up-side down. I believe some of the thinking inspired by Eastern religions finds the “primacy of consciousness” congenial.<br />
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This also all bears on a question that is very hotly debated in the western world these days, and that is the question of whether human-kind can create “artificial beings (robots or androids) that are conscious, and that are quite possibly vastly more intelligent and much more quick thinking than humans. The consensus seems to be “yes”. If so, this would perhaps give credence to the materialist position.<br />
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But not necessarily, since, if consciousness is in some way embedded in the very stuff of the universe (not going all the way to panpsychism), it is plausible that conscious beings could impart consciousness to other beings that they create.<br />
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Of course all the above considerations lead into other perplexing puzzles such as “do we, or the androids, have free will?” (whatever that concept might mean). Certainly, on the mechanistic picture, the answer would be no, since in that picture all is just deterministic motions of particles. But even the dualism proposed above does not provide a clear path to free will.<br />
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Quantum mechanics does, at first sight, seem to offer a way out of determinism. But this is not really true, since the state of a physical system (as represented by its “wave function”) is predicted to evolve in a deterministic way until it is observed. And if conscious beings are always part of the system comprised of the physical universe, observations by such beings within the universe do not really interrupt the deterministic evolution of the universe.<br />
Even if we allow that QM does offer a way out, there is still the problem of determinism from the all inclusiveness of “nature plus nurture”, which seems to exhaust the possible reasons for a person’s actions and thoughts. That is, every thing we can imagine a conscious being to do seems to be due to a combination of its physical makeup (e.g. its genes) and its life experiences. There appear to be no other options that would allow any sense to be made of “free will”.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-87541950342457820012015-12-06T20:39:00.002-08:002015-12-07T10:27:53.314-08:00Angst versus Anxiety<br />
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When does worry qualify as "Angst", and when does it qualify as "Anxiety"?<br />
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OK, I’ll admit right away that I am not a psychologist. But I very much like to think about the subject, especially when it verges on philosophical issues. So I would here like to consider how these two psychological terms, Angst and Anxiety, might differ.<br />
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I watch a lot of Woody Allen films, and it is clear that he often refers to having feelings of Angst. Some of this is no doubt to colorfully enhance the neurotic stage persona he has developed in most of his films over the years. Google defines Angst as “A feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general.” This comports well with the kinds of concerns that Woody Allen typically expresses as a character in his films. But the Google site goes on to list “Anxiety” as a synonym for Angst, which to my notion is not entirely true. indeed, the same site goes on to define “anxiety” as “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.”<br />
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My take on the difference between there two terms is that “Angst” properly refers to some type of metaphysical dread, while “Anxiety” refers more to a practical kind of fear, or set of worries, that are limited to practical existence. The above cited Google definitions seem to support this interpretation, at least to a fair approximation.<br />
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The reason I find the distinction a useful one for myself is that many times, when I confess to a friend as having Angst, the friend often responds as if to say “Oh come one, just admit that you are just a ‘worry wart’ about some practical issue, such as keeping your job, fixing up or selling your house, meeting a potential spouse, not losing money in the stock market, etc. Don’t try to make it seem more highbrow by using some hoity-toity “Kierkegaardian” term like Angst.”<br />
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One of my favorite jokes can bear on illustrating feelings of Angst:<br />
Question: What is the difference between an Optimist and a Pessimist?<br />
Answer: An Optimist believes that this is best of all possible worlds. A Pessimist fears that the Optimist is right.<br />
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Here are some examples of what kinds of thoughts might prompt Angst:<br />
-- The fear that life is meaningless, or that there is, in some sense, a void at the heart of existence.<br />
-- The deep concern about a possible existence that follows this life. As Hamlet worries in his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy : “To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause”.<br />
-- The worry that we might be “reincarnated” as some kind of creature, maybe an animal such as a crustacean or even as some alien creature from a distant galaxy.<br />
-- The rather bizarre worry that there is in fact some kind of God or Deity, but He/She is a “perfect stinker”, or otherwise not totally in control of existence.<br />
-- The fear that somehow we will all have to “pay” in some so far unspecified or unknown way for any misdeeds (whether slight or major) we have performed in this life.<br />
-- The fear that our life is really just a simulation of some kind, and we will awaken from it as from a dream into some form of existence that is unimaginably different than what we now experience.<br />
-- The worry that we do not even have any idea about what to worry about, metaphysically speaking.<br />
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I do not want to minimize the concerns that surely everyone has that fall into the perhaps more prosaic category of Anxiety. While perhaps some of us maintain the Angst kind of concerns almost all of the time in the background (perhaps subconscious?), probably conscious or subconscious practical worries pester us too: Health concerns for our families and friends, worries that our jobs and financial situations are secure, and so on. It is just that these kinds of worries are of a different kind than those represented by Angst.<br />
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What, if anything, can be done to alleviate feelings of Angst? I do not know. I seriously doubt that any kind of counseling could help, since my guess is that most counselors or psychologist would be ill-equipped to discuss the metaphysical issues behind the dread. If one were a believer in one of the existing world’s religions, then perhaps in some cases a session with a priest, rabbi, minister, or imam might help. But for those of us who are skeptics and lack any religious affiliation, we are left to deal with these feeling on our own.<br />
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In particular, I want to say that I doubt very much that any kind of medical treatment, such as a prescription pill, can help in an acceptable way. Indeed, the person who experiences Angst probably feels that it would be undesirable to alleviate his/her concerns in this way, since that would simply be a refusal to face what may be the most important questions we can ask of life. And furthermore, he/she probably feels that considering the question prompting feelings of Angst may in fact be the very purpose of life.<br />
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As far as what can be done about feelings of Anxiety. I suspect nothing at all can be done about these, because my guess is that many of these are valid concerns. Having such anxiety might even be a good thing, especially when the worry is accompanied by some kind of a plan of attack in case the worry materializes.<br />
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Finally, I do not mean to imply that somehow the people who experience much Angst are in any way superior to those who do not, or are they somehow deeper than those who are mainly beset by only Anxiety. I myself have significant degree of both Angst and Anxiety, as no doubt do a great many people in the general population. Some others will perhaps feel that the tendency to experience Angst is either an affection or an unfortunate affliction. Well, I do not feel that way about it. I have had people tell me that they pity me for having these metaphysical concerns, for indeed they are not decidable in any way that I know about, certainly not by accepted methods of science. So, they say, why allow oneself to dwell on them. Three things to that: one, is I doubt that such a person has any real choice in the matter; second, that in some ways it is, perhaps paradoxically, a privilege or a benefit, because it evokes the joy of wonder to speculate on such “Angst-inducing issues; and third, that some of us feel that it adds to the meaning of life to consider these things, and that it is even necessary for us to do so.<br />
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<br />Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-51965034264129837042015-11-22T21:03:00.000-08:002015-11-22T21:15:14.989-08:00Please, stop using the word “Islamaphobia”.<br />
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It is an amazing, but confounding and daunting, cultural phenomena in the United States today---perhaps in the Western world---that so many educated people, especially those on the political left, are quick to brand any criticism of islam as “Islamaphobia”. This is unfair, and wrong on so many levels it is hard to decide just how to start an analysis of it. I will try to sort all of these typical accusations out, and will discuss what I believe are the errors in them.<br />
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First of all, Islam is a religion, obviously not a race of people, and it should therefore be perfectly legitimate to analyze Islam’s precepts, and to present opinions about what is bad and what is good in it.<br />
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I’ll put my cards on the table right off the bat, and admit that I find this religion to be almost certainly false, and also backward and harmful to humanity at large. I have read the Koran, albeit in English, and to my disappointment, found it to be lacking the richness and the interesting stories in, for example, the Old Testament. Further disclosure---I am severely critical of said Old Testament, and am an agnostic about whether there is any kind of God or Deity---even tending toward atheism with respect to the God of any of the world’s major religions. But this is all irrelevant to the issue at hand, since I believe a person should be free to believe any religion, but should not be free to force that religion on other people.<br />
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There appears to be a prevalent, but confused, idea that “multiculturalism” demands acceptance and support for any religion that is not predominant in our own culture. I have posted another blog on this site that discusses what is wrong with this, http://bigthickglasses.blogspot.com/search/label/Muliculturalism but will just say here that multiculturalism is a wonderful thing as it pertains to importing art and music from other cultures, but when it involves ideas that violate human rights it is not a good thing. And the Islamic precept of Sharia involves many such rights-violating ideas, such as prescribing capital punishment for apostasy, practicing homosexuality, adultery, etc.<br />
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Another oft-heard attack on those who criticize Islam is that the critique is “racist”. Let’s try to figure out just what such such charges might mean, even though on the surface such a position is absurd since neither muslims nor Islam refers to a race. I suspect the basis is two-fold: (1) the muslim population is perceived to generally be darker skinned than the majority of people in the western world, and (2) the muslims are on the whole much worse off economically than many in the west. Both of these ideas are perhaps basically correct, on the average, and people of a “liberal” persuasion value---quite rightly-- tolerance of other cultures, the more so when the other culture involves these two factors. And everyone is aware of the very bad treatment in the past of certain dark-skinned people by the west.<br />
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But consider this: the widespread poverty in so many muslim populations is arguably in part due to the precepts of Islam. Hence criticizing Islam is actually an act of kindness toward muslims, since if one feels Islam holds them back, the removal of the strictures of that religion might well help them in the long run (maybe even to some extent in the short run). In any case, it is clearly true that negative reviews of Islam are not intended to hurt or offend Muslim people.<br />
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The term Islamaphobia is indefensible for another reason. If one were inclined to show hatred or disdain for muslim people, that could quite properly be termed “Muslim-phobia”; but even then the suffix “phobia” would be dubious since it suggests fear of the subject it refers to. It would not really be fear, but dislike. However, this is more of a nitpick, and I think we could let “Muslim-phobia” be used, without a strong protest, for bigotry against muslims. And that would indeed be a bad attitude to have, for the very reason that I give above, namely that reasonable people should wish the best for muslim people, except in cases where a group of Muslims tries or wants to overthrow the constitutions of the countries in which they reside.<br />
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It must also be realized that the implementation of Sharia concepts (in the form of a Sharia court) cannot coexist in a western democracy. Consider the case where woman living in a European country commits adultery, and is brought before a Sharia court and condemned to death. Whether she is a citizen of that country, or a prospective immigrant that is not yet a citizen, such a sentence cannot be allowed to be carried out because that “crime” is not punishable by death in a liberal democracy (in fact, it is not even considered to be a crime, although some may condemn it morally). The same would go for a person charged with the “crime” of being gay, or of being an apostate. All western democracies forbid “cruel and unusual punishments”, most forbid capital punishment for any crime, most consider the right to a fair trial by the standards of the countries constitution, and most all adhere to the principle of of separation of church and state (which is immediately violated by the idea of a Sharia court).<br />
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Another common response to critics of Islam involves pointing to the horrid crimes done in the past in the name of Christianity---slavery, the crusades, witch hunts---which is not only the world’s other dominant religion, but the religion which invites a degree of disdain among the cultural elite in the United States and in much of the western world. But the difference is that the zeal for the committing of these crimes has been mitigated by the Enlightenment of the 18th century. Of course, those crimes can still point to the evils done when religion is made part of the state, and actually serve as additional fodder for criticizing theocratic Islam. And furthermore, every school child should know that pointing to evils done by some faction does not excuse the evils done by another one.<br />
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As far as I know, no one in the West is arguing for an actual physical war against Islam per se. The only war that seems justified to me is a “war of ideas”, which is in part justified by a true concern to improve the lives of the world’s Muslims.<br />
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So in summary:<br />
--The term Islamaphobia is rarely, if ever, justified for use by people who care and value liberal democratic ideas.<br />
--Muslim-phobia would be the correct term to apply to a person who is bigoted toward muslims.<br />
--People should stop trying to excuse the bad actors of Islam by saying Christians (or followers of other religions) have been as bad. While this might even be arguably true, it is no longer relevant today.<br />
--People in the west should feel free to criticize the precepts of islam, and engage where, an avenue exists (e.g., blogs), in a “battle of ideas”.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-36686072847555342022015-06-16T21:44:00.000-07:002015-06-16T21:44:54.675-07:00In partial praise of the power of ideas<br />
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Who was it that defined humankind as the “rational animal”? Someone in the Athenian philosophical circles, I think. But in any case, it is certainly a big fat target for ridicule, since there is apparently a great deal of irrationality in the world today, what with the 20th century’s terrible wars, and the middle east’s quagmires of recent times. One could go on and on listing all the folly and needless human suffering, fueled by passions unchecked by reason. I recall somewhere that Bertrand Russell wrote many years ago that universities should not try to teach reasoning to people, because “they would only reason wrongly”. I was in college at the time, and quite under Russell’s spell; but even then I felt that he was being unduly cynical. Now I think I can partly see his point.<br />
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There can be little doubt that a great deal of the suffering by humans has been caused by the various world’s governments, which in turn are usually directly linked to certain ideologies. Examples would be communism, nazism, and fascism, all of which have led to enormous human misery, although there might be those who would argue that the fault was not the respective ideologies per se, but rather the opportunistic exploitations and distortions of them by evil politicians. I do not wish, in this post, to delve into this issue. Rather, I want to sound what may be a hopeful note, and suggest there is some evidence that good ideas can slowly--all too slowly, to be sure---win out with time.<br />
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In a recent post, I discussed how Sam Harris made an appearance on the Bill Mayer show, and made a plea for liberals in the west to intellectually engage with the world’s Muslims, to attempt to convince a critical percentage of them that such backwards precepts as embodied in Sharia Law are “bad ideas”. Though the discussion was tarnished by angry and irrelevant outbursts by a certain other panelist, Harris’s point still came across to those who would listen. But I think many have belittled the notion that such things as Sharia and jihadism can be effectively combatted by words. I believe such belittlers are underrating the power of ideas.<br />
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I would like to point to three examples in the western world: the acceptance of gay marriage, the general agreement that the use of marijuana should be decriminalized, and the increasing attitude that the death penalty should be abolished. I am not saying that these examples command universal approval, but are being widely accepted to an extent that would be unbelievable just a few decades ago. All of these have of course been extensively debated in various forums and editorial pages, and no doubt the modern accessibility to the internet has contributed to the relatively rapid acquiescence.<br />
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The reader will no doubt infer that I feel these examples are largely good; indeed, I would be including them in a post that praises the strength of ideas unless I felt they were good. I have believed that the first two examples represent good changes in the state and society for all of my adult life (with caveats). The third, involving the prohibition of capital punishment, I have gradually come to agree with , after hearing and debating the issue for many years.<br />
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Well, I hate to now sound a sour note, but feel I have to point out that there are other ideas that are being bandied about that in my opinion are not so good. For example, as a “libertarian” (or “classical liberal”) I am a firm believer in the virtues of the free market, i.e., laissez faire capitalism. But in this case, the public is barraged by opinions to the contrary, notably, in the press and the media. For reasons that are not clear to me, these tend to be largely anti-capitalist.<br />
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If capitalism is such a great idea, why hasn’t it garnered larger acceptance? I suspect the reason is partly that it runs afoul of the prevalent “identity politics” . The three examples considered above all involve, to a considerable extent, situations and freedoms that are given to other people than ourselves, and are hence removed from the passions of ID politics. I can only hope that in the not too distance future, a critical percentage of people will see that the free market in fact benefits all, and will become an idea with a wide degree of acceptance.<br />
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<br />Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-87619745615136282822015-05-17T22:16:00.000-07:002016-06-01T21:23:28.659-07:00The differences between a "Leftist" and a "Liberal"<br />
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It is an almost constant source of annoyance to me that all too often these days people in the US on the political Left persist in referring to themselves as “Liberals”. This is nonsense. The essence of “classical” Liberalism is to minimize the power of the state, and to limit it to simply protecting individual rights. In particular, Liberalism extols the virtues of the free market, i.e., capitalism. But the dominant position of the modern Left is anti-capitalist. I can only guess that it is at least partly the fault of academia (in the liberal arts areas), which tends to be dominated by a statist philosophy, and is also staffed by a high percentage of people of the “Baby Boom” generation, who were taught in the 1960’s onward that they were automatically on the side of the angels, and hence get to call themselves by a self-congratulatory name. After all, “Liberal” sounds like a good trait---as indeed true liberalism is!--but quite often the only way the people on the Left are “generous” is with other peoples money and property.<br />
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I need to qualify what I mean here by individual rights. I refer to what libertarians term “Negative Rights”, a concept which means that your rights can only be violated by another person, group, or agency initiating force against you. Thomas Jefferson was quoted as saying that the state’s only purpose is to prevent people from initiating force and thereby causing injury to innocent people. Positive Rights would mean that a person has the right to another person’s property or labor in the absence of a mutually acceptable exchange being involved. True Liberals should not recognize the existence or “Positive Rights” in a free society.<br />
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The other term in common use by the American Left is perhaps even more annoying. Namely, the term “Progressive”. Well, everyone is in favor of progress in some sense, but it is the height of arrogance to refer to ones personal political philosophy as embodying progress in a form that all would agree with. At least this term, and its application, has a historical precedent, going back to the early 20th century (for example, Theodore Roosevelt was associated with the Progressive political party).<br />
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Classical liberalism today tends to go by the name of “libertarianism”. But there are two flavors of libertarians:<br />
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One type argues that freedom is desirable because of the beneficial effects it has on society. These are usually termed “consequentialist” libertarians, for obvious reasons. For example, the Free Market is praised and advocated, because, it is argued, Capitalism this leads to an economic situation that is to the benefit of all the citizens; or, at least, that it is optimal. The late Milton Freeman, Friedrich von Hayek, and Ludvig von Mises would be seem to examples of this camp.<br />
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By contrast, the other kind takes an Individual-Rights based stance, and argues that the purpose of the state is simply to vouchsafe individual rights, and it is irrelevant whether this leads to optimal consequences for the society that the state serves. Here rights are to be understood as “Negative Rights”, in the sense that each individual has a right to not be the victim of force initiated against her/him.<br />
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An an example, consider the issue of marijuana legalization. The consequentialist type of libertarian would likely argue that people should be free to use any drug for personal enjoyment, as long as the effect of this freedom does not prove harmful to society at large. But the deontological libertarian would profoundly disagree, noting that making a law against using marijuana violates a persons’ right to put anything at all in his/her own body. But he/she would quickly add that some activities would involve violating the rights of others, if done under the influence of such a drug (for example it would be, quite properly, illegal to drive a car while stoned).<br />
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Now, it is still true in a sense that the deontological libertarian believes that his/her philosophy is indeed good for everyone, because a government that properly represents individual rights, benefits all. But it may not maximize some societal traits that some might consider “Good”, such as preserving traditional marriage, maximizing the GNP, or discouraging future drug use , etc.<br />
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As for me, I am a firm advocate of the deontological brand of libertarianism.<br />
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Why is our society today divided almost 50-50 into the two poles of Left and Right? First off, one must realize that libertarians are not “Right Wing”. As the recent book on Liberalism by science writer Timothy Ferris points out, the political spectrum is really better represented by an equilateral triangle, with two of the vertices representing Left and Right, and the remaining vertex being Liberalism (or, to a good approximation, libertarianism).<br />
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The Wikipedia page on Libertarianism points out that “Liberal” only means left wing in the US. In Western Europe the term means “laissez faire” economics and individual freedom.<br />
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An occasional misconception is that libertarians are “rugged individualists”. While it is probably often true that “rugged individualists” are libertarian oriented, the converse is certainly not the case. Libertarianism generally recognizes the immense value of Society to the individual, and notes that we would be little more than wild animals (and short lived, being poorly equipped for survival by our natural bodily features) in the absence of it. In fact, the power of society, apart from how it is represented in the state, is something that is unfortunately little recognized by left and right. Disapproval by society is often all that is needed to deter a great deal of anti-social behavior. For example, a business owner that refuses service to some group of people, on grounds that are generally considered bigoted, will not long survive in the marketplace, because a critical percentage of prospective customers with tend to shun that particular business. Of course, the stronger the majority of society that considers such an attitude bigoted, or unfair, the more rapidly will the “bigoted” shop owner’s business fail.<br />
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It is only fair to say that both left and right take libertarian positions on some issues. For example, those on the left are usually in favor of gay marriage, marijuana legalization, and separation of church and state, all by themselves pillars of libertarianism. Those on the right quite often favor free market economics, in alignment with libertarianism. Indeed, one often hears libertarians say that they are “socially liberal and fiscally conservative”, which perhaps gets across the approximate idea, but requires considerable qualification.<br />
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Finally, I believe that most every reasonable person assumes what is essentially a "libertarian" position in private dealings with individuals that he or she associates with. I cannot recall anyone threatening violence against a colleague or friend lest---for example-- they give a third party money for lunch. The "live and let live" attitude that is basically the idea behind libertarianism seems to be universally adopted in private practice in the western world today. Oddly, it seems to get lost when abstracting or generalizing this philosophy to the state and society at large.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-51511714481039674952015-02-22T11:49:00.000-08:002015-02-22T11:49:12.091-08:00<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It seems that there is massive confusion in the West about the valid domain of multiculturalism. I believe that it should not entail condoning another country’s government in cases where human rights are blatantly violated. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In particular, “Sharia Law”, as applied by governments of some Islamic theocracies, involves blatant human rights violations. For example, that law apparently prescribes stoning an adulteress to death, killing homosexuals and apostates, and many other outrageous or excessive punishments (take a look, for example, at the Wikipedia article on Sharia Law). It seems that the approval of such rights-violating governments is all too often extended by leftists and progressives, and who are generally quick to denounce criticism of these governments as “Islamaphobia”. I for one am mystified as to why that is the case in the United States today. Should not leftists and progressives generally denounce governments and cultures that, for example, treat women as second class citizens? I can only guess that their seeming approval comes from a misguided, and mindlessly applied, “multiculturalism”.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Multiculturalism should rightly celebrate such things as the variety of the world’s music and arts, but should not extend to the approval of governments that violate human rights.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our disapproval in these cases should never take the form of military intervention; what is needed is engagement in the realm of ideas.</span><br />
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Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-68529649834396154072015-01-31T21:44:00.002-08:002015-02-01T22:56:28.155-08:00<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was stunned to learn that apparently freedom of speech in France does not extend to “Holocaust denial”. In other words, it is a crime in that country to deny the Holocaust. I believe this is a huge mistake.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The recent mass murders of the Charlie Hebdo staff were done by two muslim terrorists, who were evidently enraged to violence by cartoons of the prophet Mohammed published by that organization. The French government, quite rightly, does not legally forbid the publication of such cartoons that might be offensive to certain religious or ethnic groups, the justification being freedom of speech. Citizens do not have the legal right to not be offended by words (spoken or on paper) against the group they happen to belong to. But by making Holocaust denial, or any particular general topic, off limits, the free speech argument is rendered hypocritical.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In a video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r29tRfjv3N0"><span style="color: #0225a3; letter-spacing: 0px;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r29tRfjv3N0</span></a> a French government official says that the reason for this limit on free speech is that scholars the world over are all agreed that the Holocaust is a historical fact. Well, that may be true---but it is irrelevant. The justification for free speech is not that one should be allowed to say (or write) anything at all as long as it is true. One should be allowed, for example, to say that the earth is flat, or even that some particular ethnic group has this or that negative characteristic (though that would be unkind, and I would not like someone to say or write such things).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, there are instances where speech is quite properly limited. One should not be free to engage in personal, libelous attacks on individuals, nor should one, in a mob frenzy context, be allowed to clamor for killing some group of people (e.g., the police). A common example of disallowed “speech” is falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Clearly, the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo did not involve any of these disallowed forms of speech. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Legality aside, I would say that the cartoons were perhaps unkind, and predictably hurtful to some groups; but that does not constitute being guilty of any crime against muslims, and certainly is not deserving the death penalty. Any persons who respond to an offensive cartoon or words by violence and murder, have committed a capital crime, and should be prosecuted and punished accordingly, with no leniency to account for their having being offended. One should not have the right to not be offended.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I suspect that the proscription of Holocaust denial by the French is an attempt to avoid offending the Jewish citizens that had direct family experience with the Holocaust. While I do not wish to encourage Holocaust denial, and I would avoid any hurtful words to any people of the world, making the denial a crime undermines, and renders hypocritical, the position that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons were protected by the rights of free speech.</span></div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-3152038758909934492014-10-17T22:46:00.001-07:002014-11-02T20:28:42.735-08:00<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">A few thoughts after watching a Bill Maher, Sam Harris, and Ben Affleck discussion involving Islam, and how the Liberals in the West should be more inclined to criticize the human rights violations inherent in certain political ideas practiced by Islamic states.This discussion took place on Bill Maher’s show in early October (I’m not sure of exact date and time)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This discussion can be seen on YouTube, and it is a painful thing to watch, because the irrationality of Mr. Affleck goes beyond anything I have ever had the misfortune to witness. Affleck appears to have had no idea of, or any desire to understand, what Maher and Harris were arguing, and his constant jumping in and interrupting with irrelevant, angry statements made this very clear throughout the entire ten minute segment.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Incidentally, almost all of the subsequent comments by the “talking heads” on this pathetic performance also missed the essence of the Harris-Maher argument. I believe their main point was simply the following: a great many of the ideas of mainstream Islam, as represented by Sharia Law, are bad, and lead to blatant violations of basic human rights.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Their point was not so much that, as so many talking heads argued, more prominent muslims should condemn the violence associated with “radical islam”, jihad, or “extremist islam”, although surely a reasoned argument could be made along those lines. It is just that that was not the main point Maher and Harris were making.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Affleck, showing painful ignorance, came back at Harris early in the discussion with accusations of “bigotry” and “racism”. Ludicrous, since Islam is a religion, and its practice is not limited to a “race” of people (muslims are not a race, they are a religious group consisting of many ethnicities). Apparently Affleck may be OK with Sharia Law, which for example prescribes execution to anyone daring to leave the faith of Islam, or to anyone found to be gay, or to a woman that has committed adultery. The treatment of women generally under Sharia Law is unfair to an unbelievable extent. Harris is claiming that there is, in the West, a prevalent, misguided “multi-culturalism”, leading many self-styled “liberals” to fail to denounce such evil concepts, and this failure enables such ridiculous laws to persist in many nations dominated by Islamic people (indeed, many are theocracies, and so “Sharia Law” often has the force of that countries’ government behind it).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At one point in the discussion, Maher stated something like “Islam is the only religion in the world where if you try to leave it, they f__ing kill you”. Mr. Affleck did not address this comment.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here is how the United Nations has addressed the issue of punishment for leaving ones religion, according to Wikipedia:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Laws prohibiting religious conversion run contrary to Article 18 of the United Nations’ 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, which states the following:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">‘<i>Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.</i>’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Islamic nations have criticized the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as a non-Muslim world's attempt to impose their values on Islamic people, and presumption of cultural superiority.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Cultural superiority? No, it’s <i>moral superiority</i>. This is Harris’s point, I believe. By objective standards, Sharia Law violates human rights at a level that is above any particular governments or cultures domain of law. Attitudes of some Western liberals appear to be, “Well, this is what they believe. Who are we to condemn or even criticize their practices?” The fact is, we must condemn them, because such practices as implicit in Sharia law are in fact evil by any objective standard.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The precept of innate and universal human rights is well stated by this passage in the US “Declaration of Independence”:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.“</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Seemingly unable to understand that one can criticize Islam and Islamic theocracies while not wishing physical harm to any of the followers of that religion or citizens of such states, Affleck blurted out something indicating that he thinks that Sam Harris and Bill Maher want to wage war and kill Muslims. My goodness, how could anyone possibly infer that from their arguments? Well, I guess it would be easy to explain how; namely, if one were not listening to the arguments of the other side, and had perhaps decided ahead of time what their positions were going to be. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The point of this blog post is not such much to heap scorn on Mr. Affleck, though there is something to be said for that since these days the American public seems to accord too much credence to the banal political pronouncements of attractive film stars, as perhaps typified by Mr. Affleck. The point I would like to emphasize is the point I think Harris and Maher were making, that “liberals” in our country and Europe should, whenever the opportunity arises, point out the inherent badness of governments founded on such principles as Sharia Law.</span></div>
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Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-42286663497124007732014-08-31T22:59:00.002-07:002014-09-04T22:34:33.894-07:00<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">My take on Cognitive Dualism</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Understand that this may not be exactly what philosopher Roger Scruton meant in his essay on Cognitive Dualism. What I write here is my interpretation of his idea.<br />
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<span class="s1">I have always been mystified by the concept of free will. Even though I am firmly convinced that all conscious beings (well, at least humans) have free will, I have never been able to see any way that we can have it, in view of two highly convincing arguments for determinism (that may in some sense be the same):</span></div>
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<li class="li1"><span class="s1">Type 1, According to which all motions in the universe are determined by the laws of physics. In this view, the atoms in any brain are determined in a self consistent manner with all the other matter and energy in the universe. There is no room for free will in this mechanistic picture. Not surprisingly, this version of determinism seems to be prominent among physicists.</span></li>
<li class="li1"><span class="s1">Type 2, Which would determine animal behavior even if Type 1 can be gotten around (which I think it can). This corresponds to the complete determination of a person’s actions, behavior and thoughts by a combination of that person’s genetic makeup (“hardware”) and the persons experiences after birth (and the memories of those experiences). Hence there is no room for free will in this picture. This version of determinism seems to often be held by those in the social sciences.<br />
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<span class="s1">It would seem to me that it is hard to escape the conclusion that a person’s actions are entirely determined by Type 2 (I tend to think that Quantum Mechanics (QM), which implies that causeless transitions and motions occur, undermines, and allows an escape from, Type 1 determinism).</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But this leaves a troublesome inconsistency. What role would reason and consciousness play in deciding what course of action to take? It seems that a reason for an action is redundant if genes/experience would determine what one would do. It is like an “overdetermined” quantity in mathematics.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We humans are seemingly “programmed” to look for causes of all actions and motions. If I understand Kant in his “Critique of Pure Reason”, he maintains that the idea of cause and effect is built into the human brain. That things have causes is, in a sense, an axiom within the human brain.<br />
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But what if not all phenomena have physical causes? As I mentioned, QM suggests that causeless transitions occur, for example the causeless dropping down of an electron in an excited atom to a lower energy state, giving off a photon of light. Of course, there is a cause of the transition in the sense that the electromagnetic interactions is responsible for the transition, it is just that there is no reason why the electron “decided” to make the transition at a given time. It is a statistical thing, just as it is with the familiar idea of radioactive decay and the half life concept.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Another physics consideration: in QM, a photon can manifest either wave or particle aspects, depending on the context of it’s interaction with a given experiment or observation. So we have an example of a hard science being content with two incommensurate models of a physical entity.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">OK, perhaps by analogy we could argue that there are two incommensurate ways of looking at the world:</span></div>
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<span class="s1">View 1: Cause and effect, the mechanism of physics, the complete determinism of inanimate objects and energy. In this view, animals are collections of atoms all obeying laws of physics, and there is no room for free will. In particular, consciousness itself is a deep mystery__unless as many physicists do, it is argued that a machine of a threshold complexity can lead to the emergence of consciousness. A big problem here is that this latter idea is untestable, since consciousness is subjective, and only resides inside the mind of a given person. It cannot be objectively accessed by methods of science.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">View 2: Free will, consciousness, and reason are an entirely distinct picture of the nature of human life (maybe to some extent, animal life also). In this view, some actions of conscious entities are <i>not caused by physics mechanisms</i>. This perspective is separate and obviously incompatible with view 1. Free Will would simply involve the “causing” of an action by the concomitant effects of reason and consciousness on the part of a being. (Of course, no doubt many actions, perhaps the majority of them, are in practice not undertaken because of reasoning, but are undertaken rashly or impulsively without much thought being involved. Perhaps such actions fall under the category of Type 2 determinism.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Yes, it might seems that the two views have to be relatable, or reconcilable, in order to make sense to us beings “trapped” in a realm where all things seem to be caused. But, taking the cue from the aforementioned photon’s dualistic nature in QM, isn’t it plausible that the two views must simply co-exist, in full recognition of their incommensurate nature? </span></div>
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<span class="s1">To explore a little further the implications of this cognitive dualism model: Consciousness is not caused by any physical mechanism, but simply is. A conscious being can choose, through its free will, to use, or not use, reasoning processes to decide what to do. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The physical world, in the absence of any conscious beings within it, is purely, strictly, deterministic. Many process that would occur are chaotic and hence “unpredictable”, but are still deterministic (a coin toss is chaotic, and hence unpredictable, but no one can doubt that the dynamics of the coin is absolutely determined by Newton’s laws). The cosmologist Andre Linde has pointed out that the Schrodinger equation for the entire Universe does not depend on time, but that this changes when conscious beings enter the picture. Novelty in the universe thus requires the decisions of conscious beings.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Bertrand Russell’s phrase in “A Free Man’s Worship” (which has had a very great effect on me all of my life) that we are “accidental collocations of atoms”, is thus dubious, since there are no accidents in a strictly physics-determined universe. Time and chance in such a universe are superfluous concepts.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But what qualifies as a conscious being? Is an amoeba or a slug a conscious being? I doubt it. There must be a threshold degree of consciousness, in some sense, in order for novelty to emerge.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">(to be continued)</span></div>
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Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-70574836892508086852013-06-07T23:07:00.003-07:002013-06-09T23:21:06.746-07:00<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I want to once again present some thoughts, perhaps a bit rambling, on the issue of Free Will (FW), in the context of the question “Can we hold wrong-doers to be blameworthy?” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In private conversations, I continue to see what I think is a great deal of puzzlement on this issue. For example, many wonder if FW is illusory, given that all of the processes in the universe presumably follow causal laws of physics. Bertrand Russell, in his brilliant essay, “<a href="http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/archives/a%20free%20man's%20worship.htm">A Free Man’s Worship</a>”, called humans (and all animals) "accidental collocations of atoms" (let’s leave aside for the present purpose that it would seem there could be no “accidents” if the universe unfolds in a strictly mechanistic manner). </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is common to hear people say that quantum mechanics (QM) does away with strict causality, implying that that solves the FW problem in that it allows room for us to have it. I think that is partly right, in that QM seems to allow an escape from strict Laplacian determinism: The apparent randomness, or probabilistic nature, of processes at the quantum, or micro, level, might conceivably be amplified up to macro levels, where the “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect">Butterfly Effect</a>” of chaos theory </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">leads to indeterminism in the evolution of the universe, and of all “collocations of atoms” within it. In other words, an organism might not have to be considered “a puppet on a string”, with the strings being pulled only by the iron clad laws of physics. QM does indeed seem to offer a way out of Laplacian Determinism as the sole cause of an person’s actions.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But I think this misses a deeper aspect of the problem: namely, that we human animals seem to be products of nature (genes) and nurture (experiences), and these two factors seem to be exhaustive in determining our choices and actions. What other factors could possibly be involved in these? There do not seem to be any.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Among other confounding aspects, this raises knotty moral issues. If an individual’s genes and experiences are all that make him/her act as he/she does, and there is no one to blame for these, how can there be any justification for punishment? Or for credit, praise, or assigning merit, for that matter.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A new born baby seems to have certain innate, or instinctive traits (as we have learned from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker">Dr. Steven Pinker</a>'s persuasive book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0142003344">The Blank Slate</a>); but surely these traits and inclinations are morally neutral. As the baby grows into childhood and adulthood, he/she acquires experiences, which create memories, opinions, loves and hates, desires, prejudices, insights, and so on. At some point in the toddlers development, as surely every parent or guardian must know, he/she is capable of being “naughty”.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Does perhaps each person have an " Adam and Eve"-like "Fall", a threshold in time, where he/she is first capable of knowing good and bad? But there is a problem here. The terms “good and bad” apply to actions that are presumed to be freely chosen, and if the developing person has genes and experiences that determine how he/she will act, the terms “good and bad” seem to become of dubious applicability.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hence, on this view, it seems wrong for society to punish crimes (Crimes being a certain kind of immoral action; clearly there are immoral acts that should not to be considered crimes, such as rude or loutish behavior). But this view leads to an absurdity, or into a circular path, because the individual humans comprising society, and in particular those in a position of prescribing punishments for crimes, are all themselves subject to the same all-encompassing, molding factors of nature and nurture. Hence it would seem that they cannot be blamed for punishing criminals.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is odd, in a way, that so much political and sociological heat has been vented in the past 50 years or so on whether “Nature or Nurture” are dominant factors in determining or forming a person's moral and intellectual character. Both factors are deterministic, and would of course imply that a what one does is beyond his/her control.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The sad fact is that many contemporary political agendas, especially those on the Left, would like to argue for Nurture dominance partly because it seems to further their agenda of forcing a more active role of the government to install a favorable social environment. The idea seems to be that if we create a "Utopian Society", everyone will be happy ( excuse me for being a bit cynical here: I suspect a hidden agenda of optimizing their own identity-driven political position). In addition, they seem to want to minimize the Nature side of the equation, since that is perceived as being associated with Fascist regimes and/or Racist philosophies.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Let us turn back to the issue of moral culpability. My college Philosophy book on Ethics (</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/B000BSXTUO%20)">Value and Obligation: Systematic Readings in Ethics</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">, ed. R. B. Brandt contains an essay by philosopher <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=E15C9F97C190BA2FF2400536B69E7135.journals?fromPage=online&aid=2401916">C. A. Cambell</a> titled “is Free Will a Pseudo Problem?” In this, he points out that what most of us mean for a person to be blameworthy, or guilty of some act, is that he/she must have been able do what she/he ought to have done even even being exactly the kind of person he/she was, and all other conditions being exactly as they were. I think this is one of the best ways I have seen the free will and blame conundrum framed. Note that determinism would say that with those stipulations, the person could not possibly have acted differently. His/her behavior would, after all, be wholly fixed by the casual factors related to genes and experience. So if there is somehow some other factor, someone "inside" that is somehow outside of those stipulated factors, the act might have been free (and hence subject to moral blame or praise).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This suggests that one way---can it be the only way?-- out of the nature-nurture deterministic trap is to postulate that a given conscious being has some kind of eternally existing soul, or at least one that is outside of time. Postulating that we have souls, or spirits, that are created and formed as we live and grow in this world do not allow a way out, for all of the reasons presented above; i.e., the soul would still have been formed by causal factors that could not be considered the fault of that soul. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My own suspicion is that somehow the fact that our subjective consciousness is anchored in time prevents us from seeing how FW can actually be possessed by sentient life forms. But I am not at all sure of that. And by the way, the emergence of consciousness is to me another one of the great mysteries, and is very possibly related to the emergence of FW (if there really is such).</span></div>
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3690365956618918207.post-72268435223644010582013-06-06T19:54:00.001-07:002013-06-06T19:54:30.222-07:00OK, I'm back. I have been absent from posting on this blog since June of last year (2012). I do have some excuses for the lapse, mostly valid, IMHO: some distracting medical issues, plus teaching senior and graduate level classes in elementary particle physics at UCCS. The latter has required a great deal of time, since my PhD in the field was "many years ago" ---er, many decades ago, actually. So not only was considerable review of the subject required, but I also had a lot of catching up to do. However I love the subject passionately, so the "work", though intense, was really more like an inspiring kind of play for me.
The course focused on the "Standard Model" of particle physics, which is heavily reliant on gauge theory of quantum fields as well as the abstract mathematical field of Group Theory. This is not easy stuff! And, BTW, as I have noted in previous blog entries, it is a very odd thing that the universe appears to be, in a very real sense, mathematical (I understand this to be a "Pythagorean" view of the world, so-named in honor of the ancient Greek philosopher that held essentially this view).
In any case, I now have a considerable backlog of topics I want to consider in these pages. For example, though I have previously written a lot about consciousness, and free will (versus determinism), I want to further consider them in view of my recent, related studies. I plan to also add (at the risk of venturing---or blundering---into some areas that I lack professional credentials in) some thoughts about music, ethics, literature, theology/metaphysics, and maybe even politics. I plan to also add some short book reviews. So more to follow soon!---Tom Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356460399015222744noreply@blogger.com4