Consider this implication that the human brain is composed mainly of water and that thoughts are electrical transmissions. These are scientific facts. Also fact that the brain requires oxygen to remain functional. Heck let's toss in that it is a complex structure. And we will take the final step and say that we are explicitly discussing a fruit fly brain.
Now, remove religion. I am not saying that a deity of sorts does not exist or anything like that. This is just a simple extension of Sartre's statement in Being and Nothingness that he did not deny god existed but he questioned should god not exist man would create himself. Arguing Sartre's theory is an entirely different post. And while I am removing religion, remove qualia, that mythical "essence" that Searle and others desperately cling to in their argument against computers and artificial intelligence.
Referencing the opening paragraph, I have to wonder if rain could have sentience? Let me define sentience as having the quality of being able to compose and transmit thoughts independently of outside manipulations. Rain is composed mostly of water, conducts electrical transmissions, has access to unlimited amounts of oxygen and is a complex structure. To say that rain is not a complex structure, snow is a type of frozen rain.
Is it possible to prove that rain is not capable of sentience? Not that rain is sentient, but that it is impossible for rain to be sentient. Having disqualified religion and qualia, how can the argument against be made? Is this a perversion of Pascal's wager?
09 February 2011
05 January 2011
Happy 2011
Sorry for the infrequent posts. Hopefully I can get back to posting at least once per month this year...
06 October 2010
What is bad?
A local television ministry has the following statement in their commercial:
Putting aside the question of whether such deities exist, instead we need to focus on the ambiguity of the words good and bad. Neither word has an absolute meaning. Each person, pending we have free will, makes constant determinations as to what they believe is good and bad. Sartre was fond of making the argument that without god man creates himself. I make a much looser assertion.
A perfect example is food. Say you think prime rib is good. To a vegan, prime rib is bad. It is both good and bad, ambiguous.
To a catholic, god is good and the devil is bad. To a satanist the devil is good and god is bad.
What about murder? Murder is the willful taking of life. Can murder be a good thing or is it always bad? A poor analogy would be the war argument, that soldiers willingly murder people, but they don't. They follow orders. Taking ones own life is murder and therefore bad. But its not. In certain cultures committing suicide is respected and therefore good.
And if god exists, then god takes our lives willfully, being the supreme arbitrator of life and death. So to rewrite the statement of the television ministry:
if its good its god, if its bad its the devil.
Putting aside the question of whether such deities exist, instead we need to focus on the ambiguity of the words good and bad. Neither word has an absolute meaning. Each person, pending we have free will, makes constant determinations as to what they believe is good and bad. Sartre was fond of making the argument that without god man creates himself. I make a much looser assertion.
A perfect example is food. Say you think prime rib is good. To a vegan, prime rib is bad. It is both good and bad, ambiguous.
To a catholic, god is good and the devil is bad. To a satanist the devil is good and god is bad.
What about murder? Murder is the willful taking of life. Can murder be a good thing or is it always bad? A poor analogy would be the war argument, that soldiers willingly murder people, but they don't. They follow orders. Taking ones own life is murder and therefore bad. But its not. In certain cultures committing suicide is respected and therefore good.
And if god exists, then god takes our lives willfully, being the supreme arbitrator of life and death. So to rewrite the statement of the television ministry:
If its good it might be god or the devil, and if its bad it might be god or the devil
10 June 2010
The truth question
Nietzsche once wrote that "Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies." And of course the begged question is what is truth then? How does one define it and validate it. Can that even happen? Do we kill truth be the simple process of definition?
From convictions truth becomes irrelevant. Convictions force truth to be what it wants it to be. In religion, conviction would make a deity truth. The quest then would be to cast off convictions to know truth. But how does one do that? How does one even have any idea what convictions are?
If we believe in something, then it is a conviction. Worse still, "all things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." In the Dark Ages, the Church determined what was truth through its immense power. It silenced Copernicus and Galileo. It burned those who questioned their autonomy. So the question of truth gets murkier as we try to de-wed ourselves of the influence of religion.
Left stark and bare, we can only assume that Nietzsche is saying truth is. Or I suppose more correctly, truth was. It is a thing that can't be defined but has one true definition. Its like the Mohist saying that no matter where you look at a stream, you are seeing the beginning, middle, and end all at once. It is the beginning the flows from where you look, the middle of the entire stream, and the end of where it came from. It is truth.
Truth can never flow from definition or conviction. Truth is what exists and it must be something that can never have a definition. Truth just is.
From convictions truth becomes irrelevant. Convictions force truth to be what it wants it to be. In religion, conviction would make a deity truth. The quest then would be to cast off convictions to know truth. But how does one do that? How does one even have any idea what convictions are?
If we believe in something, then it is a conviction. Worse still, "all things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." In the Dark Ages, the Church determined what was truth through its immense power. It silenced Copernicus and Galileo. It burned those who questioned their autonomy. So the question of truth gets murkier as we try to de-wed ourselves of the influence of religion.
Left stark and bare, we can only assume that Nietzsche is saying truth is. Or I suppose more correctly, truth was. It is a thing that can't be defined but has one true definition. Its like the Mohist saying that no matter where you look at a stream, you are seeing the beginning, middle, and end all at once. It is the beginning the flows from where you look, the middle of the entire stream, and the end of where it came from. It is truth.
Truth can never flow from definition or conviction. Truth is what exists and it must be something that can never have a definition. Truth just is.
19 April 2010
A question of time
It was Augustine of Hippo who declared that time exists in the created, and that god exists beyond the created, for god was not created. This notion goes against all human-established/observed laws of nature. But since these laws were written by man does it necessitate that they are actually true? Could our observance of these laws be nothing more than an intentional illusion, or a weakness of mind? Is time not necessarily linear, or engendered with multiple facets?
For god to exist beyond time it is apparently necessary to support Augustine's view. If actions require time, and god acts beyond time, then time itself must have a variable that allows for actions without time. It would require time to exist in a sort of multi-dimensional way, in that for humans time is linear, for supernatural beings such as a god time could be non-linear or multi-linear. As there have been interesting findings in the field of non-linear dynamics, it can not be omitted that time as we know it, may not be as it is.
Are humans of sufficient intelligence to understand the laws of nature? It is quite feasible that our arrogance prevents us from exploring/considering that what we “know” is in error. Our knowledge of nature is based on our experience and observations, and is limited to human-centric views. Perhaps dolphins perceive the laws of nature as something entirely different than the laws that we do. Does this lend itself to supporting that god could exist then? No. But it does allow for the possibility, as we do not have definitive answers to the universe. Physics may unlock many mysteries, but with each one unlocked, there are millions more that remain locked. The Anasazi are the only known people who were Moon worshippers. This seeming anomaly points squarely at the limitations of our understandings of physics and of nature. What knowledge did they possess, knowledge that we do not have now?
While it may seem impossible for a god to exist beyond time, we must have a concrete definition of time, one that is unchallengeable for us to make that claim a law. As we do not understand what gravity is, though we clearly experience it, we understand time as we know it. But time could be something entirely different from what we “know”. And as such, a being may exist beyond time as we know it, and that we may exist in a pocket of time that is just a facet of true time.
For god to exist beyond time it is apparently necessary to support Augustine's view. If actions require time, and god acts beyond time, then time itself must have a variable that allows for actions without time. It would require time to exist in a sort of multi-dimensional way, in that for humans time is linear, for supernatural beings such as a god time could be non-linear or multi-linear. As there have been interesting findings in the field of non-linear dynamics, it can not be omitted that time as we know it, may not be as it is.
Are humans of sufficient intelligence to understand the laws of nature? It is quite feasible that our arrogance prevents us from exploring/considering that what we “know” is in error. Our knowledge of nature is based on our experience and observations, and is limited to human-centric views. Perhaps dolphins perceive the laws of nature as something entirely different than the laws that we do. Does this lend itself to supporting that god could exist then? No. But it does allow for the possibility, as we do not have definitive answers to the universe. Physics may unlock many mysteries, but with each one unlocked, there are millions more that remain locked. The Anasazi are the only known people who were Moon worshippers. This seeming anomaly points squarely at the limitations of our understandings of physics and of nature. What knowledge did they possess, knowledge that we do not have now?
While it may seem impossible for a god to exist beyond time, we must have a concrete definition of time, one that is unchallengeable for us to make that claim a law. As we do not understand what gravity is, though we clearly experience it, we understand time as we know it. But time could be something entirely different from what we “know”. And as such, a being may exist beyond time as we know it, and that we may exist in a pocket of time that is just a facet of true time.
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