Consciousness and Free Will: these two mysteries are, I suspect, intertwined. I feel fairly certain that both are largely unsolvable, in that the methods of science cannot fully explain them in the sense of understanding their origin and their mechanism. The reason for this is that consciousness is by its very subjective nature not amenable to direct, objective observation. This is of course disturbing, as we do not like to confess that a prominent feature of the real world is forever beyond our grasp. But it is also scary for a practical reason: the human race will surely soon create artificial life forms, i.e., highly sophisticated robotic beings that will by all outward appearance be conscious. Will we give them the “benefit of the doubt” and assume they are? Will we extend the same rights to them as are extended to humans (and to some extent, to other animals)? Will we hold them blamable for crimes? These questions are not urgent today, but perhaps in the next few decades will begin to be.
Now, I have little doubt that evolution has produced consciousness by purely natural means, and that it has its function and origin entirely within the neuro-chemistry of the brain. My point is only that we can not observe it, and hence study it in the way we do other phenomena of nature. And hence we cannot be sure when it is present in a “system”, and so the philosophical problems alluded to above. It is true that we do not, for example, directly observe quarks, but we do observe them indirectly through their predicted associated particles. But it is different there, because of course no conscious beings existence is threatened if we are wrong about the existence of quarks.
The concept of God: I do not see how the Judeo-Christian “concept” of God can be rendered coherent. We have no way to model, in out brains, the existence of a solitary, infinite, outside-of-time Being. This is one of the main reasons I consider myself an “agnostic”. But I resist the term “atheist”, in spite of the excellent defense of that term given by the likes of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, because I think physics has taught us to be wary of expecting reality to be describable in terms that seem coherent to our common sense. The prime example would be quantum mechanics, the theory that applies to the micro world, i.e., atoms and smaller. Even Einstein balked at this theory because it did not conform to his idea of what the world must be like. But it does now appear that his dislike of quantum theory was unfounded, since quantum mechanics seems to work, and the common sense ideas of classical mechanics have seemingly been shown to be invalid through Bell’s Theorem.
Well, I for one do not know if there is a God or not, or if the idea even makes any sense. But I suspect that “there is something going on”. While I very much doubt whether anything like the God of the major religions exists, the universe and conscious life is probably not an accident (whatever an accident means when we are talking about universes). As many of Albert Einstein's writings suggest, it does seem that there is some kind of "mind" involved in creating the awesome and intricate complexity of physical existence. We are either not expected to know what it is that is behind it all, or our brains are simply not suitable for the task of understanding it all.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
A plausible resolution of the free will paradox?
The question is not so much, “Do we have free will?”, as, “What would free will even mean?" There does not seem to be a way to make the concept of free will coherent. If there is no way to render an idea sensible, then what sense would it make to ask if the idea is correct?
The paradox comes in because I believe we all assume that we have free will, and usually that others do too. And we blame and punish wrongdoers, i.e., criminals, as if they were free do not have committed their crimes. We try to convince others of some idea, or to persuade them to do something, all of which seems nonsensical if their behavior and their thoughts are determined. To complete the paradox, consider that no one can consistently maintain strict determinism, since they would make to make the tacit assumption that they were free to have arrived at that conclusion.
Consider this: you by a new Mac. It comes bundled with software and firmware, that is, an operating system along with a host of standard applications, but of course this all runs on a particular hardware architecture that is presumably identical to all other instances of that particular Mac model. Certain settings are peculiar to your machine, as you fire up the machine and choose preferences and various control panel settings. As time passes, and you begin to use your computer, you create files, and download and install certain additional programs. Very quickly your computer is like no other. The computer acquires what seems to be a “personality”. You yell at it such things as “Oh, come on, I didn’t say to do that”! and so forth, even though you know it is just a machine, doing what its hardware and software dictate it will do. To this, we can in principle add randomness, that is, such things as a power surge, or cosmic ray induced bit flips, and so on, which can cause it to deviate from a predictable path on occasion.
Now I want to make the analogy that the initial state of the machine is like our genetic makeup, with the aforementioned “preferences” added, while the installed software is analogous to what an organism learns and adapts to through experience. So, just as the hardware and installed software entirely determine what the machine will do (excepting the small input from random perturbations), so genetic makeup (“nature”) plus the build up of life experiences (“nurture”) entirely determine how an organism will behave. If you doubt this, please tell me what these other factors might conceivably be.
It does no good to say that there is some kind of “internal you” or “self”, that decides what to do, because we cannot imagine where that self has emerged from other that from experience plus genes. “Nature plus nurture” seem to be the only conceivable process that could have created a conscious self.
Some people have suggested that the existence of a spirit or soul might be injected here to leave room for escaping from the hardware plus software factors. I disagree, because the same problem emerges even then. As long as we postulate that that spirit or soul has a beginning (in some sense, not necessarily temporal), the determining factors would seem to shift to some kind of “supernatural hardware” plus experience (in the natural world plus in the postulated “super-nature” or transcendent realm).
So, what is the proposed “solution”, or “resolution”, I mentioned in the heading? It is, not unexpectedly, difficult to explain. I believe that it is that, to be able to render the concept of determinism coherent, we would have to be outside “the system” of existence we are all in. Only a being outside of that would have the intellectual basis to observe that we are all determined beings, without free will. Since we are all inside, and not outside, nobody can get outside to make the consistent observation that we are all determined. We are trapped, “within the system”, and all have to make (what is at least a consistent assumption) that we are possessed of free-will. But all of us knowing that, at some level of reality beyond the one we have access to, we all have to be determined. In other words, we have no choice but to consider all of human-kind to have free will.
This has perhaps some similarities to the Godelian idea that mathematical systems are either incomplete or inconsistent. Only here we have a concept, “free will”, which cannot really be defined in a coherent manner, but one that we must necessarily assume exists. This appears to be a consistent approach, in that by symmetry everyone can assume everyone else has free will, knowing that our understanding of what it means is fuzzy and incomplete. The opposite position, that everyone is determined, is not a symmetrically consistent ‘solution”, since the person maintaining it would seem be excluding himself or herself as a determined being (since he/she would not have been free to use reason to arrive at that position). This is all an odd state of affairs, to be sure, but we know going in that it has to be, since philosophers have struggled with it with limited success for a good chunk of recorded history.
The paradox comes in because I believe we all assume that we have free will, and usually that others do too. And we blame and punish wrongdoers, i.e., criminals, as if they were free do not have committed their crimes. We try to convince others of some idea, or to persuade them to do something, all of which seems nonsensical if their behavior and their thoughts are determined. To complete the paradox, consider that no one can consistently maintain strict determinism, since they would make to make the tacit assumption that they were free to have arrived at that conclusion.
Consider this: you by a new Mac. It comes bundled with software and firmware, that is, an operating system along with a host of standard applications, but of course this all runs on a particular hardware architecture that is presumably identical to all other instances of that particular Mac model. Certain settings are peculiar to your machine, as you fire up the machine and choose preferences and various control panel settings. As time passes, and you begin to use your computer, you create files, and download and install certain additional programs. Very quickly your computer is like no other. The computer acquires what seems to be a “personality”. You yell at it such things as “Oh, come on, I didn’t say to do that”! and so forth, even though you know it is just a machine, doing what its hardware and software dictate it will do. To this, we can in principle add randomness, that is, such things as a power surge, or cosmic ray induced bit flips, and so on, which can cause it to deviate from a predictable path on occasion.
Now I want to make the analogy that the initial state of the machine is like our genetic makeup, with the aforementioned “preferences” added, while the installed software is analogous to what an organism learns and adapts to through experience. So, just as the hardware and installed software entirely determine what the machine will do (excepting the small input from random perturbations), so genetic makeup (“nature”) plus the build up of life experiences (“nurture”) entirely determine how an organism will behave. If you doubt this, please tell me what these other factors might conceivably be.
It does no good to say that there is some kind of “internal you” or “self”, that decides what to do, because we cannot imagine where that self has emerged from other that from experience plus genes. “Nature plus nurture” seem to be the only conceivable process that could have created a conscious self.
Some people have suggested that the existence of a spirit or soul might be injected here to leave room for escaping from the hardware plus software factors. I disagree, because the same problem emerges even then. As long as we postulate that that spirit or soul has a beginning (in some sense, not necessarily temporal), the determining factors would seem to shift to some kind of “supernatural hardware” plus experience (in the natural world plus in the postulated “super-nature” or transcendent realm).
So, what is the proposed “solution”, or “resolution”, I mentioned in the heading? It is, not unexpectedly, difficult to explain. I believe that it is that, to be able to render the concept of determinism coherent, we would have to be outside “the system” of existence we are all in. Only a being outside of that would have the intellectual basis to observe that we are all determined beings, without free will. Since we are all inside, and not outside, nobody can get outside to make the consistent observation that we are all determined. We are trapped, “within the system”, and all have to make (what is at least a consistent assumption) that we are possessed of free-will. But all of us knowing that, at some level of reality beyond the one we have access to, we all have to be determined. In other words, we have no choice but to consider all of human-kind to have free will.
This has perhaps some similarities to the Godelian idea that mathematical systems are either incomplete or inconsistent. Only here we have a concept, “free will”, which cannot really be defined in a coherent manner, but one that we must necessarily assume exists. This appears to be a consistent approach, in that by symmetry everyone can assume everyone else has free will, knowing that our understanding of what it means is fuzzy and incomplete. The opposite position, that everyone is determined, is not a symmetrically consistent ‘solution”, since the person maintaining it would seem be excluding himself or herself as a determined being (since he/she would not have been free to use reason to arrive at that position). This is all an odd state of affairs, to be sure, but we know going in that it has to be, since philosophers have struggled with it with limited success for a good chunk of recorded history.
Monday, September 20, 2010
The Story of the Blue Eyed Islanders
One of the most perplexing problems I have ever encountered is the infamous “Blue Eyed Islanders” puzzle. The perplexing aspect is a seeming paradox I will get to shortly, but the nominal solution involves straightforward induction, and is relatively easy to understand. It is possible that the story also has some applicability to more realistic human societeies.
The puzzle may be stated as follows:
There is a village where everyone has either blue eyes or brown eyes. Each person can see what eye color everyone else has, but each does not know the color of his or her own eyes. It is strictly forbidden for any islander to tell anyone else what color he/she has. If on a given day one happens to find out the color of ones own eyes, one must hurl oneself into the volcano at dawn the next day.One day an outsider comes to visit, a person who is known to always tell the truth. This person asserts for all to hear that “some of the people in this village have blue eyes”. Within a certain number of days, all in the village have killed themselves.The relatively easy parts of the puzzle are "why", and "when" does this happen?
Assume first that there is only one blue eyed person. He does not know that he has blue eyes until the fateful day of the outsider’s statement, but he does know that all of his fellow islanders have brown eyes. He thinks it is possible that he has brown eyes himself. But after the statement that there is at least one blue eyed person, he knows that it must be he himself, and the next day he commits “volcanacide”. If he were to see any other blue-eyed persons, he would not do himself in on the first dawn. So when the remaining brown eyed people see him do the deed, they all know that he saw all brown eyes, and thus they all have brown eyes. On the second dawn, they too jump into the fiery pit.
It is easy to see that if there were two blue-eyed persons, say Sam and Sara, each would think it possible that the other blue eyed person is the only one. But Sam sees that when Sara does not jump into the volcano upon the first dawn, he knows that he also has blue eyes, and on the second dawn Sam jumps in, and so does Sara, for exactly the same reasoning with regard to Sam. All the rest would jump in the third day, since they then deduce that they all have brown eyes, since evidently only Sam and Sara had the blue eyes the outsider noticed.
From induction, it follows that for a village population of N people, with X blue-eyed people and N-X brown eyed people, all of the blue eyed people will hurl themselves into the volcano X days after the outsider’s assertion. On day X+1, the brown eyed people will follow.The paradox is that every individual person in the village already knew, before the outsider’s visit, that there were some people in the village that have blue eyes (assuming that there was more than 1). They simply could see them, because if you were a blue, you’d see X-1 blues, if you were a brown, you’d see X blues. So what did the outsider tell them that they did not already know? That is, what specific new information did the outsider give them that led to the mass suicide of the village?
To illustrate this more concretely: What if there were 1000 villagers, 400 (say) with blue eyes. Before the outsiders visit and his unfortunate faux pas, each native knew that there were at least 399 blue eyed people on the island. Doesn’t it seem absurd that the statement that there is at least one would cause all 400 of the blue eyed people to hurl themselves to their doom on the 400th dawn, and the rest of the browns would follow on the 401st dawn? Thus, in this example, it would take over a year for the village society to cease to exist.
It seems that if one accepts logical induction, as surely one must, this surprising outcome must occur. The situation was stable before the outsiders made his observation, but the observation rendered that society unstable, and it rather quickly became extinct. It makes one wonder about possible applicability to more realistic human societies: could it be that some of the seemingly arbitrary taboos that have been put in place in various closed civilizations could somehow serve to stabilize them? In the example above, the particular taboo seems silly and unrealistic (and have they no mirrors or reflecting surfaces?). And even if an arbitrary taboo does bring about stability, we must also ask whether it involves a morally acceptable restriction, and if it is the only way that such stability could be achieved.
Perhaps the morale to this story is that there should be no taboos, but rather that human societies should be based on universal morality, that in turn is based on game theoretic reasoning such as is involved in the “prisoners dilemma” (this is really a sort of a generalized “golden rule”, wherein each person respects the rights of others to “live and let live”). But that is another tale, hopefully to come in a later blog.
The puzzle may be stated as follows:
There is a village where everyone has either blue eyes or brown eyes. Each person can see what eye color everyone else has, but each does not know the color of his or her own eyes. It is strictly forbidden for any islander to tell anyone else what color he/she has. If on a given day one happens to find out the color of ones own eyes, one must hurl oneself into the volcano at dawn the next day.One day an outsider comes to visit, a person who is known to always tell the truth. This person asserts for all to hear that “some of the people in this village have blue eyes”. Within a certain number of days, all in the village have killed themselves.The relatively easy parts of the puzzle are "why", and "when" does this happen?
Assume first that there is only one blue eyed person. He does not know that he has blue eyes until the fateful day of the outsider’s statement, but he does know that all of his fellow islanders have brown eyes. He thinks it is possible that he has brown eyes himself. But after the statement that there is at least one blue eyed person, he knows that it must be he himself, and the next day he commits “volcanacide”. If he were to see any other blue-eyed persons, he would not do himself in on the first dawn. So when the remaining brown eyed people see him do the deed, they all know that he saw all brown eyes, and thus they all have brown eyes. On the second dawn, they too jump into the fiery pit.
It is easy to see that if there were two blue-eyed persons, say Sam and Sara, each would think it possible that the other blue eyed person is the only one. But Sam sees that when Sara does not jump into the volcano upon the first dawn, he knows that he also has blue eyes, and on the second dawn Sam jumps in, and so does Sara, for exactly the same reasoning with regard to Sam. All the rest would jump in the third day, since they then deduce that they all have brown eyes, since evidently only Sam and Sara had the blue eyes the outsider noticed.
From induction, it follows that for a village population of N people, with X blue-eyed people and N-X brown eyed people, all of the blue eyed people will hurl themselves into the volcano X days after the outsider’s assertion. On day X+1, the brown eyed people will follow.The paradox is that every individual person in the village already knew, before the outsider’s visit, that there were some people in the village that have blue eyes (assuming that there was more than 1). They simply could see them, because if you were a blue, you’d see X-1 blues, if you were a brown, you’d see X blues. So what did the outsider tell them that they did not already know? That is, what specific new information did the outsider give them that led to the mass suicide of the village?
To illustrate this more concretely: What if there were 1000 villagers, 400 (say) with blue eyes. Before the outsiders visit and his unfortunate faux pas, each native knew that there were at least 399 blue eyed people on the island. Doesn’t it seem absurd that the statement that there is at least one would cause all 400 of the blue eyed people to hurl themselves to their doom on the 400th dawn, and the rest of the browns would follow on the 401st dawn? Thus, in this example, it would take over a year for the village society to cease to exist.
It seems that if one accepts logical induction, as surely one must, this surprising outcome must occur. The situation was stable before the outsiders made his observation, but the observation rendered that society unstable, and it rather quickly became extinct. It makes one wonder about possible applicability to more realistic human societies: could it be that some of the seemingly arbitrary taboos that have been put in place in various closed civilizations could somehow serve to stabilize them? In the example above, the particular taboo seems silly and unrealistic (and have they no mirrors or reflecting surfaces?). And even if an arbitrary taboo does bring about stability, we must also ask whether it involves a morally acceptable restriction, and if it is the only way that such stability could be achieved.
Perhaps the morale to this story is that there should be no taboos, but rather that human societies should be based on universal morality, that in turn is based on game theoretic reasoning such as is involved in the “prisoners dilemma” (this is really a sort of a generalized “golden rule”, wherein each person respects the rights of others to “live and let live”). But that is another tale, hopefully to come in a later blog.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Regarding putting a Muslim building close to the Twin Towers site
This has created quite an outcry from people who should know better. I simply do not get it. It was not Islam per se that did the terrible 9/11 crime, but rather a small number of Muslims. How anyone can want to pin a crime committed by a few members of a religion on all of their members just boggles the mind. Surely nobody would object to Catholics building a church close to where some slaughter of Belfast Protestants by Catholics (or vice versa) took place.
I often hear people say that they do not dispute the right of the Muslims to build there, they just think it is “insensitive”, or “in bad taste”. Why is that? Again, though it seems so obvious it shouldn’t even have to be said, most Muslims are not guilty of the attack on the World Trade Center. And while it is true that the United States is currently at war with two predominantly Muslim countries, we are of course not at war with the Islamic religion.
If the proposed mosque (or Islamic community center) were known to be an al Qaeda cell, or any group claiming to be responsible for the WTC attack, then the issue would be different (although one might feel even then that there is an advantage to keeping ones enemies in a known place where they can be more easily watched).
Assuming the property is owned and the project is funded by a Muslim institution, there are no conceivable grounds for preventing them, or even discouraging them, from building it. We should even be proud of having them from putting it there, as it is a clear demonstration of our basic rights to freedom of expression and freedom of religion, as well as the recognition of property rights. Maybe it will even serve as a good example to the many religiously dogmatic Muslim states.
I often hear people say that they do not dispute the right of the Muslims to build there, they just think it is “insensitive”, or “in bad taste”. Why is that? Again, though it seems so obvious it shouldn’t even have to be said, most Muslims are not guilty of the attack on the World Trade Center. And while it is true that the United States is currently at war with two predominantly Muslim countries, we are of course not at war with the Islamic religion.
If the proposed mosque (or Islamic community center) were known to be an al Qaeda cell, or any group claiming to be responsible for the WTC attack, then the issue would be different (although one might feel even then that there is an advantage to keeping ones enemies in a known place where they can be more easily watched).
Assuming the property is owned and the project is funded by a Muslim institution, there are no conceivable grounds for preventing them, or even discouraging them, from building it. We should even be proud of having them from putting it there, as it is a clear demonstration of our basic rights to freedom of expression and freedom of religion, as well as the recognition of property rights. Maybe it will even serve as a good example to the many religiously dogmatic Muslim states.
Political opinion: gay marriage and marijuana
I don’t usually like to ponder politics much, but I cannot help this one. How could that California Proposition 8, about banning gay marriage, even get on a ballot? I do not understand how that could happen. Anything involving the basic rights of US citizens should not be decided by majority vote. This is why we have a republic, not a strict democracy. The rights of any minority group are protected from being violated by majority sentiments. The judge that ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional was definitely right.
I see in the various opinion forums and OpEd pages certain patterns in why some people oppose gay marriage.
The often used “slippery slope” argument, that allowing gay marriages opens the door to marriage among multiple individuals, to animals, to underage children, etc is ridiculous. Allowing gay marriage is better likened to repealing the laws against interracial marriage (some of which existed into the 1960’s I believe); that is, allowing individuals the freedom to pursue happiness and live and love the person of their choice.
People who counter that proposition 8 did allow civil unions between gay couples miss the point. There are financial advantages that are associated with the government recognizing the marriage relationship—to give just a single example, and probably far from the most important one in terms of the amount of money involved, the “married, filing jointly” option is an advantage in most cases in filing federal income taxes. And if such advantages are there for straight couples, it is wrong (discriminatory) to deny them to gay couples.
Further, anyone who can muster up much energy and enthusiasm for objecting to gay marriage is not only being wrongheaded, but also needs to “get a hobby”. There are real things out there to worry about, folks, and this is not one of them. One should “live and let live”.
One frequently hears or reads the argument that gay marriage will undermine the traditional marriage. Well, so what? The divorce rate associated with traditional marriage is very high, so I would say it has already been undermined, and in fact the institution of marriage is often hypocritical (a vow “Till death do us part” is now apparently uttered without conviction in many cases). But that said, I do not even see how gay marriage would even affect most married people. Are these people thinking that there will be some massive rush for heterosexuals to divorce, and marry members of their own sex?
I saw one letter to the editor in the local paper today that asserted that government should be concerned with stopping anything that “weakens the moral fiber of the nation”---or some such nonsense. Has this person never read anything about Nazi Germany? I have little doubt that that government would have considered that to be within its scope. No, worrying about something as nebulous as “the moral fiber of the nation” is most certainly not the role of the government. The State, according to the philosophy of the “founding fathers” and the US constitution, is limited to securing and protecting the rights of the individual. I have to add that there is something really revolting about denying an individual the right of an association with a loved one for some dubious and vague purpose such as the “moral fiber of the nation”.
Here is a practical reason why everyone should support gay marriage: given that males tend to be polygamous, whether heterosexual or homosexual, the institution of marriage has a tendency to minimize (not eliminate, of course) promiscuity. So, if marriage is available to gay male couples, the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases would be very likely to decrease in frequency.
Many of the letters to the editors of the media seem to confuse the strictures of their religious beliefs with what should be binding legally. But no!---remember the separation of church and state principle---you must differentiate between what you believe God approves of, and what the US government allows. This seems so obvious to me that I really do not have the energy to elaborate on it much.
And what’s up with this widespread stupidity in Colorado of trying to get the medical marijuana dispensaries shut down? What hypocrisy, since my suspicion is that many of these objectors use alcohol, tobacco, coffee, etc. I do not have the facts at my fingertips, but am certain that from a practical standpoint—which by the way is not the only, or even the main, consideration here---that liquor causes much more socially negative behavior and damage than marijuana does. It is odd---I would have thought that as the generation older than baby boomers begins to fade (I hate to say, “die off”), that people would come to their senses and stop the idiotic “war on drugs”. Of course, I believe the first order principle involved here is that it is not the business of the government to tell us what we can and what we cannot imbibe (of course, it should be a crime to drive on public roads while under the influence of alcohol or drugs).
Wouldn’t a great many of the human caused ills in the world be greatly mitigated if people would learn to just mind their own business, and to take a “live and let live” attitude. But, it seems that very hard for us humans to do.
I see in the various opinion forums and OpEd pages certain patterns in why some people oppose gay marriage.
The often used “slippery slope” argument, that allowing gay marriages opens the door to marriage among multiple individuals, to animals, to underage children, etc is ridiculous. Allowing gay marriage is better likened to repealing the laws against interracial marriage (some of which existed into the 1960’s I believe); that is, allowing individuals the freedom to pursue happiness and live and love the person of their choice.
People who counter that proposition 8 did allow civil unions between gay couples miss the point. There are financial advantages that are associated with the government recognizing the marriage relationship—to give just a single example, and probably far from the most important one in terms of the amount of money involved, the “married, filing jointly” option is an advantage in most cases in filing federal income taxes. And if such advantages are there for straight couples, it is wrong (discriminatory) to deny them to gay couples.
Further, anyone who can muster up much energy and enthusiasm for objecting to gay marriage is not only being wrongheaded, but also needs to “get a hobby”. There are real things out there to worry about, folks, and this is not one of them. One should “live and let live”.
One frequently hears or reads the argument that gay marriage will undermine the traditional marriage. Well, so what? The divorce rate associated with traditional marriage is very high, so I would say it has already been undermined, and in fact the institution of marriage is often hypocritical (a vow “Till death do us part” is now apparently uttered without conviction in many cases). But that said, I do not even see how gay marriage would even affect most married people. Are these people thinking that there will be some massive rush for heterosexuals to divorce, and marry members of their own sex?
I saw one letter to the editor in the local paper today that asserted that government should be concerned with stopping anything that “weakens the moral fiber of the nation”---or some such nonsense. Has this person never read anything about Nazi Germany? I have little doubt that that government would have considered that to be within its scope. No, worrying about something as nebulous as “the moral fiber of the nation” is most certainly not the role of the government. The State, according to the philosophy of the “founding fathers” and the US constitution, is limited to securing and protecting the rights of the individual. I have to add that there is something really revolting about denying an individual the right of an association with a loved one for some dubious and vague purpose such as the “moral fiber of the nation”.
Here is a practical reason why everyone should support gay marriage: given that males tend to be polygamous, whether heterosexual or homosexual, the institution of marriage has a tendency to minimize (not eliminate, of course) promiscuity. So, if marriage is available to gay male couples, the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases would be very likely to decrease in frequency.
Many of the letters to the editors of the media seem to confuse the strictures of their religious beliefs with what should be binding legally. But no!---remember the separation of church and state principle---you must differentiate between what you believe God approves of, and what the US government allows. This seems so obvious to me that I really do not have the energy to elaborate on it much.
And what’s up with this widespread stupidity in Colorado of trying to get the medical marijuana dispensaries shut down? What hypocrisy, since my suspicion is that many of these objectors use alcohol, tobacco, coffee, etc. I do not have the facts at my fingertips, but am certain that from a practical standpoint—which by the way is not the only, or even the main, consideration here---that liquor causes much more socially negative behavior and damage than marijuana does. It is odd---I would have thought that as the generation older than baby boomers begins to fade (I hate to say, “die off”), that people would come to their senses and stop the idiotic “war on drugs”. Of course, I believe the first order principle involved here is that it is not the business of the government to tell us what we can and what we cannot imbibe (of course, it should be a crime to drive on public roads while under the influence of alcohol or drugs).
Wouldn’t a great many of the human caused ills in the world be greatly mitigated if people would learn to just mind their own business, and to take a “live and let live” attitude. But, it seems that very hard for us humans to do.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Some Philosophical Musings
Consider the concept of the “multi-verse” . There are, of course many other equivalent, or at least closely related theories, such as “parallel universes theory”, “the many worlds interpretation”, etc. (the wikipedia site just referenced has some good descriptions of these related ideas). But all of them, as far as I can tell, do not admit of any kind of empirical verification, and hence it is dubious to consider them science. One almost wonders if this kind of speculation should be considered “religion”, since I suspect a strong motivation for it is to avoid the implications of this universe seeming to be the product or creation of some kind of mind (whether a deity, deities, or something not yet even imagined by humankind).
Now, I am not saying that the existence of parallel worlds is necessarily wrong, just that we will never know if it is right or not. It is beyond the methods of science. Perhaps this is a good example of how something like “Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem” has applicability applies to physics and metaphysics as well as to mathematics. That is, there may be truths that can not be broached by the scientific method.
Perhaps this seems a “duh”—but I don’t think it is, because I often find that people imply that ideas that can be shown to be unverifiable are thereby false. Now maybe it is rational to decide that we can’t know whether they are true of false, and therefore decide that they do not matter in our practical everyday lives.
I noted with interest the other day that the Templeton Foundation offers grants to study and make progress on the subject of “Free Will”.
How, I wonder, would one propose to investigate that? I am inclined to think that most people, and even many philosophers, do not fully realize the deep mysteries and paradoxes involved in this subject. Determinism in some form seems inescapable, but impractical, since it seems we cannot act upon it, and we all assume that we are not determined. Indeed, the assumption of absolute determinism seems to render absurd any of moral notions, and hence any kind of blame or punishment. Everyone learns in a college “Ethics 101” that “ought implies can” (a Google search on this phrase will bring up thousands of hits on the topic).
The odd thing is that we cannot coherently specify what the concept of “free will” would even mean. It seems that everything a system does is either the result of its physical makeup (i.e., for animals, genes), external forces, or previously stored information (this latter being the result of delayed external forces). And yet, we all assume in practice, even the “deterministic philosophers”, that we have free will. I am inclined to say that we “know” that we do. This is an odd thing, that there seem to be two all inclusive opposites, free will and determinism, and yet neither seems quite right. Is there some “third way” out of this that no one has yet thought of?
When we ask, “Why is there Something and not Nothing” are we committing a fallacy of sorts? (Again, one gets thousands of hits with a Google search on this phrase, so there are a lot of us that wonder about this question.)
Within our experience, that is, within the part of the universe that we inhabit, we have observed that when something is “there”---that is, in some region of space and time---then there is some reason for it to be there. Someone has put there, some inanimate object has knocked it there, and so on. But can such a cause and effect relationship be expected to hold for “Existence Itself”? No, from a purely rational perspective, it seems we must accept the fact of existence as axiomatic. But this will never satisfy most of us psychologically. And, along the lines of the “multi-verse” idea mentioned above, it may be that there is a reason for “Why is there something and not nothing”, it is just that we can never know, using any kind of exploration or verification methods we have, what that reason is.
Now, I am not saying that the existence of parallel worlds is necessarily wrong, just that we will never know if it is right or not. It is beyond the methods of science. Perhaps this is a good example of how something like “Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem” has applicability applies to physics and metaphysics as well as to mathematics. That is, there may be truths that can not be broached by the scientific method.
Perhaps this seems a “duh”—but I don’t think it is, because I often find that people imply that ideas that can be shown to be unverifiable are thereby false. Now maybe it is rational to decide that we can’t know whether they are true of false, and therefore decide that they do not matter in our practical everyday lives.
I noted with interest the other day that the Templeton Foundation offers grants to study and make progress on the subject of “Free Will”.
How, I wonder, would one propose to investigate that? I am inclined to think that most people, and even many philosophers, do not fully realize the deep mysteries and paradoxes involved in this subject. Determinism in some form seems inescapable, but impractical, since it seems we cannot act upon it, and we all assume that we are not determined. Indeed, the assumption of absolute determinism seems to render absurd any of moral notions, and hence any kind of blame or punishment. Everyone learns in a college “Ethics 101” that “ought implies can” (a Google search on this phrase will bring up thousands of hits on the topic).
The odd thing is that we cannot coherently specify what the concept of “free will” would even mean. It seems that everything a system does is either the result of its physical makeup (i.e., for animals, genes), external forces, or previously stored information (this latter being the result of delayed external forces). And yet, we all assume in practice, even the “deterministic philosophers”, that we have free will. I am inclined to say that we “know” that we do. This is an odd thing, that there seem to be two all inclusive opposites, free will and determinism, and yet neither seems quite right. Is there some “third way” out of this that no one has yet thought of?
When we ask, “Why is there Something and not Nothing” are we committing a fallacy of sorts? (Again, one gets thousands of hits with a Google search on this phrase, so there are a lot of us that wonder about this question.)
Within our experience, that is, within the part of the universe that we inhabit, we have observed that when something is “there”---that is, in some region of space and time---then there is some reason for it to be there. Someone has put there, some inanimate object has knocked it there, and so on. But can such a cause and effect relationship be expected to hold for “Existence Itself”? No, from a purely rational perspective, it seems we must accept the fact of existence as axiomatic. But this will never satisfy most of us psychologically. And, along the lines of the “multi-verse” idea mentioned above, it may be that there is a reason for “Why is there something and not nothing”, it is just that we can never know, using any kind of exploration or verification methods we have, what that reason is.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The Universe as an example of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking? Nah!
Though I doubt if anyone could really believe what I am going to speculate about here, it is perhaps an interesting idea. Let me add that I may not have thought of this myself, but may well have read about it in some of the speculative cosmology and physics books.
In answer to the famous question “Why is there something and not nothing?” might we suppose that it is an example of what in modern physics is called “Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking” (SSB)?
SSB is a simple but elegant idea, and is usually illustrated by the image of a pencil balanced on its tip over a flat surface. The pencil of course wants to fall to a position of lower potential energy, and when released it will “choose’ an angle to fall to on the flat surface. Note that the initial position on its tip is perfectly cylindrically symmetric about the axis of the pencil (make the idealization that the surface is infinite and perfectly flat and smooth, and the pencil is perfectly symmetric about its axis). But—here is the odd thing---the later, lower energy, state of the pencil is not cylindrically symmetric.
In physics terms, one says that “the ground state of the system does not have the symmetry of the dynamical expression that describes the initial state of the system (technically, this expression is called the Hamiltonian of the system).
Other more complex examples of SSB are ferromagnetic alignment when a sample of iron is cooled below the Curie temperature, and the Higgs Boson that will be sought after by experiments on the LHC. But these will not be considered in this short note.
The point is, imagine a “state of nothingness”. Well, ha ha, we probably really can’t, but maybe we can at least try. In any case, it would seem that a state of nothing possesses a high degree of symmetry: No direction in space could be defined (even if there were space), no angles or orientations can be imagined, etc. In fact, it seems that “nothing” represents perfect symmetry in every sense. Now the actual physical Universe does not seem to be as symmetric as “a state of nothing” is symmetric. Could it be that in some sense, “a state of nothing” involves a tension, an energy, that is just not stable, and it must “fall” (in some unimaginably complex hyperspace) to a lower energy consisting of a bunch of random stuff—i.e., a vast collection of matter and energy, a Universe? Well, as I said at the outset, I can’t buy this, but it is at least an amusing speculation.
In answer to the famous question “Why is there something and not nothing?” might we suppose that it is an example of what in modern physics is called “Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking” (SSB)?
SSB is a simple but elegant idea, and is usually illustrated by the image of a pencil balanced on its tip over a flat surface. The pencil of course wants to fall to a position of lower potential energy, and when released it will “choose’ an angle to fall to on the flat surface. Note that the initial position on its tip is perfectly cylindrically symmetric about the axis of the pencil (make the idealization that the surface is infinite and perfectly flat and smooth, and the pencil is perfectly symmetric about its axis). But—here is the odd thing---the later, lower energy, state of the pencil is not cylindrically symmetric.
In physics terms, one says that “the ground state of the system does not have the symmetry of the dynamical expression that describes the initial state of the system (technically, this expression is called the Hamiltonian of the system).
Other more complex examples of SSB are ferromagnetic alignment when a sample of iron is cooled below the Curie temperature, and the Higgs Boson that will be sought after by experiments on the LHC. But these will not be considered in this short note.
The point is, imagine a “state of nothingness”. Well, ha ha, we probably really can’t, but maybe we can at least try. In any case, it would seem that a state of nothing possesses a high degree of symmetry: No direction in space could be defined (even if there were space), no angles or orientations can be imagined, etc. In fact, it seems that “nothing” represents perfect symmetry in every sense. Now the actual physical Universe does not seem to be as symmetric as “a state of nothing” is symmetric. Could it be that in some sense, “a state of nothing” involves a tension, an energy, that is just not stable, and it must “fall” (in some unimaginably complex hyperspace) to a lower energy consisting of a bunch of random stuff—i.e., a vast collection of matter and energy, a Universe? Well, as I said at the outset, I can’t buy this, but it is at least an amusing speculation.
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