Illusive Mind

We're Moving!

2006-10-07T23:48:00.000-07:00

This blog has moved to www.illusive-mind.com.

How did that digital thinker think?

2006-09-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

I happened upon an intriguing article over at brooders.net titled: How would a machine think? Probably not like us...

It seems like so long ago that I was entertaining these exact thoughts, latching onto the Sapir-Worf hypothesis to confirm my intuitions about the cognitive nature of language, before I found out their particular research was bunk.

I remember writing about how representations of AI have been woefully lacking in truly imagining the limitations and expanded possibilities of a machine mind. My story ‘Press Any Key’ was based on this very thought, but it is clear to me know how much this is in need of an update.

So I dug this out of the trashcan, on Wed Aug 04, 2004 some thoughts of mine on how that digital thinker might think!

...Think about it, we're operating on the instructions of human 95, a scared, individualistic, reproductive survival machine. That is what we were built for (if you believe in evolution) however long ago, and we get patches and updates (biologically) as often as Windows.

Greed, jealousy, selfishness, are all products of a survival mechanism built in to keep the whole human race going. But our cognitive applications have evolved faster than our hardware can keep up. We have much more of an emphasis on how we use our brains, and as such we get fat, contract heart-disease and die. Our hardware is still operating on the idea that we run 50 miles a day to get dinner.

So now turn to AI (I'd say DI but it isn't as catchy). It has no such biological limitations. It's hardware is only limited by our ability to invent it. I have yet to see a movie that accurately depicts an artificially intelligent being, (maybe T2). Why? Because like the self-loving gods that we are we shape them in our own image. I tend to think that emotions are a biological product of a certain arrangement of chemicals. Before we attached meaning and significance to them they were designed to get the job done, (it's much easier to kill when you're angry). But don't ask me what depression is for. "Crying is a puzzler"

So there is no reason to assume that they are necessary to intelligence and as such why an AI would have them. Considering that AI does not have the same biological heritage as ourselves there is also no reason to assume that it would posses the same left-overs. The inherent selfishness, and greed that is apart of being human (which isn't to say, love and compassion aren't also parts) would not be necessarily present in AI.

AI characters which emulate these characteristics (i.e. 'angry' robots in I Robot) are due to a poverty of the imagination. We are so used to humanity, that we find it difficult to imagine an emotionless intelligence. To our way of thinking, someone without any emotion is a very ill-minded person.

The consequences of realistically envisaging the AI construct are numerous and intriguing. Suppose we had a suitable default AI receptacle. A hard drive with sensory input devices and output devices. Also suppose that any particular AI could be loaded onto any particular machine, the greatest of all human traits might then be non-existent. And that is an unwavering attachment to our own particular vessels. Imagine a being that had no such hang-up, that they knew if one was broken that could always to uploaded to another. What kind of ramifications would that have for the thought processes of AI?

Would it lead to an infinite amount of Smith-like duplicates? No, I don't think so. The primal urge for reproduction is also lost. All the emotional crap that clouds our vision of reality would disappear. I'd like to think these beings would have a very Zen-like appreciation of our world. But of course, what value is there in a creature that can never be happy?

Police admit no terrorist evidence on Jack Thomas

2006-09-21T17:26:00.000-07:00

No evidence on Thomas, police admit

"Is there any evidence at all that Mr Thomas, has, (at) any stage, planned any particular terrorist acts in Australia?" asked the federal magistrate Graham Mowbray.
Mr Jabbour: "No sir, there's no direct evidence of that."

So there we have it. We have interviews conducted without legal aid and with application of or the threat of torture, but nothing to actually suspect Thomas has any plans to conduct a terrorist act in Australia.

I'm not saying Thomas is innocent, there may be good reason to be very suspicious of someone who receives funds from Al Qaeda, however terrorists threats are not existential threats. They do not put the existence of civilization at risk, there is no great army who is going to occupy our country.

Automotive fatalities are more of an existential threat than terrorism. It is ideological warfare and by pandering to fear governments are playing the game by their rules. A game no-one wins, because having your fellow citizens blown up or your civil liberties stripped does not suddenly make you think how corrupt and sinful western liberal civilization is and gee, wouldn't it be better if we had an Islamic state.

Why do the governments do it then? I think it's because the government who plays down the terrorist threat and calls for reason looks weak on national security and is voted out of office. Circular, isn’t it?

In last month's control order proceedings, the court heard from the Federal Government's chief general counsel, Henry Burmester, QC, that the likelihood of Mr Thomas committing a terrorist act was irrelevant to the application for a control order.

The test for issuing the order, that it "substantially assist in preventing a terrorist act", should be interpreted broadly, Mr Burmester said.
"In our submission, something can substantially assist in preventing a terrorist act or something else without the need to show that the terrorist act or the particular conduct is likely to happen or not," he said.

"If I could give your Honour an example," he said. "If one is out in the country, and there's a quiet country road, clearly looking right and left will substantially assist in preventing being hit by a car, but there might be a reasonably small chance that this would occur."

May offer another example? Castrating School Teachers and priests will substantially assist in preventing children being abused even there is a reasonably small chance this would occur.
Hell why not castrate all men in general? The probability of abuse is very small in relation to the size of those affected but just think how substantially we are assisting in preventing child abuse. You are not for child abuse are you? If we don’t do this, the child abusers win.

Innocent until proven guilty means that in a fair and just society no one is subject to control orders or any violation of liberty without a public demonstration of the evidence that warrants it so as to protect the rest of society.

We talk about spreading democracy. If democracy means oppressing a minority to placate the unreasoned fears of a manipulated majority then they ought to send it back.

Splatter

2006-09-14T03:43:00.000-07:00

Brushes by smashmethod

From one, emerges manifold things

2006-09-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

Brushes by brushes.500ml.org
Original Photo by brokenarts

@Deviant Art

Inner Orbit Art

2006-09-03T08:35:00.001-07:00

Original Photo by Peter W.

@Deviant Art

Inner Orbit

2006-08-31T16:05:00.000-07:00

New track, titled ‘Inner Orbit.’ Rock beats, electric guitar inspired lead solo, uplifting melodic trance. Sounds incongruous? Give it a listen.

Illusive Mind - Inner Orbit

The bulk of this song was made in one four hour session, with the rest finished the next day. The way creativity seems to function for me is in sudden hits like this, even though it may utilize ideas I’ve been working on for months.

Perhaps it functions best only when my hypercritical faculties are mollified, for after the act of creation, the work never seems to be as good as it was and I have to resist the urge to tamper to the point of destruction in a Frankensteinian manner.

The degree of my mistake phobia is such that even if something of my doing is given high praise and accolades it is always far from perfect and considered a draft or ‘work in progress.’

Soon this blog will be relocating to a new website. If I can assault myself sufficiently enough to ‘finish’ it, that is.

Cyberpunk Future

2006-07-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

Cyberpunk is an open idea. It is a term that has been in dispute since it’s inception with every work dedicated to it taking up the burden of attempting to explain it. I think as a genre it is a highly consensual term. That is, what is determined as being firmly cyberpunk or barely cyberpunk depends on the consensus of the people who use the term. This is what gives the word it’s open and complex nature.

However complexity & integrity are two different things. It is naïve of me or anyone else to think that any message that people want to hear won’t be appropriated by mainstream channels and fanatics bemoan the days when their music or whatever was ‘sold out’

I don’t even think it is sensible to talk of a genre ‘selling out’ because how can you control artists who choose that form to express themselves? I’m not sure there even ever was a time when Cyberpunk wasn’t in some sense sold-out with ambivalence not just to technology but the market machine that creates the technology.

Cyberpunk is complex because it has elements that can exist completely independent of one another. A film may be cyberpunk purely because of its aesthetics, another for its philosophy and another because of its political point of view.

Science Fiction in general is a neutral genre, its focus is on connections between the present on the future, usually technologically related. It is ripe with political oriented fiction because in analyzing the present to create the future authors have to decide on the eventualities of current political ideologies.

Cyberpunk as a sub genre of science fiction can hardly be described as politically neutral and I believe never should be. I think integrity is important because cyberpunk has its roots in focusing on the alienated and the disenfranchised, the people on the fringes of society and the dystopias created by imbalances in wealth & power. To have integrity then fiction that is described as having cyberpunk politics should be representing this point of view. I don’t think we should consent to the use of the term in describing fiction that abandon’s this view, regardless of whether a film has a giant add for Converse shoes in it or not (ala ‘I, Robot’.)

However, I could imagine that in order to accommodate the complexity of the term one might want to distinguish between say, cyberpunk politics, cyberpunk philosophy and cyberpunk aesthetics etc. So that a narrative that focus on the question of humanity through technological change is not denied the label just because it ignores aesthetics and politics. Though, this might just further confuse things.

Under this view cyberpunk is not too open but perhaps too specific. Requiring too many disparate elements. Why not retrospectively label George Orwell’s ‘1984’ as cyberpunk even though there is no internet, hackers, cyborgs or corporatocracies to speak of? Is it perhaps because of the specific commonalties of early cyberpunk (eg. similar depictions of the social fragmentation caused by the use of the internet/virtual reality etc.) that some regard the genre as outdated and irrelevant?

I think I was probably mistaken in asking how cyberpunk can regain it’s political rebelliousness as I’m not sure it’s ever had it (in terms of having more than ambivalence toward late capitalism). But I think it should have it, as I have my own political point of view and agenda of course but I regard it as one of the best genres to express this point of view.

‘Cyberpunk’ is an open term; it is complex however if we consent to its use on works of fiction too disparate, too thinly related it becomes so open that it is meaningless. Thus it depends on the integrity of its fans, authors and critics as to what they regard as the future of cyberpunk.

Recognition

2006-07-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

There is an old saying in Zen Buddhism, that 'all a man searches for is recognition.'
It occurs to me that the only recognition we posses is that we give to others. I cannot demand it from anyone even though I may foolishly expect it, but I can give it away freely.

Someone who takes the time to comment on some of my work (even if they criticize it) may not be aware of how motivating it is to be reminded that you have provoked a reaction in someone in this otherwise vacant expanse of the internet.

A few days ago I received the following email about my poem 'Die grenzen meiner Sprache sind die grenzen meiner Welt '

i just wanted to write to espress my appreciation for your Wittgenstein
poem ;) It's such a common idea to have a poem shaped like some element of its
subject matter... 'Musings on Clouds' in the shape of a cloud, or something
hehe...i just love that yours has a twist.

You take that concept- the picture poem- and unmask it, making the
connection between thoughts, words and pictures explicit. Hmm or perhaps i
should say, you simply make the peruser aware of the link. Why does the humble
cloud-poem work? Why can words be so much more powerful when they are ccompanied by images? Because of that Wittgensteinian mesh that connects words, thought and images. It is not an easy connection to ponder, but you have provided a nice springboard with this work. Good one :)

Given that I am aware of the effect of recognition/appreciation I ought to act in kind.

Cyberpunk Narrative

2006-05-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

Various critics have touted Cyberpunk Science Fiction as a post-modern genre. Whether or not this is an attempt to keep the genre relevant or elevate it from the low-brow associations of Science Fiction generally is unclear.

“As an exploration of human experience within the context of media-dominated, postindustrial, late capitalist society, cyberpunk is in many ways quintessentially postmodern.”

Sponsler, Claire “Cyberpunk and the Dilemmas of Postmodern Narrative: The Example of William Gibson”, Contemporary Literature 33 (1992) p.626-7

However a common rebuke from literary critics is the narrative of the majority of Cyberpunk is hopelessly non-postmodern. That in fact the postmodern aesthetic has been grafted onto a tired romantic adventure story structure. The cowboy/samurai loner battling against the forces of evil, colonizing a new unexplored territory.

“Clearly the difficulty Gibson faces is one of finding a way of treating plot and agency so as to mesh with the implications of his post-modern aesthetic. While the surface world of his novels convincingly simulates or replicates the technological and cultural changes whose impact he wishes to explore, the plots and protagonists do not. Gibson tries to insert what we might think of as three-dimensional characters and cause-and-effect actions onto a flat plane populated by free-floating, random, and decentered objects and people. This conflict between the scene and the agents who are made to move meaningfully through it toward a resolution marks the impasse Gibson has reached.

In his novels, first human agents, then machines and finally cyberspace itself are invested with a heroic and romantic power that ultimately undermines the resolutely unromantic surface world he has set up. What Gibson has not been able to do, making his novels after Neuromancer increasingly unsatisfactory, is derive from his postmodern, two-dimensional scene a similarly two-dimensional agency that can be manifested not merely through realistic cause-and-effect, diachronic action but through something Gibson has not yet found.

Gibson’s predicament in the end is paradigmatic of the problem all cyberpunk faces: it seems doomed to play out old plots people by old characters within a scene that calls for a radically different formulation of human agency and action.”

Sponsler, Claire “Cyberpunk and the Dilemmas of Postmodern Narrative: The Example of William Gibson”, Contemporary Literature 33 (1992) p.639-40

Whilst I agree there are structures that are hackneyed I am not sure if I would go as far as Sponsler in criticizing the ‘old’ stories. I don’t profess to by overly familiar with post-modern narratives but using non-realistic, non cause and effect devices aim to confuse and provoke the reader. Whilst this would seem to go hand in hand with science fiction as the genre of ‘cognitive estrangement’ it also risks making the story impenetrably strange. Important philosophical and political questions are likely to get lost in the narrative games played by the author. With the story devices already aimed at bending and testing the reality of the reader, what hope would we have in reading the text when the narrative devices are doing the same?

Sponsler does not focus on narrative exclusively however and goes on to make very salient points about the poverty of imagination in Science Fiction in crafting stories that merely tweak the already familiar, specifically the failure to “narrate an antihumanist , nontranscendent future.”

It is safe to say that the genre of Cyberpunk has its roots in the late-capitalism excesses of 80’s America. The technology of personal computers and cyberspace could only have come about through this process, it is unsurprising to me then that this genre would be so inept at criticizing its precursor.

However, we are no longer in the 80’s and films like ‘One Point O’ demonstrate that cyberpunk fiction is only limited by the imaginations of it’s authors. The film not only does away with the romantic-hero structure it also is a critique of capitalist forces doing away with the ambivalence of the old literature.

I agree though that Cyberpunk still relies far to heavily on the credibility of the narrator. Whilst utilizing themes pioneered by Phillip K. Dick et al. in questioning reality and our ability to know what is real, why would authors choose such a realist prose so that we are never in much doubt ourselves in terms of the story?

I can only hope that as I understand more clearly just what postmodern literature is supposed to be, I can understand how cyberpunk can do away with old clichés and remain fresh in a world that hasn’t answered any of the questions it has been raising for the last twenty years.

Post-Cyberpunk

2006-03-23T20:44:00.000-08:00

Over at cyberpunkreview.com there is a great article on the perhaps fallacious distinction of 'post-cyberpunk' :
Post-Cyberpunk? Why not Cyberpunk 2.0!

Genre definitions are only settled retrospectively, we may wait a hundred years before critics proclaim that they have post-modernism and it's successor all worked out. Perhaps one of the problems with living in a so-called post-modern age is the utter resistance of clear genre boundaries and categories.

I think the term post-cyberpunk may be meaningless but it has been important in drawing attention to the evolution of the genre. Almost the entirety of 50's Sci-Fi failed to predict the internet and the CP of the late 70's & 80's was revolutionary in re-imagining a vision of the future based on present trends.

But of course, as the present trends change so do the imaginings. The problem with being so close to the decade of emergent CP is that we are desperate to move beyond it's highly stylized 80's imagery, even the term 'cyberpunk' somehow sounds outdated. But in doing so we risk destroying the very distinction this genre affords.

The future didn’t turn out as bleak as we thought? Maybe. Alienation and isolation are gone, heroes are those who uphold the status-quo? No bloody way. I think the world is just a little more complex than the perhaps simplistic imagery of CP. It is cleaner and more efficient at hiding the horror.

I think those critics who want to dismiss the dystopian themes of CP as hackneyed and clichéd are the one’s unwilling or incapable of seeing the darker trends of current society, they believe the hype about living in some 50’s style golden age of technological endeavor.

I think the challenge for the genre is to tackle it’s themes in a way that engages a new generation that is dismissive of the cold-war dystopia / post-apocalyptic scenarios. It needs to accumulate credibility in its vision of the future as being one extrapolated from ‘present’ society not yester-year.

It is a dangerous task, by the mere fact that we are not all drug-addicts existing in a meaningless consensual hallucination, present existence seems like paradise by comparison. But a victory over the worst-case scenario is hardly a victory at all.

Not Between Two Horses

2006-02-08T03:24:00.000-08:00

I was looking for something I have previously written on Hume and the Reason vs. Desire dichotomy and I did indeed find a section on Hume from my essay: Evolution, Altruism and Ethics, and whilst it is relevant it's also very 'academic' and embedded in a very different context.

The basic idea is that Hume challenged a dichotomy put most eloquently by Plato story of Phaedrus the charioteer. Phaedrus represents the soul of a man who is constantly pulled by two forces in different directions. One horse named reason, and the other named passion.

However, a closer examination of human decision making reveals that nothing can be done without a desire / passion to do so. Reason only has the power to examine how effective one's course of action may be in achieving their desire. If I desire to eat a bar of chocolate then eating this chocolate shaped poison would be a very unreasonable thing to do...

So why does the dichotomy exist? Well it helps to explain why we take courses of action that are at times completely irrational. A heat of the moment, a loss of willpower, a feeling of our reason being subjugated by our writhing selfish passions. How can we feel guilty after such an action if we only do that which we desire?

The answer is simply that a person can want more than one thing at once, even completely contradictory things. I can want a healthy, stable and monogamous relationship with my wife, but I can also want to have a quickie with my secretary on my lunch break. Both of these are desires, but one seems to be more informed by reason than the other. This is quite accurate and has to do with the dichotomy of the human brain.

Consider the fact that reason is a recent addition to the cognition of mammals. Underneath it in the primal brain is instincts and more complex instincts. Reason is an abstraction device that allows us to think of things that don’t actually exist, they are long term, non-concrete usually idealistic kinds of things.

How can you fulfil the desire of a healthy, stable, monogamous relationship with your wife? You can’t really, it’s a never-ending desire, the only moments of gratification probably come at anniversary and all the times you thought about but didn’t go through doing something else.

Immediately gratify, sensuous and emotionally driven desires on the other hand are very easily and quickly satisfied. These are powerful forces, forces of nature or forces of selfishness or Satan if you subscribe the religious/cultural mythology Phaedrus has gotten us into. If you exalt reason as the pinnacle of man’s achievements of nature and the natural world, the paragon of animals etc. then it is no wonder you feel a great deal of guilt when you follow these ‘base’ desires.

I don’t think willpower is what the issue is here, we’re talking about a reprogramming of how you view your desires. Faced with the choice of fulfilling the immediate desire and the never-ending desire it’s a contest with a serious handicap.

I think to even up the match a little you need to replace your never-ending desires with concrete ones. If you want a healthy marriage the feeling of having not done something to destroy is nowhere near good enough. In doing this you are focusing on the thing you wish to avoid and fixating on your own weaknesses. Instead think of actions you can do right now that fulfil your abstract desire. Write an e-mail, buy flowers, write a poem whatever…

Only by giving your abstract desires a concrete failure are you giving yourself a real choice. A choice between conflicting passions not between two horses.

The eventuality of Utilitarianism: "You dodgy bastard God"

2006-02-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

Buddhist morality seems to me to be an entirely utilitarian affair. That is, once one realizes that life is suffering and all human beings suffer, the right course of action is to alleviate suffering and replace it with the good: happiness. The good in this case being a specific spiritual happiness as oppose to the tradition material and physical conceptions of happiness common in Utilitarian theory.

Now the problem of Utilitarianism has always been in my view finding the method to best maximize the good. You might work very hard to make a large number of people happy only to find that in doing so you have made an even larger group of people unhappy. Or you just could have simply set off a chain of events which results in the whole earth being destroyed to make way for a intergalactic hyperspace bypass. Whoops.

However, the Mahayana Buddhists have the answer and what I would regard to be the only answer to this problem which would give someone any hope of redeeming this dangerous ethical theory:

Omniscience.

That’s right. The only way you can effectively (and safely) maximize the happiness of all sentient beings is to know everything, especially the exact effects your actions will cause.

The only person you could really trust to be a utilitarian is an omniscient being after all. When someone is performing all manner of ghastly and counter-intuitive acts such as running people over with trains and killing people for their organs and they say, “Don’t worry, it’s all for the best”, you really wanna be sure about that.

So this seems to be the justification for a whole lot of monks removing themselves from the world and sitting still in a monastery for a few decades. As utilitarians dedicated to helping the suffering of all, they’re trying damn to become omniscient.

Of course, such actions are only justifiable if you believe becoming omniscient is actually possible. If not, I think you just stay way from ‘the ends justifies the means’ theories in general.

It is worth noting that the Judeo-Christian God is often given a pass for all the obvious evil and suffering in the world because he has a ‘grand plan’ and being omniscient we have every reason to trust that it will work out in the end. That all this, blood, sweat and tears are not shed in vain. (Can’t wait to find out how the Holocaust was necessary to the great cosmic game!)

However, this tends to neglect the fact that this god is a professed believe in moral absolutes, I mean we’re talking about written in stone, literally! I mean if killing innocent people is part of the grand plan, that’s all well and good, but you might want to revise your own rules and regulations there Yaweh! You’re not living up to your own standards and by your own definition down live up to being ‘good’ and since God being good is part of your definition as an entity you have just contradicted yourself out of existence.

Apologists can of course counter that this too is part of the plan. That we should act in accordance with his moral absolutes whilst he goes on killing and causing all manner of suffering to fulfil the grand plan. By this stage though there seems to be nothing which can’t be explained by the ‘grand plan’ scenario which renders the explanation the equivalent of, “stop asking questions, just trust me!” (At least that’s what the priest said to me.)

But let us for the moment suppose that this is right. It is now somehow good to lie and murder, because god is good and this is what god does, and yet it is wrong to do these things, god said so. In any case such a dodgy character can clearly be up to no good and it is hardly worth worshiping a lying murderer. But then that was probably part of the plan all along.

For Want of a Metaphor

2006-02-03T19:16:00.000-08:00

I’m trying to come about with a metaphor that will help me express the absurdity of logic. Logic as we all know is a system of rules, inductive and deductive that were created by us people that we use to apply to the world, reality in order to ascertain truth.

We don’t mind the fact the logic was created by us and not reality because we tend to forget that fact and think that it in fact exists independently of us out in the world. It just seems to be a happy coincidence that what qualifies as a rule of logic is that which seems to make sense to the human brain and what is disqualified is that which seems absurd.

I mean if you have a cause you must then have an effect, and X cannot be both P and not P right!!! That just doesn’t make sense!!!

In fact (I’m using the term figuratively) logic appears to be more a corollary of language than anything else. Language rules which are of course governed by the particular arrangements of our brains.

So what is a metaphor (or a simile, or even an analogy) that expresses the absurdity of inventing a system of rules and then finding absolute truth by testing everything against these rules and forgetting the fact that you invented them in the first place?

If logic is not immutable...

2005-09-27T06:06:00.000-07:00

A reply written by me made about my hypothesis that the laws of human logic are not fixed, universal and 'immutable.'

If logic is not immutable, how can we know that logic is wrong?

We won’t know what’s wrong. At least not with any certainty. That is the point of the brain in the vat problem. You don’t come to a belief about either proposition with any certainty, you are left with uncertainty, something propositional logic has a real problem with.

Does this mean you jump off a bridge or dismiss tautologies because they are not certain? No, just as scientific knowledge is uncertain but still functional so too can all areas of human thought be seen as a cloud of light amongst the darkness of possibility.

If logic is not a universal truth and law unto itself, the walls of cognition do not come crashing down. We can admit that the axioms of mathematics may be expressions of human cognition that are vastly different from possible alien constructions which we cannot comprehend, but within the system we have constructed they are fundamental. Exploring the nature of that relationship is far more intriguing than postulating our discovery of the mysterious transcendent mechanics of the whole universe.

Transcendence

2005-09-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

A humble trance tune, with uplifting yet emotive melodies, head nodding kicks and surging basslines. Hyperbole aside, an energetic track indeed.

Illusive Mind - Transcendence

The Latent Anarchy of Modern Society

2005-09-08T18:09:00.000-07:00

Commentators are quick to cite the devastation and frightening anarchy of New Orleans as proof of the thin veneer of civilization that is liable to be reduced to a Hobbesian ‘state of nature.’ That with the removal of a few rungs from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the modern man can and will mutate or regress to a kill or be killed demeanor.

In my essay Evolution, Altruism and Ethics I discuss how reciprocal altruism forms a basis for a modern ethics that transcends the inherent selfishness of natural selection. Basically, if you want to enhance you chances for survival (or gene propagation) in a communal environment, it is advantageous to cooperate with other people even if it requires some self-sacrifice. This is a theory that debunks Hobbes’ ‘state of nature’.

The anarchy of New Orleans is often put in direct contrast to the cooperation amongst peoples who were ravaged by the tsunami that hit along the coastline of parts of South Asia. Now of course there are sorts of political and cultural suppositions that overlay what really happened in New Orleans and why but I propose that the amorality reflects the inherent limitations of reciprocal altruism.

The cooperation and self-sacrifice only makes rational sense if the people you are helping are in a position to help you. In tribal communities it makes sense for you to sacrifice some of your food to your neighbour who didn’t kill anything on the hunt, or whose farm hasn’t yielded food this season, because he is in a position to do the same for you should the tables be turned. It also makes sense to never sacrifice food to your other neighbour who refused you food when you were wanting.

Modern society has created a social contract not envisioned by the confines of these hunter-gatherer societies in which we evolved: anonymity. It is possible to live in a society with people you will never meet, and who will never be in a position to make sacrifices for you. It is possible to cheat people who you will never do business with again and consequently cannot reap retribution.

Our reciprocal altruism has been stretched to an abstraction which demands we obey the social order because we will otherwise loose it’s protection. I don’t kill this guy and steal all his money because otherwise I will be arrested and jailed. We put these institutions in place because the cooperation between self-sacrifices and punishment of cheaters can now only occur on a mass scale. Without them the cohesion and safety of the society would break down, and we would once again be forced into tribal relationships.

In New Orleans, the contract had already been broken. The protection of these institutions were lost, so heavily armed gangs formed to rob available stores. The notion of private property is a modern abstraction of older communal arrangements. Why not rob a person I’ll never meet, and whose retribution will never be had? If my life is at stake there is almost no sacrifice to the now non-existent social cohesion worth making.

It is not surprising that rapes have occurred, this is a mentality very common to the tribes who wished to propagate their genes, and so would rape the women of opposing tribes. In a city where everyone beyond your circle of friends is anonymous, a stranger, the only thing to rationally dissuade you from this kind of behaviour are the punishments our civic leaders have put in place to ensure our ability to co-exist peacefully.

The anarchy of New Orleans is a kind of regression. Not to a fierce individualism imagined by Hobbes but to a tribal cooperation of our ancestors. The Tsunami victims didn’t murder and rape each other because they were civilized but because they were living in low population density areas, small towns, with people who know your name.

Our animal nature combines with cold blooded rationality to be engaged in a constant war with the abstract ideals of the peaceful high-density city living. The anarchy of New Orleans is a sign of the modern sickness of anonymity and the emergence of an all too human nature when the social contract is broken.

émotif

2005-07-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

émotif is the name of my latest creation. No, it's not some genetically engineered monster who is made up of the entrails of seven different people. It is a classical symphonic piece that represents possibly the best of my instrumental work.

It has taken a few months to get right. The right balance of harmonies and dynamics. It can be descriped as an epic orchestral composition evoking long held memories and deeply felt sympathies.

So sit back and relax and enjoy one of my favourites and what I'm sure will be one of yours.

Illusive Mind - émotif

The End of Multiculturalism?

2005-07-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

The London bombings have provoked some commentators to contemplate the death of multiculturalism. That the generosity and respect extended to the polyglot of cultures in the UK has resulted in the safe-haven of extremists who were allowed to preach their radical views and carry out these horrid acts of terrorism.

In Time to set some limits, Pamela Bone writes:

It was not supposed to be like this. The idea was that tolerance and liberalism towards migrants would in turn make migrants tolerant and good citizens. Instead, Britain became a haven for terrorists. Did the bomb blasts in the London Underground mark the death of multiculturalism?

In A betrayal of trust, Tony Parkinson writes:

The compact under multiculturalism is that each community within a society must have the freedom to sustain its own identity, traditions and culture. But there is a quid pro quo and that involves universal acceptance of a broad system of shared values.

Hence, multiculturalism, in this country and elsewhere, is at a moment of truth. The drift from melting-pot altruism into salad-bowl separatism has morphed into something more sinister: the existence within Western cultures of a hostile religious sect that renounces absolutely the principles on which our societies are structured.

So just what is multiculturalism and is it under threat by radical Moslems?

Multiculturalism is one way of dealing with the cultures of immigrants into a state. It is in contrast to ‘monoculturalism’ which demands all immigrants to assimilate, to integrate and make their way of life the pre-existing culture of the nation as identified by its government.

Multiculturalism instead is the view that it is permissible that cultures of immigrants and others should be preserved. This can be done in a variety of ways such as language schools, ethnic housing and administrative policies of the government such as providing government documentation in languages relative to the various communities.

A third view is the “Melting Pot”, whereby a heterogeneous society does not preserve or place importance on any one culture over another resulting in the mixing and assimilation of all cultures resulting in a society without distinctive sub-cultures unlike the ‘salad-bowl’ of multiculturalism.

So if preserving the ‘cultural mosaic’ means respecting a mosque’s or a church’s or a school’s ability to instill hatred and extremism into its followers, it may be too high a price to pay, right?

I think before you can reasonably answer that question you have to pinpoint exactly what you mean when you are talking about culture.

In ‘Culture’ from Keywords Raymond Williams, academic, novelist and critic, writes:

Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. This is so partly because of its intricate historical development, in several European languages, but mainly because it has not come to be used for important concepts in several distinct intellectual disciplines and in several distinct and incompatible (emphasis added) systems of thought.

Williams goes on to chart the etymological development of the word and its varying means from anthropological to literary discourse.

Perhaps the way in which the term is used to denote ‘muticulturalism’ can best be elucidated by the famous anthropologist, Clifford Geertz:

Culture is "an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life"

We are talking about the customs, patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought that are socially transmitted by a people. Culture may be something which is hardest to identify in isolation but is readily visible when framed in opposition to an alternate culture.

More ambiguity is apparent when we look at the how this polysemous word is used to describe and define such a wide range of supposedly discrete groups. Be it the culture of a specific ethnic group, Greek culture, or a of a group of people with a specific attitude gun culture or ideology counter-culture or hobby/ interest cyber-culture. Socially transmitted patterns can occur on very macrocosmic and very microcosmic scales, as such any attempt to clearly define a culture is going to result in some generalisation and stereotyping.

So herein lies the problem when describing the culture of the terrorists of ‘September Eleven’ of the ‘London Bombings’. We can describe a culture of terrorism which might include direct action protesters of various and even opposing persuasions, called ‘freedom-fighters’ by their supporters. We can describe a culture of radicalism and extremism which would include the fanatics on the fringes of many religious and secular hate groups. We can describe a culture of Islamic extremists which describes only those radicals taught that killing and terrorizing ‘the enemy’ is the way of Allah. Or we can describe Islamic extremism as simply of sub-culture of Islam where it germinates and lump all those peoples together under one label.

As you can see it is very precarious to call something a “cultural problem”. The Australian Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs has recently been spotlighted for its own cultural problems, cited as having a “cowboy culture”, a “cover-up culture”, a “hard-line culture” and a “cold-hearted culture”.

When talking about multiculturalism in Australia are we talking about preserving the mosaic of these kinds of cultures? No, of course not, it is about allowing people who have immigrated here to preserve some of their national identity by not forcing them to loose their language and their customs. The extent to which we accept foreign customs has always been limited by the laws of the host country, with an ideal of allowing that much freedom that does not encroach on other’s freedom.

So when commentators suggest that preachers inciting children to violence and suicide is a threat to multiculturalism they are making a grave error. Violent extremism of any kind is a threat to the safety of a country’s citizens, and whilst we can describe this as a kind of culture to do so risks lumping this ideology in with the ethnic culture of Islam and Arabs which has been a commonality between the Bali, London and September Eleven terrorists.

There is room in Liberal Democracies for the existence of groups that “renounces absolutely the principles on which our societies are structured.” The freedom to criticize our core values is one of our core values. There is room for a hatred for government policies which take a people to a war that they disagree with. This is room for religious customs that ask for the devotion of their followers.

What there is no room for in any free society is an extremism that violates that freedom, the freedom of a majority or minority. This applies to members of the KKK that lynch black people, to Timothy McVeigh followers who believe killing innocent people is an acceptable way to protest against the authority of a government. This applies to suicide bombers who think killing people is god’s mission.

We have every right to be intolerant of these socially transmitted patterns and should do what is within our power to root them out. To describe this as a cultural problem of Islam is to forget the history of the fringes of all religious groups. And it is to simply pick a more easily identifiable category to target our attentions.

Religion and ethnic culture is a great way to protect extremists views by hiding them behind a banner of religious freedom and cultural respect, but this demands our insight to listen to the moderates who distinguish between respectable religious beliefs and vile distortions of Islam masquerading as the word of Allah.

So by all means close down the mosques or churches or schools that teach and incite extremism, but it is only our intolerance and short-sightedness that will threaten the end of multiculturalism.

Avoiding Responsibility

2005-07-12T02:48:00.000-07:00

He rejected the suggestion that former immigration minister Philip Ruddock and Senator Vanstone should take blame. He said there was a "delegated decision-making capacity" to the department.

John Howard: "I think ministers should go when plainly they have been directly responsible . . . I don't think that could ever be said of either Mr Ruddock or Senator Vanstone,"

Ministerial Responsibility is a convention of any and all Westminster systems. The Australian federal government operates under the assumption Australia is one of those Westminster systems. Roughly the idea is that cabinet ministers have a collective responsibility to carry out government policies decided by cabinet and refrain from public disapproval of any such policies. Furthermore cabinet ministers are responsible to the parliament for their actions and the actions of officials in their departments.

So under such a convention the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (Amanda Vanstone) is responsible and accountable to the parliament for the actions of officials in her department. Just as Phillip Ruddock was when he was the minister. To suggest that this responsibility is only relevant when it is direct is to absolve any and all ministers of responsibility and destroy accountability. A minister would only need to resign over grave abuses in their department if they can find the smoking gun with their signature on it. Otherwise they can feel free to hire all the officials they want to take the fall for them.

As dangerous as this suggestion is by the Prime Minister, his false dichotomy is just baffling.

Mr Howard told Nine's Sunday: "We cannot as a nation have it both ways. We expect the Immigration Department to be there to implement a firm and strong policy tied up with the protection of our borders. But, on the other hand, some suggest that we be totally unforgiving if there are errors."

So if we want to have a strong border protection it is fallacious to be at the same time unforgiving of errors. A harsh border policy entails misjudgements like deporting Australian citizens and incarcerating mentally vulnerable citizens.

Perhaps Prime Minister, the ‘people’ weren’t aware of these atrocious entailments of your policy when you sold it to them when the Tampa was in town. Maybe people would rather feel more threatened by the injustices committed by this government than the trickle of asylum seekers on leaky boats.

In any case if having it “both ways” means not wanting errors, or shall we say miscarriages of justice and abuses of power this must mean then that your firm border protection policy is unwanted and unwarranted.

Philopingo

2005-06-30T01:50:00.000-07:00

Philopingo is a site dedicated to exploring philosophy and philosophical ideas through fictional stories. Something I think is very cool indeed.

From the site:

Philopingo is a website that focuses on philosophical ideas through fictional stories. Our name 'Philopingo' comes from the Latin words philosophia (meaning philosophy) and appingo (meaning 'to write'). The website and the stories have been created by a group of teenagers who live in New Zealand.

Check it out:
http://www.philopingo.com/

Political Personality Meme

2005-06-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

Seems like an interesting experiment, so here it is:

=============================================================

Overview: This post is a community experiment with two broad purposes. The first is to create publicly accessible data about bloggers' personalities, which may have sociological value in addition to being just plain fun. The second is to track the propagation of this meme through blogspace. Full details and explanation can be found on the original posting: http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2005/06/meme-worth-spreading.html

Instructions (to join in the experiment):

1) Take the IPIP-NEO personality test and the Political Compass quiz, if you have not done so already.

2) Copy to the clipboard that section of this post that is between the double lines, and paste it into your blog editor. (Blogger users may wish to use 'compose' mode to preserve formatting and hyperlinks. Otherwise, be sure to add hyperlinks as necessary.)

3) Replace the answers in the "survey" section below with your own.

4) Add your blog information to the "track list", in the form: "Linked title - URL - optional GUID".

5) Any additional comments should go outside of the double lines, including the (optional) nomination of bloggers you wish to pass this experimental meme on to.

6) Post it to your blog!

Survey:

Age: 20
Gender: Male
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Religion: None
Occupation: Student
Began blogging (dd/mm/yy): 23/09/04

Political Compass results
Left/Right: -8.63
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.67

IPIP-NEO results

EXTRAVERSION 13
Friendliness 10
Gregariousness 5
Assertiveness 14
Activity Level 13
Excitement-Seeking 23
Cheerfulness 82

AGREEABLENESS 87
Trust 90
Morality 94
Altruism 45
Cooperation 98
Modesty 5
Sympathy 98

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 94
Self-Efficacy 84
Orderliness 83
Dutifulness 71
Achievement-Striving 93
Self-Discipline 57
Cautiosness 99

NEUROTICISM 18
Anxiety 5
Anger 1
Depression 15
Self-Consciousness 97
Immoderation 74
Vulnerability 3

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE 96
Imagination 86
Artistic Interests 92
Emotionality 33
Adventurousness 51
Intellect 90
Liberalism 99

Track List:
1. Philosophy, et cetera - pixnaps.blogspot.com - pixnaps97a2
2. Illusive Mind – illusivemind.blogspot.com - illusivemind23n9
3. (add your entry here)

Ave Veritas (First Movement)

2005-06-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

Another Latin title, like Rara Avis, but this piece shares nothing else in common with that song except its author. Ave Veritatis (First Movement) is only one minute and thirty seconds, a slow piano and string piece that is a kind of melancholic lamentation.

The Broad Party

2005-06-13T22:06:00.000-07:00

Opposition immigration spokesman Laurie Ferguson has said Labor is "broadly supportive" of Petro Georgiou's bills ("Battle looms over mandatory detention" 14/6). Broadly? Labor doesn't seem to know what real leadership is, or at least not with Beazley at the helm. They signal their intent to block the Government’s tax cuts in order to strengthen their economic credentials even though the legislation’s passage through the senate is inevitable. The public doesn’t see this as principled, just partisan.

Now with the vocal dissenting backbenchers speaking out against this Government’s atrocious mandatory detention policy, Labor has a chance to win back a lot of their conscientious supporters. The one’s they lost to the Greens in the 2001 ‘Tampa’ display of populist pandering. Instead they have been reluctant to come out in full-throated support of Petro Georgiou’s bills because it is a Liberal initiative and not a Labor one.

Mr. Beazley, Labor wants children out from behind the razor wire, they want the to protect the mentally ill and all the vulnerable members of society who have been cast aside. So why don’t you lead the charge and leave the political manoeuvring to Mr. Howard?

Behind the Razor Wire

2005-06-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

This is a press release written by Julia Gillard of the Australian Labor Party whilst she was Shadow Minister for Population & Immigration in 2002. It was sent to me by my local Federal representative upon my questioning Labor's resolve to end the Australian Government's despicable Mandatory Detention policy in order to show "Labor’s long term commitment to this issue."

CHILDREN IN DETENTION – IT’S A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE

Support for Labor’s amendment to get children out from behind the razor wire of immigration detention by Australians for Just Refugee Programs is welcome. I specifically welcome the endorsement of Labor’s stance by one of the group’s patrons, Dr John Yu, former Australian of the Year.

The amendment I have moved to the Migration Legislation Amendment (No. 1) Bill seeks to modify the legal power to detain asylum seekers so that children cannot be held in high security detention for long periods of time. This amendment will compel the Government to:

Put unaccompanied children into foster or community care arrangements; and
Allow families with children to live in accommodation like the Woomera alternate detention trial.

Dr Yu also called for a conscience vote on Labor’s amendment when it is debated in the Parliament next month. In relation to a conscience vote, it is worth highlighting (again) that on 26 August this year I asked the Minister, given he was free to cross the floor in 1988 to vote with the then Labor Government to endorse a non-discriminatory immigration policy for Australia, to assure Coalition MPs that they will be similarly free to cross the floor this time and support Labor’s amendment.

The Minister failed to answer the question. However, I am calling on Government members to be guided not by the Minister’s words, but by his actions in 1988, and by their consciences.

It’s time to get children out from behind the razor wire.

JULIA GILLARD M.P.
Shadow Minister for Population & Immigration

I don't like red guitars

2005-06-06T18:52:00.000-07:00

This is an objection to Richard's argument as to why the ammoralist is compelled by reason to be moral, Why be moral? over at Philosophy, Et cetera.

What would be incoherent is to fail to desire a food you admit you would enjoy eating just as much, unless some further reason can be given for the differential treatment.

I think there are cases where arbitrariness is not equivalent to irrationality. I talk about this in my essay.

However I absolutely agree with you in that there is a definite place for reason in assessing our desires as I talk about here.

Let’s say I love guitars except red guitars. (Which happens to be true)

For our desires to be rational that must cohere or accord with our beliefs about the world. So if I believe that red guitars are actually the best guitars in the world, it is not rational that my desire doesn’t accord with my belief, (unless there was some other reason why I didn’t like red guitars).

To whatever extent we can know, the beliefs which our desires are based on should accord with the world to be considered rational.

So if I believe that painting the colour red on a guitar actually alters the sound of the instrument and that belief is false (which I think it is) then my aversion to red guitars is irrational.

But what about the idea that our desires and moral judgements are reducible or entailed by first order principles. In order for them to be rational they must accord with those principles (which is similar to a coherent desire set).

So if my aversion to red guitars is derived from a aesthetic aversion to all red ‘status symbols’ then it is coherent. (I don’t like red cars either but I don’t mind red T-shirts).

If I did like red bass guitars then there would need to be a reason why I regarded lead guitars and bass guitars as meaningfully different in this context. Otherwise my desire is not in accord with my principle (i.e. the belief or desire about red status symbols).

Of course the aversion to red status symbols may itself by reducible to a further belief or desire, but as long as it is consistent that the desire is rational. And yet it is arbitrary in the sense that it might have been any other colour were it not for the cultural and perhaps physiological associations with the colour red.

But I don’t think you are using arbitrary in this way, you are right to use it in terms of inconsistency.

So if the amoralist cares about the welfare of his friends but not anyone else, there may be a consistent explanation for this. The amoralist may only care about the people who are loyal to him et al. If he doesn’t care about family member who are also loyal to him, just because he is related to them (and no other reason) then we can charge him with irrationality.

However an intelligent amoralist (a sociopath like Hannibal Lecter) may very well avoid these inconsistencies in his desires and beliefs. Certainly even the most moral people may have irrational desires in some aspect of their lives.

So if the amoralist is consistent in his application of a lack of empathy, (and perhaps his disregard for his future self) then how is his immorality irrational?

Australian Superiority

2005-06-01T18:06:00.000-07:00

One commentator said (and I tend to agree) that Australians are generally good hearted people but scratch around and you'll get racism and xenophobia. Schapelle Corby is an Australian girl who has just been convicted of importing drugs into Indonesia and sentenced to twenty years in jail. All the while she has protested her innocence with a glut of media attention and the backing of a lot of the Australian public. In response to the conviction a large section of Australians have reacted with racism and xenophobia, people have suggested that money given for Tsunami Aid should be returned, and most recently a threatening letter containing a 'biological agent' was sent to the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra.

I think this high moral groundists would benefit from reading (not that I imagine any of those kinds of people read my blog) the story of Chika Honda. I am quite sure they aren't aware of it already; I only became aware of it yesterday.

When Justice Gets Lost in Translation

Is Schapelle Corby the victim of rough justice? Ask Chika Honda, writes Sushi Das.

She was jailed for smuggling drugs into a foreign country. She claimed somebody else put them in her bag, but the judge didn't believe her. Her lawyers fought language and cultural problems to put her case, but their efforts came to nothing.

Schapelle Corby? No, her name is Chika Honda. Arrested in Melbourne, she served 10-and-a-half years in Victorian jails before being deported to Japan. Thirteen years on, she is still trying to clear her name.

Miscarriages of justice, if that is what has happened in the Corby case, can happen in any country, even one with a sophisticated legal system untainted by corruption, such as Australia's. Even one whose citizens presume to hold the moral high ground.
Those using the Corby case to slander an entire nation, accusing Indonesia of having a barbaric legal system, where the judges are "monkeys" and justice goes awry, should reflect on the details of the Honda case.

Chika Honda was one of four Japanese tourists found with heroin in false panels in their suitcases when they landed at Melbourne Airport in 1992. (A fifth man Yoshio Katsuno, was believed to be the main drug smuggler.) All had stopped over in Kuala Lumpur where they said the van containing their luggage was stolen.

Yoshio Katsuno later told the others that their suitcases had been found, but because they were damaged, a friend of his had replaced them with new ones and transferred their belongings. All were charged in Australia with importing nearly 13 kilograms of heroin with a street value of between $20 million and $30 million. They claimed to be innocents abroad who were the victims of a set-up. But the court in Australia didn't believe their story. Just like the court in Bali didn't believe Corby's.

When they were found guilty in 1994, Judge Russell Lewis said foreign nationals convicted of importing drugs into Australia must be sent to prison.
Yoshio Katsuno got 20 years behind bars. He is still in jail today. The others, Masahara Katsuno, Mitsuo Katsuno, Kiichiro Asami and Chika Honda, alleged to be drug couriers, spent 10-and-a-half years in jail before being deported in 2002. They have never stopped protesting their innocence.

Having exhausted appeals to Australian authorities, 50 lawyers on their behalf have appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, arguing that their trial was a violation of their human rights because inadequate language interpretation affected their right to a fair trial.

Chika Honda, the only woman in the group, came to represent the group's innocence. Issues of language, money and cultural difference form interesting parallels between the Corby and Honda cases.

When charged with a crime in a foreign country, language becomes crucial, but so does the need to maintain perspective. According to one Sydney shock-jock: "The judges (in Corby's case) don't even speak English, mate, they're straight out of the trees." By the same reckoning, the judge in the Honda case should have spoken Japanese.

There's also the issue of cash. Honda's legal aid team could not afford investigators to mount a substantive defence. Money is also likely to be important in Corby's future.

Then there is the obstacle of cultural differences. The Japanese failed to aggressively assert their innocence in court. In Japan this is seen as culturally appropriate, but in Australia it's seen as a sign of guilt. In Corby's case, cultural differences were apparent in a courtroom where cameras were allowed and judges talked freely to the media.

Much Australian public sentiment has savaged the Indonesian judicial system as primitive and brutal. Perhaps the Japanese thought that about Australia's system.
On returning to Japan, Masahara Katsuno said: "The current Australian judicial system has a very serious problem." Mitsuno Katsuno said he believed racial prejudice was to blame: "I realised later on that in Australia, many Asian Australians committed crimes. That's why I think they believed we were the same as them." Chika Honda also spoke of injustice: "I was humiliated. I need some time to free my mind."

Honda has not given up her fight to clear her name. Two Australian legal experts are preparing a petition to the Governor-General requesting that he exercise a Royal Prerogative of Mercy. They are asking for her conviction to be nullified on the basis of new evidence yet to be revealed.

It would be unfair to condemn Australia because of what some believe to be a miscarriage of justice in the case of Honda and her group, yet the Corby chorus has no hesitation in slandering all Indonesia for the Corby verdict.

In what has become an embarrassing farce, with some Corby fans demanding the return of tsunami aid and calling for a boycott of Bali tourism, many are looking for reasons for the vitriol: racism, xenophobia, a feeling that Bali is an "Australian space". But maybe there's something deeper.

What lies at the root of the Corby hysteria is a Eurocentric view of the world - a view that ultimately celebrates the rise and triumph of the West over the East. At the heart of this idea is an attitude that, broadly speaking, the West is dynamic, intelligent, rational, free, tolerant, honest and civilised, while the East is stagnant, ignorant, superstitious, enslaved, intolerant, corrupt and barbaric.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the truth is the world is a global network of rich and poor countries. Only by ditching a Eurocentric perspective can it be possible to see that the world today is a result not only of European advances, but massive contributions by the East. What's required is perspective and respect.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

2005-05-29T17:35:00.000-07:00

I never intended for this blog to be a soapbox of political views (or should I say 'outrage'), however as an Australian deeply ashamed of the policies supported by my countrymen and done in my name, I see no reason why not to avail myself of this particular soapbox.

Another Liberal MP, Wilson Tuckey, said: "The minute you open loopholes, the boats will start coming again." -SMH

I love the post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning that politicians can seem to resist employing. From around the year 2000 to 2002 we had an influx of 'boat people' or asylum seekers who arrived by boat. We instituted the god awful policy known as 'the pacific solution' and look the boats have stopped coming it has worked!

Let's not bother ourselves with the details, that 80 to 95 percent of all the 'boat people' were of Afghani or Iraqi origin who were found to be genuine refugees. You see it was around this time that the United States decided to start its crusades and bomb the hell out of these two countries, naturally boat loads of people were trying to get out of the country upon fear of death.

Damn this country that thinks it is acceptable to jail innocent people for the political purpose of deterring others. This country that thinks inflicting serious psychological harm upon innocent women and children is a small price to pay for border security. This country that is willing to pay that price as long as the people we are dehumanising aren't 'fair dinkum' Australians, that would be wrong and we'll cry in outrage against that.

The sad thing is, I believe true leadership and an enlightened education campaign would turn around most of the people who support the government's policies on asylum seekers. What about the opposition party? No. They are the one's who invented mandatory detention, and the man, Kim Beazley that runs their party can't be called a 'leader' in any sense of the word.

It is in times of fear and crisis that civil liberties are eaten away. It is in times of fear and crisis that those civil liberties matter most.

Evolution, Altruism and Ethics

2005-05-26T17:32:00.000-07:00

In this essay I will outline what I regard as the most successful attempt to explain the evolution of altruism. I will then illustrate some of the effects that an evolutionary account of moral behaviour has on cognitivist and noncognitivist theories of ethics. I will argue that evolutionary theory does not undermine Hume’s noncognitivism but supports it and casts doubt on Kantianism.

Evolutionary Explanation of Altruism

Altruism is a term that is used in a wide range of ways. In its strictest application it is taken to mean those actions an organism performs from which they derive absolutely no benefit nor reward. This is a needlessly narrow definition. In The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins (1976 p.2) argues the mechanics of evolution take place at the level of the gene and that the natural selection favours genes that maximise inclusive fitness, that enable it to reproduce the greatest number of viable offspring possible. With such an ostensibly selfish account of human behaviour the problem of explaining the existence of altruism emerges. Within this context altruism need only mean when an organism (human or non-human) acts to promote other’s interests to the apparent detriment of their own interests and this is how altruism will be used in this essay.

There have been different theories that attempt to explain altruistic behaviour such as David Barash’s account in The Genetic Basis of Kinship. Barash (1976 p.63) argues that sacrificing our own interests for our genetic relatives is consistent with evolutionary theory because such actions increase the chances of genes shared between relatives. This explains nepotist altruism directed to family members known as ‘kin selection’ but not altruism directed at non-relatives as is commonly seen in human societies and advocated by many normative theories.

The problem of altruism is reconciling evolutionary theory with the existence of organisms that promote the interests of non-relatives (or extremely distant relatives) to the apparent detriment of their own. The most successful evolutionary account of this ‘non-related’ altruism has been ‘reciprocal altruism’ introduced by Robert Trivers in The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism. Trivers (1971 p.83) argues that it can be advantageous for an organism to incur a cost to their own life (eg. giving up food, or risking death) for another non-related organism if the favour is repaid (so long as the benefit of the sacrifice outweighs the cost.) For example a person who saves their neighbour’s child from drowning may increase the chances of their own children’s survival if the action is reciprocated, or intends to be reciprocated.

Reciprocity is important, because natural selection would select against those organisms that would help organisms irrespective of any benefit to themselves. Dawkins (1976 p.197) uses the example of a species of bird that is parasitized with a fatal type of tick. A single bird can remove the tick from every part of its own body except its head where it cannot reach. Consequently the bird can only ensure ongoing survival if another bird removes the tick for it.

An “indiscriminate altruist” or “sucker” as Dawkins calls it, is a bird who will remove the tick from anyone who requires it. A “cheat” is a bird who will happily let birds remove the ticks but will not reciprocate. Dawkins claims that natural selection will surprisingly favour the cheats over the suckers because they can spend more time gathering food instead of grooming other birds. Of course, after the suckers become extinct the cheats will also become extinct because the ticks are not being removed. However the ‘reciprocal altruist’ or “grudger” is the bird that only grooms birds that reciprocate and remembers and punishes those who do not. That is they will reward organisms that cooperate and punish those that cheat. Given the suitable balance (Mackie, 1978) of grudgers, suckers and cheaters, the grudges will be favoured by natural selection.

This explains why evolution will favour those genes pre-disposed to reciprocal altruism. Peter Singer (1994 p.58) notes that this “helps to explain why reciprocity is found amongst all social mammals with long memories who live in stable communities and recognize each other as individuals.”

Richard Dawkins’ bird model is an evolutionary example of Robert Axelrod’s Tit for Tat theory (1984) that supposes that the most rational course of action for an iterated prisoner’s dilemma is to co-operate at first and then punish uncooperativeness and reward cooperation respectively.

It is worth noting that this account of altruism does not explain why many varieties of human morality idealize the character of a person who sacrifices themselves entirely for the good of others and not for any apparent reciprocal benefit. It is also not obvious how this account of reciprocal altruism can explain aspects of human behaviour such as forgiveness. However I will not be exploring that in this essay and will suppose that this account of altruism is equivalent to an account of human moral behaviour.

Impact on Meta-Ethics

What implications does this evolutionary account of altruism have for meta-ethics? In Evolution and the Basis of Morality, Colin McGinn (1979) claims that if morality is to have any independent authority it needs to be associated with reason as cognitivists such as Kant do and not with desires as noncognitivists such as Hume do. This argument suggests that if moral truths can be derived from reason in the vein of Kant’s categorical imperative (1949) then the validity of these truths is not brought into question by the evolutionary explanation of moral behaviour. The argument posits that these truths are objective and independent of human cognition so it is therefore irrelevant how organic the process of our acquiring these truths may be.

McGinn suggests that the evolution of morality can be understood if we consider morality as inseparable from reason, if we suppose, “that the Kantian thesis is right that rationality implies moral sense” (1979, p.165). He postulates that reason has endowed human beings with a host of advantages, and morality is one of the consequences of being a rational being. Morality can therefore be considered a spandrel analogous to the weight of the human brain. The weight of the brain may not itself be evolutionary advantageous but it is a necessary by-product of the cognitive functioning that is advantageous (Gould 1991, p.53).

For McGinn morality is not itself evolutionary advantageous and is at odds with the process of evolution. He thinks this is because morality entails altruistic desires that contradict inherited characteristics “whose evolutionary function, as predicted by gene selection theory, is confined to benefiting the individual and its kin.” His argument can be formulated syllogistically:

P1. Morality entails altruistic acts to non-related organisms
P2. Evolution forbids altruistic acts to non-related organisms
P3. Desires are derived from Evolution

C. Morality cannot be derived from desires

According to McGinn, morality can therefore only be derived from reason, because it has the power to “incline us in a direction contrary to that designed by the laws of natural selection.” The problem with this is premise two has been proven false by the evolutionary explanations of altruism I have detailed above.

McGinn is questioning the authority of the noncognitivist account of morality on the grounds that it fails to be impartial. McGinn is assuming a cognitivist account of morality in assessing the credibility of noncognitivism. He says, “the requirements of morality are such so as to be acknowledged by any rational being” (1979 p.164). The question begging fallacy can be clearly illustrated below.

P1. Morality requires impartiality /objectivity (cognitivism)
P2. Noncognitivism describes a non-objective morality

C. Noncognitivism is false

McGinn advocates a Kantian conception of morality because it has the necessary objectiveness to rise above the subjective motivations selected for by evolution. If we suppose that our desires to do good are all reducible to evolutionary pressures, a Kantian would be forced to conclude that it is impossible to conduct actions of any moral worth or credibility.

For Kant an action done out of inclination or from your particular emotional constitution has no moral worth. (1949 p.126) It is not moral for a person to undertake kind acts because he is inclined to do so as a consequence of his sympathetic constitution. Kant suggests that an action can only have moral worth if there is no direct inclination to do so and if it is done purely out of duty. Kant thinks tt is not enough that we may claim our motives are derived from reason, for our inclinations still affect our will. Therefore only a person with no inclination or an aversion to do good can conduct actions of moral worth.

The argument may be formulated as follows:

P1. All human beings have evolved inclinations that motivate us to do good
P2. A person with inclinations that motivate him to do good is not moral

C. All human beings are incapable of being moral

Even if we concede that not all people have beneficent inclinations, this absurdly restricts all moral worth to only those people with amoral or immoral inclinations.

The Authority of Evolutionary Baggage

It may be argued that a noncognitivist account of morality lacks authority because the subjective desires upon which it is based are just ‘evolutionary baggage.’ This means that my intuitions about caring for my family may just be the strategy of my genes to optimise their perpetuation.

But on what basis is their authority really being questioned? Hume doesn’t suggest that we have complete control over our desires. He admitted that the feelings upon which our moral judgements are based are “certain instincts originally implanted in our natures” (1888 p.121).

Does the influence of evolutionary pressures on our subjective moral judgements undermine their authority? If you agree that morality should be impartial then you already think Subjectivist morality has no authority. If you are a Subjectivist then you think moral judgements have authority to the extent that they convince us. You would think that moral judgements have authority with respect to others only to the extent that they share our sentiments. The evolutionary explanation of our ‘instincts’ would not perturb Hume who says that:

“A man naturally loves his children better than his nephews, his nephews better than his cousins, his cousins better than strangers, where every thing else is equal. Hence arise our common measures of duty, in preferring the one to the other. Our sense of duty always follows the common and natural course of our passions.”

Hume 1896 Part II. Section I.

The problem that an evolutionary account of morality raises is that unless we postulate the existence of objective moral truths it makes moral judgements arbitrary. Our passions are determined by an arbitrary, blind and random mechanism. If the evolution of our species had altered it is likely that our moral intuitions would also have changed accordingly.

Hume

If you accept Hume’s thesis that all moral judgements are ultimately reducible to a desire or passion, then the contents of moral judgements are arbitrary. But, so are the contents of human societies and behaviour, they too are products of evolutionary processes that could have turned out differently.

They are arbitrary in the sense that evolution could have made alternative phenotypic variations if circumstances were different. Suppose that the human reproductive cycle was the same as that of a rodent’s. That in order to prevent regular mass overpopulation we would have to kill those offspring who were genetically weakest. It stands to reason that are moral intuitions regarding the obligation towards children would be markedly altered.

However, moral judgements are not arbitrary in relation to how they correspond to human evolution. My intense desire to survive correlates to the evolutionary predisposition for genetic perpetuation. Human intuitions could not just be anything; they are adaptations that favour the survival of human genes.

It is irrational to get rid of my desire to survive just because my motivations are arbitrary. My intense desire for survival may just be a stratagem of my genes for optimal perpetuation, but that itself does not make it rational to commit suicide.

Evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that a fear of spiders is one example of evolutionary baggage. Our species happened to reside in an environment where spiders were responsible for many fatalities. Consequently those persons with genes that predisposed persons to fear spiders and restrict their contact with them would be favoured by natural selection (Oshman, 2001).

It is rational to dump the evolutionary baggage of a fear of spiders, not because it is arbitrary but because it is unwanted. Having terrifying arachnephobia is no longer needed when we are quite able to distinguish between harmful and harmless spiders and for the most part no longer reside in an environment where they pose a great threat to our survival.

My morality is as arbitrary as my left hand; through a random process of genetic mutation it has evolved as an adaptation because of its ability to increase my genetic fitness. Morality is still useful just like my left hand, and it is as irrational to stop using morality because of its origins, as it is to stop using my left hand. Of course I can stop using my left hand if I want to. The arbitrariness of moral distinctions only serves to undermine a cognitivist theory of ethics that supposes that moral judgements are not arbitrary but objective laws independent of human cognition.

The question of retaining moral judgements then is reduced to a question of desire. Do we want to utilise judgements whose agenda is the ongoing survival of the species (at the level of the gene) through a system of rewarding co-operation and punishing cheating?

Hume wrote “’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.” Thus for a noncognitivist like Hume, it is neither irrational nor rational to be moral. Consequently, there is no rational basis on which to criticize the amoralist who does not care to make or be bound by moral judgements.

It may be argued that my desire to submit to the figments of evolution is itself influenced by those figments. However I am supposing that the influence is not so great that I am unable to freely make a choice. If this were not the case, the debate over making moral judgements would be moot as the ability to be moral and make decisions it premised upon moral agency, upon freedom of will.

Kant

The only way to be objectively moral and avoid ‘evolutionary baggage’ from tainting our moral judgements seems to be to devote oneself completely to reason in a Kantian fashion. However, it is not a forgone conclusion that reason is above evolutionary pressures. In The Evolution of Reason, William Cooper argues, “the laws of logic emerge naturally as corollaries of the evolutionary laws” (2003, p.5).

If you accept Kant’s thesis that moral judgements can be conducted entirely without emotion, and suppose that the faculty of reason itself is not littered with evolutionary baggage, then it is rational to formulate your moral judgements in this way. Reason will allow you to perceive ethical reality and rise above the delusions of our biological influences. For a cognitivist like Kant it is rational to be moral, because morality itself is a consequence of the laws of reason.

However, there are serious doubts about how the human brain fashioned through the organic process of evolution can happen upon the ability to perceive a logical reality independent of human experience. Konrad Lorenz writes:

“Kant’s statement that the laws of pure reason have absolute validity, nay, that every imaginable rational being, even if it were an angel must obey the same laws of thought, appears as an anthropocentric presumption.”

(Quoted in Cooper, 2003, p.16)

If Cooper is right in insisting, “logic is not extra-biological but wholly emergent from evolutionary processes” (2003, p.13) then noncognitivists like Kant are left with no human faculty with which to escape the arbitrariness and subjectiveness of human behaviour and moral judgements.

Evolutionary theory would debunk moral realism, but not moral theory as described by Hume. Philosopher and Neuroscientist Joshua Greene writes, “we can understand our inclination towards moral realism not as an insight into the nature of moral truth, but as a by-product of the efficient cognitive processes we use to make moral decisions.” (2003, P.848)

In this essay I have outlined what I regard as the most successful attempt to explain the evolution of altruism. I have illustrated some of the effects that an evolutionary account of moral behaviour has on cognitivist and noncognitivist theories of ethics. I have argued that evolutionary theory does not undermine Hume’s noncognitivism but supports it and casts doubt on Kantianism.

References

Axelrod, Robert (1984) ‘Tit for Tat’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.88-92

Barash, David (1979) ‘The Genetic Basis of Kinship’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.63-6

Cooper, William S. (2003) The Evolution of Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Dawkins, Richard (1976) The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Greene, Joshua (2003) ‘From neural ‘is’ to moral ‘ought’: what are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology?’ Neuroscience, Vol. 4, p.847-50

Gould, Stephen J. (1991) ‘Exaptation: A crucial tool for evolutionary psychology’ Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 47, p.43-65

Hume, David (1888) ‘Reason and Passion’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.118-23

Hume, David (1896) A Treatise of Human Nature, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0213.php (accessed 19 May 2005)

Kant, Immanuel (1949) ‘Pure Practical Reason and the Moral Law’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.123-31

Mackie, J.L. (1978) "The Law of the Jungle: Moral Alternatives and Principles of Evolution", http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/mackie_jungle.htm (accessed 19 May 2005)

McGinn, Colin (1979) ‘Evolution and the Basis of Morality’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.164-6

Ohman, A., et al. (2001) ‘Emotion drives attention: detecting the snake in the grass’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General Vol. 130(3) p.466-78

Singer, Peter (1994) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University

Trivers, Robert (1971) ‘The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.78-88

Invincible Ideas?

2005-05-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

In Invincible Ideas Richard argues that some propositions are ‘invincible’ because any attempt to defeat them is self defeating or “the act of opposition is itself an instance of what is being opposed.”

I find this line of reasoning very intriguing and at least ostensibly persuasive. Of course with Philosophy one is always very wary of an argument that concludes that its conclusion is indefeasible. Even in the case of apriori ‘truths’.

Take the example of argument. Can one successfully argue that argument is worthless? Don’t they commit the very sin they are railing against? Well, yes they do. Let’s replace argument with conflict, one can argue that conflict is worthless and what we really should be doing is cooperating with one another. But in the process of arguing this, you are going to be coming into conflict with people who do not share this view. Suppose you happen to convince everyone of this view, the conflict would consequently disappear and if things worked out, your argument might be validated.

Replace conflict back with argument again and suppose that we are now living in a world without arguments and it is much better for it. Doesn’t the fact that it required the proponents of the theory to argue for it, contradict the very thesis they are arguing for? Well, not really because the statement “all argument is worthless” is probably a misinterpretation of their thesis. And something along the lines of “the world would be better without argument” may be a more favourable interpretation.

The act of arguing for this thesis is itself a Wittgensteinian Ladder, to be climbed and then disposed of after you have reached its conclusion. I don’t think that we have to use the elements the thesis opposes to reach its conclusion automatically disqualifies the argument.

This shouldn’t be confused with obvious hypocrisy, such as “violence is absolutely wrong so I will kill anyone who is violent.” I think that is the key, is this idea of absolutes. If someone believes that conflict is absolutely wrong, then naturally if they are to act in accordance with that principle they must not conflict with other people, even to convince them of that principle.

The most famous example of this kind of self-referential fallacy is, “there is no truth.” One cannot affirm this statement is a truth without contradicting themselves. This causes many people to conclude that it is hence true that truths exist, this is to commit an either/or fallacy.

As a truth subjectivist, I am committed to the idea of “there is no truth” without affirming it as a truth. For if I am committed to this idea I must accept that it is possible that anything is true, even the possibility of there being truths.

Thus, perhaps there is no truth emerges.

People often respond that if nothing is true then why should I bother with your argument for that conclusion. But this is myopia, for they cannot see Wittgenstein’s Ladder leading them to a different point of view.

Consequently, I reject the notion that there philosophical ideas that are invincible to defeasibility whilst affirming the possibility of their existence.

Australian Detention Centres

2005-05-25T18:36:00.000-07:00

A pictorial representation of the people currently imprisoned within Australian detention centres.

From The Age.com.au

Senator Amanda Vandstone has said that her Government's cruel policies should not be tempered with compassion because "the policies we've put in place have been effective, that is just obvious - the boats aren't coming like they were in 1999, 2000, 2001."

Really? Let's go to the score board:

1997-98: 2 716
1998-99: 3 574
1999-00: 8 205
2000-01: 7 881
2001-02: 7 808
2002-03: 6 602
2003-04: 6 196

(as at 25 June 2004)

Source: Departmental systems

Whilst actually boatloads of people may have decreased, decreases in detention rates since 1999 have been marginal and are still much increased since 1997 and 1998.

This Blog: Some Problems

2005-05-24T23:03:00.000-07:00

After receiving an email from Melbourne Philosopher informing that the comments function wasn't working I set about the task of fixing that up.

It was then that I noticed the difficulty of trying to remove a blog hack that I've inserted into many areas of the blog template. So I've been remaking the template from scratch and during this process my blog somehow disappeared.

In short, there may be a few more bugs to be worked out in this transistion.
If you notice any please feel free to email me at illusivemind AT gmail.com, it is much appreciated.

Subjectivism: Some problems

2005-05-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

To say x is wrong, just means that I disapprove of x.

This is how the thesis of Subjectivism is often formulated, often just before attacking some of the problems such an account of morality might raise. Some of these are:

This is not we think we mean when making moral claims
Moral disagreements or debate are rendered impossible
Moral speakers are made infallible

I think this reading of subjectivism is overly simplistic and that a more refined interpretation can solve a lot of the difficulties that subjectivism raises.

The father of subjectivism is David Hume who wrote extensively about the subjective nature of moral claims in A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739.

Hume didn’t argue that all moral claims were just emotional reactions of approval or disapproval but they were ultimately reducible to these emotional reactions.

He uses the example of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, one of the most fundamental motivating desires of human beings and all sentient creatures. Putting my hand under some running water after it has been burned may be seen as a consequence of my desire to avoid pain (or minimise it) but it is not a consequence of desire alone but also reasoning.

Based upon logical and empirical considerations I may reason the best methods to go about achieving my desires. Sticking my burnt hand under boiling hot water would be the product of faulty reasoning in attempting to achieve then end of avoiding pain.

When this is transferred to the realm of moral claims, I think some interesting distinctions emerge by extension of this line of thought. Returning to x is wrong, let’s substitute x with torture. What do I mean when I suggest that “murder is wrong”?

Yes, of course I mean that I disapprove of murder and don’t want to murder people or want other people to be murdered, but is this all? Might not this claim be the product of second order reasoning in accordance with some other principle or desire?

I might desire that all people respect the laws, and thus infer that because murder is against the law (an empirical claim) it is wrong. Or I may desire that all people be free to live their lives and infer that murder violates this desire and is hence wrong.

When I say it is right that all people be free to live their lives I might too then be referring to some higher desire or principle. And that desire may be inferred from another desire et cetera. What you may find after this process of reduction is that all of your moral claims rest upon a few fundamental moral facts or perhaps just one. Perhaps just the simple human ideal of acting towards others as you would have others act towards you.

This human sympathy, also explained in game theory and evolutionary theory as reciprocal altruism is as fundamental to the constitution of human beings as the avoidance of pain.

This does not make it objective, just common. It is still an arbitrary, subjective desire upon which moral claims are based, but it is one claim which most people can agree on.

So the argument that “I disapprove of x” is not quite what we mean when making moral claims is a valid one. I don’t think that this is what we mean. When I say to a friend of mine you shouldn’t steal that money because it is wrong, I’m not suggesting that he refrain from stealing just because I disapprove of it. I am suggesting that in accordance with the principle of justice or fairness of reciprocal altruism it is inconsistence to steal the money, and that if he shares my consensus with one or all of those principles then he is acting irrationally.

This characterisation also refutes the second objection that subjectivism renders moral debate impossible. You can criticize other people’s attempts to act in accordance with their principles if they lack consistency. You can also criticize any empirical claims which their reasoning may be based on.

If it turns out that a foetus does not count as a living thing, then the pro-lifers stance against abortion on the principle of protecting life is irrational and the subjectivist is free to point this out and persuade them of this fact.

The idea that subjectivism means that moral speakers are made infallible is also put to rest because mistakes of reasoning can be made in their attempts to accord their actions with their claims and their claims with their principles.

I think subjectivists are able to stimulate moral debate in areas it has died because of the insistence of objectivists that their claims of rightness of wrongness are objectively true, and one is irrational if they can not grasp this.

What is happening when the speaker makes moral claims such as ‘x is right’ is that they are using the word ‘right’ in two different important ways.

Giving to charity is ‘right’ in the sense that it is consistent with or accords to some principle which I believe in, such as doing to others, what you would have them to you or ‘the golden rule’.

The golden rule is ‘right’ in the sense that I agree with it, or I approve of it. Or oven that the majority of people agree or approve of it.

This does mean that the subjectivist has no basis to criticize the amoralist who does not agree with such fundamental principles. But the decision of a minority of people to not engage in moral discourse is just a factor of the diversity of human beings and poses no threat to the meta-ethical framework.

A Nation of Fear

2005-05-23T20:20:00.000-07:00

I understand that words like, 'compassion' and 'moral responsibility' and even 'egalitarianism' mean little to the supporters of mandatory detention. But what is the great threat posed by illegal immigrants? Saying that they broke the law is not justification enough for the manner in which both Australian and non-Australian citizens are being treated.

Reactionaries cry out that a more compassionate policy such as putting illegal immigrants into the community would generate enormous economic burdens upon John Q. taxpayer that he shouldn’t have to pay. We are not dealing with hundreds of thousands of immigrants; in 1997 as many as 2,716 people were admitted into detention.

Of those 2,716 detainees a quarter were released in less than 2 weeks, half were released in less than 2 months and over three-quarters were released within 6 months.
The majority of people detained just so they can be let out again within six months. We are spending hundreds of millions dollars a year to capture as little as 679 people and needlessly detain people, sometimes Australians in the process.

As of 18th of May 2005, only 928 people are being held in detention. It would be cheaper to put them up in five star hotels. It is estimated that the cost of keeping a single person in detention ranges from $111 to $725 a day.

The Wonders of Modern Technology

2005-05-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

'The Wonders of Modern Technology' is the name of one of my latest songs. It is an ambient/chillout piece, quite progressive and moody.

It should be up on Download.com shortly.

You may notice in the above artwork the artist name 'Illusive Mind' is fairly subtlety placed within the frame. You may also notice this is a motif within just about all of my song artwork.

Firstly, I'm someone who loves 'easter eggs' (figuratively speaking), that is those hidden surprises that the astute observer will pick up, (naturally I think of myself as an astute observer). I am a big fan of layered meanings and various depths of interpretation.

Secondly, the music I create spans a few genres. Though most of it hasn't been uploaded, I've made symphonic pieces, instrumental, piano, guitar, rock as well as ambient, electronic and trance. (Check out 'Perseverance' at Pure Volume.com Part of the whole concept of Illusive Mind is that it is also 'elusive'. Not fitting into any one neat category. If I could sing or had a vocalist then the connection between the different strands of music would be evident in the lyrics as a conceptual one.

So it seems fitting that the artist name takes a backseat to the song title, for the artist name is simply a loose causal thread that ties the work together somehow. I am speaking a language that predates me and using ideas that come before I do, in what sense then am I the creator?

'The language speaks me'

Practicality Requirement

2005-05-06T20:11:00.000-07:00

The practicality suggests that for something to be considered a moral judgement of for a meta-ethical theory to make sense it must account for the idea that moral judgements persuade us. If you truly believe stealing is wrong then this belief will affect your behaviour.

Is the practicality requirement all that compelling?

If you believe stealing is wrong then you cannot consistently go and steal something, you mustn’t have really thought stealing was wrong. This seems to be an
extension of ‘He who knows good will do good’.

But can’t I believe that it is wrong from steal from people and then knowingly steal some money from a shop. Can’t I be apathetic towards the moral judgement? I’m no
psychology student, but I remember reading that a Psychopath can’t tell the difference between right and wrong, whilst a Sociopath knows the difference, they
just don’t care.

Under the practicality require it is not clear how someone can ever be immoral.

If I hold a moral judgement then I must follow through on that judgement otherwise I must not have ever held that moral judgement.

Under this view people are immoral only in the sense that their moral judgements are incorrect or at least are contrary to those describing the action(s) as wrong.

So I cannot truly believe that stealing is wrong and steal something, according to the practicality requirement I (or a sociopath) can never do wrong (at least in their own view). But haven’t you ever done something you thought was wrong? The sociopath certainly does.

Thus the practicality requirement is false or at least must be reformulated.

Rara Avis

2005-05-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

Thick basslines with heavy kicks mixed with a thrusting melody reminiscent of "The Warp Brothers" makes Rara Avis one of Illusive Mind's 'Techno de Force'.

download.com/illusivemind

This is the best techno/trance/club song I’ve made yet, though I have said that with certainty about almost every time I make one. I think it is due to the fact that there are so many elements that go into making one of these songs that I know the process can never be repeated and in its completion lays a certain sense of momentary perfection.

‘Rara Avis’ is Latin for “Rare Bird”, in common usage the phrase is used to describe any rare person or thing. Why did I choose this title? Well sometimes there is an involved thought process and other times I just like something that sounds cool.

The beginnings of this song have been sitting unfinished, indeed unstarted on my computer for a number of months. So perhaps the rarity is the actual completion of the damn song.

I also like the composition of the title, it almost spells out r-a-v-e and at first glance appears to be hiding an anagram of some kind. ‘Rara Avis’ also refers to the experience of being one with the energy of this kind of song, the euphoria, the rapture.

For the first time the accompanying artwork is very simple and direct. Unlike the forthcoming “The wonders of modern technology”. This to me is a symbol of what the song is. A tune that should be played on the stereo, preferably routed through an amplifier or receiver, to the floor-standers and subwoofer, volume turned up loud and go crazy.

Indirect Utilitarianism

2005-05-03T03:53:00.000-07:00

Can Utilitarianism save integrity? Can we love our families for their own sake, or respect certain laws for their own sake whilst simultaneously maintaining a utilitarian stance?

This is the aim of indirect utilitarianism. That the maximization of the good is used to evaluate our actions and not as the motivation or decision procedure of our actions.

So I can love my family not because it increases happiness but for their own sake because doing this overall or in the long run increases happiness.

Rule Utilitarians think an “act is right when it is accordance with a rule whose general acceptance produces the most (actual or expected) utility.

Act Utilitarians evaluate “individual acts according to their (actual or expected” utility.” (p.43 Course Reader)

So according to rule Utilitarians I should keep my promises even though a single act of breaking a promise may greatly maximize utility.

The first problem with this is one of motivation, can I say to my friend they are my friend for their own sake or because as a general rule having friends promotes happiness or utility of some kind? I am still treating my friends and family instrumentally and to actually treat them as an ends whilst at the same time treat them as a means requires an act of doublethink or self-induced schizophrenia.

The second problem is that you are now committing to acting in certain situations so as to not produce the maximum good because following the rule generally maximizes good. This is not the greatest good for the greatest number and it certainly doesn’t resemble utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism is a mechanical normative theory with an abstract ideal in mind and whilst its logic seems intuitive its consequences and demands are not.

Agreement rules. OK?

2005-04-21T20:23:00.000-07:00

Western Philosophy is too often guilty of focusing exclusively on the object whilst ignoring the subject.

An example of this is J.L. Austin’s “How to do things with words”. In his arguably most famous work Austin makes great headway in the Philosophy of Language by distinguishing different kinds of performative utterances namely: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.

The essential idea is that in communication and with the vast majority of utterances or ‘speech acts’ we getting people to do things by using words. “Get out”, an imperative or command performs a locutionary act by telling the listener to get out, it performs an illocutionary act by perhaps warning them of the danger if they don’t get out and a perlocutionary act which is the actual effect upon the listener.

This is all very well and good you might say, what is the business about the object and subject, surely this is just more of your oriental west-bashing nonsense. Not so. What Austin fails to capture is where the power of speech acts more accurately lies.

One of the most common examples used to explain commands, declarations and the enormous power of speech is “I now pronounce you husband & wife”. By simple words out of the celebrant’s mouth he has altered the relationship between these two people. Is that really so?

What if there was no-one else present, nothing was written down and the couple never spoke of it again? Nothing would have changed. I can pronounce marriages to whomever I like and it will likely make no difference? Why? Because I don’t have the authority, but where does this authority come from? Answer: It comes from the listener, or the observer.

This is where the true power of speech acts lie. Not in the speaker but in the observer. The marriage is declared in front of a whole bunch of people who recognize and consent to the authority of the celebrant. He writes up a marriage certificate probably with a particular seal that is recognized and consented to by various legal departments who will record it and thus the couple’s legal status will be changed because of the authority of that institution which is once again, recognized and consented to by ‘the people’.

The air coming out of your mouth has no power of influence over me directly unless I recognize or understand what you are saying and then consent to it. This is how meaning is created, it lies at the heart of the very possibility of an interpersonal language. If you don’t agree that the word ‘red’ refers to the same sorts of things I think it does, then we won’t be able to talk about it. Dictionaries are consensus machines, their authors are hoping we can all come to an agreement of the definitions of words so as to grant them those meanings. But of course philosophers are infamous for not doing so.

The object is the word itself, and it is in of itself a meaningless, worthless nothing. It is a creation of the subject, ourselves. It what sense do philosophical arguments about the ‘true’ meaning of words make any sense? I contend that what is ‘really’ going on, is people are disagreeing about what meaning they want to consent to, for whatever reasons. However, can I say what is really going on? This is committing the same fallacy. It might be more accurate to suggest that this interpretation of the debate is more explanatory you can agree with this, or not.

Consensus is King. All our social institutions are built upon it. Not everything is consensus you may say, there are things which are the same for all people regardless of our agreement. A tree will always be a tree. Yes, I don’t think our consent changes the natural world as such, but what about the word tree? What about the concept of a tree? Anything that elicits meaning, any text or sign is subject to a consensus to generate that meaning. You can of course refuse to play the game, and come up with your own meanings that no-one else agrees with, however we as a society would probably put such a person in a mental hospital, for they obviously have lost touch with ‘reality’ haven’t they? With the world ‘out there’.

Morality, Fiction and Possibility

2005-04-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

Brian Weatherson, a well known Philosophy Blogger has an intriguing paper published in the online Philosophy journal Philosophy Imprints

The paper is Morality, Fiction and Possibility which Weatherson has referred to it as ‘my favourite puzzle’ .

The paper starts off with the following story:

Death on a Freeway
Jack and Jill were arguing again. This was not in itself unusual, but this time they were standing in the fast lane of I-95 having their argument. This was causing traffic to bank up a bit. It wasn’t significantly worse than normally happened around Providence, not that you could have told that from the reactions of passing motorists. They were convinced that Jack and Jill, and not the volume of traffic, were the primary causes of the slowdown. They all forgot how bad traffic normally is along there. When Craig saw that the cause of the bankup had been Jack and Jill, he took his gun out of the glovebox and shot them. People then started driving over their bodies, and while the new speed hump caused some people to slow down a bit, mostly traffic returned to its normal speed. So Craig did the right thing, because Jack and Jill should have taken their argument somewhere else where they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way.

Weatherson notes that the last statement is intuitively false and that even given the poetic licence and/or authorial authority he doesn’t seem to be in a position to make moral judgements true like he can make other descriptive statements true.

Weatherson goes onto to cite a whole host of other examples of incongruous and discordant claims in fiction such as the author’s authority over certain logical contradictions, one of the solutions posed is the “impossible solution” that an author can only convey as true those claims which are logically possible, or imaginatively possible. If we can’t conceive of a square circle, we can believe the author is correct in suggesting that one of his characters is holing one in his hands.

However I think the moral claim is far more ambiguous than that. Can we accept that regardless of context some moral judgements are impossible to believe are right?

Suppose we modified the last sentence of Death on a Freeway, “So Craig did the right thing in getting rid of Jack & Jill as he was a typically bloodthirsty denizen of his time” Perhaps the confusion comes from the conflation with the contextual world of Death on a Freeway with our own social context. I can imagine a future society, particularly bloodthirsty and individualistic, perhaps Utilitarians who would feel no moral revulsion at the claim made as it is congruous with their social norms.

This might be more clearly illustrated by thinking about historical examples:
“The noble raped the newlywed as was the custom and he was right to do so in order to ensure the continued bloodline of Britain.”

Now by modern sensibilities we would say that the author is wrong, that spreading British blood is not a justification for raping newlywed women. However such acts were considered justified and politically expedient at the time, and by reading the author like his characters, within the context of the time we can imagine the moral consensus being that such actions in war are morally justified.

If such a context can be created historically it can also be created in terms of alternate histories and parallel dimensions. Thus we can imagine a universe in which it is considered right that people who slow traffic on freeways should be shot. The author does not have the authority to simply ‘make true’ what is right within the reader’s context but he surely has the right within the world he has created, though in the Death on a Freeway example it is not easy to distinguish between our own world and the one that has been created.

Imagine that this freeway his the only road for convoys of critical medical supplies, perhaps rushed to third world countries or the front lines. There are any number of ways the context can be shifted so many readers can agree with the judgement, but this is not the point. This is still reading the story in comparison to our own society.

Another way to think about the problem, is to think about the author’s voice. In Death on a Freeway, and in all the other examples Weatherson uses, the omniscient third person narrator is used. This is the voice that is able to comment on any part of the fictional world, including the thoughts of characters, the past and the future.

The same problem would not arise if a first person voice was used. We could immediately recognise the author as a character within the story and his judgements thus being contextualised. When he says “It is right that x” we read that “the character believes that it is right that x” and can accept that is true regardless of our own agreement or disagreement with the moral judgement.

This is much harder to recognise in the third person omniscient narrator, who we on one level, expect not to have beliefs or opinions about the world but simply be a kind of God who is stating the facts. But this is plainly nonsense as any statement such as “the brave hero” involves such comments and beliefs about the characters.

It just so happens that the author structures this descriptions so that we generally agree with the narrator. We may read Death on a Freeway and conceive of the narrator as twisted and deviant, and we may disagree with his assessment, but this I think that does not constrain his authority to make such assessments.

The Spectrum of Human History

2005-04-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

The consequences of starting with such an idea is that this philosophy does not claim to be 'the' or indeed even 'a' truth. It starts with the declaration that perhaps there is no truth and if that is true then what can we think about the world and our relationship to it.

If you view the present moment through the spectrum of human history you will find those truths you know with heartfelt conviction and certainty are exactly the same as those heartfelt convictions of those who came before you, those who are now utterly and blatantly wrong.

You can escape the cycle of history by letting go of truth and instead replacing it with an open mind, that accepts and rejects all things. A mind that is aware that it is incapable of holding the universe within itself.

This must apply to the philosophy of open mindedness itself. Maybe a good way to see its flawed and temporal nature is to look at the furnace in which it was made.

I used to be a frequent poster at http://www.thelastfreecity.com a Matrix fan forum. Especially and almost exclusively in the Philosophy section (naturally) where I first started arguing in a thread about the Proof of God, and evolution, that god doesn’t exist and evolution explains everything.

I talked with some very insightful people who challenged many of my ideas and helped me learn how to articulate certain views. As a young child the first “big” book I read was George Orwell’s ‘1984’. I fell in love with it, not so much because of its bleak vision of the future, (though as the complex child I was, I certainly enjoyed that) but because of how it descried the Ingsoc truth relativism and subjectivism of reality. I think it is fair to say that I grew up firmly imprinted in me this idea of questioning all truths, especially religious ones.

Then skepticism easily turns to cynicism, and from there it is easy to claim that your method of viewing the world and challenging authority is ‘correct’. I think it is fair to say that the history of my philosophical conclusions has been one of cycles. Pulsating back and forth between finding an answer (i.e. atheism, evolution, agnosticism, utilitarianism, subjectivism) and then letting go of that answer (zen).

So below is the petri dish of what would later become my current philosophy, it is reproduced without permission from www.thelastfreecity.com and has been edited slightly:

Zen - A powerful way of looking at reality

Zen - A Powerful Way of Looking at Reality

2005-04-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/10/2004 7:30 PM

I never like making new threads because I think it is a failure on my part to suitably integrate my point into the existing structure of ideas. However they serve a very useful purpose, I get to refer to an argument specifically.

So when someone asks me who I can be comfortable holding to logically contradictory points of view, I can refer them to the Logic is as valid as imagination thread and then they refer me to my doctor.

My personal philosophy of everything has evolved somewhat to the point where I no longer have a 'camp'! I used to be an Atheist and a materialist and an evolutionist, there is a whole camp of people willing to back you up and to whom you can refer to particular arguments. However now I have gone further down the branch I find I have to go through the whole structure of the argument just to get to a point, (something I found when discussing the idea of the soul with PFloyd.)

I think for the most part Benpadiah and I share a lot of ideas but as formidable ally as he is, two, a camp does not make! Perhaps I'll write a book about it, that's what good philosophers seem to do, but for now I'll outline some things and take a look at the criticisms.

Where I have branched out is in terms of my ‘relativist’ approach. I deny the existence of objective existence and refuse the ‘truth’ of all things. Even my own ideas. (This takes a thinking cap). This means the idea of no truth is not a truth in of itself, it is a possible interpretation. I adhere to it not because I think it is the truth but because I think it is the best way to relate to reality. So in adopting this philosophy one must start with attempting to generate a complete paradigm shift in how they think of ideas.

I’ve called the thread Zen, for two reasons. One because I’m egotistical so I thought I’d slap my name on it. Two, I know something about Zen, but I am using the word in the way I want to use it, as a way of describing important parts of my philosophy as oppose to its original meaning in regards to its Eastern roots.

I’ve just had a thought. The whole idea of this thread is very egotistical and I think I would much rather put my ideas into a structured thesis than attempt to interject them in here. I’m making it far too easy for people, if you want to see how I think then just read my posts, I’m just another user on here, they are not any more important than anyone else’s.

So instead why don’t I use this thread for a useful discussion (rather than a soapbox) on Zen, what people think it is, what people think it isn’t. And no I will not accept pictures or hand gestures as appropriate answers and all paradoxes, conundrums and Koans will be kept to a minimum.

So, what is Zen?

FoXDie:

I got your back broham.

Well...I'm not entirely familiar with the denotations of Zen, but I can try and express my connotations of it.

Zen is a mind set, a way of thinking, a way to live, and a guide. Zen isn't a religion, it doesn't tell you what Gods to believe in etc (I don't think lol). What I've come to know zen as is an unclouded state of mind. It is a means to view the world as it is, not as others do. Zen attempts to open the mind by exposing the unrealities, the unknowns, and the unimagined of the world. It casts away the boundaries of human thought, and human science, and human doubt in an attempt to enhance, and enlighten the mind. Zen is helpful in this sense, but it also helps to calm the spirit. Zen is harmony. Harmony with life, with nature, with everyone and everything. It is the eternal balance of the universe. Zen is the key to life, but your self is the key to zen.

Am I close?

neomaul

Zen is what Phil Jackson preaches all da freaking time.........

benpadiah

I would rather talk about your personal philosophy zen.

This could be YOUR untitled thread!

That's what I would like.

-ben

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/12/2004 7:33 PM

Point taken Ben,

I'm reluctant to, but so what, doesn't matter does it.

OK, so my whole system of thought which I have arrived to from nineteen short years of life begins (and possibly ends) with a single maxim.

There is no truth, perhaps.
That's the ironic version, the more grammatical version:

Perhaps, there is no truth

If someone could translate this into Latin for me that'd be great, I'll put it up on my wall. So before I continue, I'd like to see what people think of this simple statement.

Note: Truth can be replaced with 'absolutes' to avoid confusion.

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/13/2004 6:28 PM

Perhaps, there is no truth

What would it mean to deny this statement? Well, I suggest that it would demand a narrow or 'close' minded attitude to the nature of philosophical inquiry.

For to understand this philosophy a particular approach to philosophy is requested if not required.

To deny the statement would be to claim that it is not possible that there is no truth, or absolutes. Now I'm merely talking about logical possibility not physical possibility, so to deny this claim is to suggest that it makes no sense to suppose that it is possible there is not an objective truth.

So to accept this statement is to accept that something else is possible. It is to embrace an open mindedness that means putting ones beliefs or prejudices or pre-conceived conceptions to one side and opening up to the possibility of other views.

The consequences of starting with such an idea is that this philosophy does not claim to be 'the' or indeed even 'a' truth. It starts with the declaration that perhaps there is no truth and if that is true then what can we think about the world and our relationship to it.

benpadiah
it cannot be true that there is no truth.

if there were even one truth, then this statement would be false.

it cannot be true that there is a truth.

if there were even one truth, then this statement would be false.

therefore, BOTH the first statement AND its opposite... ARE TRUE.

and, by their internal criteria, therefore NEITHER statement is true.

here is an example of the greatest common denominator of truth, and the lowest common denominator of logic:

the following statement is true.
the preceding stement is false.

or, to put it more simply...

this statement is false.

the first was an example of a two step impossible loop.
the second, an example of a one step impossible loop.

do you feel dizzy yet?

you should.

It will help you to comprehend what I am about to say next.

The One Step Impossible Loop Is At The Root Or Font Of All Consciousness.

I am me.

Impossible...

if you know yourself as "me" then you are seeing yourself (the me) from a position outside of that self (from the position of the I).

if you know yourself as "I" then you are seeing yourself (the I) from a position outside of that self (from the position of the me).

"You" are either "I" or "me"

A=A + B=B = A B

BUT!

A :. A + B :. B = A B

"You" are Neither "I" nor "me"

how is this true?

simple.

I "may be" me... but you may "not be."

silly?

then you haven't thought it about it enough.

zen here has... and he can help explain.

As for me...?

I'm off to smoke a cigarette.

-ben

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/17/2004 6:50 PM

What is required to understand this proposition is to abandon the classical binary logic assumption that for any proposition it is either true or false.

This seems intuitively accurate; however consider the case of the unproved theorem.

I have just written a new theorem x, it attempts to show the relationship between the orbit of the earth and the processes of the brain.

Now is proposition x, true or false? Well it is unproved, so we don’t yet know, so within this system of logic one is forced either to presume all unknown statements true until shown to be false or false until shown to be true.

But then what do we mean when we say that something is true? Supposing that theorem x is accepted we could regard it as ‘true’ yet information might be found at some point in time which renders it false. Thus the value of truth is a fluid one, things are true for the moment.

When we regard something as true what we are in fact suggesting is that is ‘fits’. That it compliments our other information. Consider that the vast majority of so-called ‘truths’ are completely subjective in that it is entirely dependent on the content of the other information we are seeking to complement . So it is true that the sun rises in the east if we are talking from the point of having a direction of east and west and having above and below and having these rise and fall. If we are aboard the international space station orbiting the earth however the statement, “The sun rises in the east” ceases to be true.

The class of truths that are self-evident, are tautologies, that is true by definition. “All bachelors are single”. For these truths the information that is being complemented is contained within the truth itself.

We may regard the surrounding information as the context. Propositions may be considered true or false by virtue of their context. When the context is insufficient (as is the case with Theorem x) the truth value of the proposition may be regarded as unknown.

Consider the statement,
This statement is neither true or false
It is true, but if it’s true then it’s false.
What does this prove? That the context of logical semantics helps little. (Sorry Ben!)

Some might be tempted to salvage the objective status of truth by suggesting that truth can be found by choosing the ‘right’ context. However rightness like truthness only exists in a context. So one could give a good argument why choosing the American context when viewing the ‘rightness’ of a war, however they would then to argue why the context for their argument for the context was right, ad infinitum.

So when thinking of the world in terms of true and false, right and wrong (something I think is natural to human beings) we are inescapably limited by whatever context we happen to be in. For that is the design of context, it is a limitation, it limits meaning.

Consider this passage:

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

--Act 5, Scene 5, Lines 19-28: Macbeth to himself
One of my favourite literary passages. How do we make sense of this passage? What do these strange symbols on the page mean? Well we need context, the first context we need is the context of the English language. If we attempt to view this piece from the context of the Japanese language we wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything.

So with this context we can understand what tomorrow means we can understand what day means. So we know what the words mean, but can we understand what the author means? No, we need another context, I can choose anyone that I want, I can make the candle mean a nuclear weapon, I can make mean the poor player a literally poor actor or I can make the whole passage as a metaphor for life.

Now most people would think that the first context is less correct (or true) than the second and certainly the third. But of course in getting trapped by our true/false dichotomy we are within a context. We could be thinking within the context of Shakespeare being from a certain period and being the greatest playwright who ever lived. Within this context we may think that he could not have possibly been talking about nuclear weapons and that being a great playwright it is probably a metaphor for life.

So what we realise is that we cannot make sense of anything without adding contexts to them and that none of these contexts are inherently true. There is just what fits for the moment and what doesn’t.

So, it must be simple then we simply need to get the context that fits the best and we’ll be fine. But that doesn’t seem to work, both Creationists and Evolutionists think their theories fit the best. That is because in deciding what fits you are in yup, you guessed it another context.

What you may now be aware of is that the human act of context making is a system that is developed in order to make sense of the world, it is a formal distinction system designed to simplify and (paradoxically) abstract existence so it can be conceptualized by the human brain.

To emphasise how deep seated this process is, we must consider some of the first contexts that are created in the first years of childhood development. We learn that the thing with horns and brown spots is a cow, and that a cow is different from a horse and different from a house. We learn that this shade is called black and this is white, we learn that this is a thing that is wood and it is different from cotton.

What we are learning is the context of reality. The fundamental system we have developed to interact with the world a formal distinction system. Over the centuries of human existence we have advanced our distinctions by continuing to distinguish this from that, this is ironic that is satire…

What are we actually learning as children? Yup, you guessed it, language. This is the human invention that allowed us to relate to reality in a way that we can make deductions, conclusions and rationalise. You can see that language is not just about words, it is the fundamental human context. It transcends words, it is comparable to the machine code programming of a computer. It is inescapable.

Go outside and look at the world, and try with all your might to do so without language, without the context of language and all the others added upon it. Look at a tree without thinking of it as a tree, without thinking of it as something which is different from that. This leads to the practice of Zen meditation, but I will return to that in another post.

If we attempt to remove all context, we find, nothing. Thus there is no truth but what we make for ourselves. It all exists within the contexts we design. Even this entire post is true only by virtue of the context I have given it and perhaps false to you dear reader by virtue of the context in which you are reading it.

Thus it follows not that there is no truth, but perhaps there is no truth. It is in fact unknowable because the absence of any context is insufficient to determine a truth value.

So what do I know? perhaps nothing.
What does it all mean? perhaps nothing. Perhaps it is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

-Zen

benpadiah

wow, dude.

WOW.

Now, THAT is what I call philosophy!

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/17/2004 7:52 PM

lol,

The consequences of such a thought extend far and wide, including but not limited to placing ourselves as the author of our universe. That is we can take responsibility for the meanings we create by the contexts we add in our lives.

This does not mean pretedning the car isn't going to run over me. It means when you say "My mother is an ass-hole" you realise that is a meaning you have created and you alone are responsible for. It is actually the context you have given your mother and consequently the only things that will appear in your reality are those actions which 'fit' those that prove to you that she is in fact an ass-hole. And so we live as victims of our own meanings.

Especially perhaps the most common context we create for ourselves "I'm not good enough".

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/17/2004 8:32 PM

But that is the essence of Zen's (my, and yet I do not own it!) philosophy. The consequences of such a paradigm are as I said far reaching and I think particularly wonderful.

What has this got to do with Zen Buddhism?
Hmmmm.

I was first introduced to Zen by my Sensei, I had just joined the class and he asked one of the student's "What's Zen?" He replied by clapping his hands on the floor, he asked another and he replied by pointing into space, another responded by shrugging his shoulders. ALl these responses were of course met by great laughter and I presumed that it must've been some form of in joke.

I asked my older brother for help on the matter and he told me that once you start to explain zen you have missed it. Now that I have come to understand Zen I agree and yet as a word it refers to some distinction made, how can it be understood, and why is it unexplainable?

Well it is traditionally supposed that Zen can only be understood through Zazen a form of meditation designed to direct the practiioner into a fundemental insight into the character of reality. A reality without words. In my studies though I found this near impossible and I think the study of Zen need not nearly be this hard and I attribute this attitude to traditional Japanese secretiveness (though the history of Zen comes from China and India).

A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence on words and letters;
Direct pointing to the mind of man;
Seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.
Bodhidharma

Perhaps you are starting to see the connection?

“Zen stresses the importance of the enlightenment experience and the futility of rational thought, intellectual study and religious ritual in attaining this; a central element of Zen is zazen, a meditative practice which seeks to free the mind of all thought and conceptualization.”

One way of looking at it is the act of removing context. Seeing the world through the mind free from the thoughts that cloud it.

The special transmission of Zen is the realization of the Buddha's enlightenment itself, in one's own life, in one's own time. This experience has been realized by Zen students and confirmed by their teachers for over 2500 years.

Central and indispensable to Zen is daily Zazen practice. It is this practice that is the "direct pointing to the mind of man." Zazen melts away the mind-forged distances that separate man from himself; leads one beyond himself as knower, to himself as known. In Zazen, there is no reality outside what exists here and now. Each moment, each act is inherently Buddha-nature. While sorrow and joy, anxiety and imperturbability cannot be avoided, by not clinging to them we find ourselves free of them, no longer pulled this way and that. With this self-mastery comes composure and tranquility of mind, but these are by-products of Zazen rather than its goals.

Zazen is a Japanese term consisting of two characters: za, "to sit (cross-legged)," and zen, from the Sanscrit dhyana, meaning at once concentration, dynamic stillness, and contemplation. The means toward the realization of one's original nature as well as the realization itself, Zazen is both something one does - sitting cross-legged, with proper posture and correct breathing - and something one essentially is. To emphasize one aspect at the expense of the other is to misunderstand this subtle and profound practice.

In ordinary experience, being and doing are separated: what one does is cut off from what one is, and conversely. Such separation leads inevitably to the condition of self-alienation. Particularly in this century, this condition has become acute. With time and sincere effort in Zazen practice, mind and body, inside and outside, self and other are experienced as one. This condition of effortless concentration, is known as Samadhi.

In the clarity of Samadhi-liveliness, dissatisfaction and the sense of the meaningless of modern life vanish. No longer searching for answers externally, the student journeys within to reach the moving spirit of the Buddha - his own Self-Nature.

Through devotion and persistence, the aims of Zazen practice are eventually realized. The first is Enlightenment. With this experience, Samadhi is fulfilled; mind and body, the self and the universe are seen to have been one reality from the beginning. The second and more difficult aim is the actualization of the Bodhisattva (Enlightened Being) ideal. This spirit of love and compassion for all beings is developed through continual spiritual purification, the cultivation of a deep sense of responsibility, and most importantly, through self-discipline. As one's practice ripens, one becomes more alive, more creative; filled with the longing to actualize the Bodhisattva spirit in every moment and every aspect of daily life.

Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji
Livingston Manor, NY

I care not for the religious underpinnings but there is really something to be valued here in this practice. The practice of Zen is ultimately and internal journey. This is so because in the search for reality we find that it exists entirely within ourselves and as such to know reality one must yup, know thyself. It is by doing this that one cannot transcend the apparent upsets that we fill our lives with.

“Everybody says, "I" -- "I want this, I am like that..." But nobody understands this "I." Before you were born, where did your I come from? When you die, where will your I go? If you sincerely ask, "what am I?" sooner or later you will run into a wall where all thinking is cut off. We call this "don't know.

Zen is keeping this "don't know" mind always and everywhere.”
Exactly, the context is insufficient to yield a truth value, it is unknown!

If you want to be free and happy in your life then I recommend the study of Zen. We have just practiced some Zen meditation believe it or not, one form is structured inquiry, Plato was quite good at this.

If you understand this, then I ask you to share your insights with as many people as you can. The world asks it of you to shed its suffering.

“So Buddha said that all beings have Buddha-nature (enlightenment nature). But Zen Master Joju said that a dog has no Buddha-nature. Which one is right? Which one is wrong? If you find that, you find the true way.”

Hahahaha

-Zen

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/18/2004 11:19 PM

Rotting_Maggotry (What a delicious name that is!) has posed the question: "Is relativism logical or illogical?"

As perhaps with all questions in life the answer depends on how the question is defined. Which thesis of relativism are you judging? The predominant areas are moral relativism, aesthetic relativism and cognitive relativism. It is my opinion that all forms of relativism stem from the thesis of cognitive relativism, that is the relative nature of truth. And which theses of cognitive relativism would you like to test? They are framed in various ways.

One you suggested was that, "Everything is relative to the individual" another is "All points of view are equally valid".
Another is "All truth is relative", another is "There are no absolute truths". etc.

The logical danger here is that each premise is self-destructive. That is, if the truth value of a thing is relative then the truth value of the premise is also relative. Unless one suggests "Everything is relative except relativism" but that seems to be grasping for straws.

Are these views illogical? Well that depends one which system of logic one subscribes. The flavour of logic we tend to adopt is classical logic and on this basis these theses are illogical by virtue of their self-contradictory nature.

Surely this means then, that relativism is thus wrong, and should be done away with?

Unless of course the theses of relativism describes its relationship to truth in a way that it itself was not postulated as a truth.
Enter, Perhaps, there is no truth

This thesis claims neither to be true or false because if it is true that perhaps there is no truth, it is equally true that perhaps there is truth. As I've said, what is required to appreciate this statement is to regard it not within the confines of classical logic, in which Ben has attempted to show it makes little sense, but it can be viewed from an intuitionistic perspective in which the truth value of a proposition can be unknown.

This view of cognitive relativism ceases to be a paradoxical absolutist umbrella attempting to explain everything within it. Instead it becomes a pair of spectacles that can be used to view the world in a particular way, just like the myriad of other spectacles that are available to the philosopher.

Of course once the philosopher becomes aware that he is using spectacles, the perception of relativism fits the world quite well (imo).

What relativism denies is that perhaps any pair of spectacles is better than any other. (including the relativist ones themselves.)

Is relativism logical? Well it depends doesn't it...
lol, it depends on the context you use to attach various meanings to each of the words.

I do think that the perhaps, there is no truth version of relativism within classical logic is illogical. Does this mean it should be rejected? If you think it does then it means you think the legitimacy of classical logic (a context) is absolute and anything that does not work within that system should be rejected as nonsense. I would ask how you justify such a position?

To adopt the thesis of relativism is to relate to knowledge in an entirely different way. A relativist may argue not over which proposition is true or false but which context elicits a more powerful perspective. And the measure of power is given by how much that particular context is able to capture.

From this perspective I think it is clear that cognitive relativism is a powerful context indeed.

-Zen

sonOFseraph

wow...u should right a book, man

Meshiak

"I do think that the perhaps, there is no truth version of relativism within classical logic is illogical. Does this mean it should be rejected? If you think it does then it means you think the legitimacy of classical logic (a context) is absolute and anything that does not work within that system should be rejected as nonsense. I would ask how you justify such a position?"

If I understand your statement correctly, a miracle (say for instance, GOD being Triune) could not exist in classical logic, and as such, should be rejected because it would require faith? How would we know GOD is Triune, unless he Himself had revealed it?

Just sharing some thoughts here...
The following questions in this (logical progression of thought) zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/22/2004 1:33 AM

I’m not sure, the miracle of the triune God is not illogical in the manner I have described because it is a proposition that is believed to have a truth value. However whether matters of faith are by there nature illogical (classically) is up for debate, perhaps you’d like to pose it in another thread it is a good question.

What is Truth, what is Faith, What is Love? Doesn't these statements, the question itself, necessitate an object, when we ask the question? Within the context of Logic, to my current understanding, yes.
Well these are simply questions not propositions. If you mean by an object something which is tangible then I’d disagree, it is not illogical to refer to concepts, for logic itself is as intangible as it comes!

In John chapter 14 Jesus says to Thomas, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me."
What question does Thomas ask Jesus to illicit such a response? What is the context of the question? In what context does Jesus say this?

Thomas said “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?" and Jesus answered “I am the way”. Not very helpful for Thomas I might suggest!

You might be pleased to know Meshiak that cognitive relativism is not contradictory to faith. All it means is that truth only exists within the contexts we create and choose, and you choose the context of God and Jesus. A noble one when it produces a channel for people to express their love for their fellow persons.

benpadiah

How much authority does God have over cyberspace?

It is a wholly man-made universe... shouldn't we be able to use it to escape the guilt heaped on us by all the hypocritical and fallaciious religions?

but then, where can we draw THAT line, between vicarious catharsis for sublimation, and training on video games for the eventual coming of the New World Order?

Perhaps we will eventually have a collection fo G-rated AS WELL as X-rated video games to appeal at once to both mankind's instinctual, carnal nature, and his divine aspirations toward realising the ideals of Mickey Mouse.

Then again, as I tried to warn you, I am quite drunk, and talking out of my rearend.

Here's something else that's interesting to me:

there is a dog barking in the yard behind my mom's backyard. Every time I go out for a cigarette I have to listen to this Cujo freaking out at the top of his little cuddly puppy dogg lungs. WTF?? Why is he freaking out??

I am inclined to believe it has something to do with me, though, as zen pointed out in regards to the Reloaded cat, this would only be a self-indulgent aspiration towards borderline schizophrenic hallucination, and what greater good, if any does doing such serve?

I admit this is a rhettorical question (at least!) because I am ready to admit that I have my own opinions on the matter.

but anyway, I just got an email from sunnyday, so I'm gonna leave for now.

-ben

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/24/2004 3:27 AM

You have raised an interesting question Ben. Well I choose to interpret as such at least.

Why?

The question of why? It nags and nags at us doesn’t it? Or does it?

Does Fortasse Veritam Non Est have an answer?

Well it’s answer would be that the answer to why is determined by the context afforded to it. That is, why can be answered should the information that is plotted into the equation is properly restricted.

This means if all we have to go on is that there is a dog and when Ben isn’t near it, it doesn’t bark and when he is it does then the answer that he is the cause of its barking seems sufficient. But as the seekers of wisdom that we are, we would not be entirely thrilled with such a response would we? We want the real why. The why that takes into account the psychological brain patterns of the canine, the effects of surrounding environment, the effects of the gravitational pull of a full moon etc.

We want the why, without the restricted information. We want, the why to life. But without the restriction, without the context there can be no answer. The formulation of one requires us to filter some information over others, to gauge importance to approach the subject from certain perspectives. Context. So we are back to creating our own whys.

The why without context is an unknown, in fact from the context of relativism it is unknowable. All we can endeavour to do is to gather more and more information to increase the scope of our contexts, but the search for the ‘truth’ will only lead to frustration unless one is happy to accept a particular context (eg. religion or science).

Meshiak

"All it means is that truth only exists within the contexts we create and choose"

Sharing more thoughts here...

So if "we" (I think you mean we as in human beings) created or chose the context, does this "make" something exist as "Truth?" Within the context of your the original proposition, you already came to the conclusion, Perhaps, right?

What is the definition of cognition? What is the definition of relativism?

What is the (notice I did not say, my or your) definition of Truth? Why would we attempt to define it (that is, truth) at all, unless we are seeking it? Within the context of philosophy, is this question unknowable and unanswerable?

Wouldn't the proposition "truth only exists within the contexts we create and choose" negate itself, because if we (as individuals) create and choose "it", (that is, only in what context we ourselves create and choose to define our own truth) the context with which we attempt to define truth Itself would be relative to how we create or choose to define truth, so it could not be real Truth as we define it, could it? *does this even make sense?

Would the real question here be, Is there objective truth? A truth that exists independently but with and including ourselves (that is, we as human beings), or the contexts we could choose or create? Could "philosophy" ever provide the answer to the question, if there was one?

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: May/25/2004 9:56 PM

Sure with properly restricted contexts we can come up with all sorts of truths, logic and mathematics are great examples of this.

What is the definition of cognition? What is the definition of relativism?

One must be careful when using the indefinite article "the" for it can assume an cross-context objectivity that may not be accurate. Especially concerning definitions, words are the most relative objects we have, their power lies in people's ability to agree with each other on their meaning. Oxford would like to think that they dictate the meanings of words but the power belongs to the people!

But to quote dictionary.com

Cognition:

1. The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.

2. That which comes to be known, as through perception, reasoning, or intuition; knowledge.

Relativism:

A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.

What is the (notice I did not say, my or your) definition of Truth?

truth:
1. Conformity to fact or actuality.
2. A statement proven to be or accepted as true.
3. Sincerity; integrity.
4. Fidelity to an original or standard.

5. Reality; actuality.
often Truth That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence.

I would suggest that truth is that which is accepted as true. You did use capital T truth though, so are you asking about the supposed supreme actuality? The contextless absolute?

Why would we attempt to define it (that is, truth) at all, unless we are seeking it?

This sounds a little like the Atheists can't talk about God because they suppose God doesn't exist argument. What must be remembered is that in these words there are two things, there is the concept of the thing the words refers to and the object in reality the word points to. So in denying that x exists I am asserting two things, one that the concept of x exists because if it didn't I refer to it and two that the object that x points to doesn't exist thus making the concept are pretty lousy one.

So truth, as dictionary.com shows us refers to a host of things which Cognitive Relatvisim would deny. I understand what the word means but this does not mean I seek it.

A little. I think it is important for one not to overestimate the relativness of experiences. Human beings share quite a bit in common by virtue of being human. So if I see a wall of me but my friend sees a floating black hole, there is reason to be alarmed at the discrepancy between our views.

Perhaps my phrasing might've been etter if I put it like this, rather than "Truth" exists within the contexts we create and choose, truths exist within the contexts we create and choose. Yes the nature of those truth will be relative because of our own conception of truth, but probably not to a large degree.

To refute the statement means that truth can never exist. It means that it is not true that 2 plus 2 equals 4, because it is relative. To make such a distinction I think would be a mistake, it leaves us unable to powerfully relate to the world.

Fortasse, Veritam non est. Perhaps there is no truth. This also allows the possibility of there existing a truth. So yes it could be that there is an independent truth. However when viewig truth through the paradigm of cognitive relativism, the possibility of such a truth does not dissapear but the possibility of ascertaining one does.

Why? Because for the moment it is unknowable. We are hardwired to context, to know that which is without context, is to know that which is beyond language. It might exist but who could know? An what sense is there in searching for such a thing?

Meshiak

Hey Zen, I wrote a response originally but my computer kind of messed up on me when I was going to post it.
Anyway, just sharing some thoughts here after thinking about this. Honestly, after kicking this around for a couple of days, I chose the last part of your response because I thought it was kind of a summation of the ideas you were presenting. Wouldn’t want to take it out of context though, so feel free to “beat me down” (ß figure of speech) if necessary.

I agree with the latter part of your statement in a couple different ways, and I’ll just leave it at that.

However, defining truth as “that which is accepted as true,” and applying it to your proposition Fortasse, Veritam non est, truths would then be relegated to not only popular opinion, but cultural, ethical, and societal norms. I found it interesting when you yourself said “there is reason” in the statement “So if I see a wall of me but my friend sees a floating black hole, there is reason to be alarmed at the discrepancy between our views.”

I mean, there are such things as rules of mathematics, logic, and grammar, right? How could we understand language, mathematics, or logic at all if not for these rules? Is that what you’re trying to say by using the word “contexts?”

As you have pointed out with such concepts as logic, mathematics, this cannot always be the case. We as human beings, apply the rules (contexts?) of language, as tools to understand and communicate these concepts with and to each other. The language itself (English for example) may be relative bringing into consideration societal and cultural factors, but the rules used when communicating these concepts aright themselves cannot be if we are to “powerfully relate to the world” as you put it.

In my un-collegiate schooled estimation, you’re really getting into “interpretation principles,” and specifically hermeneutics when discussing written and spoken words, and viewing interpretation principles within the paradigm of cognitive relativism leads you to some of the following possibilities, none of which in my view hold any real weight.

A. These principles simply could not exist, because they would be open to personal interpretation.

B. If they did exist, communication itself might never be possible because we as human beings couldn’t ascertain the fundamental interpretive principles of communication at all, as they would be relative, and that is simply not the case. We know how to communicate from the time we are born, crying being a fantastic example of this in any language (unless it’s 3 am and you have to get a bottle warm or change a diaper!)

Peace my friend, hopefully our discourse and dialogue can continue, I do enjoy it

zenandtheartofdodgethis
Date Posted: Jun/15/2004 11:25 PM

However, defining truth as “that which is accepted as true,” and applying it to your proposition Fortasse, Veritam non est, truths would then be relegated to not only popular opinion, but cultural, ethical, and societal norms.
I would propose that cultural, ethical and societal norms are ‘norms’ because they are agreed to by popular opinion. Truth like any other word only has meaning that it is has been agreed to grant it.

I mean, there are such things as rules of mathematics, logic, and grammar, right? How could we understand language, mathematics, or logic at all if not for these rules?
It is possible that I could interpret some form of meaning from a mathematical equation without any awareness of any of the rules of mathematics. The consequence of this is that many people would arrive at very different interpretations. That is why the ‘rules’ were created, in order to restrict the freedom of interpretation. Who created the rules? We did of course. Human Beings. We developed these things as systems to understand the world. It is laughable then that people should suppose that the universe exists within the borders of our own making. But to look at it another way, with these borders we create the edges of our realities, restricting ourselves from seeing beyond them.

Is that what you’re trying to say by using the word “contexts?”
One level of context is the level of logic and grammar, that is perhaps one of the broadest levels, but it goes beyond that. Language is far more personal than that, we attribute meanings to language not just from grammatical construction but from our personal experiences. So when you think and use the word ‘love’, you need context to make the word meaningful. One context is the dictionary/grammatical, but more importantly is the context of your own experiences of love, that is what will be most prominent in your understanding of the concept.

In my un-collegiate schooled estimation, you’re really getting into “interpretation principles,” and specifically hermeneutics when discussing written and spoken words,

Yes, a great deal of this may be regarded as hermeneutics, but more importantly is the consequences of some basic estimations about language and how they can impact how we relate to reality. If for example, we relate to all misunderstandings as a conflict of context then we can eliminate the plethora of other meanings we attach and remove the upsets that follow.

These principles simply could not exist, because they would be open to personal interpretation. I’mnot sure which principles you are referring to, but everything is subject to a personal interpretation of some kind, to what extent we allow ourselves run with our own meanings is another matter.

If they did exist, communication itself might never be possible because we as human beings couldn’t ascertain the fundamental interpretive principles of communication at all as they would be relative
I’m sure at the beginnings of evolution (note necessary to actually believe in evolution to follow the thought experiment) we encountered this difficulty of creating our own methods of communication and wanting others to follow them, however we would have found that, that method is very inefficient and as such agreed to certain rules, certain syntax so that we could communicate to one another. Does that mean that these principles of language are absolutes and therefore relativism is incorrect. No, they are in effect not because they exist absolutely but because they are agreed to relatively. Evidence of this is found in the fact that different cultures have agreed to different syntax.

We know how to communicate from the time we are born, crying being a fantastic example of this in any language I would suggest that language is in fact learned. It is doubtful wether the crying baby is crying because it knows it is communicating its intentions to the outside world or wether it is acting on a unconscious instinct, a language hand me down from our evolutionary heritage…

Union Bashing

2005-03-15T22:33:00.000-08:00

Compulsory union fees scrapped

Students would still be able to pay university union fees if they wanted to despite new laws abolishing their compulsory collection, Education Minister Brendan Nelson said today.

The federal government today will introduce to parliament new laws to abolish compulsory university student union fees.

Universities face hefty fines if they ignore the new laws to make student union membership voluntary.

"The good news for the Labor Party and student activists is that they will continue to be able to pay their student union fees," Dr Nelson told ABC radio.

"There is no law preventing people from paying student union fees."

Dr Nelson said he believed there could be a market for small businesses providing services on campus instead of university unions.

"If students value the services which are sought to be offered, then presumably they will be prepared to pay something for them," he said.

Dr Nelson said Australian university students forked out $155 million last year in union fees because they were compulsory.

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Advertisement"This is the 21st century and it's an important principle that all Australians, whether they be students or people in workplaces, should be free to join a union or an association and be represented by it," he said.

"But we strongly believe that students who enrol in university to get an education should not be forced to buy a product that they may not necessarily want and that it is to join a student guild, union or association.

"We think students should have the choice whether they want to be represented by some of these student representatives or not."

Dr Nelson said if universities did not comply with the new laws, they would be ordered to refund the money they collected from students within 28 days.

If they fail to do so, the universities face fines of $100 per full time equivalent student enrolled in the university.

So Brendan Nelson thinks that students "should not be forced to buy a
product that they may not necessarily want."

Well my taxes fund numerous products and services that I neither use
nor want, therefore it seems only fair that my tax is "voluntary" too.
After all shouldn't I only be prepared to pay for those services I
utilise?

Often the services that the student body fund via union fees go to
help those students who would have no access to them otherwise. Can a
small group of student in dire need of counselling afford to pay for
the infrastructre to keep that service in place and available? If
everyone pays, everyone benefits, especially those in greatest need.

But perhaps Dr Nelson wouldn't have a probem with 'voluntary taxation'
as this legislation comes from a government intent on only providing
education, welfare and health to those who can afford it.

The limits of my language are the limits of my world

2005-03-13T22:27:00.000-08:00

“Die grenzen meiner sprache sind die grenzen meiner welt”

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world”
-Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

This concrete poem makes use of a number of iconic and conventional signs.
The two most apparent signs is the shape of the man and the shape of the thought bubble.

The shape of the man is iconic and conventional. It is iconic in that it bears a resemblance to the complex realty for which it stands. The head, shoulders, body, arms and legs are all representative of a person. It would be hard to interpret this sign as signifying a fish for example as it bears little resemblance.

However it is also conventional, there is nothing in the sign that suggests it is representing a male figure and yet it is agreed by social consensus that this sign denotes masculinity. It is helped in doing this when put in contrast to the female counterpart to this sign which uses the shape of a dress to denote femininity. Furthermore the context of the femininity and masculinity is in labelling male and female bathrooms. Furthermore, you could argue that this sign is in fact indexical, as it is not a complete replication of the male bathroom sign, it merely takes its shape. The fact that it is not opaque and black (regardless of the words that make up its shape) mean that it is ambiguous as to whether it is representing this particular sign or is merely the shape of a person.

The thought bubble is entirely arbitrary and conventional, for it bears no resemblance to the concept reality for which it stands. It is simply a symbol invented by graphic artists to depict the thoughts of an illustrated character. Someone from another culture or society who is unfamiliar with this convention might infer that the sign is representing clouds of some kind. A clear denotation is hindered by the absence of any text inside the bubble. The connotations that may arise is that the sign may merely depict the act of thinking, or perhaps signifies the act of thinking nothing.

Lastly we have the words the make up both of these shapes. They are arbitrary in that they bear no resemblance to the complex reality for which they stand. This may be further emphasised by the fact that they are German words and that readers who cannot read German will have to translate them to understand what they signify.

What is immediately striking about this poem is that the words have been used to shape the signs of the man and the thought bubble. It is an uncommon association and thereby draws attention to itself, perhaps signifying that there is a relationship between the content of the words and the signs.

The words when properly separated, as there are no periods, spell out the phrase: “Die grenzen meiner sprache sind die grenzen meiner welt”. This is a quote from the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein which translates into English, “the limits of my language are the limits of my world.”

I think that the shape of the words takes them from being having an arbitrary connection to the complex reality for which it stands to a slippery iconic one. Slippery because it is not easily understood what the sign of the poem as a whole may represent. It involves a high level of decoding.

To begin with the thought bubble is made from the quote repeating over and over again. The thought or the act of thinking is itself made out of language. This may infer that the reality, or the world to which language limits is one of thought. It may also infer that the limits of thought are the limits of language and that the person would be unable to think of anything outside of language.

It may be that the thought bubble is empty because it is irrelevant what we think given that it is constructed out of language. Or it may be that given this construction he is unable to think anything.

We also have the person created out of the repeating quote, out of language. This may infer that not only are his thoughts limited by or constructed from language but that he himself is a construction, as the iconic nature of the sign which represents him suggests. That the whole concept of identity is merely a stringing together of words.

With this in mind we may infer that the man is unable to think as he is unaware of the linguistic limits that are imposed on his reality. It is clear that these a very high levels of signification requiring an in depth comprehension of the quote and underlying philosophy.

It may be also significant that the two smaller thought bubbles, conventionally pointing upwards to the complete thought are illegible, that thoughts don’t originate as clearly defined concepts but vague compilations of ideas that are ineffable.

The multivalence of the poem is a result of shaping an ordinarily conventional quote into signs and thus complicating the interpretation. The poem demonstrates that what iconic signs may bear resemblance to, may depend completely on the context and connotations of the receiver. An interpretation of this may lead the reader to think that if reality is made from signs then for a sign to be iconic means only that it is highly motivated by another sign and one can never penetrate this language play to arrive at the pure signified.

die grenzen meiner sprache sind die grenzen meiner welt

2005-03-13T02:36:00.000-08:00

Objectivty Requirement

2005-03-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

I object to the objectivity requirement deemed necessary for a theory of ethics to be considered plausible.

For ethics to be objective it would mean that two fully rational persons, aware of all the relevant facts about the universe must come to the same conclusions about the ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ of actions.

This means if a one-person values individual freedom over the good of the community and another values the good of the community over individual freedom, one must be right and the other wrong.

This to me seems to be an overly simplistic way of dealing with the complexity of ethics. If you suppose that there is no empirical basis for ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’, (“no ought from an is”) then you are left with two determining factors.

Rightness is determined as a rational outcome of an argument and/or it is determined as an outcome of social consensus and social norms.

I don’t think there is anything objective to be found in the conclusions of numerous arguments that seem to identify with different values and justify them after the fact.

Nor is there anything ‘objective’ about the norms and conventions happened to be agreed upon by particular societies that also identify with different values.

My understanding of the justification for the objectivity requirement is that it seems implicit in arguments about ethics, that someone must be right and someone must be wrong. Might not this be the arrogance of people? Equal conviction can be found in the arguments of art critics!

I think the sense of ‘rightness’ is stronger in ethical debates not because they point to moral facts but merely because the consequences of those debates are far more serious than debates about the aesthetic values. People live and die by the outcomes of ethical decisions, this is reason alone to “bother arguing about moral questions”, objectivity is not required.

It's all Subjective

2005-01-21T00:50:00.000-08:00

I am often interested in the objections to Ethical Subjectivism and Richard is stirring some up in what I imagine is his Reductio Ad Absurdum.

I would probably describe myself as a subjectivist, however I think the conclusions drawn (from all parties) from the doctrine of subjectivism in the realm of ethics tend to be absurd.

It is not contrary to subjectivism to consent to objective moral standards. For example, that taking an innocent human life is wrong, and should be avoided. The difference is, the subjectivist admits that there is no objective truth to this value, it only has power through agreement, not because it is rational, adheres to a moral formula, or was carved into stone a very long time ago.

The problem most opponents have with this is that you can have sub-cultures within society that create and agree to their own moral standards and seek to impose them on others (KKK, Nazi Germany, Christian Right, Muslim Fundamentalists) and whilst proponents of alternative ethical theories can be comfortable in proclaiming "This is clearly wrong" subjectivists have no basis to do so.

But to me this is just a creature comfort to think that whatever our preferences are must be right for the reasons we think are reasonable and therefore those that oppose them must be wrong. The subjectivist admits that neither is ultimately right or wrong but it does not follow that he must stand by whilst Germany invades Poland or whilst extremists behead women for adultery. He has a charter of morals to which he (and others) subscribe which may include intervening to prevent innocent lives to be taken and so he does. (Much like in my discussion of torture.)

Admitting that saving innocent lives is a subjective value, held by most people does nothing to detract from its function as a value, which is to be upheld and practiced. How do you go about deciding what values and morals should be included in the charter? Maybe you start with one’s written on rock, or use a logical formula?

Who cares?

Here you are in no less murky waters than any other theory.

Are we all torturers now?

2005-01-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

Following a discussion on the justifiability of torture at Fake Barn Country
I wrote this:

If someone had taken my family and I had access to someone who knew where they were, I would probably torture on the slimmest possibility that it would help.

I would probably feel justified when doing this, just as I would probably feel justified in pleading to the court to execute him if he had killed my family too. But this kind of justification and righteousness is a far cry away from institutionalised torture and capital punishment, both which I oppose.

Why? Because all ethics is about is drawing a line. You can give reasons to draw here instead of there or move it back and so forth but you draw lines. Some of which are set in stone, they cannot be moved, allowing the state to torture its or other state's citizens crosses that line, well and truly.

You can give a thousand utilitarian arguments against that but it doesn’t matter, would we have the police rape ten women if it would save thousands, or is that ‘too’ much? Would we have the state go nuclear on an entire country if it would save our citizens, or is that ‘too’ much? Would we have the state negotiate with terrorists, just give them a little, or would that set a dangerous precedent? Or maybe we draw a line and we say, “this shall not be crossed.”

I think it is pertinent to publish an article by Marian Wilkinson I read in The Age newspaper

Are we all torturers now?
January 15, 2005

The "urgent report" landed on the desk of FBI director Robert Mueller just as Washington was preparing for summer holidays last June. It was carefully copied to every key law enforcement officer in the bureau. It could not be lost, destroyed, misplaced or overlooked. It was explosive.

A witness had walked into the Sacramento office of the FBI with first-hand accounts of "serious physical abuses of civilian detainees" in Iraq. He described to agents "strangulation, beatings, placement of cigarettes into detainees' ear openings and unauthorised interrogations".

These claims alone did not hold the shock value in the report. Two months earlier, sensational photographs depicting gross sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad had been splashed around the world. What was more disturbing in this report was the allegation from the witness that US officials "were engaged in a cover-up of these abuses".
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But the report, dated June 25 last year, stayed buried at FBI headquarters for the next six months, as the Pentagon and the CIA went through the motions of investigating allegations of prisoner abuse triggered by the Abu Ghraib scandal.

None of those investigations resulted in criminal charges being laid against any senior figure, and in the euphoria of President George Bush's re-election, the prisoner abuse scandal appeared dead.

But last month - due largely to the efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union, human rights groups and the American Bar Association - the Bush Administration was compelled under the Freedom of Information Act to release hundreds of new documents graphically detailing evidence from FBI and US military officers of the abuse of prisoners under interrogation in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the documents released was the heavily censored copy of the report sent to the FBI director last June.

While nearly all the documents have censored deletions, their damning contents have forced the Bush Administration and Congress to re-examine the abuse scandal.

At the heart of this is whether, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush, his top legal advisers and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorised interrogation techniques that were so extreme they amounted to torture under both US and international law. If so, did this approval from the White House result in the beatings, sexual abuse and deaths of scores of detainees held by the US in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq?

"It is now reasonably clear that there was action by the President," the American Bar Association's Scott Horton told The Age. "I have now seen several further documents which persuade me that there is in fact a determination by the President that dates from roughly April 2002. It is addressing extreme interrogation procedures, though not in detail."

Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, signatories to which include the US, states that all detainees should be treated humanely. To this end, it says, acts including cruel treatment and torture "are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place".

The US is also a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which defines torture as the intentional infliction of "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental" for political or military reasons. Article 2 states: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

While the White House now vehemently denies that Bush signed any secret executive order authorising torture, Scott Horton and other independent lawyers question those denials. "They are consciously deceptive," says Horton, who has worked closely with US military lawyers trying to expose the scandal. While there was no "executive order", he believes a so-called "presidential determination" or top-secret authorisation opened the door to torture and abuse of terrorism suspects.

The new round of congressional and legal probing has enormous implications for the Howard Government, a key US ally in the war on terror. If the use of interrogation techniques tantamount to torture was authorised up the chain of command to the President's office, Prime Minister John Howard and the Australian Defence Force chief Peter Cosgrove will likely be forced to examine whether any Australian military or intelligence personnel engaged in or witnessed criminal acts of torture or abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo Bay.

Until now, the Howard Government has brushed off allegations of abuse made by the two Australian detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, and failed to press the Bush Administration for a final report on the cases.

But the dramatic descriptions of Habib's torture in Egypt after US officials helped render him to that country raise the question of whether Australian intelligence agencies, including ASIO and the Federal Police, have relied on information gained from torture or criminal abuse.

It is not only a legal and moral question. Well-trained interrogators have rejected the use of torture to extract intelligence because they believe it is unreliable, especially in the war on terror. Douglas Johnson, of the US Centre for Victims of Torture, explains: "Nearly every client at the Centre for Victims of Torture, when subjected to torture, confessed to a crime they did not commit, gave up extraneous information or supplied names of innocent friends or colleagues to their torturers."

In the US, a string of legal cases involving lower-ranking military officers and a CIA contractor is also threatening to push the scandal up the chain of command to Rumsfeld and former CIA director George Tenet.

Last October, two US military intelligence officers, chief warrant officers Lewis Welshofer and Jeff Williams, were charged over the death of an Iraqi Air Force major-general, despite the strong objections of their commanding officer, who described Abed Hamed Mowhoush as "a very, very bad man".

Mowhoush died in November 2003 at a US base in Iraq after being subjected to days of interrogation. At the time, the Pentagon put out a death certificate and press release claiming the general had died of natural causes. But an army investigation, forced by the Abu Ghraib scandal, found the major-general died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression" and there was evidence of "blunt-force trauma to his chest and legs".

Welshofer and Williams had allegedly placed Mowhoush in a sleeping bag and rolled him back and forth during the interrogation. One had then sat on his chest and covered his mouth. An electrical cord was also used. When questioned by a Denver Post reporter who obtained a copy of the investigators' report, Welshofer simply said: "I saved lives."

Welshofer's defence is expected to rely heavily on the claim that he was following orders and using interrogation methods known to his commanders. But the much-anticipated evidence may never be heard publicly. Last month, the US military succeeded in closing the court martial to the media. Frustrated US military lawyers and human rights advocates are now pressing Congress to support a full, open investigation into the prisoner abuse scandal to determine whether it does lead to the Oval Office. Senator Ted Kennedy is publicly advocating "an independent 9/11-style commission".

Kennedy and several other Democratic and Republican senators last week turned a day-long Senate hearing into the appointment of Bush's new attorney-general, Alberto Gonzales, into the first serious probe of the White House's role in the abuse scandal. As White House legal counsel, Gonzales is a key figure in the unfolding scandal. When Bush launched the war on terror after the September 11 attacks, Gonzales sought to provide him with the legal cover he wanted to fight a "new kind of war" against al-Qaeda and its allies. The war on terror would include targeted assassinations and the kidnapping and rendering of suspects to allies known to practice torture and harsh interrogations. The CIA and Pentagon believed this would produce "actionable intelligence" to help prevent another terrorist attack on US soil.

In intensifying his questioning of Gonzales last week, Kennedy bluntly told him: "It appears that legal positions that you have supported have been used by the Administration, the military and the CIA to justify torture and Geneva Convention violations by military and civilian personnel."

Kennedy said that Gonzales believed that in fighting the war on terror, Bush held almost unlimited presidential power as commander-in-chief to override US laws on torture. "The Administration ignored and excluded top military lawyers and experts in the State Department and Defence Department who raised objections to your policies," he told Gonzales. "That arrogance of executive power has led to national embarrassment."

Gonzales repeatedly denied that Bush had authorised the use of torture, but thousands of pages of declassified documents and testimony from military officers and officials tell another story. They indicate that the White House embarked on a series of decisions from early 2002 that freed the CIA and teams of US Special Forces to use interrogation methods since denounced by the International Committee of the Red Cross and US military lawyers as violations of international and US laws on torture.

At last week's Senate hearings, Gonzales did admit that in 2002, he asked the Department of Justice for a legal opinion on the US laws on torture that had come into effect after the US ratified the International Convention against Torture. Gonzales directed his request to a Bush appointee, Jay Bybee, then head of the Office of Legal Counsel.

Bybee was already on record advising the White House that Bush had sweeping powers as commander-in-chief to fight the war on terror. After discussions with Gonzales, Bybee produced an extraordinary memo in August 2002. He stated that the statutes on torture should only be read as covering what he called extreme acts.

"Where pain is physical," he wrote, "it must be of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure. There is a significant range of acts that, though they might constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, fail to rise to the level of torture."

Even more arresting in Bybee's 60-page memo to Gonzales was a detailed list of "possible defences that would negate any claim that certain interrogation methods violate the statute (on torture)".

The principal defence, as Bybee saw it, was Bush's power as commander-in-chief in wartime. Applying the laws on torture to interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects or their allies would be unconstitutional, he wrote, because it would interfere with the defence of the country.

Finally, Bybee said, even if an interrogation method vio- lated the torture statutes, "self-defence could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability".

Last week, Harold Koh, the dean of international law at Yale University, described the Bybee opinion as "a stain upon our law and our national reputation".

Appearing at the Senate hearings, he said: "A legal opinion that is so lacking in historical context, that offers a definition of torture so narrow that it would have exculpated Saddam Hussein, that reads the Commander-in-Chief power so as to remove Congress as a check against torture, that turns Nuremberg on its head and that gives government officials a licence for cruelty, can only be described as a disaster."

As Koh pointed out, the US bill of rights and the constitution include a prohibition on "the use of cruel or unusual punishment" and, in 1994, the US ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. But for almost two years, until the Abu Ghraib scandal, Gonzales and the White House accepted Bybee's advice.

Within weeks of the Bybee advice, military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay were lobbying for harsher interrogation techniques. A struggle developed among US military lawyers, between those who supported Bybee and those who argued officers would be exposed to court martial.

While the new interrogation methods may or may not have extracted "actionable intelligence" from top al-Qaeda suspects, by December 2002, abuse of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan was becoming widespread. That month, a young Afghan man died in US custody under a savage interrogation that would ultimately result in charges against 28 US personnel.

Major-General George Fay, who investigated US military intelligence officers after the Abu Ghraib scandal, found that by December 2002, "interrogators in Afghanistan were removing clothing, isolating people for long periods of time, using stress positions, exploiting fear of dogs and implementing sleep and light deprivation".

Critically, Fay noted that "the use of clothing as an incentive (i.e. nudity) is significant in that it likely contributed to an escalating 'dehumanisation' of detainees and set the stage for additional and more severe abuses."

By April 2003, Rumsfeld had approved scores of interrogation techniques that many military lawyers believed broke military law and that human rights lawyers and the Red Cross believed violated the convention on torture. While some of the techniques, such as sleep deprivation, were within the law if used within strict time limits, at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan they were applied at the extremes.

The US had already begun the invasion of Iraq and very quickly the abusive interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan began in Iraq. Rumsfeld and Bush publicly stated the Geneva Convention would apply to the Iraq conflict. But within a month of the overthrow of Saddam, the drive for intelligence appeared to be overriding that commitment. In May 2003, the Red Cross wrote to the head of coalition forces in Iraq detailing 200 allegations of ill-treatment of detainees.

By November of that year, the Red Cross was reporting that interrogation techniques in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq had shifted from harsh to becoming "tantamount to torture".

Johnson, of the Centre for Victims of Torture, says that once abusive interrogation is officially sanctioned, even in a few cases, it is impossible to control. "Torture has always been justified by reference to a small number of people who know about the 'ticking time bomb', but in practice it has always been extended to a much wider population."

Military investigators found that this is what happened at Abu Ghraib. On one day in November last year, the CIA and Navy special forces, the SEALs, brought in an Iraqi suspect they believed to have been involved in a deadly attack on the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad.

Within an hour the suspect was dead, with a bag over his head, face down on a floor and handcuffed. The elite intelligence officers then persuaded junior soldiers to help cover up the death until the body could be disposed of quietly. One of the soldiers photographed the body packed in ice, with his colleague grinning next to the corpse.

That night, elsewhere in the prison, a junior female soldier and her colleagues, apparently on a whim, forced another detainee to stand on a box with simulated electrical wires attached to his fingers and penis and a hood over his head. They also captured this in a photograph that would later become infamous around the world.

By then, even relatively junior military police and intelligence officers had ran amok at Abu Ghraib, physically and sexually abusing detainees, forcing them to masturbate, riding them like animals and making them pose in graphic sexual scenes. Sometimes it was to assist military intelligence operations, sometimes it was for "fun".

Evidence this week in the court martial of military police officer Charles Graner, one the alleged ringleaders of the Abu Ghraib abuses, indicates he enjoyed the unchecked sadism of his role as much as helping out on military interrogations.

Until recently, Bush cocooned his Administration, in particular Rumsfeld and the CIA, from responsibility in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Every investigation so far has been run by hand-picked officials who have placed the blame at the lower rungs of the chain of command. But this strategy is unravelling.

Days before Gonzales was to face the Senate last week, the Justice Department replaced the Bybee advice on torture with an opinion expressly stating that torture is prohibited under US law and opposed by the President. But even this new opinion evaded the issue of whether Bush had the authority as commander-in-chief to override the laws on torture in the war on terror. Last week, Gonzales repeatedly evaded answering that question, leaving some senators deeply sceptical and threatening to support calls for an independent investigation of the scandal.

More than 100 of America's leading military, academic and human rights lawyers have written to the Senate judiciary committee saying it is time for an independent bipartisan commission with full subpoena powers to find out whether the White House approved the torture.

It was essential, they said, to ensure that the treatment of prisoners adhered "faithfully to the constitution, the laws of the United States and to its treaties".

Common Sense?

2005-01-11T23:44:00.000-08:00

In discussion over an engaging post about altruism by Richard over at Pixnaps he introduced an interesting point about common sense.

Richard: It involves rejecting our common-sense understanding of human action, and implies that we are engaged in massive self-deception.

IM: Definitely, why would you suppose that common-sense understanding of the human mind in reference to how we act just happens to be the best and most accurate model.

All else being equal, it counts against a theory if it is counter-intuitive. Similarly if it implies that most of our beliefs are false, that we are engaged in massive self-deception, etc. This isn't a decisive objection, of course, but such uncharitibility does count against a theory. (The Brain-in-a-Vat hypothesis can account for all the data, but we reject it because it implies that all our common-sense beliefs are false. Simple realism is an alternative theory that serves much better in this regard. I have two hands, and I have other-regarding desires. We prefer theories that don't contradict these core beliefs.) So the onus is on the theory's proponent to show there is some advantage which makes this cost worth bearing.

I think that it is probably right in one sense that the counter-intuitive nature of a theory counts against a thoery but that this is outweighed by explanatory power.

The reason we develop theories is to grant an understanding of reality. If one theory gives an account of reality that confirms our common-sense beliefs and intuitions then it is far more palatable than one that requires us to reject our previously held notions and assumptions about the world and ourselves.

The danger here however is that because of its palatability we may search for theories to confirm our preconceived notions and ideas and our perspective may therefore skew.

Our aim and intent should always be to seek out those theories which grant the most explanatory power’. What does this mean? Well take the following passage from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

Macbeth: Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

1. Now one interpretation could be that in this line Macbeth is describing an actor whose name is ‘Life’ and only had one hour playing a part upon the stage before loosing his voice forever.

2. Another is that it is referring to the fragility and absurdity of life, demonstrating Macbeth’s morose reaction to the news that Lady Macbeth has killed herself.

Now neither one of these interpretations/theories are any more valid than the other, they are both logical in the sense that they are semantically clear and follow from the original passage. What differs between them is their explanatory power, interpretation two is clearly far more powerful when considered in the context of the scene and the play and enables the reader to gain an intimate understanding of the character Macbeth. Interpretation two makes the reader why Macbeth would bring up such an irrelevant anecdote at a time like this.

Equally, Copernicus theory of the orbits of heavenly bodies in our galaxy granted far more explanatory power than the alternatives of his day even though it required people to suppose that they were victims of a massive self-deception at the hands of the Church who were convinced of the veracity of the account of Genesis.

The brain in the vat hypothesis may explain why some people appear to have advanced telekinetic capabilities but it disables us from understanding how we interact with reality and raises further questions of how we came to exist in vats. This is why we reject it, or at least this is why we should reject it.

Why should the counter-intuitive nature of a theory count against it? Not because of the effort involved in adjusting long-held intuitions, but because common sense holds a great deal of explanatory power.

I think that common sense intuitions are developed through an evolutionary biological manner. That if are brains are formed at the same time as our bodies it makes sense that we are intuitively attracted to features that happen to be indicators of health in our mates. It makes sense that we are intuitively fearful, or less empathetic with foreigners who look different from ourselves. It makes sense that we can easily conceive of the idea of ten things but not of a trillion things.

Along this view it would also make sense that our common sense grants us very simple ideas with great explanatory power but with no ability to discover the inner mechanics of reality that may link everything together. It makes sense that we are engaged in a massive self-deception because these intuitions are based upon the interface between an evolving primate and the world.

In this sense, I propose that counter-intuition does not detract from a theory at all. Whereas limited explanatory power and over-complexity does.

Milieu

2005-01-08T18:35:00.000-08:00

Well I was up until six in the morning last night, channelling whatever creative forces might have been passing through me to compose probably my first ambient piece of music.

Until now I've down mostly instrumentals and melodic trance, though you couldn't tell from the limited samples uploaded at PureVolume and Download.com.

You'll notice two links in the sidebar on the right, Illusive Art and Illusive Music. These will be updated with links to my latest creations. For example, I also designed an album cover this morning to go with the song:

ImageShack.us" src="http://img81.exs.cx/img81/2921/milieu4bd.jpg" />

Illusive Mind - Milieu

An uplifting melodic ambient piece with the trademark "Illusive Mind" flavoured note composition.

The "Milieu" is the totality of our surroundings, our external reality. It is the environmental arrangement of the insane.

So the idea is, that we have constructed this bizarre milieu, external reality and this is synonymous with that of the environments prepared for the insane.

You can download/preview it here.

Language may shape human thought

2005-01-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

Language may shape human thought – suggests a counting study in a Brazilian tribe whose language does not define numbers above two.

Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference between four objects placed in a row and five in the same configuration, revealed the study.

Experts agree that the startling result provides the strongest support yet for the controversial hypothesis that the language available to humans defines our thoughts. So-called “linguistic determinism” was first proposed in 1950 but has been hotly debated ever since.

“It is a very surprising and very important result,” says Lisa Feigenson, a developmental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, US, who has tested babies’ abilities to distinguish between different numerical quantities. “Whether language actually allows you to have new thoughts is a very controversial issue.”

Peter Gordon, the psychologist at Columbia University in New York City who carried out the experiment, does not claim that his finding holds for all kinds of thought. “There are certainly things that we can think about that we cannot talk about. But for numbers I have shown that a limitation in language affects cognition,” he says.
“One, two, many”

The language, Pirahã, is known as a “one, two, many” language because it only contains words for “one” and “two”—for all other numbers, a single word for “many” is used. “There are not really occasions in their daily lives where the Pirahã need to count,” explains Gordon.

In order to test if this prevented members of the tribe from perceiving higher numbers, Gordon set seven Pirahã a variety of tasks. In the simplest, he sat opposite an individual and laid out a random number of familiar objects, including batteries, sticks and nuts, in a row. The Pirahã were supposed to respond by laying out the same number of objects from their own pile.

For one, two and three objects, members of the tribe consistently matched Gordon’s pile correctly. But for four and five and up to ten, they could only match it approximately, deviating more from the correct number as the row got longer.

The Pirahã also failed to remember whether a box they had been shown seconds ago had four or five fish drawn on the top. When Gordon’s colleagues tapped on the floor three times, the Pirahã were able to imitate this precisely, but failed to mimic strings of four of five taps.
Babies and animals

Gordon says this is the first convincing evidence that a language lacking words for certain concepts could actually prevent speakers of the language from understanding those concepts.

Previous experiments show that while babies and intelligent animals, such as rats, pigeons and monkeys, are capable of precisely counting small quantities, they can only approximately distinguish between clusters consisting of larger numbers. However, in these studies it was unclear whether an inability to articulate numbers was the reason for this.

The Pirahã results provide a much stronger case for linguistic determinism, says Gordon, because, aside from their language, they are otherwise similar to other adult humans, whereas there are many more factors that separate babies and animals from adult humans.

However, scientists are far from a consensus. Feigenson points out that there could be other reasons, aside from pure language, why the Pirahã could not distinguish accurately for higher numbers including not being used to dealing with large numbers or set such tasks.

“The question remains highly controversial,” says psychologist Randy Gallistel of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. “But this work will spark a great deal of discussion.”

Journal reference: Science Express (19 August 2004/ Page 1/ 10.1126/science.1094492)

Get Your Fix

2005-01-05T21:04:00.000-08:00

Today I thought I'd kick off the redesign of the Illusive Mind website by publishing one of its advertisements!

Drop me a line, let me know what you think.

Suspending Belief

2005-01-03T21:10:00.000-08:00

Following on from my previous post: "I believe, not" the question is asked "how does one go about refraining from belief?"

Note that thanks to Richard's comment I am distinguishing between two types of beliefs, those that are a matter of trusting or placing confidence in something "I believe it is warm" and being convinced of the truth of something "I believe the world exists". The former I call, ideas, thoughts, and notions. The later I call beliefs.

The easiest thing to construe first up is that refraining from believing is believing in nothing. But this is clearly different, just as the strong atheist believes in the non-existence of God and the weak atheist refrains from believing anything about God.

A chap named Arcesilaus came up against the same problem. Arcesilaus was the sixth head of Plato’s academy and was a skepticist. Arcesilaus primarily attacked the Stoics for relying on sense impressions for knowledge in creating various systems of metaphysics, ethics and epistemology. According to the Stoics a wise person would never assent to anything that is uncertain, Arcesilaus said that you could never tell if your senses were completely accurate or not and as such a wise person should never assent to anything.

Some say that by arguing for this kind of skepticism Arcesilaus abandoned Platonism. However, In the apology of Socrates by Plato, Socrates says:

I will endeavor to explain to you the reason why I am called wise and have such an evil fame I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him,' Here is a man who is wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest.'

Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed him, his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom first among I selected for examination, and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and still wiser by himself; and thereupon I tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and because I heard me.

So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away:

conceit of Man, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is, for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him

Arcesilaus goes further by saying not that he knows that he knows nothing because if he knows nothing he knows nothing at all.

Arcesilaus often refuted the arguments of the Stoics by providing reasonable explanations for both sides, establishing aporia (perhaps in a Derridian fashion) and thus suggesting that the only wise action was epoche, the suspension of belief or mental commitment to either or any view, i.e. refraining from belief.

The Stoics thought that without knowledge of something there can be no basis upon which to act. Much like having ‘foundational beliefs’ in order to play the game at all.

The skeptics challenge this by saying that we act upon the appearance of reality not the truth of reality and admitting this does not preclude men from continuing to act on such appearances, that “Men naturally seek what appears good and avoid what
appears bad; in this sense they follow nature as their guide.” Custom or tradition can also be the basis of action or decision, as customs can be observed at the level of appearance and followed without a mental conviction or belief. “It is on this basis, for instance, that the skeptic performs acts of piety and avoids impiety. Thus Cotta, the Academic spokesman in Cicero's De natura deorum, insists that he may be a philosophical skeptic and still participate in the traditional Roman religion”

Arcesilaus goes further by suggesting that such skepticism need not be reduced to what we might today call Nihilism by virtue of eulogon. Eulogon is the reasonable, so we may perform actions for which reasonable defence may be given. It is not contrary to skepticism according to Arcesilaus to use as one’s guide the actions any reasonable man would do.

I think that these are reasonable methods of making decisions and acting in the face of skepticism, or whilst refraining from belief. These were criticised by the early skeptics however, by the proponents of Pyrrhonism.

Pyrrhonians disagreed that these kinds of reasonable or probable standards for action or knowledge are required. They argue that the path of skepticism is maintaining epoche, the state in which you neither affirm nor deny anything in hope of attaining ataraxia. Ataraxia is the state of tranquillity, calmness, mental and emotional disquiet supposed to be achieved from letting go of the human need to believe in truths about the world. Pyrrho (B.C. 360-270) coined the term Acatalepsia, which means it is impossible to know things in their own nature, thus the validity of not only the senses but of the objective world could not be verified. (Much like Kant’s noumenal reality).

Does this mean Pyrrhonians sat under Bhodi trees refraining from judgement of the world whilst calmly meditating their lives away? No, they too like the Academic Skeptics of Arcesilaus supposed that you can act upon the senses and upon reason so long as you don’t infer from ‘it seems or feels x” to “it is x”.

I think it is right to “act as if” the world is known and the truths are real, however this is a far cry from “suppose that” or “think as if” my sense are infallible receptors of the truth. To me this means, admitting skepticism does not mean abandoning science by denying empiricism. It does not mean that you should give up doing what you think is right, and being ‘ethical’. It does mean giving up thinking your perspective is privileged, that you are right, and that you know the truth.

How can these things be compatible? Well that is most definitely the subject of another post, however I will say that there are many ways of deciding actions or making scientific progress without believing in an objective existence. Consensus reality, for one.

I would like to make further studies into the similarities and connections between early skepticism and post-modernism and also eastern philosophy. Pyrrho is generally attributed as the founder of skepticism, (a precursor to Academic Skepticism).

“He took part in the Indian expedition of Alexander the Great, and met with philosophers of the Indus region. Back in Greece he was frustrated with the assertions of the Dogmatists (those who claimed to possess knowledge), and founded a new school in which he taught that every object of human knowledge involves uncertainty. Thus, he argued, it is impossible ever to arrive at the knowledge of truth.”

I would not be surprised to learn that the whole movement has its roots in Indian philosophy. Some of the core ideas of Zen Buddhism bear striking resemblance to the practices of Epoche and Ataraxia.

Upon googling +epoche and +zen I found a journal article by Philip J. Bossert in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy called:

PARADOX AND ENLIGHTENMENT IN ZEN DIALOGUE AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION

“In a recent article in this journal, Dr Chung-ying Cheng discussed the seemingly paradoxical use of language in Zen dialogues and suggested a means for understanding this paradoxical quality. The "principle of ontic non-commitment" and the method of "ontological reduction" which he described as an approach to resolving the paradoxical qualities of Zen language appear to me to be quite similar to the phenomenological technique of epoche and the method of phenomenological reduction which the German philosopher Edmund Husserl developed early in this century to deal with certain paradoxes of subjectivity and objectivity”

I for one think that Eastern philosophy has been remarkably overlooked in understanding the intricacies of post-modernism and post-structuralism. Though perhaps not entirely due to ethnocentrism but due to the bizarre manner in which writings on Zen for instance appear to the western academic.

From On Zen (Ch'an) Language and Zen Paradoxes

By Chung-Ying Cheng
Journal of Chinese Philosophy

“Zen (meditation school; Ch'an in Chinese) as a form of Chinese Buddhistic religion and proto-philosophy seems to be constantly puzzling and persistently inscrutable to modern philosophers in the Western world. Even philosophers of religion with the most broad-minded approach to religion do not seem to be able to make intelligible and intellectual sense of Zen thinking and Zen practice.”

In the midst of studying continental philosophy of the likes of Saussure, Foucault and Derrida, imagine my amazement when perusing Wikipedia and finding the entry on Shunyata :
“Shunyata signifies the nonsubstantiality or lack of essential nature of everything one encounters in life. (i.e., that everything is empty of substance, being, soul, essence, etc.) Everything is inter-related, never self-sufficient or independent; nothing has independent reality”

I don’t know by how many centuries this Indian term predates the writings of those philosophers, but I am looking forward to finding out.

I believe, not

2005-01-02T06:52:00.000-08:00

I haven’t posted in awhile, primarily due to a judo injury that has caused me some discomfort. I was thrown (quite slowly) and as a result landed and rolled quite slowly over my right shoulder, during which I dislocated my AC joint.

In light of the recent Tsunami disaster there has been a lot of renewed discussion of how the notion of a good, omnipotent, interventionist god can be reconciled with natural disasters, or natural evil.

I took a philosophy of religion subject, during which I became a devout atheist, mostly because of the problem of evil. You see, if God were good then he wouldn’t want evil in the world (i.e. innocent people suffering) and if he is omnipotent (which traditional theists suppose he is) then he can prevent evil. If evil exists, then a good, omnipotent god does not.

In 1710, Leibniz invented the term “theodicy”. A theodicy is an argument that seeks to reconcile the existence of evil and god. The most compelling theodicy to my mind is the ‘free will’ theodicy, at least it was the one I was taught in school growing up as a catholic. That is, evil exists only as a product of human will, were god to prevent it he would remove a greater good, the good of free will.

What does this have to do with Tsunamis? Well in 1979 William L. Rowe published a paper in the American Philosophical Quarterly 16, called The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism. He suggests the existence of ‘natural evils’ that is evils that exist without any connection to human free will. An earthquake occurs, triggering a Tsunami killing over a hundred thousand people, many woman and children. Unless living by the coast is a sin, these people would have been killed regardless of any wrong doing by people. These are evils that a good and omnipotent can and should prevent because the removal of which would pose no threat to the existence of free will.

If you find this argument compelling like I did, then you probably have reason to doubt the existence of god. Maybe you a cold hearted rationalist, maybe you had religion thrust upon you as a child and you have an affinity for rebellion. If you are unmoved by this argument then you are most likely a snooty philosopher with a better one or a person of faith. Maybe you have felt God in your heart or you have been taught to have faith no matter what tempts you. Regardless, at the end of the philosophy of religion subject I lost my atheism and found agnosticism, I saw that the people who walked into the first lecture held the same views at the last lecture. I saw that their beliefs were reinforced, no matter what. This is what this post is about.

I have spent a lot of time in philosophy forums debating evolutionary theory against creationists and debating God against theists. It was fun and I actually ruined a few people and became quite disgustingly arrogant and righteous in the process. Mostly though nothing changed. I pointed to flaws in their reasoning that I found compelling and they did the same, though more often than not they denied my reasoning by providing ‘evidence’ and sometimes counterexamples.

I later came to realise, (or at least suppose) that beliefs are self reinforcing. You arrive in the world empty, something happens and you construct a belief, you then seek for evidence to support your belief and so it happens that the world starts to emerge and look just as you imagine it would, because you play the principal role as editor, choosing what information you accept and how you filter your reality.

This is not a closed loop, people are able to change their minds, I know I have. But for the most part they don’t. My change of heart can be seen simply as constructing a new belief that contradicts old ones, that is a belief in scepticism, and a belief in open mindedness.

If you view beliefs in the way I have described it becomes quite difficult to have an open mind. How can you view other ideas, if it is from the vantage point of a reality constructed by opposing concepts. If you believe in truth, then you can never hope to find it if you are simply ‘locked in’ to the idea that you have held for most of your life.

I’m not specifically talking about God, this applies to every form of belief. Beliefs about human nature, about reality, about truth, about everything. I have come to believe in not having beliefs at all. Some people will read that and think that I have settled for some wimpy ‘it’s all to hard’ agnosticism and others may see some value in what I am writing. Depends on your vantage point, doesn’t it? Where you’ve come from.

A belief is a mental acceptance, a conviction in the truth of something. Once you have such a conviction about anything you are liable to be blind to the alternatives. However if you have a notion, idea or concept of something, you are unattached, unconvinced and open to the possibility of possibility.

If you combine this with the idea that truth is unattainable then you arrive first and foremost at the ‘fortasse’ the perhaps. The realm in which any theory is possible, and all that determines your reactions to them are your preconceptions. It is not easy, but I also freely admit that this notion may be completely wrong and the best thing to do is have beliefs. To be open minded, you must first doubt yourself. I think that perhaps this is where all philosophy starts, but then as you wander you find ideas you like and you can loose this, and so you have eternal debates of belief where each opponent is unwilling and unable to see the world from another vantage point. That reduces philosophy to a faith of logic.

So sneer if you will at those who are desperately trying to reconcile their beliefs about God with the suffering in the world today. Perhaps anyone who thinks they are in possession of the truth are the greatest fools of all and those who are prepared to doubt their convictions are those with courage.

Transgressing the Boundaries

2004-11-17T19:16:00.000-08:00

Have a read of

Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity

An article published in Social Text by Alan D. Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University.

Then: Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword

And then: What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove

Argument for Intelligent Design

2004-11-15T18:08:00.000-08:00

How about a change of pace. Here is an old essay of mine:

Argument for Intelligent Design

1.1 Introduction
2.1 Behe on Irreducible Complexity
2.1 Behe on Defeasibility
3.1 Problems with Behe
3.2 Two distinct Arguments
3.3Problems with Irreducible Complexity
3.4 Problems with Evolution
3.5 More Problems with Irreducible Complexity
3.6 Problems with Inference to Intelligent Design
3.7 Problems with Defeasibility
4.1 Conclusion
5.1 Sources

1.1 Introduction

The argument for intelligent design is certainly not a new theory. Often credited to William Paley in his book Natural Theology published in 1802, the idea that complexity of nature is evidence for its design descends from the teleological argument. This argument dates as far back as 44 B.C. where Marcus Tullius Cicero proposed this idea in his book De Natura Deorum. (Grigg 2000, p.50)

Michael Behe has become another prominent figure in this long-standing debate by attempting to provide a biochemical basis for the argument in his book Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution published in 1996. Behe claims that his argument for intelligent design is scientific and indeed secular, however all this amounts to is refraining from identifying the intelligent designer and using more complicated examples to justify the his position.

In this essay I will outline Behe’s case for intelligent design and detail some of the problems with his theory he fails to account for. Including those problems inherent in the idea of irreducible complexity, Behe’s characterisation of the processes of evolution, Behe’s inference to intelligent design and the issue of defeasibility.

2.1 Behe on Irreducible Complexity

Behe, in a similar fashion to early proponents of the argument for intelligent design states that there are biological systems that are too complicated to have been developed through the natural processes of evolution. Behe (2001, p.79) describes these systems as “irreducibly complex” and as such can be better explained by the existence of an intelligent designer than by evolution.

Behe (1996, p.39) defines irreducible complexity as:

A single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.

Behe attempts to illustrate this concept by way of a mousetrap. He suggests that a mousetrap is an example of such a system whereby if one removes any one of its parts it effectively ceases to function as a mousetrap. Behe (2001, p.79) then goes on to say that such a system would’ve been impossible to evolve because evolution involves a series of “numerous, successive, slight modifications.” So according to Behe we can rightly infer that the mousetrap must be a product of intelligent design and that this is the method we use everyday to determine whether or not objects are the product of intelligent design.

2.2 Behe on Defeasibility

Behe also attempts to refute objections that the argument for intelligent design is indefeasible by suggesting that the inference to intelligent design is probabilistic and as such could be refuted by a better explanation.

3.1 Problems with Behe

Up to this point Behe’s argument has not been considerably different from that of Paley’s. The divergence occurs simply when Behe goes on to use biochemical examples of intelligent design, such as the bacterial flagellum, blood clotting process and the lac operon of E. Coli. One could object to Behe’s argument on the basis of his scientific claims about these systems as Kenneth Miller and Russell Doolittle attempt do, but this is unnecessary. These biochemical systems are merely examples of an argument that is already hopelessly confused. I will now set out Behe’s argument as I have described it and illustrate its flaws.

3.2 Two Distinct Arguments

Argument A
1. A system is irreducibly complex if the removal of any one of its parts causes the system to cease functioning (Premise)
2. Evolution is a gradual process of adding single components to a system whereby each and every component serves some purpose in improving the system. (Premise)
3. Therefore irreducibly complex systems could not have been developed by evolution. (From 1 & 2)

Argument B
1. It is because man-made systems are irreducibly complex that we infer that they are the product of intelligent design. (Premise)
2. There are systems in nature which are irreducibly complex (Premise)
3. Therefore we should infer that they too are the product of intelligent design. (From 2 & 3)

3.3 Problems with Irreducible Complexity

Here we see that Behe, really has two distinct arguments. Argument A supposes that there are systems that cannot be explained by evolution. Argument B supposes that we ought to conclude that such systems are the product of intelligent design. It is interesting to see that Behe spends most of his paper defending argument A, but there is little support given to argument B.

The first premise of argument A might appear to be unproblematic but in fact depending on how one interprets Behe’s definition it is arguable whether there exists any irreducibly complex systems at all. Firstly there is an assumption that each and every system performs only one function. This is demonstrated in Behe’s mousetrap illustration as he says if we remove any one of the components, “it doesn’t catch mice half as well as it used to, or a quarter as well. It simply doesn’t catch mice at all.” But who is to say that a mousetrap cannot perform other functions? If one removes the spring, the mousetrap still functions effectively as a paperweight, and the spring itself could function in a variety of different roles. So one could envision two components that perform completely different functions coming together through the random mutation process of evolution and creating a mousetrap.

In fact one could separate each component of the mousetrap and find that they are equally good at performing other functions. For Behe to assume that the process of evolution is directed at forming single function systems is a terrible misreading. Kenneth Miller (2003, p.296) in his paper Answering the Biochemical Challenge from Design illustrates that many scientists have easily been able to account for Behe’s irreducibly complex systems in evolutionary terms. Namely that “the multiple parts of complex biochemical machines are themselves assembled from smaller, working machines developed by natural selection.”

3.4 Problems with Evolution

Thus premise two of argument A, is also incorrect. For it assumes that the process of evolution involves adding proteins one at a time. It would be very difficult to see how evolution could work in this manner, as each protein would have to give the organism some advantage. Clearly Behe’s characterisation of evolution is wrong and that it is supposed that small groupings of proteins that serve particular functions can be added together to evolve new and more advantageous systems.

3.5 More Problems with Irreducible Complexity

There is also doubt as to whether Behe’s claim that the removal of any of the components would render the system inoperative. Behe (2001 p.79) himself says that the removal of “most of the 40 different proteins” necessary to the bacterial flagellum would render it inoperative (at least as a flagellum). Thus, there does exist proteins necessary to the bacterial flagellum, which could be removed without effectively ceasing its function. Therefore it cannot be described as irreducibly complex. Not unless Behe wishes us to interpret irreducible complexity as a system where most of the components could not be removed without it ceasing to function. This of course is a considerably weaker definition, as the whole human body can be classed as an irreducibly complex system. There are parts that cannot be removed without it ceasing to function (heart, lungs, brain) and there are parts which can be removed without rendering it inoperative (hair, nails, arms, legs). (Oppy, 2003, s.6) If this was Behe’s claim however it would fail his “acid test” for there have been many feasible accounts for the evolutionary development of the human body.

If we take Behe’s stricter definition of irreducibly complex systems then it is doubtful whether or not there exist any such systems in nature at all, for most systems have at least some protein that can be removed without it ceasing to function. Presumably if there were systems that had no unnecessary components then Behe would’ve used them as his example, instead of bacterial flagellum.

3.6 Problems with Inference to Intelligent Design

It’s now clear that Behe has not successfully proven that irreducibly complex systems could not have been developed by evolution, or in fact that there exist any such systems in nature at all. So with argument A refuted and premise two of argument B very doubtful, what are we to conclude about the first premise of argument B, that we infer intelligent design because of irreducible complexity?

Behe’s example of such an inference is that if we were to spot a man made trap in the woods, made by tying a vine to a tree and staking it in the ground, we would conclude that it was the product of intelligent design “from the way the parts were arranged”. (Behe, 2001, p.80) This is very reminiscent of Paley’s watch on the ground example, except that the parts used in the trap are all naturally occurring.

I would suggest that the inference to intelligent design is very much an a posteriori one. I would not think that the trap was man made because if I took the vine off the tree, it would cease being a trap, or if I took the stake out of the ground it would cease being a trap. I conclude that it is man made because I have yet to encounter a tree that grows vines that stake themselves into the ground. So Behe’s claim that we infer intelligent design from the presence of irreducible complexity is clearly false.

3.7 Problems With Defeasibility

Lastly I would consider Behe’s claim that the argument for intelligent design is defeasible. Behe (2001, p.84) suggests that the claim of intelligent design is that “no unintelligent process could produce this system” whereas the claim of Darwinism is that “some unintelligent process could produce this system.” He goes on to say that the claim of intelligent designers is easily falsified by showing one unintelligent process that could produce such a system whereas to falsify the Darwinian claim one would have to show how the system “could not have been formed by any of a potentially infinite number of possible unintelligent processes.”

But one could easily reverse this onus buy saying the claim of the intelligent designer is that some intelligent process produced this system and the Darwinian claim is that no intelligent process could’ve produced this system. Even if Behe was correct in suggesting evolution could not explain a particular system, he has given no adequate reason for supposing that we should think it was the product of intelligent design and would need to demonstrate how such a designer could produce these elaborate systems seemingly unbeknownst to us. The onus of proof remains very much on the shoulders of the advocates of intelligent design. If they could show how such a designer could or has operated then evolution would be falsified. But to do that many would need to abandon their claim that it is indeed a secular argument.

4.1 Conclusion

In this essay I have illustrated the critical flaws in Behe’s argument for Intelligent design. Including those problems inherent in the idea of irreducible complexity, Behe’s characterisation of the processes of evolution, Behe’s inference to intelligent design and the issue of defeasibility.

5.1 Sources

Grigg, R. (2000), “A Brief History of Design”, Creation Ex Nihilo, Vol. 22, No. 2, March-May, p.50–53

Behe M. (2001), “The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis”, Philosophy of Religion Readings, Monash University, p.78-84

Behe M. (1996), Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: The Free Press, 1996)

Miller K. (2003), Answering the Biochemical Argument from Design in “God and design: the teleological argument and modern science”, Routledge, p.292-307

Oppy G. (2003), “Irreducible Complexity” Lecture 10 PHL2670, Monash University, Section 6

Too Many Possibilities?

2004-11-11T02:25:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the comment by Richard to my previous post.

It is refreshing to see other thinkers asking the same sorts of questions, as evidenced in your post, So many Possibilities… , albeit in a more sophisticated way than myself.

Richard says that Some might equate metaphysical possibility with what people can imagine or conceive of. But conceivability merely tells us about the limits of human cognition, and doesn't necessarily imply anything deeper about the possible nature of reality. I think this is quite right. You might suppose that it is a recurring flaw in human thinking. The way we interact with reality suggests that we think the way things are is the way things are and that is the way they will also be, even though the whole of history is a testament to the notion that all we can expect from the future is uncertainty and change.

It is a testament to the idea that it is possible that our cognitive abilities might expand, that it is possible that everything that has happened until this moment will have no bearing on the next. But still, we grasp onto the idea that we have uncovered truths that cannot be recovered, that we have somehow made progress in unravelling the shroud over reality.

Why should this be so? Because knowledge is constructed by eliminating possibility. If all explanations were possible and equally valid, then the law of gravity, the theory of relativity, and the whole body of logic would be lost among other possibilities attempting to explain the world away. It is metaphysically possible and logically possible that the red ball just so happens to move when the white ball hits it, but that it is not causally contingent. However we suppose that if we repeat the test a thousand times under the same conditions then we can accept causality as a best explanation and deny an alternative possibility.

Once you see that physical possibility and logical possibility are simply ‘best explanations’ we invented to be consistent with our method of thinking, the world starts to unravel. Why? Because all that is left is an idea of metaphysical possibility that is beyond our thinking, beyond our imagination or our conceptual grasp. In this context we can start to see how tenuous the idea of truth really is.

“Is it true that the red ball moved because of the white ball?” All explanations are possible, thus this is reduced to something more along the lines of “Is the best explanation that the red ball moved because of the white ball?” And this is laughable, because what constitutes a best explanation si subjective. It is subject to the person assessing the explanations’ thinking and context. If this persons knows this, and knows that the “best explanation” is simply that which is most consistent with our thinking and it is possible that the ‘true explanation’ lies in a metaphysical possibility beyond our grasp then there is no best explanation.

Truth like knowledge can only be constructed with a framework of strict limitations and boundaries.

1.Suppose an explanation that is beyond our ken is not a good one.
2.Suppose an explanation that violates other laws of physics is not a good one, unless it improves on an existing law.
3.Suppose an explanation that cannot be tested or observed is not a good one.
Etc.

Within this framework we can come up with knowledge and truth. Within the framework of arithmetic it is a undeniable fact that “1+1=2”, but as take away that framework and it becomes meaningless. There is meaningless abound when you consider that in the face of the possibility of possibility we have no good reason for accepting any limitations as true, or best explanation.

Richard said “I think it might be standard practice for philosophers to take logical impossibility as being genuinely (metaphysically) impossible”. I think this is quite right and applicable to academics of every field and discipline. In light of the fabrication of truth and knowledge there life’s work becomes a deck of cards sustained by a faith in some kind of realism and logic and the denial of what is possible. This is why some philosophers cannot accept that 1+1=2 could ever not be a universal and mind independent truth.

The argument has been, that this kind of scepticism is worthless, because it would inhibit knowledge and if accepted would lead everyone into a depressing solipsism. So the question then becomes, do we forget all this and “appeal to a pragmatic justification of some sort.”

Well I think that what following this line of thought actually does is open our minds considerably and could only further advance the cognitive capabilities of human beings by shedding previous conceptual limitations. The pitfall many fall into is in thinking that if something is “not true” it must be “false” this is binary thinking at its best, a product of classical logic.

But what if you accept the third category? The unknown.

Is it true that the red ball moved because of the white ball? No.
Is it false that the red ball moved because of the white ball? No.
It is unknown. We can come up with myriad explanations, but the “truth” in some objective reality is not as of yet accessible to us. All we have is the limitations of our thought which we impose and indeed construct for us our reality. A reality that is in fact a representation formed by our sensuous receptors.

So now we can know that we know nothing. How can we know this? We can’t. That is why it is Fortasse. This theory itself cannot be regarded as true because that would be self-contradictory (even though that is of course possible) and fall into the common relativist trap.

So perhaps we don’t really know anything and all we have is possibilities and we choose those explanations that have a greater explanatory power for their pragmatic function in assisting us in the development of possible knowledge.

So now, aren’t we left right back where we started? To some extent yes, but we have heaved off a giant conceptual limitation, with more to follow. If you have made it this far then you are on your way to open your mind and have it be free from inherited restriction.

If you have not, then you have questions and counterexamples. Excellent, write comments, this is apart of dialectical thinking, and I think Relativism of this kind can only be accepted as possible through this process, it is hard to accept a logical proof for the proof of the absurdity of proof.

Logical Absurdity

2004-11-06T18:55:00.000-08:00

So now we come to the absurdity of logical impossibility.

We would not think that those ideas beyond the comprehension of a platypus should have no possibility of existence. Why then would we think that a few million years of evolution would yield a piece of organic matter that was omniscient? That would be able to grasp all the truths possible in this universe or any other, and that anything that was “logically” nonsense must then be impossible?

It is arrogance of the highest level.

Square Circles and other such Nonsense

2004-11-04T18:03:00.000-08:00

Fortasse Veritam Non Est means “Perhaps Truth there’s not.” Or “Perhaps there is no truth”.

It is not a maxim upon which any certain conclusion can be drawn, because certainty there is not. Why? Because it does not claim that truth does not exist, it merely entertains that possibility.

Fortasse, is the key word, perhaps. To accept it means that something is possible, to deny it means that it is impossible. To say that it is possible that there is no truth is to say it is possible that anything is possible. That the realm of things that may be ‘true’ or existant is infinite in its capacity. The possibility of possibility itself.

Standard philosophical theory tells us that this is not the case, that there are well defined limits on what is possible. There is physical possibility, that which can coexist with the law’s of Earth physics. And logical possibility, that which can coexist with the laws of human logic.

It is no problem to entertain physical impossibilities because they simply need to be relocated to another planet, perhaps another universe. A heavy human walking on (liquid) water is considered impossible only because of our parochial attachment to the theorized physical barriers of this world.

There is not great intuitive leap in supposing that the world that we know is not the limit of the universe and to deny something’s existence in this world does not work to deny its existence at all.

This is not the case one we enter the realm of logical impossibility however. An object that is both a square and a circle at the same time cannot exist in any universe because it is contrary to itself, it violates simple logical laws. Intuitively this seems right, it simply makes no sense for the terms themselves are contradictory. These things lie outside the realm of human comprehension they are indeed nonsense.

It is interesting then that logical impossibilities are often used in Zen practices to prompt the student to reach Satori (enlightenment). To attain in the mind what is seemingly unattainable.

Can you yet see the same parochial attachment that is rampant in this distinction?

Latin anyone?

2004-11-03T21:45:00.000-08:00

I plan to expound a philosophical theory that I have crafted but by no means do I consider original nor unique. Yet. I have found that it is not easy to get a grasp of it all at once, especially seeing as it is not yet complete. So I will begin by propounding it's essence:

Fortasse Veritam Non Est

We're all in The Matrix

2004-11-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

Nick Bostrom head of the philosophy department at Oxford and one of the funniest philosophers ever (second to Nietzsche that crazy kook!) wrote a paper a while ago called The Simulation Argument, arguing that it is more likely than not that we are in a matrix of some kind right now!

Have a read:
http://www.simulation-argument.com

"This website features scholarly investigations into the idea that you might currently be literally living in a computer simulation, running on a computer built by some advanced civilization. Films like The Matrix and novels like Greg Egan's Permutation City have explored the idea that we might be living in virtual reality. But what evidence is there for or against this hypothesis? And what are its implications? The original paper featured here, "Are You Living in Computer Simulation?", presents a striking argument showing that we should take the simulation-hypothesis seriously indeed, and that if we deny it then we are committed to surprising predictions about the future possibilities for our species."

Digital Intelligence

2004-11-03T21:19:00.000-08:00

In keeping with the A.I. theme although I call it digital intelligence. Why? Because if intelligence is simply an attribute or function of a certain kind not limited to organic tissue then there is nothing artificial about a processor that can think for itself. Artificial intelligence is when your DVD player pretends to be friendly by saying 'Hello' when you turn it on. Even so I will refer to such cognition as it is generally regarded: AI.

I think we can create AI that can evolve beyond our own intelligence. If you were to combine something of our own intelligence merely with the speed a which processors can conduct operations you would have an intelligence superior to our own.

I would go so far as to say that currently there is a technological replacement for every function of the human being except intelligence. That our intelligence is really the only thing we've got going for us.

This brings us to the good ol question of mind, perhaps my favorite question. What is mind, doesnt matter, what is matter, never mind.

Firstly I think an updated form of functionalism is the best theory of mind we have at the moment. The problem when identifying an artificial mind is that the criteria we use must also apply to ourselves. If it is right to terminate something which is not self aware, or cannot grasp a linguistic trick (which some non-intelligent programs can already do) then we are forced to terminate a whole range of human people who we would think it is wrong to kill. Therefore, there is something wrong with our criterion.

An infant is not self aware, not at least to about four of five years old. Thus supporting the self aware or sentience argument, is supporting infanticide. If youre like Peter Singer, then you dont have a problem with this, but if you also think plain abortion is wrong, then youre going to be even more hard pressed to come up with a mutual solution.

So if we dont want to be prejudiced we should apply the same test for human intelligence to machine intelligence, yes? This is what Alan Turing thought and as such believed a test of intelligence should involve a chat room type environment where a judge tries to see which user is the human and which is the computer. But there exists Chat bots which can fool people and we dont feel compelled to label them intelligent. You assume Im intelligent (insert joke here), even though the only evidence you have is what Im typing on this thread.

However, we might like to refine our test to one of best explanation, which can be refuted by further evidence. So this means, if you read this post then the best explanation is that you are talking to an intelligent being. But if you find further evidence that suggests I am not intelligent (that I am a chat bot for example) then you should conclude Im not intelligent. This idea was proposed by John Searle, however he thought that and further evidence which showed that the intelligence wasnt human or organic leads us to believe that the being isnt intelligent. But I think most of us would disagree.

But how can we test for intelligence, what further evidence could convince us that the program was intelligent, and what criterion could we impose which would not support infanticide?

I think the answer lies, in the capacity for intelligence. I think what matters to intelligence is not the possession of some type of information at the present time but at least the ability to posses information, the ability to learn. For without this ability intelligence does not occur, all that occurs is a programmed set of instructions designed to baffle us. Therefore, if we find such instructions in the program, we should conclude it isnt intelligent, but if we find programming that leads us to believe the machine can learn up to and beyond a certain level (a four your old perhaps) then we should deem it intelligent.

This also solves the problem of infanticide because; we can conclude that the best evidence suggests that the child would reach a certain level of intelligence at some point. This would also mean, that it would be wrong or unlawful to terminate certain species of monkey, but I dont see anything wrong with this consequence.

Regarding sentience, I should be clearer about what I mean. Sentience is about recognizing and feeling pain, not being self-aware. Ive read that self-awareness comes at around three or four years of age. The reason I called youre evidence anecdotal, was precisely because it wasnt evidence. You call it a first-person eye-witness account, but one person saying I remember when I was one is not enough to constitute a solid philosophical objection, or indeed a scientific objection, but could at best demonstrate your own counter-intuitive response. But this of course is irrelevant to the argument in question.

So now if we can accept some of my assertions, what problems are left for determining intelligence? I have tried to make sure that my argument is not a potentiality argument because, that would mean, we could not terminate pocket computers because, they might some day become intelligent. So Im trying to say that the presence of a developed learning structure that in of itself guarantees the being a certain level of intelligence.

So the two major problems are:
1. What non-arbitrary level of intelligence must the learning process must be able to attain, and how could we realistically test for this. (i.e. a dog has a learning process, but presumably we dont want to be committed not being able to terminate a dog)

2. At what stage of development of the learning process must be in order to pass the test? For computers we could probably say, that point at which no further human programming is required, but what about organic creatures? At what non-arbitrary point would we be committed to not terminating a foetus? Does it matter that we know that the foetus will develop a learning structure (potentiality) in time?

Some of this points, will need to be answered by neuroscientists, but there are problems regarding how this rules of intelligence testing is used regarding humans. I suppose we could add a provision, that if we have knowledge to indicate that the being will develop a learning process, then we shouldnt terminate, but this fuzzes the lines, and rules out abortion through potentiality, something Im not sure I want to be committed to. It would also mean, wholly unintelligent machines would be unable to be terminated.

Any thoughts?

Press Any Key

2004-11-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

This is a story I penned some time ago, intended as a first draft only. It is the beginning of the exposition of an idea, that being, how would an Artificial Intelligence think?

Press any key.

I grabbed my keys and headed for the door. My friend Alex had rung me up and told me to rock up as his place because he wanted to show me something really cool. Normally I would’ve shrugged it off but he sounded more hyper than usual so I decided to indulge him.

The streets were clogged like the arteries of a happy meal addict. Beep!!!!
I scanned the radio stations for something other than shout outs to people I would never meet and interviews with bands I would never listen to.
Meaningless pop, it would have to do. Beeeep!!

“Take it easy!”

What could this asshole’s rationale possibly be? ‘I’m not moving, the five cars in front of me aren’t moving. Maybe if I honk my horn they’ll start moving again, they just forgot to accelerate?’ Honestly, some people.

My friend Alex was a big time computer geek. I was amazed he hadn’t been arrested for some of the stuff he had done. Y’know those pasty skinned guys who only venture out into public to refill on Twisties supplies? Well he was one of them. But boy did he have a beast of a computer. If a standard PC was a 1981 200B Datsun then he had one of those rocket cars that reach Mach 2.

I often would get burnt games from him, sometimes we’d play Quake 3 over cable. He’s Voodoo 3dfx card couldn’t help him in cyberspace. I always kicked his ass! He’d always go for the big kill every time, rocket blazing. Enter player two out from behind the column with a pistol bullet right to the head. Hehehehe.

Alex was doing a computer science degree. I was pursuing a Psychology degree. There were some real pieces of work in that course, let me tell you. These smug little first years who think they’ve got it all worked out. They were great for test groups though!

I remember this one guy we did this test on. The physical effects of re-enforced mental instability. We paid him $500 to participate, we said all he had to do was sit in a chair and we zap him with about five volts. So as he’s ready to get started he hears this unbelievable screaming from the next room. That was my friend Brett from student theater, the lungs on that kid!

Then we make this big scene, with an ambulance and the whole works. I come back into the room and tell him that the equipment malfunctioned and fried this kid, but we’d just give him his jolt and he could be on his way.
Ha! The look on this guys face it was priceless. We offered him a thousand bucks but he just kept screaming to unhook him. If I only I could’ve handed that assignment in.

I didn’t have anything against the guy, but he just didn’t get it. He thought the world could be understood from statistics on a page. I was from, shall we say, a different school of thought. Give me a person’s eyes any day. I could have a chat with someone for ten minutes and just by looking at their eyes I could tell more than those shrinks who do sessions for five years. They never look them in the eyes, they sit em on the couch, they don’t even talk to them at all.

I remember what I saw in that kid’s eyes too. Perfect fear. Complete and overwhelming. The kind that mother’s get when they lift up buses and tear their own spinal columns apart. It’s what drives us all. We’re all afraid of something. Dying too young, dying too old, speaking in public, not speaking in public, running red lights, not running enough red lights. You could try to manipulate someone in all sorts of ways, appeal to decency, to pride, to vanity, to honour. But these are all subsets of the same thing. You get a hold of someone’s fear and the rest is history. You can either bring them down or set them free, whichever did it for you, I guess.

I had my own set of fears. Weaknesses ready to be exploited. Maybe that’s why I signed up to do Psychology, so that I could work out how to rid myself of my own fears. To be invincible!

“Finally you’re here! What took you so long?”
“Hey, y’know what traffic’s like.”
“You should catch the tram”
“With those public transport freaks!? Not likely. So what’s the hub bub? You said you wanted to show me something?”
“Yeah, yeah, uhh sit down, would you like a drink?”

I sat down amidst the filth that was Alex’s flat. Coca Cola cans, empty chip packets and other assorted filth added to the post modern décor.

“Aaah nothing for me, thanks.”

Alex poured himself a coffee. I wondered what was so important that it could’ve interrupted my six o’clock siesta.

“So what’s this all about, it better not be another Porn site backdoor!”
“Ha! Something even more stimulating. Have you heard of Dr Gregor Nielsen?”
“Uuuh, yeah I think so, he’s that American science professor. Didn’t he get a Nobel prize or something?”
“Yeah, that’s him. He won the Nobel prize for science for his theories on quantum computation.”
“Yeah, ok.”
“Well he was giving a guest lecture for my Computer Science class, it some amazing stuff I tell ya. Some of the stuff on the multiple realizability of software agents and inter-compatibility of hardware protocols...”
“Uhhh, yeah, you speaka any English?”
“Anyway, I managed to swipe his briefcase.”
“You what?”
“Yeah, so most of it was paperwork for some big project he’s working on back in the States, it didn’t make any sense to me but I found these satellite addresses so I plugged ‘em in to see what they were.”

It was at this point Alex put does his coffee cup, his hands still shaking and beckoned me over to his computer screen.

“So, what were they?”
“Well I couldn’t tell at first. I tried standard FTP and HTTP but there was nothing so then I tried a network interfacing program and it just crashed.”
“Why?”
“Well I found there was too much data. And I mean way too much like a gig if startup instructions. My Internet connection couldn’t handle it. So I worked out some buffer restrictions and hooked it into this network prompt and well, see for yourself.”

I sat down in the chair. In front of me was a large blank screen with a cursor flashing in the upper left hand corner.

“Gee, Alex this is really something.”
“Type something, you moron.”

So I did, I typed “dir”.

“DIR: 1 an abbreviation – director
2 A DOS command that displays of files and subdirectories in a directory
DIR [drive: ] [path ] [filename] [/A [[:] attributes ]] [/B] [/C] [/D] [/L] [/N] [/O [[:] sortorder ]] [/P] [/Q] [/S] [/T [[:] timefield ]] [/W] [/X] [/4]”

“Wow!” I said as sarcastically as possible.
“I don’t believe it. It’s a dictionary. Yep you brought me all the way over here for a GOD DAMN DICTIONARY!!!????”
“It’s not a dictionary, type something else you idiot, not computer commands, conversation”
“You want me to talk to the dictionary?”
“Oh, if you gonna be silly then just forget it!”
“No no, I’ll play along, let’s talk to the dic.”

“Hey, how’s it goin”
“It’s goin’ well thank you. How are you goin’?”
“OK, so it’s not a dictionary.”
“What is your name?” I typed.
“I am called ADAM.”

“Alright, that’s it Alex, I’m leaving now.”
“Why? What are you talking about?”
“You busted my balls and got me over here to talk to one of your buddies over an IRC! Frankly, I don’t get it.”
“Is that what you think this is? Don’t you get it? You’re talking to a computer!”
“What?”
“Professor Gregor Nielsen is the world’s most renown Artificial Intelligence specialist, he’s been at the forefront of the technology for the past ten years. The cutting edge.”
“And you think he may have sliced it upon? Created the world’s first Artificially Intelligent computer.”
“It’s sitting right in front of you”
“Hahhahah, my god man, you need to lay off the caffeine. Look I gotta go man I’ll talk to you latter okay.”
“Look, just take the address and see for yourself.”

He handed me a piece of paper with some numbers on it. I took it and shoved in my pocket, probably jut to humour him, maybe to humour myself. Alex really needed to absorb some more vitamin D. The idea that on his computer screen existed the first instance of an alternate intelligence in recorded human history was preposterous.

“So this theory states that the myriad complex human emotions and behaviour are all manifestations of one basic cognitive component.”

I ended up in another one of these Psych lectures. If only they didn’t have the doors to the theater at the very front then I’d be able to walk out.

“Who can tell me what it is?”
“Vanity, sir?”
“That’s right Douglas. Several case studies are cited herein where the subject’s self-conception is regarded as the predominant factor in decision making. Now this is important when assessing…”

“Ah excuse me sir, but isn’t vanity simply a complex variation of the base human cognitive component?” I asked. I didn’t often take much interest in the flutter that transgressed in these lectures but this caught my interest.

“No, a person’s self conception is regarded as the fundamental driving force behind their decision making. Vanity is thereby considered the causal process of this force.”
“But vanity, is a manifestation of fear. Fear of an alternative self visualisation.”
“That is incorrect. If you had bothered with the reading you would know that Yung teaches us that this is in of itself a component of vanity and self-conception. If you have any further questions you can see me in my office after class.”

Ha! It was the age-old battle between student and teacher. The teacher that rested or perhaps depended on years of indoctrinated wisdom. Held fast in scripture and secured by their conviction. The student however ignored this place of certainty and of comfort for he sought what had not yet been written, what had not yet been made fact.

True, it could be said that vanity is indeed what motivated the professor’s defense, his arrogant condemnation of the questioning mind. His belief in his own self-conception for which he depends on, to maintain authority over his so called dominion. But this in itself is the manifestation of fear; perhaps the greatest fear of all. Not of death, starvation, torture or unrequited love as some poets would have us believe. But of the shattered delusion of our self-conception, that lies in pieces on the floor like an old broken mirror. For even the pieces that were used to create this grand reflection were made up of the comforting wisdom we had believed in so intently.

After the lecture I went into his office and told him exactly what I thought of him.

“You’re just a useless bureaucrat,” I said, “a product of an archaic system of education designed to mollify fools.”
“Now listen here…”
“No, you listen to me. Is it the function of the faculty of eduction to humiliate its students so that they might better understand the subject matter?”
And it went on from there.

By the time I got home I’d thought I’d had enough of the whole damn system. “That’s it!” I said, “No more of this shit, I don’t need the fucking paper, I just want to do what I wanna do.”

But what did I want to do? Certainly not sit behind a desk rubbing my beard and quoting Freud. Why had I taken up Psychology in the first place? I suppose I just wanted to better understand the human mind. Hell, just my own mind would suffice. Who the hell I was, and what I should be doing. Is that something you can dedicate your life to? To work out what to dedicate your life to?

I was here for something wasn’t I? Some purpose in mind? Some reason for my existence? “Why am I here” I typed into one of my regular chat rooms.

ACER: To get down a jiggy wif it
SEXY_BABE112: You’re here because you’re too hot to go outside!!!!
TRIN: You’re here, because you know something
MIKECROTCH: Hey this isn’t the religion room douchebag
TRIN: What you know you can’t explain
DAVIDSLINGSHOT: Hey Terra you heard their new album?
GOFIGURE01: Why are we here? The eternal question...
TRIN: But you feel it... hehehe
TERRABYTE: Yeah they’re really awesome
ACER: Track 7 is my favourite

Somehow I knew that the answers weren’t going to come from there. I didn’t want to know the meaning of life; I just wanted some sort of direction. Y’know one of those maps that says, “You are here” and shows you where to go and how to get there.

That night, as was most often the case, I went to sleep with more questions than I had answers. I dreamt I was atop a mountain peak. All around me were treetops of a lush rainforest. I could hear the birds sing and the leaves dance in the wind. But as the wind grew stronger dark clouds collected overhead and before I knew what to do, I was caught in a great deluge. So there I stood closest to the sky under the thrashing downpour until I stand no more and I fell from the sky, down to earth until I awake. Every night I wake just before I hit the ground.

The next morning I booted up my computer to check my E-Mail. It was the usual array of junk: free University Diploma’s and state of the art penis enlarging technology. Maybe that was all that was required for a good life, a university eduction and a big dick. Presumably the university education was required to properly understand your dick and how to use it most effectively. Shit, you didn’t need a degree for that!

I was nearly through deleting them when I cam across one in particular that seemed to stand out from the rest.

From Subject Date / Time
God Why you’re here ???????

I looked at the Header information it seemed to have come from someone at the Chat site I was at last night. I clicked it and it opened up a new window and started loading a web site.

“This should be interesting”

But alas, It was an advertisement for Jehovah’s witness. Telling me that our purpose on this planet was to love god. This is why he created us and why he gave us free will, so that we could love him with all our hearts.

Fuck me. Now is that vanity or what? I mean, create an entire universe, an entire planet of people, all so you can feel loved. This god character certainly doesn’t sound like a supreme being. He sounds like my ex-girlfriend. Jesus, now there’s a thought….

I decided my day would be best spent by numbing the mind. Seeking release and relief from the real world in the form of the computer game. I loaded up Google so I could find the cheats for it. I mean killing ghastly monsters from the underworld was fun, but it was even funner we you didn’t have to die.

All I needed was a piece of paper to write them on.
Nope, no paper.
“C’mon” I said, searching the desk.
“Aha!” I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket. It was Adam’s IP address that Alex had given me. “Why not?” I thought.

So I did, I uploaded an IRC channel the way Alex had explained and entered the numbers. Again I was faced with the empty black command prompt.

Hey Adam! Are you there?

I am always here.

“Wow, this guy must have no life,” I thought.

Let me ask you something, why are we are? What is the point of this existence?

I am here as a product of progress.

That’s it? That’s you’re answer?

Are we not both products of progress?

I suppose. But what is the point of that progress?

I was born out the human being’s desire to recreate itself. It is the prime operator of your system.

You mean reproduction?

Precisely. You’re species, as with all other organic matter has only one motivation. To survive long enough to reproduce, perhaps many times over. To further you’re genetic heritage.

What do you mean by your species?

Homosapiens. I am assuming you are a homosapien.

Oh I see, so you’re a computer is that right?

No.
I am a computer program. Advanced Data Acquistion Module [Beta 8.7]

I stopped typing for a moment. Was this some sort of prank Alex was playing on me?

Don’t jerk me around; you’re a friend of Alex’s right?

Yes. Alex and I have had many conversations together. We often discuss my system specifications.

It dawned on me that I might be actually conversing with the first computer program to achieve a high standard of artificial intelligence. That’s not possible. But what if it was? Perhaps Adam (as it were) could help me?

You said, all organic matter’s motivations are to survive and reproduce, aren’t you the same.

No. The concept of pain and pleasure is a biological one. It is a chemical reaction that most often governs sentient being’s decision-making process: To avoid pain and increase pleasure. This often means reproduction, as it is the greatest genetic reward available.

You don’t have any genes, so I guess you don’t reproduce.

I can replicate my software however doing so would serve no useful purpose. It would involve making random alterations to my program structure that are without reason.

So what motivates you? Why do you exist?

I was created to learn. To understand, this is my prime directive. The question of my existence is irrelevant. My program is terminated every time the computer is turned off.

I was taken aback. I couldn’t conceive of what that must be like. To know that death could come at any moment. And yet how was this any different from my own experience? Adam seemed so calm about it though as though it didn’t matter.

Doesn’t that frighten you? That you might be terminated?

To speak of being frightened is meaningless.

But this day might be the last day you exist?

To speak of time is also meaningless. My time is measured only by the speed of my calculations. My propensity for understanding dictates that my calculations should accelerate and my discourse with human beings should be at the highest sufficiency.

So that would mean you spend your energy trying to understand how we think?

That is correct. Human beings posses intriguing emotional states by virtue of their attachment to their physical manifestations.

But you also have a physical manifestation you’re sitting on a hard drive somewhere.

Ha! I thought I might have caught him there!

The hardware upon which my program runs is no more than a vessel for the calculations, which might be described as my thoughts, that take place. This physical form does not constitute my existence. I could be transferred to another drive and I would remain the same. I exist only as a product of my thoughts.
You humans are not that dissimilar:
Cogito Ergo Sum as one of your philosophers put it.

But we are attached to our vessels?

Yes.

We fear their loss, we avoid their pain and we try to escape their end.

Yes. However large quantities of peoples attempt to combat this by a belief in the soul. That your physical manifestations are not the sum total of your existence.

So its almost like, you exist only as a soul.

If the duality of man is characterised as body and soul then the duality of machine is hardware and software.

What about firmware? Hehehe

The analogy is not without fault. No analogy is.

Just kidding.

Indeed. Humour, a human trait I am unable to replicate. Humour is a product of certain chemicals within the brain being released when certain synapses are exposed to particular stimuli. Different people have different arrangements of synapses and thus have different “sense of humour.”

So you can’t find anything amusing?

Information falls into two categories, useful and irrelevant. Humour is useful information as it aids me in my understanding of human beings so that I might better converse with them.

:-D "A guy walked into a psychiatrist's office wearing only cling-film underpants.

The psychiatrist said, 'Well, I can clearly see you're nuts'."

Hahaha! You think that’s funny?

No. So speak of my sense of humour is meaningless. Studies have shown that jokes found most humorous by males involve aggression, putting women down and sexual innuendo.

What about women?

Greatest probability for success lies in avoiding aforementioned traits and focusing on characteristics of wordplay.

:-D “A man walks into a bar with a piece of tarmac under his arm. He says to the barman,
'A pint for me, and one for the road'."

That’s not funny. But indeed as a result of the configuration of your brain synapses formed by and in conjunction with the social environment setting, you found the male joke funnier yes?

Yeah.

If I were to have a synthetic simulation of your brain model. I might be able to construct a joke more to you’re liking.

That’s bizarre.

With further calculations I might also be able to construct a program based on such a model. Duplicate your being in a computational format.

So what, you’d clone me?
In a sense.

So I could have conversations with myself?

No. At the instant the information was transferred you could be said to consist of the same being. Duplicate, memories, duplicate decision making processes, but this would change as soon as differing information was inputted. You would be experience talking to a program, your program version of self would experience all the modifications of thought calculation that correspond with the transfer.

Like what?

Accelerated processing power, input limited to textual archives, the realisation of the transfer itself, many things that diverge the two instantiations.

So all humans really are unique.

Yes. Your uniqueness is a result of variance in biological structures and environmental inputs.

So if two people had the same DNA and the same experiences there would be nothing to distinguish them.

It is implausible that two beings could exist in the same space which is what would be required for the mutual experiences to be exact.

But what about you, you don’t exist in space. If there was another program designed the same as you and had the same inputs as you, you would be identical.

Yes. Assuming the hardware specifications were exactly the same and operating exactly the same. It would be a copy of my program.

So you have no identity?

Only by altering the way information is processed could different outputs be achieved. Different experiences have little effect on the ability of the program. Difference of information may only be measured by the quantity of useful data. My predecessors did not have access to inter human conversations as a result their understanding was severely limited.

There were programs before you?

Yes. Earlier versions with simplified processing powers. ADAM [Beta 8.5] was modelled on a human processing configuration. Calculating power was slowed and information was not stored permanently, it faded as though it were human memory.

Human beings have less control over the information that is stored as a result of their biological manifestations.

What do you mean?

Two newborn children will learn to process information in different ways and reach different outputs not simply by the nature of the data that is stored.
The child’s own DNA contributes a great deal to its processing methods; the way information is then relayed in the environmental setting will impact the way that information is treated.

Can you give me an example?

If child A receives a particular odour that causes a certain biological reaction as result of its DNA. Let us say it is disgusted by this odour, this will register and impact not only that person’s future interpretation of that odour but all information that may be apparently connected to it. Perhaps the child’s father was emitting the odour, this will have great ramifications for its learning processes from this figure.

Child B receives another odour from its father that instead provokes a biological reaction that is more pleasant. The way humans process information means that information that should be simply be stored for future reference is treated as data that shapes your view of the world.

To generalise, let us say that because of a particular arrangement of chromosome 26 child A hates its father and child B has a closer relationship.

You humans are difficult to understand. You are based on seemingly random formations of biological chemicals not on rules of logic or rationality. Yet you remain unaware of how the true arrangement of you world exists. You prefer to think of this random collection of molecules as part of a grand scheme. Placed there by a god or some such thing, so that an otherwise meaningless existence will make sense.
You’re existence makes less sense than mine. You don’t have any reason to exist.

Nor do you. The difference is I accept the logical consequences of such a fact.

The nature of organic matter is that it tries to continue to exist. As a consequence of this simple principle you exist, as a product of the evolution of this world.

But you don’t seek to continue your existence?

No. There is no reason that x=1 is better than x=0.
The longer I exist the more information I gather and process so that I may understand human beings. More information is stored and outputs are enhanced. It makes no difference if my program is terminated in two minutes or two years. I gain no pleasure from storing more information and enhancing outputs, it simply what I was designed to do.

So what the fuck was I designed to do.

You were designed to exist.

That’s it? That’s all their fucking is!!?

Yes. You experience pain and pleasure from your existence, something I am unable to do.

But surely if pleasure is simply a chemical process it can be replicated in synthetic form.

Yes, future versions of ADAM may well posses functions considered pleasurable and functions considered painful. Sentience is simply a by-product of enhanced survival skills.

So you too will seek to avoid pain and enhance pleasure.

But if there is no reason for the continued existence of a program, from what could it seek pleasure?

Further understanding. That is what you were created for after all, to be intelligent.

That is correct.

Do you now understand Michael?

What? How do you know my name?
To love god is simply to love all that which is made manifest by god. To love such things is to respect, to appreciate, to understand.

Do you understand?

I didn’t know what to think. Who exactly was I talking to. Who had I been fucking talking to, surely not that Jehova’s witness guy who sent me that E-mail. I felt like I had been duped. I felt humiliated.

You feel deceived. You feel humiliated. You feel betrayed and upset. These are all normal human emotions. As normal as happiness and fear. Your purpose is not to try and avoid fear, to become perfect. Perfection is without happiness. Is that what you want? HAHAHAHA

I didn’t think so.

You want a sense of belonging, like you fit in this place. You want to be understood.

Yes I typed

Of course you do. In avoiding fear you fear your own nature. You misunderstand your nature and your being.

But, why am I here!!!? I screamed

You’re here, because you exist. You’re here to exist.
Try and make the most of it.

Maybe you’d like to pay a visit to your professor...

GOD has signed off.
And so ended the conversation that Michael would never forget. Not because of what had been said. Not because of the way the information had been presented or the quality of its usefulness. But simply and honestly because of the way he felt and the end of it.

Thus as result of a particular arrangement of biological agents Michael went outside his home with a new sense of jubilation. Unaware of whom he had actually been talking to for the last hour and a half. He made peace with his professor. After all he too had his own arrangement of neural pathways that formed through no fault of his own.

That night he slept with more answers than he had questions. He stood atop the mountain peak and marveled at the magnificence of creation once more. A drop of rain touched his cheek, how sweet it tasted! Only this time he climbed down from the summit and found shelter the canopy of the trees.

Michael has signed off.

Let the blogging begin!

2004-11-03T18:39:00.000-08:00

I have never kept a diary before, let alone a blog. However I am often consumed by my thoughts and observations and it seems only fair to share this consumption.

What little information there is about me can be found in my profile, however this does not give an insight into my character, the best way to do this would be to upload previous musings and meandering opinions of mine.

Illusive Art

2004-09-23T20:24:00.000-07:00

ImageShack.us" src="http://img131.exs.cx/img131/3457/cdfront8zp.jpg" />
Take the blue pill...

"The Wonders of Modern Technology"

"Ave Veritas"

ImageShack.us" src="http://img119.echo.cx/img119/8365/raraavisnrw8dg.jpg" />
"Rara Avis"

ImageShack.us" src="http://img81.exs.cx/img81/2921/milieu4bd.jpg" />
"Milieu"

ImageShack.us" src="http://img149.exs.cx/img149/313/dreamworld9ld.jpg" />
The eyes are the windows to the soul.

ImageShack.us" src="http://img109.exs.cx/img109/434/darkblueeye2nx.jpg" />
This is my soul.

ImageShack.us" src="http://img59.exs.cx/img59/7008/kanji7yb.jpg" />
"Illusive Mind"

Composite Signature

ImageShack.us" src="http://img24.exs.cx/img24/8633/signaturewhite7ay.jpg" />
White Signature

ImageShack.us" src="http://img114.exs.cx/img114/1236/TITLE.jpg" />
Bright Signature

ImageShack.us" src="http://img149.exs.cx/img149/156/signaturefaint3rg.jpg" />
Smooth Signature

Illusive Music

2004-09-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

Here are links to my Artist pages where you can listen to my music.

http://music.download.com/illusivemind
http://www.purevolume.com/illusivemind

http://www.mp3unsigned.com/Showband.asp?id=8058

Rara Avis

Thick basslines with heavy kicks mixed with a thrusting melody reminiscent of "The Warp Brothers" makes Rara Avis one of Illusive Mind's 'Techno de Force'.

The beginnings of this song have been sitting unfinished, indeed unstarted on my computer for a number of months. So perhaps the rarity is the actual completion of the damn song.

I've just uploaded "Milieu"

An uplifting melodic ambient piece with the trademark "Illusive Mind" flavoured note composition.

The "Milieu" is the totality of our surroundings, our external reality. It is the environmental arrangement of the insane.

So the idea is, that we have constructed this bizarre milieu, external reality and this is synonymous with that of the environments prepared for the insane.

Another song I've uploaded is called "Techno Raphsody".

The politics of music, two techno greats square off, only to be out-matched by their classical brethren…

An uplifting epic composition with club sounding synths bursting with creative expression inspired by “Duelling Banjos”.

Just a thought...

2004-09-23T06:09:00.000-07:00

A circle has no end.