tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33772070565513525462024-03-14T06:16:45.006+00:00Philosophical InvestigationsAs 2020 opens, we're celebrating our first 300 000 readers! Philosophical Investigations is an open access, online, scholarly collaborative knowledge work, but a work that is not organized from A to Z, but as a network of interwoven themes. All articles are questions.docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.comBlogger410125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-2713081350175839542024-03-04T14:36:00.012+00:002024-03-05T14:59:14.502+00:00Picture Post #43 The Importance of Empathy<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEejfiQ6qVOJDYHYpId_ro2oqntMS5VpR4-TGmlsEYb8HfrrWn4B1krwnJHCdjmPxnwD5BOYEMV0AiYP0ZjCZnmDMu9MdNRPUIZ1VQ912xqMPvsJss2tmzAvVb9ynjTE2mayjpe10pCHM/s315/logo+Pi+%25281%2529.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEejfiQ6qVOJDYHYpId_ro2oqntMS5VpR4-TGmlsEYb8HfrrWn4B1krwnJHCdjmPxnwD5BOYEMV0AiYP0ZjCZnmDMu9MdNRPUIZ1VQ912xqMPvsJss2tmzAvVb9ynjTE2mayjpe10pCHM/s0/logo+Pi+%25281%2529.png" /></a></p><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><hr style="text-align: center;" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be</i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>neither will they become what they might appear to become.'</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: arvo; font-size: 16px;"><hr /></b></div><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"> </span></b></span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">Posted by Martin Cohen<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #38761d;"> </span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5B5EUGnnx3vReEFg8h-Ng2sI9SFdr2cFFALsZj9VwNCnvORj3xW42dOAi88AGyMYOL2wkhrQM2YLUviiQhYJ7LgcynLgTJ_qMqbaORjY9i-nqMNHf9EQjarHply6_niq4Zy96k1zpEOv_cSJIXXDTEv-mUceKb4KgW7XX6-Z1WA3bUd-3bqLu2M7smID4/s990/APTOPIX_Israel_Palestinians.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="660" data-original-width="990" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5B5EUGnnx3vReEFg8h-Ng2sI9SFdr2cFFALsZj9VwNCnvORj3xW42dOAi88AGyMYOL2wkhrQM2YLUviiQhYJ7LgcynLgTJ_qMqbaORjY9i-nqMNHf9EQjarHply6_niq4Zy96k1zpEOv_cSJIXXDTEv-mUceKb4KgW7XX6-Z1WA3bUd-3bqLu2M7smID4/w640-h426/APTOPIX_Israel_Palestinians.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I </span>remember reading about Nazi Germany, which is truly the only comparison that makes sense when looking at Israel's genocidal hatred of all things Palestinian. The ordinary German people used to line the streets and toss bread to Jews in the wagons as they went past on their way to concentration camps. They did this for AMUSEMENT - they laughed at the people scrabbling for the scraps, like animals. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The point is, ordinary Germans felt their Jewish neighbours were not "people'. Something of the same cruel indifference governs the behaviour of Israelis to their Palestinian neighbours today. The picture is powerful because it reveals what happens where common humanity has disappeared.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">AP photographer Tsafrir Abayov, who has been covering the border between Israel and Gaza for almost 20 years commented in the <i>Independent</i>:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><blockquote>“I grew up in Ashkelon about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of Gaza, and I’ve been covering the Israel-Gaza border for almost 20 years, so I know this border from end to end. I have a lot of spots where I know I can get a good shot. On this day, I was driving by and I saw a group of female soldiers who had gone up to a tank position on the Israeli side, about 50 meters (164 feet) from the border. I don’t think these soldiers are normally stationed there. They just went up to take a look. From this position you can see right into Gaza — and all the destruction.”</blockquote></div></div><hr /><br />docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-3646204785324919682024-01-29T00:00:00.001+00:002024-01-29T11:38:36.695+00:00Bittersweet Ballads<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6gKTchX7p2f2bgJgpf_D9FVmVLjsWxsuXxcHSqoaPyIfcvamdHtTk1Okns9WKOKyem1DNyK7RucSF_q6sFSop-MtqjZJlOpu4AhnNn8ID5ES6Tpb5P7J-z-wgrj_MQ6EJMaE-wZnfAioGHI676WYsDg1jEdHY5w9HDkQSiTbkIU3il5iPJw5Nk6P4WoSE/w400-h279/refugeee-camp.png" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Children playing amidst the rubble of damaged buildings in a camp for Palestinian refugees</i></span></div><br /><b>By Martin Cohen</b><br /><br /><div><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">P</span>alestine Wail and Other Bittersweet Ballads</i> is a collection of poems by Yahia Lababidi. Yahia, as he recalls, has a personal connection to the conflict in Palestine, because his grandmother, Rabiha Dajani, was, seventy-five years ago, forced to flee her ancestral home in Palestine at gunpoint. She went on to become a remarkable educator, activist and social worker.</div><div><br /></div><div>The collection starts with an apt quotation. Mahmoud Darwish’s aphorism that:</div><div> </div><div><i>«Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.»</i></div><div><br /></div><div>These are poems like ‘We Were Playing with the Clouds’ by the Palestinian artist and activist, Ghassan Kanafani (1936 – 1972), which runs:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div><i>I wish children didn’t die.</i></div><div><i>I wish they would be temporarily elevated</i></div><div><i>to the skies until the war ends.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Then they would return home safe,</i></div><div><i>And when their parents would ask them,</i></div><div><i>where were you? They would say,</i></div><div><i>we were playing in the clouds.</i></div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div>Yahia himself writes, by way of an introduction to the collection:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>‘The death of one child, due to natural causes, is nearly unbearable. The systematic, cold-blooded murder of thousands of innocent children, in the name of so-called ‘self-defense’, is an unjustifiable moral obscenity. Yet, this is what the Israeli government continues to do and it is appalling that there remain democratic nations as well as civilized individuals who find it difficult to unequivocally condemn such depravity and call for a ceasefire. Who will honor these blameless, anonymous martyrs? How can we remain silent in the face of such atrocities?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Words matter, since narratives shape realities and, in turn, how history is told and who is deemed worthy of our sympathies. That’s why artists are deemed dangerous, for daring to speak truth to power. It is, especially, significant for example that since October 7th, more than 70 Palestinian journalists have been killed, in Gaza, in the line of duty while Israel has murdered at least thirteen Palestinian poets and writers in Gaza.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Our understanding of the human condition is diminished without the emotionally imaginative and spiritually-enriching witness of storytellers and artists. We know from watching the news that narratives are grossly distorted when high-jacked by corrupt politicians and compromised media. As a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Malcom X, succinctly put it: “If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.’</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div>As a case in point, just over a month ago, young Palestinian poet, scholar and activist, Dr Refaat Alareer, was assassinated by a targeted Israeli airstrike, along with his brother, sister and her four children. Anticipating his own death, Alareer shared this heart-rending poem, just one month prior to his murder by Israeli forces:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div><i>If I must die</i></div><div> </div><div>If I must die,</div><div>you must live</div><div>to tell my story</div><div>to sell my things</div><div>to buy a piece of cloth</div><div>and some strings,</div><div>(make it white with a long tail)</div><div>so that a child, somewhere in Gaza</div><div>while looking heaven in the eye</div><div>awaiting his dad who left in a blaze–</div><div>and bid no one farewell</div><div>not even to his flesh</div><div>not even to himself–</div><div>sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above</div><div>and thinks for a moment an angel is there</div><div>bringing back love</div><div><br /></div><div>If I must die</div><div>let it bring hope</div><div>let it be a tale.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>But this is a collection of new poetry by Yahia Lababidi so let us include now this one – by way of a taster. The reader is sincerely encouraged to seek out the rest in the collection.</div><div><br /></div><blockquote><i>The Light-keepers</i><br /><br />Hope is a lighthouse <br />(or, at least, a lamppost) <br />someone must keep vigil <br />to illumine this possibility<br /><br />In the dark, a poet will climb <br />narrow, unsteady stairs <br /> to gaze past crashing waves <br />and sing to us new horizons<br /><br />Others, less far-sighted, might <br />be deceived by the encroaching night <br />mistake the black for lasting, but <br />not those entrusted with trimming wicks<br /><br />Their tasks are more pressing — <br /> winding clockworks, replenishing oil –<br /> there is no time for despair <br />when tending to the Light.</blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Commenting on the collection, James Crews, author of <i>Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Creativity, and Self-Compassion,</i> writes: </div><div><br /></div><div>‘These are necessary and truthful poems. Yahia Lababidi powerfully illuminates this heartbreaking time and terrible season in the history of our world. This book, like a lantern in darkness, brings to light the truth of lives we must learn to honor and remember.’</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><hr /><br />And do check out Yahia’s YouTube channel where he regularly includes readings of his poems.<br /><br /><i>https://www.youtube.com/@Yahia.Lababidi</i><br /><div><p class="yiv6783150526MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; outline: none;"><br /></p></div></div>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-54312658545541064142024-01-08T00:00:00.006+00:002024-01-08T00:00:00.141+00:00What's in a name? <div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpGQPiM5-VKz0KuYM5BcH-oBnLe2URKz8qnPjVL1xKR6xI0RaKdAFktaPbNEYOn_kUaXxcwsVJBzrdvg3dx7UNrliki2ZacEF32HriTRbQErqysQD8KKnxXhCpJObXiQm1Mk9dzr87sTIfivRJ281FgpOqwUTAwDvRFLlwGYVN2-vgMLEjt7JRdhoJRk3O/s632/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="632" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpGQPiM5-VKz0KuYM5BcH-oBnLe2URKz8qnPjVL1xKR6xI0RaKdAFktaPbNEYOn_kUaXxcwsVJBzrdvg3dx7UNrliki2ZacEF32HriTRbQErqysQD8KKnxXhCpJObXiQm1Mk9dzr87sTIfivRJ281FgpOqwUTAwDvRFLlwGYVN2-vgMLEjt7JRdhoJRk3O/s320/images.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><b>By Shoidur Rahman</b><div><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span>rench <i>Martin</i>ique: no marionette martinet then, or nightingale. Thus begins this tail, as all tails do, quietly and decently, but rising to prenominal elaboration. The jackdaw may <i>crakkajack</i> alone, but listens to the earth call of toucan.<br /><br />Now the toucan’s brow is so heavily, crossly drawn, a look of ineffable concentration is there like beetlebrow. But it's also endearingly light and playful as well. Wait, my bird, ‘til I get to the bottom of this tail. Wait, ‘til I end my song.<br /><br />His crumpled orange beak is sharp, not yet for this world – nor so flash that he could start to work it like a hip-hop hopeful, complicity, asininely <i>imitatio</i> - but as a scimitar he might use it as a dagger, instead. - Fan that tail! But only just so – modestly! </div><div><br /></div><div>Don't grauble or grumble or grovel in the dirt, like a turkey. Be glossy, a high shine, be as polishedly black as any upperclass British person of high decorum wearing bowler hat and clipped moustache and suit. Be as black as the polished wood veneer of the effigies of a certain yesteryear, a toucan squat be on my windowsill bookshelf. </div><div><br /></div><div>But if in your boots you see reflected your own face, have a care you don't remember poor Indian shoe shine boys, who wore the big turbans, who daily pushed the brush, shovelling hay and other shit stuff, but never grovelled, earned only a rupee a day, or exchanged it so that their brother could eat. Only let it be, so that it live.</div><div><br />He’s quite fine, toucan, complete within these sheaves of leaf and shade, his tropical retreat. The black men come and go, toiling in the blazing sun. But his eye is gimleted, and he’s quick to scuttle, two at a time, on clawed feet, breathing respiration in a big billowing sky, which descends to our planet like the calmest bluest sheet you've ever seen…</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-44693628296209195212023-12-25T00:00:00.032+00:002023-12-26T14:13:58.624+00:00POETRY: Oh, AI!<div><span 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align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNBqzjZ4N3-hpbyK1lVDdvzuo6E37MGNJoPDnlPLlI3iQF9AFE9m-7AVeFBMtkamLHvyu2l3ONkabo2sRxC06lpjNtMddtrRy4InSgW5cc7kMJXROpyhb5W94S3BFUj0wavleLdyl0fc4LRtpm2Zu3sx0MEgykKvSQ9T5AvB_NjEDj3w9fUuB5sfo4PDt/s256/ai3.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNBqzjZ4N3-hpbyK1lVDdvzuo6E37MGNJoPDnlPLlI3iQF9AFE9m-7AVeFBMtkamLHvyu2l3ONkabo2sRxC06lpjNtMddtrRy4InSgW5cc7kMJXROpyhb5W94S3BFUj0wavleLdyl0fc4LRtpm2Zu3sx0MEgykKvSQ9T5AvB_NjEDj3w9fUuB5sfo4PDt/s1600/ai3.png" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan to in conversation with the contemporary novelist Mo Yan, Courtesy AI.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>By Chengde Chen</b><blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><br /></blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>h, <i>AI</i>, are you the Southern Gate between the known and unknown<br /><br />Or the Monkey King of humanoid capabilities, unparalleled and bold?<br /><br />You, on my behalf, think, write, design, and program,<br /><br />Responding effortlessly, seeking widely, and chatting with ease.<br /><br />Your literary prowess is like galloping from Qu Yuan* to Mo Yan**,<br /><br />Your profound knowledge spans from Thales’ to Musk’s domain.<br /><br />Your ‘deep learning’ leaves me trailing in the dust,<br /><br />While your ‘algorithmic’ space unifies man and God!<br /><br /> <br /><br />I know you’re a machine, yet I envy your intelligence,<br /><br />You're clearly my invention, yet exposing my incompetence.<br /><br />I should celebrate your arrival, yet fear self-destruction,<br /><br />I want to reject you, yet dread delaying the theory of evolution.<br /><br />Ah, please tell me, how should I truly treat you? <br /><br /> Is it really your insidious duty to replace us?</blockquote><blockquote>I wish I could transform into your ‘artificial intelligence’,<br /><br />Let you taste the mixed flavours humans experience facing AI!</blockquote><br /><br /> <hr /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">*Qu Yuan (300 BC) is regarded as the greatest poet in early Chinese history—the first author of verse in China to have his name associated with his work.<br /><br />**Mo Yan is a Chinese novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012.</span><div><p class="yiv6783150526MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; outline: none;"> </p></div>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-10162791020389079512023-12-05T11:00:00.066+00:002023-12-05T22:20:42.848+00:00Chernobyl's Philosophical Lesson<div class="separator" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">How to Slay the Nuclear Zombie? </span></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigOVTKk-vzC5eZeggLikEWTk1J3spQ_773zFwGzId9ZS83FcYHJnSxAp7XPBuNHM-rPyviC2hG7zNnZ5npMXpJXzH2FVk5yQs9F7NccS_00FO_OMLJU62WkKEQpTzWB0KY5AU_jTmf1RzxP48HIIx42B33Yir5KeS09vhyphenhyphenGCDk_GBynoQEL6quMKkZURqd/s3264/chernobyl-book1.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigOVTKk-vzC5eZeggLikEWTk1J3spQ_773zFwGzId9ZS83FcYHJnSxAp7XPBuNHM-rPyviC2hG7zNnZ5npMXpJXzH2FVk5yQs9F7NccS_00FO_OMLJU62WkKEQpTzWB0KY5AU_jTmf1RzxP48HIIx42B33Yir5KeS09vhyphenhyphenGCDk_GBynoQEL6quMKkZURqd/s320/chernobyl-book1.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><br /><b>By Martin Cohen</b><br /><i><br />Review article on the occasion of the<a href="http://eminaltan.com/chernobyl_list.html " rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> publication of ‘Chernobyl’ by Emin Altan </a></i><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span>ow here's a coffee table debate starting book with a difference. Emin Altan’s photographic tale of the nuclear power station that exploded on 26 April 1986 is both a grim journey and yet somehow a poetic one. Page after page of evocative images – black and white with just a hint of lost colour – speak not only about the folly of nuclear power, but of the greater folly of human conceit. <br /><br />The images in the book for the most part fall into two categories. There are the are ones from the radiation-soaked exclusion zone that actually could be taken almost anywhere where human plans have been thwarted and decay has set in. A basketball court strewn with rubble, juxtaposed with a rediscovered photo – hopelessly mouldy – of children in gym gear exercising with sticks is an example that caught my eye. You sense that these children were imagining themselves as future world-beaters, and the reality of human transcience is brought home by the peeling decay of the abandoned gym.<br /><br />There is a beauty in these decaying photographs that Altan’s book powerfully conveys. The book plays with images of life that are also images of death. This is a photographic essay that is about much more than Chernobyl. Better would be to say that it is about existential questions of human existence. Scenes of life abruptly halted blended with decades of inevitable decay But then, you might wonder, how does nuclear energy, always keen to claim to be the brave and the new, fit in? But it does very well, because, as I say in my contribution for the book, nuclear energy is a zombie technology… a technology that arises from the grave, if not every night, seemingly every decade, before stalking the Earth in pursuit of hapless victims.<br /><br />Nuclear energy is eye-wateringly expensive, with effectively unlimited downstream costs for dealing with shuttered power stations and radioactive waste. It is the only human strategy for energy generation that also comes with a very real risk of one day destroying all human life on the planet. <br /><br />Another paradox is that, in recent years the nuclear industry has sold its reactors not to wealthy countries - but to the world’s poorest: Sudan, Nigeria, Egypt, the Philippines, Indonesia… Why do such countries sign up for nuclear? The answer is finance deals, and dirty money for regimes. Which is why India and China, countries in which millions of people live below the poverty line and can’t afford electricity at all, are the world’s biggest spenders on nuclear. <br /><br />However, the reasons why, once upon a time, all self-respecting environmentalists hated nuclear power are still there. It produces invisible pollution— radiation— with the potential to seep everywhere, causing genetic diseases that interfere with nature. After the explosion at Chernobyl, an invisible cloud slowly spread across the Earth poisoning food chains and leaving toxic residues in the seas and soils. Residues that would be toxic for thousands of years… And Chernobyl could have been far worse, had it not been for the heroism coupled with (ironically) the ignorance of the people who fought to prevent the plant exploding. <br /><br />When I researched nuclear’s real share of the world energy pie for my book, The Doomsday Machine, a few years ago, what emerged very clearly was that renewables, including old technologies like hydroelectric, played a secondary but significant of the energy mix - but nuclear did not. It was, I wrote then, merely ‘the cherry’ on the top of the energy pie. <br /><br />Because, while the technology of renewables steadily becomes cheaper and more efficient, nuclear energy steadily increases in cost, while efficiency gains remain purely speculative. Put another way, energy is a very complex issue, and simple one-size-fits-all solutions won’t work. It’s true, as as the nuclear lobby says, that renewables cannot easily replace nuclear for energy intensive industries and that their output is by nature erratic. It’s also true that for all the rhetoric, global primary energy consumption has not only increased over the last century, but has increased exponentially. <br /><br />The conclusion, then surely, is that part of the solution to the world’s energy problem, the solution that removes the need for nuclear, is we have to stop the ever-increasing rate of energy consumption. However, this apparently virtuous aim is complicated, indeed made not virtuous at all, when it is realised that at the moment most of the world’s population already use rather modest amounts of energy, while it is a rich elite who gobble up the lion’s share. Yes, the careless consumption of the world’s rich has to be curbed, but on the other hand, a more equal distribution of income in the world must inevitably also create higher energy demand. Because, today, hundreds of millions of people lack access to sufficient energy, often with dire consequences for themselves and the environment. When people lack access to electricity for cooking and heating, they rely on solid fuel sources – mostly firewood, but also dung and crop waste. The use of wood for fuel often contributes to deforestation – even if in principle wood can be cropped sustainably. Electricity, on the other hand, allows refrigeration of food; washing machines for clothes; and light to read at night. In some countries today, children can be found sitting under street lights to do their homework. The energy problem of half of the world is energy poverty. <br /><br />Fortunately, the kinds of energy needed by these families and individuals are increasingly within the ability of renewables to provide, while the demands of industry are flat or declining and possible to meet within the current energy mix – without needing nuclear. Without, likewise, needing us to answer all the existential questions. Which is just as well, as surely these have no easy answers.<br />docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-60660407732636585322023-11-06T12:03:00.003+00:002023-11-06T12:17:30.908+00:00A Poem comparing Confucius and Marx (with a twist)<div><span 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class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibAg6CVVsEQLyhl-2h4gICtv1O7sB_jF2Fh4QlYInYNoyXyeN1FWB5ppYW_QBX4Xu7MxzyIA8yIPrDaA9RE2yulFfciyg6lkCq__YLv7tWFgKB0k4RygHbbPsGQ7jGbOzmM0mnJcCyGJX8pUJf7wtoCsTPcAwq8Q_5yAasq_xk0ed1pWILV-pf4Aj9BsMb/s1649/conf-and-marx.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1649" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibAg6CVVsEQLyhl-2h4gICtv1O7sB_jF2Fh4QlYInYNoyXyeN1FWB5ppYW_QBX4Xu7MxzyIA8yIPrDaA9RE2yulFfciyg6lkCq__YLv7tWFgKB0k4RygHbbPsGQ7jGbOzmM0mnJcCyGJX8pUJf7wtoCsTPcAwq8Q_5yAasq_xk0ed1pWILV-pf4Aj9BsMb/s320/conf-and-marx.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />By Chengde Chen</b><div><br /> I just asked ChatGPT, one of the new artificial intelligence to write a poem about Confucius and Marx. You can see what I got below:<br /><br /><i></i><blockquote><i> Confucius and Marx</i> </blockquote><blockquote>In ancient halls where wisdom's flame did burn,<br />Two minds emerged, in different times they'd yearn.<br />Confucius, sage of old, with noble grace,<br />His thoughts engraved in time, a lasting trace.<br /><br />In golden words, he spoke of virtue's way,<br />Harmony and order, like the break of day.<br />His Analects, a guide for hearts and minds,<br />A path to walk, where virtue intertwines.<br /><br />Marx, a modern thinker, bold and keen,<br />In times of change, a revolutionary dream.<br />He saw the struggle, class against class,<br />A call for justice, echoing like glass.<br /><br />Confucius sought the moral man's design,<br />Harmony in life, like a vintage wine.<br />Marx, the critic, saw the chains of fate,<br />Called for a revolution, a new state.<br /><br />Two voices echo through the corridors,<br />Philosophers distinct, like distant shores.<br />Confucius with tradition, hand in hand,<br />Marx, the visionary, reshaping the land.<br /><br />In ancient scrolls and communist tomes,<br />Their words live on, in intellectual homes.<br />Confucius and Marx, an unlikely pair,<br />Yet their ideas dance in the cosmic air.</blockquote><br />I really think we poets, and writers generally, are close to be being made redundant by it, and I feel lucky to get my novel published before it came! . A philosopher friend (Donald Gillis) recently talked to me about this question: how should we define AI knowledge – and what is the difference between a computer gaining from ‘deep learning’ from numerous documents – and humble humans learning from experience? </div><div><br /></div><div>(Oh, and the image for the poem was also created by artificial intelligence!)</div><div><br /> </div>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-14381053009218251252023-10-26T22:09:00.006+01:002023-10-26T22:17:29.914+01:00Why Don't People Seem to Care about Palestinian Lives?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgahLsmioCLf2RNiYVkcvcyIxppq0GRach3L2cnW-zvN-xhIMsqoS1KAI7v_D-kAmjnQJF0xO71J8wvYR7RffMaB7yWLLIvwwqDtfnNhh3xd0SxuVSvs1nquPso3X8pwGZHk5idKBSh5JZNigOhExfjT1NgqDcBRZn3ivPQH0WoQbNuACphlN5lVDGbWQ-r/s602/main-qimg-319f3138d92ab18c563f706cfd9ad93f.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="602" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgahLsmioCLf2RNiYVkcvcyIxppq0GRach3L2cnW-zvN-xhIMsqoS1KAI7v_D-kAmjnQJF0xO71J8wvYR7RffMaB7yWLLIvwwqDtfnNhh3xd0SxuVSvs1nquPso3X8pwGZHk5idKBSh5JZNigOhExfjT1NgqDcBRZn3ivPQH0WoQbNuACphlN5lVDGbWQ-r/s320/main-qimg-319f3138d92ab18c563f706cfd9ad93f.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Palestine is being ‘ethnically clensed’ in plain sight - yet the West seems indifferent</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><b>By Martin Cohen</b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">P</span><span style="text-align: center;">alestine is being ‘ethnically cleansed’ in plain sight - yet the West seems indifferent. Why is this? Wherever you start, the trail soon leads back to US politics.</span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">How close is the current U.S. President, Joe Biden to Israel and how much influence does the US have over Israeli policy? The answer is “very” and “not much”. In 2010, in the middle of the then-vice president’s trip to Israel, the ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu government embarrassed Biden by announcing 1,600 new homes for Jews in East Jerusalem, which was supposed to be the future capital of a future Palestinian rump state. Biden is notoriously aggressive and won’t normally tolerate any disagreement. Thus, in a 2022 article for Axios, entitled ‘Old Yeller: Biden's Private Fury’, Alex Thompon notes how:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">“Being yelled at by the president has become an internal initiation ceremony in this White House, aides say — if Biden doesn't yell at you, it could be a sign he doesn't respect you.’</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But with Israel, it seems the situation is rather different.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One of Netanyahu’s advisors, Uzi Arad, later revealed that when Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Biden soon after publicly humiliating him, Biden threw his arm around “Bibi” and said with a smile, “Just remember that I am your best fucking friend here.” Likewise, in 2012, Biden publicly said to Netanyahu: </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">“Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say, but I love you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In vain, it seems, do advisors try to educate Biden about the complex politics of the region. About memories like that of the Nakba, at the heart of this ignored history. This is a term which means “catastrophe” in Arabic. It refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Prior to this, contrary to claims that Arabs and Jews cannot live together, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. However, the conflict between Arabs and Jews intensified in the 1930s with the increase of Jewish immigration, driven by persecution in Europe, and with the Zionist movement aiming to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. It is always unpopular to state it, but in fact Hitler supported the idea which surely tells you want a terrible one it always was.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Today, the politics of Americans – and many other countries too, including the U.K – with respect to Israel is characterised by three things. Prejudice against Arabs - who are seen as various kinds of “terrorist”; ignorance and indifference to the history of the region. However, American politics add in one other ingredient, and a most dangerous one too, which is an irrational conviction that the Bible predicts the Second Coming of the Messiah – but only once the Holy Land is reunited under Israeli control. It has even been suggested that Joe Biden is part of this evangelical cult, though I have no way of knowing if this rumour is true. What I do know is that this ridiculous and irrational view has considerable influence on both Democrat and Republican parties. It feeds into a political consensus that, one way or bloody another, Palestine needs to become “Israel”.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Nonetheless, in November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab (with Jerusalem under UN administration). When, understandably, the Arab world rejected the plan, Jewish militias launched attacks against Palestinian towns and villages, forcing tens of thousands to flee. The situation escalated into a full-blown war in 1948. The result of this war was the permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Today, most of the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees from the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 war, and more than half are under the age of 18. Apart from the tragedy of forcibly displacing children, attempts to blame the inhabitants of Gaza for either “voting for” Hamas or not resisting them are hollow given this age distribution.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Today too, due to Israel’s siege of Gaza, the majority of Palestinians there no longer have access to basic needs such as healthcare, water, sanitation services, and electricity. Prior to the siege, their situation was already pretty desperate: according to the UN, 63 percent of the population was dependent on international aid; 80 percent lived in poverty and 95 percent did not have access to clean water.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Alas, many American voters have been encouraged to feel indifference to Palestinian suffering for decades, and instead have passively accepted an alternative reality in which the Jewish people not only there - but worldwide - are a persecuted but courageous minority. Never mind that nearly six million Americans are Jewish and live pretty safely there…</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The bottom line then is that, in the normal way, there is NO political price to be paid by the Democrats for supporting the Israeli government in its latest, murderous expansion of “Jewish areas”. However, this time, I actually think is NOT normal.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The catch is, despite Biden's "unconditional" support, Israel knows the Palestinians won't conveniently flee abroad (despite so many being killed at the moment, with highly publicise strategies of cutting off water and bombing hospitals) so its strategy becomes one of just killing. But Gaza alone contains some 600 000 people - mostly children. If they won’t flee, then they need to be killed. After all, Gaza was already a kind of prison. It will be hard to square that circle.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When I was younger, I remember meeting some of the "IDF heroes" of the last war - certainly they fought at a significant disadvantage against well-armed foes. Could it be today that the 360 000 reservists now begin to doubt their commanders? I think it is possible. However, If not, they will soon find themselves wading through civilian bodies in the rubble of Palestinian homes.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But back to a question posed recently on Quora will Biden pay a price for his indifference to the plight of millions of Palestinians? No, in the short term, I don’t see Biden or anyone else paying a price for this. However, in the longer term – indeed maybe as soon as within a few months – I think things will look very different At which point, either Israel corrects itself (as Netanyahu represents only a small minority) – or history will do it for them.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><hr /><i>Further reading on Palestine</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/http-visualizingpalestine-org-visuals-shrinking-palestine-static</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rpal20/collections/GazaTwoDecades</div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div></div></div>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-67153939010096892792023-08-28T00:00:00.001+01:002023-08-28T00:00:00.131+01:00A Word to the Wise <div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicHJxgWY6JJiDGmhTksw6YeYA3J4-sEghr8RBqrLrVBEdUvo5ufjfDvX1IsTVDfFUDwwyVwczBU-jBdwOg5U4IV50aTyEF6xff_R-Qq1fQNKwcrBpfJ0wvD6AgrpLhCNKK4SyKsavGCeFKLRKK_QH95qS99AgsgTpkcU61_YEvTUF3XoLyrROG6MoznyY8/s640/shipoftheseus.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><i><img border="0" data-original-height="336" data-original-width="640" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicHJxgWY6JJiDGmhTksw6YeYA3J4-sEghr8RBqrLrVBEdUvo5ufjfDvX1IsTVDfFUDwwyVwczBU-jBdwOg5U4IV50aTyEF6xff_R-Qq1fQNKwcrBpfJ0wvD6AgrpLhCNKK4SyKsavGCeFKLRKK_QH95qS99AgsgTpkcU61_YEvTUF3XoLyrROG6MoznyY8/s320/shipoftheseus.jpg.webp" width="320" /></i></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><i>Philosophy is a sailboat that deftly catches the fair breeze…</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><b><br /></b></div><b><div><b><br /></b></div>By Andrew Porter </b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span>e live in a time in which most people, were you to ask them ‘Do you think you’re wise?’, would look askance or confused and not answer straightforwardly. They are not prepared for the question by long anticipation and living in that habitat. But you might hear answers such as, ‘I’m wise about some things’ or ‘I’m pretty savvy when it comes to how to handle people’. But your question would remain unanswered. <br /><br />Maybe it’s the circles I run in, but it seems that there's little to no hankering for wisdom; it is not prevalent. It is as if many people feel that moral relativism – the common <i>zeitgeist</i> – has taken them off the hook and they are relieved. But choices have a way of illuminating obvious help or harm. There’s really no getting off the hook. <br /><br />Wisdom can be encapsulated in a reasoned decision by an individual, but it is always in tune with larger reason. One of the great things about Plato as a philosopher is that he walks around and into the thick of the question of wisdom with boldness and perspective. A champion of reason, he grounds human morality in virtue, but emphasises that it is part of a ‘virtue’ of reality: the nature and function of the ontologically real is to be good, true, and beautiful. <br /><br />This immersion of humankind and personal choices in a larger environment seems a crucial lesson for our times. This odd and ungrounded era we live in does not have a ready and able moral vocabulary; it, more often than not, leaves moral nuance like an abandoned shopping cart in the woods. Why is Plato one of the best voices to re-energise as his philosophy applies to current-day issues and angst? <br /><br />One of the problems of individuals and institutions in contemporary times is that they think they are wise without ever examining how and if that’s true. So often, they – whether you yourself, a spouse, a boss, politicians, or fellow citizens – assume a virtue they own not. This is exactly what Socrates, in Plato's hands, addresses. What are some of the problems in the world open to reform or transformation? <br /><br />Certainly, social justice issues continue to rear their head and undermine an equitable society. Entrenched power systems and attendant attitudes are not only slow to respond, but display no moral understanding. Today, it seems there is a raft of problems, from psychological to philosophical, and the consequences turn dire. At the root of all actual and potential catastrophes, it seems, is a lack of that one thing that has been waylaid, discarded, and ignored: wisdom. <br /><br />Plato crafted his philosophy about soul and virtue, justice and character, in alignment with his metaphysics. This is its genius, making a harmony of inner and outer <br /><br />In the <i>Republic</i>, Plato himself oscillates between saying that a philosopher-king, the only assurance the city would be happy and just, would be a lover of wisdom and actually wise. In our time, the problem is a lack of desire to find or inculcate wisdom. Societies have, in general, hamstrung themselves. We do not have ready tools to care about and value wisdom, however far off. We do not, to any cogent degree, educate children to be <i>philosopher-kings</i> of their own lives. <br /><br />Western societies and perhaps Eastern ones as well have not increased in wisdom because they have abandoned the pursuit. The task is left unattended. The current problem is not that the world (or smaller entities such as companies, schools, and individuals) cannot find a truly wise person; so-called civilisation acts wilfully against finding or even thinking about finding such. It is a mobile home that's been put up on blocks. <br /><br />Philosophy can inculcate the kind of consciousness that the 20th century Swiss philosopher, Jean Gebser, called<i> integral reality</i>, which perceives a truth that, as he says, ‘transluces’ both the world and humankind (in the sense of shining light through). In short, philosophy holds the promise of educating. It is not a crazy old man on his porch, moving his cane to tell the traffic to slow down; rather, philosophy is a sailboat that deftly catches fair breeze – and moves us forward. <br />docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-5107850321566961642023-08-07T01:00:00.003+01:002023-08-07T01:00:00.137+01:00The Dubious Ethics of the Great Food Reset<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF9ZivsYQ0OYnQWoWEenjcQvmEJ47JaEBdEm6cDH5l0EgKEOMpn7bFDPvKzwRZy41-3J06qmtZOswiVNMNoaz02Ga8sjNZZeYr2Vtf-zOKoTTt2h41pKUdnjRfz5M6iUqoGQLXb9SW3oXKa0VZSiNvyhy-z-Bu0h8oIrm6FwfK1v6y2kyAFPZYfziweIki/s605/vegetarian_propaganda_by_puffugu_d5s2oz9-375w-2x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="605" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF9ZivsYQ0OYnQWoWEenjcQvmEJ47JaEBdEm6cDH5l0EgKEOMpn7bFDPvKzwRZy41-3J06qmtZOswiVNMNoaz02Ga8sjNZZeYr2Vtf-zOKoTTt2h41pKUdnjRfz5M6iUqoGQLXb9SW3oXKa0VZSiNvyhy-z-Bu0h8oIrm6FwfK1v6y2kyAFPZYfziweIki/s320/vegetarian_propaganda_by_puffugu_d5s2oz9-375w-2x.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Picture “for a school project”</div><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><br />By Martin Cohen</b></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>here’s a plan afoot to change the way you eat. Meat is destroying the land, fish and chips destroys the sea and dairy is just immoral. Open the paper and you'll see a piece on how new biotechnologies are coming to the rescue. It's all presented as a fait accompli with the result that today, we are sleepwalking to not only a "meat-free" future, but one in which there are no farm animals, no milk, no cheese, no butter - no real food in short. And that's not in our interests, nor (less obviously) in the interest of biodiversity and the environment. There's just the rhetoric that it is "for the planet" </div></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">According to researchers at the US think-tank, <i>RethinkX</i>,</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-kerning: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;">“we are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruption” of agriculture in history. And it's happening fast. They say that by 2030, the entire US dairy and cattle industry will have collapsed, as </span><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-kerning: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">precision fermentation” – producing animal proteins more efficiently via microbes – “disrupts food production as we know it”.<br /></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">There</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-kerning: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">s trillions of dollars at stake and very little public debate about it. Instead, there</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-kerning: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">s a sophisticated campaign to persuade people that this revolution is both inevitable and beyond criticism.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">No wonder Marx declared that food lay at the heart of all political structures and warned of an alliance of industry and capital intent on both controlling and distorting food production.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The Great Food Reset</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> a social and political upheaval that affects everyone, yet at the moment the debate is largely controlled by the forces promoting the changes: powerful networks of politicians and business leaders, such as the United Nations Environment Program, the so-called EAT-Lancet "Commission" (it's not really a commission, how words mislead!) - and the World Economic Forum, all sharing a rationale of 'sustainable development', market expansion, societal design, and resource control. Vocal supporters are the liberal media and academics who, perversely, present the movement as though part of a grassroots revolution.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">There have been plenty of political programmes designed to push people into ‘the future’. Often, they flirt with increasingly intolerant compulsion. So too, with <i>The Great Food Reset</i>. Governments are already imposing heavy burdens on traditional farming and attempting to penalise the sale of animal products in the marketplace - either on the grounds that they are ‘unhealthy’ or, even more sweepingly, that they are bad for the environment.</span></p><div>In recent months, the steam has gone out of the “vegan food revolution”, mainly because people like their traditional foods more than the new ones, which typically are made from the four most lucrative cash crops: wheat, rice, maize and soybean. Incredibly, and dangerously, from over half a million plant species on the planet, we currently rely on just these four crops for more than three-quarters of our food supply. Animal sourced foods are our link to food variety.</div><div><br />But there's another reason to defend animal farming, which is that for much of the world, small farms are humane farms, with the animals enjoying several years of high quality life in the open fields and air. The new factory foods have no needs for animals and the argument that, well, better dead than farmed, just doesn't hold water – at least for traditional farms. It's the fundamental ethical dilemma: yes, death is terrible – but is it worse to have never lived?<br /><br />In recent decades, we’ve seen many areas of life remodelled, whether we wanted them to be or not.. But to dictate how we grow food, how we cook food, and how we eat it, may just be a step too far.</div>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-66525136547348431472023-07-17T01:00:00.028+01:002023-07-17T01:00:00.135+01:00When Is a Heap Not a Heap? The Sorites Paradox and ‘Fuzzy Logic’<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRc_kB74hNSNXl4D0ODPGB9d5kopDJzoudQNgnx89le82A1KUGtxv5S4h3wXtQPEoMrAxd687TwCIwLH05MGrRu5RLh1OWC-u-JmnBFp7R1v-01AAGa2c7lxiFvUbO5BpSdHRWChdVCf5Z2XpXhTXeBPVscdiOj1h0DtDeXRKSp5aNaoRLBD7cqDbtRF3R/s1400/idea_sized-mrhyata-362689229_8f984bf22f_o.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1400" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRc_kB74hNSNXl4D0ODPGB9d5kopDJzoudQNgnx89le82A1KUGtxv5S4h3wXtQPEoMrAxd687TwCIwLH05MGrRu5RLh1OWC-u-JmnBFp7R1v-01AAGa2c7lxiFvUbO5BpSdHRWChdVCf5Z2XpXhTXeBPVscdiOj1h0DtDeXRKSp5aNaoRLBD7cqDbtRF3R/s320/idea_sized-mrhyata-362689229_8f984bf22f_o.webp" width="320" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><br />By Keith Tidman</b></span><div><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>magine you are looking at a ‘heap’ of wheat comprising some several million grains and just <i>one</i> grain is removed. Surely you would agree with everyone that afterward you are still staring at a heap. And that the onlookers were right to continue concluding ‘the heap’ remains reality if another grain were to be removed — and then another and another. But as the pile shrinks, the situation eventually gets trickier.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">If grains continue to be removed one at a time, in incremental fashion, when does the heap no longer qualify, in the minds of the onlookers, as a heap? Which numbered grain makes the difference between a heap of wheat and not a heap of wheat? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Arguably we face the same conundrum if we were to reverse the situation: starting with zero grains of wheat, then incrementally adding one grain at a time, one after the other (n + 1, n + 2 ...). In that case, which numbered grain causes the accumulating grains of wheat to transition into a heap? Put another way, what are the borderlines between true and not true as to pronouncing there’s a heap?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><div style="text-align: left;">What we’re describing here is called the Sorites paradox, invented by the fourth-century BC Athenian Eubulides, a philosopher of the Megarian school, named after Euclides of Megara, one of the pupils of Socrates. The school, or group, is famous for paradoxes like this one. ‘Sorites’, by the way, derives not from a particular person, <span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">but from the Greek word </span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">soros</i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">, meaning ‘heap’ or ‘pile’. The focus here being on the boundary of ‘being a heap’ or ‘not being a heap’, which is indistinct when single grains are either added or removed. The paradox is deceptive in appearing simple, even simplistic, yet, any number of critically important real-world applications attest to its decided significance. </span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">A particularly provocative case in point, exemplifying the central incrementalism of the Sorites paradox, is concerns deciding when a fetus transitions into a person. Across the milestones of conception, birth, and infancy, the fetus-cum-person acquires increasing physical and cognitive complexity and sophistication, occurring in successively tiny changes. Involving not just the <i>number</i> of features, but of course also the particular type of features (that is, <i>qualitative</i> factors). Leading us to ask, what are the borderlines between true and not true as to pronouncing there’s a person. As we know, this example of gradualism has led to highly consequential medical, legal, constitutional, and ethical implications being heatedly and tirelessly debated in public forums. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Likewise, with regard to this same Sorites-like incrementalism, we might assess which ‘grain-by-grain’ change rises to the level of a ‘human being’ close to the end of a life — when, let’s say, deep dementia increasingly ravages aspects of a person’s consciousness, identity, and rationalism, greatly impacting awareness. Or, say, when some other devasting health event results in gradually nearing brain death, and alternative decisions hover perilously over how much to intervene medically, given best-in-practice efforts at a prognosis and taking into account the patient’s and family’s humanity, dignity, and socially recognised rights.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Ot take the stepwise development of ‘megacomplex artificial intelligence’. Again, involving consideration of not just ‘how many features’ (n + 1 or n - 1), but also ‘which features’, the latter entailing <i>qualifiable</i> features. The discussion has stirred intense debate over the race for intellectual competitiveness, prompting hyperbolic public alarms about ‘existential risks’ to humanity and civilisation. The machine equivalence of human neurophysiology is speculated to transition, over years of gradual optimisation (and down the road, even <i>self</i>-optimisation), into human-like consciousness, awareness, and cognition. Leading us to ask, where are the borderlines between true and not true as to pronouncing it has consciousness and greater-than-human intelligence? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In the three examples of Sorites ‘grain-by-grain’ incrementalism above — start of life, end of life, and artificial general intelligence — words like ‘human’, ‘consciousness’, ‘perception’, ‘sentience’, and ‘person’ provide grist for neuroscientists, philosophers of mind, ethicists, and AI technologists to work with, until the desired threshold is reached. The limitations of natural language, even in circumstances mainly governed by the prescribed rules of logic and mathematics, might not make it any easier to concretely describe these crystalising concepts.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Given the nebulousness of terms like personhood and consciousness, which tend to bob up and down in natural languages like English, <i>bivalent logic</i> — where a statement is either true or false, but not both or in-between — may be insufficient. The Achilles’ heel is that the meaning of these kinds of terms may obscure truth as we struggle to define them. Whereas classical logic says there either is or is not a heap, with no shades in the middle, there’s something called <i>fuzzy logic</i> that scraps bivalence.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Fuzzy logic recognises there are both large and subtle gradations between categorically true and categorically false. There’s a continuum, where statements can be partially true and partially false, while also shifting in their truth value. A state of <i>becoming</i>, one might say. A line may thus be drawn between concepts that lie on such continuums. Accordingly, as individual grains of wheat are removed, the heap becomes, in tiny increments, less and less a heap — arriving at a threshold where people may reasonably concur it’s no longer a heap.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">That tipping point is key, for vagueness isn’t just a matter of logic, it’s also a matter of <i>knowledge </i>and <i>understanding</i> (a matter of epistemology). In particular, what do we know, with what degree of certainty and uncertainty do we know it, when do we know it, and when does what we know really matter? Also, how do we use natural language to capture all the functionality of that language? Despite the gradations of true and false that we just talked about in confirming or refuting a heap, realistically the addition or removal of just one grain does in fact tip whether it’s a heap, even if we’re not aware which grain it was. Just one grain, that is, ought to be enough in measuring ‘heapness’, even if it’s hard to recognise where that threshold is.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Another situation involves the moral incrementalism of decisions and actions: what are the borderlines between true and not true as to pronouncing that a decision or action is moral? An important case is when we regard or disregard the moral effects of our actions. Such as, environmentally, on the welfare of other species sharing this planet, or concerning the effects on the larger ecosystem in ways that exacerbate the extreme outcomes of climate change.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Judgments as to the merits of actions are not ethically bivalent, either — by which I mean they do not tidily split between being decidedly good or decidedly bad, leaving out any middle ground. Rather, according to fuzzy logic, judgments allow for ethical incrementalism between what’s unconditionally good at one extreme and what’s unconditionally bad at the other extreme. Life doesn’t work quite so cleanly, of course. As we discussed earlier, the process entails switching out from standard logic to allow for imprecise concepts, and to accommodate the ground between two distant outliers.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Oblique concepts such as ‘good versus bad’, ‘being human’, ‘consciousness’, ‘moral’, ‘standards’ — and, yes, ‘heap’ — have very little basis from which to derive exact meanings. A classic example of such imprecision is voiced by science’s uncertainty principle: that is, we cannot know both the speed and location of a particle with simultaneously equal accuracy. As our knowledge of one factor increases in precision, knowledge of the other decreases in precision.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The assertion that ‘there is a heap’ becomes less true the more we take grains away from a heap, and becomes increasingly true the more we add grains. Finding the borderlines between true and not true in the sorts of consequential pronouncements above is key. And so, regardless of the paradox’s ancient provenance, the gradualism of the Sorites metaphor underscores its value in making </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">everyday determinations between truth and falsity.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p></div>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-7019291085384706132023-06-26T16:46:00.002+01:002023-06-26T16:47:16.278+01:00Ideas Animate Democracy<p><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijgsiOgpcxAdWJ-9LbHBUL7JQ-htXFc22Dl3U2aCDrGH5iPIuuamwi1cejocH8czpxwPQ1XxlihigTHcvS5MdU1pXHafSEZCuFuE56KyvgYoi-6_lfmrSkhEGB6hJMCQDKPWbtjpRZsa2v11YgV3_GHpxnzaZfJqBchkQnh-RcbXxfnnm2JANmD-fa9MxN/s480/hqdefault.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijgsiOgpcxAdWJ-9LbHBUL7JQ-htXFc22Dl3U2aCDrGH5iPIuuamwi1cejocH8czpxwPQ1XxlihigTHcvS5MdU1pXHafSEZCuFuE56KyvgYoi-6_lfmrSkhEGB6hJMCQDKPWbtjpRZsa2v11YgV3_GHpxnzaZfJqBchkQnh-RcbXxfnnm2JANmD-fa9MxN/s320/hqdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><br />Keith Tidman</b></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>he philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once advised, ‘Life can only be understood backwards … but it must be lived forward’ — that is, life understood with one eye turned to history, and presaged with the other eye turned to competing future prospects. An observation about understanding and living life that applies across the board, to individuals, communities, and nations. Another way of putting it is that </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">ideas are the grist for thinking not only about ideals but about the richness of learnable history and the alternative futures from which society asserts agency in freely choosing its way ahead.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">As of late, though, </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">we seem to have lost sight that one way for democracy to wilt is to shunt aside ideas that might otherwise inspire minds to think, imagine, solve, create, discover and innovate — the source of democracy’s intellectual muscularity. For reflexively rebuffing ideas and their sources is really about constraining inquiry and debate in the public square.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Instead, t</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">here has been much chatter about democracies facing existential grudge matches against exploitative autocratic regimes that issue their triumphalist narrative and view democracy as weak-kneed. </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In mirroring the decrees of the Ministry of Truth in the dystopian world of George Orwell’s book <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i> — where two plus two equals five, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength — unbridled censorship and historical revisionism begin and end with the fear of ideas. Ideas snubbed by authoritarians’ heavy hand. The short of it is that prohibitions on ideas end up a jumbled net, a capricious exercise in power and control. Accordingly, much exertion is put into shaping society’s sanctioned norms, where dissent isn’t brooked. A point to which philosopher Hannah Arendt cautioned, ‘Totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorising human beings from within’. Where trodden-upon voting and ardent circulation of propagandistic themes, both of which torque reality, hamper free expression.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">This tale about prospective prohibitions on ideas is about choices between the resulting richness of thought or the poverty of thought — a choice we must get right, and can do so only by making it possible for new intellectual shoots to sprout from the raked seedbed. The optimistic expectation from this is that we get to understand and act on firmer notions of what’s real and true. But which reality? One reality is that each idea that’s arbitrarily embargoed delivers yet another kink to democracy’s armour; a very different reality is that each idea, however provocative, allows democracy to flourish.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Only a small part of the grappling over ideas is for dominion over which ideas will reasonably prevail long term. The larger motive is to honour the openness of ideas’ free flow, to be celebrated. This exercise brims with questions about knowledge. </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Like these</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">: What do we know, how do we know it, with what certainty or uncertainty do we know it, how do we confirm or refute it, how do we use it for constructive purposes, and how do we allow for change? </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Such fundamental questions crisscross all fields of study. </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">New knowledge ferments to improve insight into what’s true. Emboldened by this essential exercise, an informed democracy is steadfastly enabled to resist the siren songs of autocracy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;">Ideas are accelerants in the public forum. Ideas are what undergird democracy’s resilience and rootedness, on which standards and norms are founded. Democracy at its best allows for the unobstructed flow of different social and political thought, side by side. As Benjamin Franklin, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;">polymath and </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;">statesman,</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;"> prophetically said: ‘Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government’. A lead worth following. In this churn, ideas soar or flop by virtue of the quality of their content and the strength of their persuasion. Democracy allows its citizens to pick which ideas normalise standards — through debate and subjecting ideas to scrutiny, leading to their acceptance or refutation. Acid tests, in other words, of the cohesion and sustainability of ideas. At its best, debate arouses actionable policy and meaningful change.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #303030; font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #303030; font-family: Cambria, serif;">Despite society being buffeted daily by roiling politics and social unrest, democracy’s institutions are resilient. Our institutions might flex under stress, but they are capable of enduring the broadsides of ideological competitiveness as society makes policy. The democratic republic is not existentially imperiled. It’s not fragilely brittle. America’s Founding Fathers set in place hardy institutions, which, despite public handwringing, have endured challenges over the last two-and-a-half centuries. Historical tests of our institutions’ mettle have inflicted only superficial scratches — well within institutions’ ability to rebound again and again, eventually as robust as ever.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #303030; font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #303030; font-family: Cambria, serif;">Yet, as Aristotle importantly pointed out by way of a caveat to democracy’s sovereignty and survivability, </span></p><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #303030; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #303030; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><i>‘If liberty and equality . . . are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be attained when all persons share in the government to the utmost.’</i></span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #303030; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #303030; font-family: Cambria, serif;">A tall order, as many have found, but one that’s worthy and essential, teed up for democracies to assiduously pursue. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;">Democracy might seem scruffy at times. But at its best, democracy ought not fear ideas. Fear that commonly bubbles up from overwrought narrative and unreasoned parochialism, in the form of ham-handed constraints on thought and expression.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;">The <i>fear</i> of ideas is often more injurious than the <i>content</i> of ideas, especially in the shadows of disagreeableness intended to cause fissures in society. Ideas are thus to be hallowed, not hollowed. To countenance contesting ideas — majority and minority opinions alike, forged on the anvil of rationalism, pluralism, and critical thinking — is essential to the origination of constructive policies and, ultimately, how democracy is constitutionally braced.</span><span style="color: #303030; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-16425741494066207202023-06-12T15:43:00.002+01:002023-06-12T15:48:55.225+01:00The Euthyphro Dilemma: What Makes Something Moral?<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b></b></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMdSTzqFbFpRs-ZS7J09ywdpv9LjI7AsULJG06DBrQjRi2Wu8QFlKAiVFtY3NnI90lk5I4ZWfL7f7UJfVAOZnTpPZvhGrN2UlEecgjNXWUfpKyevCf5XJR7Pv4gGFCn6v2ovJkJYe1Ionn-Sv_bV3q0brsGGd9Je_NzPQ51wT5SyqrnrBQe2Jcguq_DQ/s1280/saint-teresa.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMdSTzqFbFpRs-ZS7J09ywdpv9LjI7AsULJG06DBrQjRi2Wu8QFlKAiVFtY3NnI90lk5I4ZWfL7f7UJfVAOZnTpPZvhGrN2UlEecgjNXWUfpKyevCf5XJR7Pv4gGFCn6v2ovJkJYe1Ionn-Sv_bV3q0brsGGd9Je_NzPQ51wT5SyqrnrBQe2Jcguq_DQ/s320/saint-teresa.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; text-align: start;"><span>The sixteenth-century nun and mystic, Saint Teresa. In her autobiography, she wrote that she </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span>‘</span></span><span>was very fond of St. Augustine …</span></span><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; text-align: start;"><span> for he was a sinner too</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b>By Keith Tidman</b></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span> </p><blockquote><span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: large;"><span>‘</span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #5b0202; font-family: NonBreakingSpaceOverride, "Hoefler Text", Garamond, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Consider this: Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span><span style="font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">—</span><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111;"> Plato, </span><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-style: italic;">Euthyphro</span></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><cite style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: calc(0.711111rem); font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></cite></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><cite style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: calc(0.711111rem); font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></span></cite></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">P</span>lato has Socrates asking just this of the Athenian prophet Euthyphro in one of his most famous dialogues.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> The characteristically riddlesome inquiry became known as the</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Euthyphro dilemma</i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">. Another way to frame the issue is to flip the question around: Is an action wrong because the gods forbid it, or do the gods forbid it because it is wrong? This version presents what is often</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> referred to as the ‘two horns’ of the dilemma.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Put another way, if what’s morally good or bad is only what the gods arbitrarily make something, called the <i>divine command theory</i> (or divine fiat) — which Euthyphro subscribed to — then the gods may be presumed to have agency and omnipotence over these and other matters. However, if, instead, the gods simply point to what’s already, independently good or bad, then there must be a source of moral judgment that transcends the gods, leaving that other, higher source of moral absolutism yet to be explained millennia later. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In the ancient world the gods notoriously quarreled with one another, engaging in scrappy tiffs over concerns about power, authority, ambition, influence, and jealousy, on occasion fueled by unabashed hubris. Disunity and disputation were the order of the day. Sometimes making for scandalous recounting, these quarrels comprised the stuff of modern students’ soap-opera-styled mythological entertainment. Yet, even when there is only one god, disagreements over orthodoxy and morality occur aplenty. <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The challenge mounted by the dilemma is as important to today’s world of a generally monotheistic god as it was to the polytheistic predispositions of ancient Athens.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> The medieval theologians’ explanations are not enough to persuade:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">‘Since good as perceived by the intellect is the object of the will, it is impossible for God to will anything but what His wisdom approves. This is as it were, His law of justice, in accordance with which His will is right and just. Hence, what He does according to His will He does justly: as we do justly when we do according to the law. But whereas law comes to us from some higher power, God is a law unto Himself’ (St. Thomas Aquinas, <i>Summa Theologica</i>, First Part, Question 21, first article reply to Obj. 2).</span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In the seventeenth century, Gottfried Leibniz offered a firm challenge to ‘divine command theory’, in asking the following question about whether right and wrong can be known only by divine revelation. He suggested, rather, there ought to be reasons, apart from religious tradition only, why particular behaviour is moral or immoral:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">‘In saying that things are not good by any rule of goodness, but sheerly by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, without realising it, all the love of God and all his glory. For why praise him for he has done if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing exactly the contrary?’ (<i>Discourse on Metaphysics</i>, 1686). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Meantime, today’s monotheistic world religions offer, among other holy texts, the Bible, Qur’an, and Torah, bearing the moral and legal decrees professed to be handed down by God. But even in the situations’ dissimilarity — the ancient world of Greek deities and modern monotheism (as well as some of today’s polytheistic practices) — both serve as examples of the ‘divine command theory’. That is, what’s deemed pious is presumed to be the case precisely because God chooses to love it, in line with the theory. That pious something or other is not independently sitting adrift, noncontingently virtuous in its own right, with nothing transcendentally making it so.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">This presupposes that God commands only what is good. It also presupposes that, for example, things like the giving of charity, the avoidance of adultery, and the refrain from stealing, murdering, and ‘graven images’ have their truth value from being morally good if, and only if, God loves these and other commandments. The complete taxonomy (or classification scheme) of edicts being aimed at placing guardrails on human behaviour in the expectation of a nobler, more sanctified world. But God loving what’s morally good for its own sake — that is, apart from God making it so — clearly denies ‘divine command theory’.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">For, if the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, which is one of the interpretations offered by Plato (through the mouth of Socrates) in challenging Euthyphro’s thinking, then it opens the door to an authority higher than God. Where matters of morality may exist outside of God’s reach, suggesting something other than God being all-powerful. Such a scenario pushes back against traditionally Abrahamic (monotheist) conceptualisations.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Yet, whether the situation calls for a single almighty God or a yet greater power of some indescribable sort, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who like St. Thomas Aquinas and Averroës believed that God commands only what is good, argued that God’s laws must conform to ‘natural reason’. Hobbes’s point makes for an essential truism, especially if the universe is to have rhyme and reason. This being true even if the governing forces of natural law and of objective morality are not entirely understood or, for that matter, not compressible into a singularly encompassing ‘theory of all’. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Because of the principles of ‘divine command theory’, some people contend the necessary takeaway is that there can be no ethics in the absence of God to judge something as pious. In fact, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i>, presumptuously declared that ‘if God does not exist, everything is permitted’. Surely not so; you don’t have to be a theist of faith to spot the shortsighted dismissiveness of his assertion. After all, an atheist or agnostic might recognise the benevolence, even the categorical need, for adherence to <i>manmade</i> principles of morality, to foster the welfare of humanity at large for its own sufficient sake. Secular humanism, in other words </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">—</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> which greatly appeals to many people.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative supports these human-centered, do-unto-others notions: ‘Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law’. An ethic of respect toward all, as we mortals delineate between right and wrong. Even with ‘divine command theory’, it seems reasonable to suppose that a god would have <i>reasons</i> for preferring that moral principles not be arrived at willy-nilly.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span> </p>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-34268722249264640612023-05-29T01:00:00.041+01:002023-06-01T23:33:56.862+01:00Life in the Slow Lane <div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8vJj0mWTVWa0mFelw5zStD-JRXHHmIJAGOH03hpE-ONvqnO7ZXvTusnH85CcV3H9p6MBM9rZ_-wyrd62UGhGhYOHu-ibhTmsc9Z7SSezJ9iGkiz6qSAFfSwZ-Mr7_3C-9gwuzSeEOPepQyfkmI3YXZomO5Tz9d4EpNm-34aY2DOgvXnW0O77H68u1gQ/s460/Illustration-by-Clifford--009.jpg.webp"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8vJj0mWTVWa0mFelw5zStD-JRXHHmIJAGOH03hpE-ONvqnO7ZXvTusnH85CcV3H9p6MBM9rZ_-wyrd62UGhGhYOHu-ibhTmsc9Z7SSezJ9iGkiz6qSAFfSwZ-Mr7_3C-9gwuzSeEOPepQyfkmI3YXZomO5Tz9d4EpNm-34aY2DOgvXnW0O77H68u1gQ/s320/Illustration-by-Clifford--009.jpg.webp" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Illustration by Clifford Harper/Agraphia.co.uk</span></i></div><div><span><b>By Andrew Porter</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>hree common plagues were cited in the early New England settlements: wolves, rattlesnakes, and mosquitoes. Our current-day ‘settlements’ – cities and towns – now have their own plagues: a crush of too many people, crummy attitudes, pollution, and retrogressive political actions. How do freedom and power play out amongst individuals and communities? <br /><br />One lens that can help us gain perspective on our life in relation to necessities and obligations beyond us, is to think about our agency and our values. If we get it right about what freedom and power are, we might clarify what values we want to exercise and embody. <br /><br />People pushed back against the wolves and did what they could against other ‘scourges’, most regularly by killing them. This seemed like freedom – power asserted. Over the centuries, peoples around the world – coursing through trials like wars and epidemics and bouts of oppression, as well as various forms of enlightenment and progress on human rights – have struggled to articulate freedom and power to make existence shine. To fulfill purposes is the human juggernaut; but what purposes? It is pretty vital that we figure out what freedom and power are in this time of converging crises, so that actual life might flourish. The trouble is, so many people are commonly thrown off by false and unjustifiable versions of freedom and power. <br /><div style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></div>In our fast-paced life, we so-called civilised humans have to decide how to achieve balance. This means some kind of genuine honouring of life in its physical and spiritual aspects. The old work-life balance is only part of it. What does vitality itself suggest is optimal or possible, and how do we make sense of what's at stake as we prioritise between competing goods? <br /><br />If a parent decides that it is a priority to take care of a newborn child rather than sacrifice that time and importance to time at work, they may well be making a fine decision. Freedom here is in the service of vital things. We might say that in general freedom is that which makes you whole and that power is the exercise of your wholeness. Or, freedom is the latitude to live optimally and power is potency for good.<br /><br />Since freedom is eschewing the lesser and opting for and living what has more value, we had better do some good defining. All situations confirm that freedom only accrues with what is healthful and attends flourishing. If one says, “Top functioning for me is having a broad range of options, the whole moral range,” you can see how this is problematic. We as humans have the range, but our freedom is in limiting ourselves to the good portion. <br /><br />Power is commonly considered that which lords the most force over others and exerts the biggest influence broadly. Isn’t this what a hurricane does, or a viral infection, or an invasion? If you look around, though, all the people with so-called power actually dominate using <i>borrowed</i> power: that is, power borrowed from others or obtained on the backs of others, whether human or otherwise. This kind of power – often manifesting in greed and exploitation – is mere thievery. And what about power over one’s own liabilities to succumb or other temptations? <div><br />For many people, life in the slow lane is much more satisfying than that in the fast one. However, the big deal may be about getting off the highway altogether. What I am suggesting is that satisfaction and contentment are in the proper measure of freedom and power. And the best definition for organisms is probably that long-established by the planet. Earth has in place various forms of ‘nature’ with common value-elements. <br /><br />For us, to be natural probably means being both like and unlike the rest of nature. It is some kind of unique salubrity. An ever-greater bulk of the world lives in a busy, highly industrialized society, and the idea of living naturally seems like something that goes against our human mission to separate ourselves from the natural world. But the question remains: is the freedom and power that comes with ‘natural living’ an antiquated thing, or can you run the world on it; can it work for a life? <br /><br />Kant spoke of our animality in his <i>Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason </i>(1794) part of the <i>Critique of Pure Reason </i>and part of his investigation of the ethical life. In this, he argues that animality is an ineliminable and irreducible component of human nature and that the human being, taken as a natural being, is an animal being. Kant says that animality is an “original predisposition [anlage] to the good in human nature”. We increasingly see that being human means selecting the wisdom of nature, often summed up in ecological equipoise, so that we can survive, thrive, and have reason to call ourselves legitimate. Freedom in this consists of developing greater consciousness about our long-term place on Earth (if such is possible) and legitimate power in in exact proportion to the degree we limit ourselves to human ecology. <br /><br />Life on its own grass-centered lane has figured out what true freedom and power are. The Vietnamese Buddhist monk and global spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hạnh once wrote:</div><blockquote>“Around us, life bursts with miracles – a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops....When we are tired and feel discouraged by life’s daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.”</blockquote>Figuring out the most efficacious forms of freedom and power promises to make us treat ourselves and others more justly.</div>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-64981365564416446612023-05-15T01:00:00.019+01:002023-05-15T01:00:00.156+01:00‘Game Theory’: Strategic Thinking for Optimal Solutions<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b></b></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyPrWOW05r0JpQva6ST7TfEOv4CZ9lsuyrPY6SzQpb6hFlGnwfxOgE5Ktwn7eV4IUYdm-6rd8gkWWyuzFECgDP6BLhFz0u0JlZRCu6SIGZKYQvHovf8VNsXIsAwAYA2b4Fkr5nZGhUHjg9c6GqQZqD1f7pAJkgYj1676RcoWx2a4kRAlyeSn-fg3U-Ow/s900/Hernan-Cortes_0.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="900" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyPrWOW05r0JpQva6ST7TfEOv4CZ9lsuyrPY6SzQpb6hFlGnwfxOgE5Ktwn7eV4IUYdm-6rd8gkWWyuzFECgDP6BLhFz0u0JlZRCu6SIGZKYQvHovf8VNsXIsAwAYA2b4Fkr5nZGhUHjg9c6GqQZqD1f7pAJkgYj1676RcoWx2a4kRAlyeSn-fg3U-Ow/w400-h255/Hernan-Cortes_0.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: left;">Cortes began his campaign to conquer the Aztec Empire by having all but one of his ships scuttled, which meant that he and his men would either conquer the Aztecs Empire or die trying.. Initially, the Aztecs did not see the Spanish as a threat. In fact, their ruler, Moctezuma II, sent emissaries to present gifts to these foreign strangers.</span><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b>By Keith Tidman</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">T</span>he Peloponnesian War, chronicled by the historian Thucydides, pitted two major powers of Ancient Greece against each other, the Athenians and the Spartans. The Battle of Delium, which took place in 424 BC, was one of the war’s decisive battles. In two of his dialogues (<i>Laches</i> and <i>Symposium</i>), Plato had Socrates, who actually fought in the war, apocryphally recalling the battle, bearing on combatants’ strategic choices.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">One episode recalls a soldier on the front line, awaiting the enemy to attack, pondering his options in the context of self-interest — what works best for him. For example, if his comrades are believed to be capable of successfully repelling the attack, his own role will contribute only inconsequentially to the fight, yet he risks pointlessly being killed. If, however, the enemy is certain to win the battle, the soldier’s own death is all the more likely and senseless, given that the front line will be routed, anyway, no matter what it does.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The soldier concludes from these mental somersaults that his best option is to flee, regardless of which side wins the battle. His ‘dominant strategy’ being to stay alive and unharmed. However, based on the same line of reasoning, all the soldier’s fellow men-in-arms should decide to flee also, to avoid the inevitability of being cut down, rather than to stand their ground. Yet, if all flee, the soldiers are guaranteed to lose the battle before the sides have even engaged.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">This kind of strategic analysis is sometimes called <i>game theory</i>. </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">History provides us with many other examples of game theory applied to the real world, too. In 1591, the Spanish conqueror Cortéz landed in the Western Hemisphere, intending to march inland and vanquish the Aztec Empire. He feared, however, that his soldiers, exhausted from the ocean journey, might be reluctant to fight the Aztec warriors, who happened also to greatly outnumber his own force.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Instead of counting on the motivation of individual soldier’s courage or even group <i>ésprit de corps</i>, Cortéz scuttled his fleet. His strategy was to remove the risk of the ships tempting his men to retreat rather than fight — and thus, with no option, to pursue the Aztecs in a fight-or-die (vice a fight-or-flee) scenario. The calculus for each of Cortéz’s soldiers in weighing his survivalist self-interest had shifted dramatically. At the same time, in brazenly scuttling his ships in the manner of a metaphorical weapon, Cortéz wanted to dramatically demonstrate to the enemy that for reasons the latter couldn’t fathom, his outnumbered force nonetheless appeared fearlessly confident to engage in the upcoming battle.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">It’s a striking historical example of one way in which game theory provides means to assess situations where parties make strategic decisions that take account of each other’s possible decisions. The parties aim to arrive at best strategies in the framework of their own interests — business, economic, political, etc. — while factoring in what they believe to be the thinking (strategising) of opposite players whose interests may align or differ or even be a blend of both.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The term, and the philosophy of game theory, is much more recent, of course, developed in the early twentieth century by the mathematician John von Neumann and the economist Oskar Morgenstern. They focused on the theory’s application to economic decision-making, with what they considered the game-like nature of the field of economics. Some ten years later, another mathematician, called John Nash, along with others expanded the discipline, to include strategic decisions applicable to a wide range of fields and scenarios, analysing how competitors with diverse interests choose to contest with one another in pursuit of optimised outcomes. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Whereas some of the earliest cases focused on ‘zero-sum’ games involving two players whose interests sharply conflicted, later scenarios and games were far more intricate. Such as ‘variable-sum’ games, where there may be all winners or all losers, as in a labour dispute. Or ‘constant-variable’ games, like poker, characterised as pure competition, entailing total conflict. The more intricately constructed games accommodate multiple players, involve a blend of shared and divergent interests, involve successive moves, and have at least one player with more information to inform and shape his own strategic choices than the information his competitors hold in hand.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The techniques of game theory and the scenarios examined are notable for their range of applications, including business, economics, politics, law, diplomacy, sports, social sciences, and war. Some features of the competitive scenarios are challenging to probe, such as accurately discerning the intentions of rivals and trying to discriminate behavioural patterns. That being said, many features of scenarios and alternative strategies can be studied by the methods of game theory, grounded in mathematics and logic.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Among the real-world applications of the methods are planning to mitigate the effects of climate extremes; running management-labour negotiations to get to a new contract and head off costly strikes; siting a power-generating plant to reflect regional needs; anticipating the choices of voter blocs; selecting and rejecting candidates for jury duty during <i>voir dire</i>; engaging in a price war between catty-cornered grocery stores rather than both keeping their prices aligned and high; avoiding predictable plays in sports, to make it harder to defend against; foretelling the formation of political coalitions; and negotiating a treaty between two antagonistic, saber-rattling countries to head off runaway arms spending or outright conflict.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Perhaps more trivially, applications of game theory stretch to so-called parlour games, too, like chess, checkers, poker, and Go, which are finite in the number of players and optional plays, and in which progress is achieved via a string of alternating single moves. The contestant who presages a competitor’s <i>optimal</i> answer to their own move will experience more favourable outcomes than if they try to deduce that their opponent will make a particular move associated with a particular probability ranking.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Given the large diversity of ‘games’, there are necessarily multiple forms of game theory. Fundamental to each theory, however, is that features of the strategising are actively managed by the players rather than through resort to just chance, hence why game theory goes several steps farther than mere probability theory.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The classic example of a two-person, noncooperative game is the Prisoner’s Dilemma. This is how it goes. Detectives believe that their two suspects collaborated in robbing a bank, but they don’t have enough admissible evidence to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. They need more on which to base their otherwise shaky case. The prisoners are kept apart, out of hearing range of each other, as interrogators try to coax each into admitting to the crime.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Each prisoner mulls their options for getting the shortest prison term. But in deciding whether to confess, they’re unaware of what their accomplice will decide to do. However, both prisoners are mindful of their options and consequences: If both own up to the robbery, both get a five-year prison term; if neither confesses, both are sentenced to a one-year term (on a lesser charge); and if one squeals on the other, that one goes free, while the prisoner who stays silent goes to prison for fifteen years. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The issue of trust is of course central to weighing the options presented by the ‘game’. In terms of sentences, both prisoners are better off choosing to act unselfishly and remain hush, with each serving one year. But if they choose to act selfishly in expectation of outmaneuvering the unsuspecting (presumed gullible) partner — which is to say, both prisoners picture themselves going free by spilling the beans while mistakenly anticipating that the other will stay silent — the result is much worse: a five-year sentence for both.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Presaging these types of game theoretic arguments, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, in <i>Leviathan</i> (1651), described citizens believing, on general principle, they’re best off with unrestrained freedom. Though, as Hobbes theorised, they will come to realise there are occasions when their interests will be better served by cooperating. The aim being to jointly accomplish things not doable by an individual alone. However, some individuals may inconsiderately conclude their interests will be served best by reaping the benefits of collaboration — that is, soliciting help from a neighbour in the form of physical labour, equipment, and time in tilling — but later defaulting when the occasion is for such help to be reciprocated.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Resentment, distrust, and cutthroat competitiveness take hold. Faith in the integrity of neighbours in the community plummets, and the chain of sharing resources to leverage the force-multiplicity of teamwork is broken. Society is worse off — where, as Hobbes memorably put it, life then becomes all the more ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. Hobbes’s conclusion, to avoid what he referred to as a ‘war of all against all’, was that people therefore need a central government — operating with significant authority — holding people accountable and punishing accordingly, intended to keep citizens and their transactions on the up and up.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">What’s germane about Hobbes’s example is how its core themes resonate with today’s game theory. In particular, Hobbes’s argument regarding the need for an ‘undivided’, authoritative government is in line with modern-day game theorists’ solutions to protecting people against what theorists label as ‘social dilemmas’. That is, when people cause fissures within society by dishonourably taking advantage of other citizens rather than cooperating and reciprocating assistance, where collaboration benefits the common good. To Hobbes, the strategic play is between what he refers to as the ‘tyranny’ of an authoritative government and the ‘anarchy’ of no government. He argues that tyranny is the lesser ‘evil’ of the two. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In dicing real-world ‘games’, people have rationally intuited workable strategies, with those solutions sufficing in many everyday circumstances. What the methodologies of game theory offer are ways to formalise, validate, and optimise the outcomes of select intuitions where outcomes matter more. All the while taking into account the opponent and his anticipated strategy, and extracting the highest benefits from choices based on one’s principles and preferences.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-58876481993776515752023-05-01T00:00:00.319+01:002023-05-01T00:00:00.151+01:00Problems with the Problem of Evil<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4CO3f_mbYKTN4XUd6WAfhhZAAjBgkzwHLA06QrM5pd1c1h5F_tc_o9_cRSH55aE9rWrpzr7QGMscgUhZNdLf85WQShbwBe2a3P-elu1hTfvbIIhV7IEIDNkCIg0e17PYu7TGLV8xDwMx3eNQxk1soU3Wqo-_TFsuoNVCFB5pvVPVmIDFxYexB6Um9Ow/s795/candide.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="795" data-original-width="597" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4CO3f_mbYKTN4XUd6WAfhhZAAjBgkzwHLA06QrM5pd1c1h5F_tc_o9_cRSH55aE9rWrpzr7QGMscgUhZNdLf85WQShbwBe2a3P-elu1hTfvbIIhV7IEIDNkCIg0e17PYu7TGLV8xDwMx3eNQxk1soU3Wqo-_TFsuoNVCFB5pvVPVmIDFxYexB6Um9Ow/s320/candide.jpeg" width="240" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><br />By Keith Tidman</b><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">D</span>o we really reside in what German polymath Gottlieb Wilhelm Leibniz referred to as ‘the best of all possible worlds’, picked by God from among an infinite variety of world orders at God’s disposal, based on the greatest number of supposed perfections? (A claim that the French Enlightenment writer Voltaire satirised in his novella <i>Candide</i>.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">How do we safely arrive at Leibniz’s sweeping assessment of ‘best’ here, given the world’s harrowing circumstances, from widespread violence to epidemics to famine, of which we’re reminded every day? After all, the Augustinian faith-based explanation for the presence of evil has been punishment for Adam and Eve’s original sin and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. From this emerged Leibniz’s term ‘theodicy’, created from two Greek words for the expression ‘justifying God’ (<i>Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil</i>, 1710).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">No, t</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">here’s a problem … the ‘problem of evil’. If God is all powerful (omnipotent), all knowing (omniscient), all places (omnipresent), all good and loving (omnibenevolent), and all wise, then why is there evil in the very world that God is said to have designed and created? Not having averted or fixed the problem, instead permitting unrestrained reins and abiding by noninterventionism. There is not just one form of evil, but at least two: moral evil (volitionally wrongful human conduct) and natural evil (ranging from illnesses and other human suffering, to natural law causing ruinous and lethal calamities).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">There are competitor explanations for evil, of course, like that developed by the first-century Greek bishop Saint Irenaeus, whose rationalisation was that evil presented the population with incentives and opportunities to learn, develop, and evolve toward ever-greater perfection. The shortcoming with this Irenaean description, however, is that it fails to account for the ubiquity and diversity of natural disasters, like tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, and many other manifestations of natural law taking its toll around the globe.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Yet, it has been argued that even harmful natural hazards like avalanches and lightning, not just moral indiscretions, are part of the plan for people’s moral, epistemic growth, spurring virtues like courage, charity, gratitude, patience, and compassion. It seems that both the Augustinian and Irenaean models of the universe adhere to the anthropic principle that cosmic constants are imperatively fine grained enough (balanced on a sharp edge) to allow for human life to exist at this location, at this point in time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Meanwhile, although some people might conceivably respond to natural hazards and pressing moral hardships by honing their awareness, which some claim, other people are overcome by the devastating effects of the hazards. These outcomes point to another in the battery of explanations for evil, in the reassuring form of a spiritual life after death. Some people assert that such rewards may be expected to tower over mundane earthly challenges and suffering, and that the suffering that moral and natural evil evokes conditions people for the enlightenment of an afterlife. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">At this stage, the worldly reasons for natural hazards and moral torment (purportedly the intentions behind a god’s strategy) become apparent. Meanwhile, others argue that the searing realities of, say, the Holocaust or any other genocidal atrocities or savagery or warring in this world are not even remotely mitigated, let alone vindicated, by the anticipated jubilation of life after death, no matter the form that the latter might take.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Still another contending explanation is that what we label evil in terms of human conduct is not a separate ‘thing’ that happens to be negative, but rather is the <i>absence</i> of a particular good, such as the absence of hope, integrity, forbearance, friendship, altruism, prudence, principle, and generosity, among other virtues. In short, evil isn’t the opposite of good, but is the nonattendance of good. Not so simple to resolve in this model, however, is the following: Would not a god, as original cause, have had to create the conditions for that absence of good to come to be?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Others have asserted that God’s design and the presence of evil are in fact compatible, not a contradiction or intrinsic failing, and not preparation either for development in the here and now or for post-death enlightenment. American philosopher Alvin Plantinga has supported this denial of a contradiction between the existence of an all-capable and all-benevolent (almighty) god and the existence of evil:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">‘There are people who display a sort of creative moral heroism in the face of suffering and adversity — a heroism that inspires others and creates a good situation out of a bad one. In a situation like this the evil, of course, remains evil; but the total state of affairs — someone’s bearing pain magnificently, for example — may be good. If it is, then the good present must outweigh the evil; otherwise, the total situation would not be good’ (<i>God, Freedom, and Evil</i>, 1977).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Or then, as British philosopher John Hick imagines, perhaps evil exists only as a corruption of goodness. Here is Hick’s version of the common premises stated and conclusion drawn: ‘If God is omnipotent, God can prevent evil. If God is perfectly good, God must want to prevent all evil. Evil exists. Thus, God is either not omnipotent or perfectly good, or both’. It does appear that many arguments cycle back to those similarly couched observations about incidents of seeming discrepancy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Yet others have taken an opposite view, seeing incompatibilities between a world designed by a god figure and the commonness of evil. Here, the word ‘design’ conveys similarities between the evidence of complex (intelligent) design behind the cosmos’s existence and complex (intelligent) design behind many things made by humans, from particle accelerators, quantum computers, and space-based telescopes, to cuneiform clay tablets and the carved code of Hammurabi law.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><i>Unknowability</i> matters, however, to this aspect of design and evil. For the presence, even prevalence, of evil does not necessarily contradict the logical or metaphysical possibility of a transcendental being as designer of our world. That being said, some people postulate that the very existence, as well as the categorical abstractness of qualities and intentions, of any such overarching designer are likely to remain incurably unknowable, beyond confirmation or falsifiability.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Although the argument by design has circulated for millennia, it was popularised by the English theologian William Paley early in the nineteenth century. Before him, the Scottish philosopher David Hume shaped his criticism of the design argument by paraphrasing Epicurus: ‘Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil? Is he neither able nor will? Then why call him God?’ (<i>Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion</i>, 1779).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Another in the catalog of explanations of moral evil is associated with itself a provocative claim, which is that we have free will. That is, we are presented with the <i>possibility</i>, not inevitability, of moral evil. Left to their own unconstrained devices, people are empowered either to freely reject or freely choose immoral decisions or actions. From among a large constellation, like venality, malice, and injustice. As such, free will is essential to human agency and by extension to moral evil (for obvious reasons, leaving natural evil out). Plantinga is among those who promote this free-will defense of the existence of moral evil. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span>Leibniz was wrong about ours being ‘the best of all possible worlds’. Better worlds are indeed imaginable, where plausibly evil in its sundry guises pales in comparison. The gauntlet as to what those better worlds resemble, among myriad possibilities, idles provocatively on the ground. For us to dare to pick up, perhaps. However, reconciling evil, in the presence of theistic paradoxes like professed omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, remains problematic. As Candide asked, ‘If this is the best ... what are the others?</span><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">’</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-55708788245551294072023-04-19T12:23:00.001+01:002023-04-19T12:23:17.070+01:00Making the Real<b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-FoCeHUXnIQz7961zDbOYTSR886-mfswdp6cC7trXR98cqW9h0g7IKDf6TYTASun_5X3lzTDlfkLfN3-qiW1LaOz2Qrx0I4O_5aBqrB_-Myj_bpwfajV8SFGQU6Ow9wYL_rmhLe2K9VR21giaeaPpdvRRxoks0HGXI6bfKMXA544n4CYOLbbrcKOdHw/s693/prometheus-conference.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="693" data-original-width="594" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-FoCeHUXnIQz7961zDbOYTSR886-mfswdp6cC7trXR98cqW9h0g7IKDf6TYTASun_5X3lzTDlfkLfN3-qiW1LaOz2Qrx0I4O_5aBqrB_-Myj_bpwfajV8SFGQU6Ow9wYL_rmhLe2K9VR21giaeaPpdvRRxoks0HGXI6bfKMXA544n4CYOLbbrcKOdHw/s320/prometheus-conference.jpg" width="274" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Prometheus in conference…</i></td></tr></tbody></table>By Andrew Porter</b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>hey say that myth is the communication of the memorable, or imitation of that which is on some level <i>more</i> real. Our inner myths – such as memory – make real what's true for us and we often communicate these lenses in stories, writing, art, and ways of being. What a person communicates, having been on their own hero's journey where they received the boon, is a kind of myth, a display of another place, where the animals are strange and the gods walk among us. <br /><br />We even make the real in creating a fiction. But isn’t the real different from fiction? Is it a caveat to say that fiction can be more real than sensible experience? If we are true to the facts and the actual events as depth of the characters involved and the flavour of the scenes we’ve lived in, are we not recounting a legitimate ‘inner tradition’? The experience is fresh and new in the telling; storytelling is the power of connection. <br /><br />In making our own version of the real, teller and listener infuse myth with logos and vice versa. Poetry (of all kinds), for instance, is the intermediary between heroic times and pedestrian hearing. It is in a sense audience to itself, living the amazement in the memory and memorialising. Like any genuine recounting, poetry tries to communicate with respect for the receiver and deep understanding of what may be received. This is as much to say that the poet is more than a bridge; they are the synergy of two depths of being: past heights and current receiver; both, hopefully, sacrifice their separateness for the joining. Is a poet perhaps most authentically themselves in the bringing together of self, experience, and the other? <br /><br />To locate the real means to get at the meaning beyond the bare events. This is done, I think, via another kind of central dynamic, between knowledge and sensitivity, or between reason and instinct. This middle ground is intuition, perhaps, or understanding of a rich sort, mixing reason and emotion or hearer and other land. Wonder is evoked or elicited in the clarity of ten thousand stars finding their way to eyes and brain. <br /><br />Communication of the valuable, we might say, promises a complementarity between the transcendent world and the mundane world. It believes in wonder and growth. Its ultimate lesson is the good, even if of human potential. It comprehends that the real must be translated, that an insight cannot be dumped out of a bag with a shrug. At best, the communicator can feel the blazing value of the extraordinariness they have been beautifully exposed to and the worthy receiver carries it on, retains it, preserves it. This is a vital synergy. Aren’t the best times in life of this kind, when existence illuminates itself? Imagine believing what the storyteller imparts, that the gods exist, though they were somewhat mundane at the time. Spirit seems to flow when its electrons are in motion with the charge of it all. <br /><br />Stories we’ve all heard are ‘invented stories’. Were they true? Art can perhaps convey a truth better than any other way could; even nature, typically banking on sharp reality with no moonshine, yet supports interpretation. If we can produce and reproduce a synergy of <i>muthos</i> and <i>logos</i>, what integration of a person or a society might ensue? <br /><br />One current issue is how we interpret our place and role in history. What story are we telling ourselves? Is it illusion of the worst kind? Do we need new myths? In our narrowness we likely have a very skewed definition of real. There may be a chance to make ourselves implicate in nature's order in a human way and understand this as true <i>techne</i>. The arts can show us its benefit. But I am not holding my breath. <br /><br />In ‘making the real’, we make ourselves. Our best selves are likely self-controlled as well as free in a broadly sanctioned way. Why has culture dropped the ball on creating a good story that we can follow? And what blend of myth and <i>logos</i> makes reality sing? Our time is not for dancing around the fire with faux-animal-heads on, but rather, one that tells stories that get it right. Why, it could be that, somewhere, a band of people are creating them even now.docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-6480146974731868432023-04-03T00:00:00.179+01:002023-04-03T00:00:00.222+01:00The Chinese Room Experiment ... and Today’s AI Chatbots<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="800" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZKp-SQEBjmGHpwJFMPD4WVswRRbnHazCB9HXhS43J8ehEM_RzPhc3ujXs_RKSR1Sfb9n1KHkvll_ny-PSUmtWtOzwEB5jqmcRxriyeb8-KvzO3r67bg54DyaQAxdWuv9sv1_ZizD8Meu89o2XsKzox5PeEvOLFrzWDlBJc06T_YhqJt48iOddUy5BwA/s320/chinese-room.jpeg" width="320" /></b></span></div><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><br />By Keith Tidman</b><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I</span>t was back in 1980 that the American philosopher John Searle formulated the so-called ‘Chinese room thought experiment’ in an article, his aim being to emphasise the bounds of machine cognition and to push back against what he viewed, even back then, as hyperbolic claims surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). His purpose was to make the case that computers don’t ‘think’, but rather merely manipulate symbols in the absence of understanding.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Searle subsequently went on to explain his rationale this way: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">‘The reason that no computer can ever be a mind is simply that a computer is only syntactical [concerned with the formal structure of language, such as the arrangement of words and phrases], and minds are more than syntactical. Minds are semantical, in the sense that they have … content [substance, meaning, and understanding]’.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">He continued to point out, by way of further explanation, that the latest technology metaphor for purportedly representing and trying to understand the brain has consistently shifted over the centuries: for example, from Leibniz, who compared the brain to a mill, to Freud comparing it to ‘hydraulic and electromagnetic systems’, to the present-day computer. With none, frankly, yet serving as anything like good analogs of the human brain, given what we know today of the neurophysiology, experiential pathways, functionality, expression of consciousness, and emergence of mind associated with the brain.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In a moment, I want to segue to today’s debate over AI chatbots, but first, let’s recall Searle’s Chinese room argument in a bit more detail. It began with a person in a room, who accepts pieces of paper slipped under the door and into the room. The paper bears Chinese characters, which, unbeknownst to the people outside, the monolingual person in the room has absolutely no ability to translate. The characters unsurprisingly look like unintelligible patterns of squiggles and strokes. The person in the room then feeds those characters into a digital computer, whose program (metaphorically represented in the original description of the experiment by a <span style="caret-color: rgb(55, 65, 81); color: #374151;">‘</span>book of instructions’) searches a massive database of written Chinese (originally represented by a <span style="caret-color: rgb(55, 65, 81); color: #374151;">‘</span>box of symbols’).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The powerful computer program can hypothetically find every possible combination of Chinese words in its records. When the computer spots a match with what’s on the paper, it makes a note of the string of words that immediately follow, printing those out so the person can slip the piece of paper back out of the room. Because of the perfect Chinese response to the query sent into the room, the people outside, unaware of the computer’s and program’s presence inside, mistakenly but reasonably conclude that the person in the room has to be a native speaker of Chinese.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Here, as an example, is what might have been slipped under the door, into the room: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #374151; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: large;"><span face="Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"" style="background-color: #f7f7f8; white-space: pre-wrap;">什么是智慧</span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #374151; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #374151; font-family: Cambria, serif;">Which is the Mandarin translation of the age-old question ‘What is wisdom?’ And here’s what might have been passed back out, the result of the computer’s search: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #374151; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span face="Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"" style="caret-color: rgb(52, 53, 65); color: #343541; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #374151; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span face="Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"" style="caret-color: rgb(52, 53, 65); color: #343541; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">了解知识的界限</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #374151; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #374151; font-family: Cambria, serif;">Which is the Mandarin translation of ‘Understanding the boundary/limits of knowledge’, an answer (among many) convincing the people gathered in anticipation outside the room that a fluent speaker of Mandarin was within, answering their questions in informed, insightful fashion.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The outcome of Searle’s thought experiment seemed to satisfy the criteria of the famous Turing test (he himself called it ‘the imitation game’), designed by the computer scientist and mathematician Alan Turing in 1950. The controversial challenge he posed with the test was whether a computer could think like — that is, exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from — a human being. And who could tell.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">It was in an article for the journal <i>Mind</i>, called ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">that Turing himself set out the ‘Turing test’, which inspired Searle’s later thought experiment. After first expressing concern with the ambiguity of the words <i>machine</i> and <i>think</i> in a closed question like ‘Can machines think?’, Turing went on to describe his test as follows:</span></p><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The [challenge] can be described in terms of a game, which we call the ‘imitation game’. It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The aim of the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either ‘X is A and Y is B’ of ‘X is B and Y is A’. The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:</span><div><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A’s object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be: ‘My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long’.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In order that tone of voice may not help the interrogator, the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprompter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively, the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game is for the third party (B) to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as ‘I am the woman, don’t listen to him!’ to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man makes similar remarks.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">We now ask the question, ‘What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?’ Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, ‘Can machines think?’ <span style="font-size: 12pt;">”</span><span face="-webkit-standard"></span> </span></p></div></blockquote><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Note that as Turing framed the inquiry at the time, the question arises of whether a computer can ‘be made to play satisfactorily the part of A in the imitation game, the part of B being taken by a [person]?’ The word ‘imitation’ here is key, allowing for the hypothetical computer in Searle’s Chinese room experiment to pass the test — albeit importantly not proving that computers </span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">think semantically</i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">, which is a whole other capacity not yet achieved even by today’s strongest AI.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Let’s fast-forward a few decades and examine the generative AI chatbots whose development much of the world has been enthusiastically tracking in anticipation of what’s to be. When someone engages with the AI algorithms powering the bots, the AI seems to respond intelligently. The result being either back-and-forth conversations with the chatbots, or the use of carefully crafted natural-language input to prompt the bots to write speeches, correspondence, school papers, corporate reports, summaries, emails, computer code, or any number of other written products. End products are based on the bots having been ‘trained’ on the massive body of text on the internet. And where output sometimes gets reformulated by the bot based on the user’s rejiggered prompts.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">It’s as if the chatbots think. But they don’t. Rather, the chatbots’ capacity to leverage the massive mounds of information on the internet to produce predictive responses is remarkably much more analogous to what the computer was doing in Searle’s Chinese room <i>forty years earlier</i>. With long-term future implications for developmental advances in neuroscience, artificial intelligence and computer science, philosophy of language and mind, epistemology, and models of consciousness, awareness, and perception.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In the midst of this evolution, the range of generative AI will expand AI’s reach across the multivariate domains of modern society: education, business, medicine, finance, science, governance, law, and entertainment, among them. So far, so good. Meanwhile, despite machine learning, possible errors and biases and nonsensicalness in algorithmic decision-making, should they occur, are more problematic in some domains (like medicine, military, and lending) than in others. Importantly remembering, though, that gaffs of any magnitude, type, and regularity can quickly erode trust, no matter the field.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Sure, current algorithms, natural-language processing, and the underpinnings of developmental engineering are more complex than when Searle first presented the Chinese room argument. But chatbots still don’t <i>understand</i> the meaning of content. They don’t have <i>knowledge</i> as such. Nor do they venture much by way of beliefs, opinions, predictions, or convictions, leaving swaths of important topics off the table. Reassembly of facts scraped from myriad sources is more the recipe of the day — and even then, errors and eyebrow-raising incoherence occurs, including unexplainably incomplete and spurious references.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The chatbots revealingly write output by muscularly matching words provided by the prompts with strings of words located online, including words then shown to follow probabilistically, predictively building their answers based on a form of pattern recognition. There’s still a mimicking of computational, rather than thinking, theories of mind. Sure, what the bots produce would pass the Turing test, but today surely that’s a pretty low bar. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Meantime, people have argued that the AI’s writing reveals markers, such as lacking the nuance of varied cadence, phraseology, word choice, modulation, creativity, originality, and individuality, as well as the curation of appropriate content, that human beings often display when they write. At the moment, anyway, the resulting products from chatbots tend to present a formulaic feel, posing challenges to AI’s algorithms for remediation.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Three decades after first unspooling his ingenious Chinese room argument, Searle wrote, ‘I demonstrated years ago … that the implementation of the computer program is not itself sufficient for consciousness or intentionality [mental states representing things]’. Both then and now, that’s true enough. We’re barely closing in on completing the first lap. It’s all still computation, not thinking or understanding.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Accordingly, the ‘intelligence’ one might perceive in Searle’s computer and the program his computer runs in order to search for patterns that match the Chinese words is very much like the ‘intelligence’ one might misperceive in a chatbot’s answers to natural-language prompts. In both cases, what we may misinterpret as intelligence is really a deception of sorts. Because in both cases, what’s really happening, despite the large differences in the programs’ developmental sophistication arising from the passage of time, is little more than brute-force searches of massive amounts of information in order to predict what the next words likely should be. Often getting it right, but sometimes getting it wrong — with good, bad, or trifling consequences.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">I propose, however, that the development of artificial intelligence — particularly what is called ‘artificial <i>general</i> intelligence’ (AGI) — will get us there: an analog of the human brain, with an understanding of semantic content. Where today’s chatbots will look like novelties if not entirely obedient in their functional execution, and where ‘neural networks’ of feasibly self-optimising artificial general intelligence will match up against or elastically stretch beyond human cognition, where the hotbed issues of what consciousness is get rethought.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p></div>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-76777463756992794772023-02-26T23:30:00.050+00:002023-02-26T23:30:00.232+00:00Universal Human Rights for Everyone, Everywhere<b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaHjo4lCVEQT0LIz-kuIGk838OfJqZVZ3w9GObSU9i8ptAZZ_B7Nzg_RskYa5NXbCOMce0QWYnqhiCPLFyL2nvL9Qx7uSaysrsQdTToOKZcuchHRgExeTD_D7GYgsr85xYEW6MgsD45ZtOEsJeaHPnCK-RRDaXb3-PFtVVWVIO0J1ZCjq_mZu7Qk9WFg/s436/rousseau.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="323" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaHjo4lCVEQT0LIz-kuIGk838OfJqZVZ3w9GObSU9i8ptAZZ_B7Nzg_RskYa5NXbCOMce0QWYnqhiCPLFyL2nvL9Qx7uSaysrsQdTToOKZcuchHRgExeTD_D7GYgsr85xYEW6MgsD45ZtOEsJeaHPnCK-RRDaXb3-PFtVVWVIO0J1ZCjq_mZu7Qk9WFg/s320/rousseau.jpeg" width="237" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Jean-Jacques Rousseau</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />By Keith Tidman</b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span>uman rights exist only if people believe that they do and act accordingly. To that extent, we are, collectively, architects of our destiny — taking part in an exercise in the powers of human dignity and sovereignty. Might we, therefore, justly consider human rights as <i>universal</i>?<br /><br />To presume that there are such rights, governments must be fashioned according to<i> the people’s </i>freely subscribed blueprints, in such ways that policymaking and consignment of authority in society represent citizens’ choices and that power is willingly shared. Such individual autonomy is itself a fundamental human right: a norm to be exercised by all, in all corners. Despite scattered conspicuous headwinds. Respect for and attachment to human rights in relations with others is binding, prevailing over the mercurial whimsy of institutional dictates. <br /><br />For clarity, universal human rights are inalienable norms that apply to everyone, everywhere. No nation ought to self-immunise as an exception. These human rights are not mere privileges. By definition they represent the natural order of things; that is, these rights are <i>naturally</i>, not institutionally, endowed. There’s no place for governmental, legal, or social neglect or misapplication of those norms, heretically violating human dignity. This point about dignity is redolent of <span style="background-color: white;">Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notions of civil society, explained in his <i>Social Contract </i>(1762), which provocatively opens with the famous ‘Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains</span>’. By which Rousseau was referring to the tradeoff between people’s deference to government authority over moral behaviour in exchange for whatever freedoms civilisation might grant as part of the social contract. The contrary notion, however, asserts that human rights are <i>natural</i>, protected from government caprice in their unassailability — claims secured by the humanitarianism of citizens in all countries, regardless of cultural differences.<br /><br />The idea that everyone has a claim to immutable rights has the appeal of providing a platform for calling out wrongful behaviour and a moral voice for preventing or remedying harms, in compliance with universal standards. The standards act as moral guarantees and assurance of oversight. The differences among cultures should not translate to the warped misplacement of relativism in calculating otherwise clear-cut universal rights aimed to protect.<br /><br />International nongovernmental organisations (such as Human Rights Watch) have laboured to protect fundamental liberties around the world, investigating abuses. Several other human rights organisations,<b> </b>such as the United Nations, have sought to codify people's rights, like those spelled out in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The many universal human rights listed by the declaration include these:<blockquote><span style="background-color: white;">‘</span>All human beings are born free; everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security; no one shall be subjected to torture; everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; everyone has the right to education; no one shall be held in slavery; all are equal before the law’. </blockquote><div>(Here’s the full <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights" target="_blank">UN declaration</a>, for a grasp of its breadth.) <br /><br />These aims have been ‘hallowed’ by the several documents spelling out moral canon, in aggregate amounting to an international bill of rights to which countries are to commit and abide by. This has been done without regard to appeals to national sovereignty or cultural differences, which might otherwise prejudice the process, skew policy, undermine moral universalism, lay claim to government dominion, or cater to geopolitical bickering — such things always threatening to pull the legs out from under citizens’ human rights.<br /><br />These kinds of organisations have set the philosophical framework for determining, spelling out, justifying, and promoting the implementation of human rights on as maximum global scale as possible. Aristotle, in <i>Nicomachean Ethics</i>, wrote to this core point, saying: </div><blockquote><span style="background-color: white;">‘</span>A rule of justice is <i>natural</i> that has the same validity everywhere, and does not depend on our accepting it’.</blockquote><div>That is, natural justice foreruns social, historical, and political institutions shaped to bring about conformance to their arbitrary, self-serving systems of fairness and justice. Aristotle goes on:</div><blockquote><span style="background-color: white;">‘</span>Some people think that all rules of justice are merely conventional, because whereas a law of nature is immutable and has the same validity everywhere, as fire burns both here and in Persia, rules of justice are seen to vary. That rules of justice vary is not absolutely true, but only with qualifications. Among the gods indeed it is perhaps not true at all; but in our world, although there is such a thing as Natural Justice, all rules of justice are variable. But nevertheless there is such a thing as Natural Justice as well as justice not ordained by nature’.</blockquote><div>Natural justice accordingly applies to everyone, everywhere, where moral beliefs are objectively corroborated as universal truths and certified as profound human goods. In this model, it is the individual who shoulders the task of appraising the moral content of institutional decision-making.</div><div><br />Likewise, it was John Locke, the 17th-century English philosopher, who argued, in his<i> Two Treaties of Government,</i> the case that individuals enjoy natural rights, entirely non-contingent of the nation-state. And that whatever authority the state might lay claim to rested in guarding, promoting, and serving the natural rights of citizens. The natural rights to life, liberty, and property set clear limits to the power of the state. There was no mystery as to Locke’s position: states existed singularly to serve the natural rights of the people.</div><div><br />A century later, Immanuel Kant was in the vanguard in similarly taking a strong moral position on validating the importance of human rights, chiefly the entangled ideals of equality and the moral autonomy and self-determination of rational people.<br /><br />The combination of the universality and moral heft of human rights clearly imparts greater potency to people’s rights, untethered to legal, institutional force of acknowledgment. As such, human rights are enjoyed equally, by everyone, all the time. It makes sense to conclude that everyone is therefore responsible for guarding the rights of fellow citizens, not just their own. Yet, in practice it is the political regime and perhaps international organisations that bear that load.<br /><br />And within the ranks of philosophers, human-rights universalism has sometimes clashed with relativists, who reject universal (objective) moral canon. They paint human rights as influenced contingently by social, historical, and cultural factors. The belief is that rights in society are considered apropos only for those countries whose culture allows. Yet, surely, relativism still permits the universality of numerous rights. We instinctively know that not all rights are relative. At the least, societies must parse which rights endure as universal and which endure as relative, and hope the former are favoured.<br /><br />That optimism notwithstanding, many national governments around the world choose not to uphold, either in part or in whole, fundamental rights in their countries. Perhaps the most transfixing case for universal human rights, as entitlements, is the inhumanity that haunts swaths of the world today, instigated for the most trifling of reasons.<br /> </div>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-40654674345416382472023-02-13T01:00:00.063+00:002023-02-13T01:00:00.232+00:00Picture Post #42 Tin Walls<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEejfiQ6qVOJDYHYpId_ro2oqntMS5VpR4-TGmlsEYb8HfrrWn4B1krwnJHCdjmPxnwD5BOYEMV0AiYP0ZjCZnmDMu9MdNRPUIZ1VQ912xqMPvsJss2tmzAvVb9ynjTE2mayjpe10pCHM/s315/logo+Pi+%25281%2529.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEejfiQ6qVOJDYHYpId_ro2oqntMS5VpR4-TGmlsEYb8HfrrWn4B1krwnJHCdjmPxnwD5BOYEMV0AiYP0ZjCZnmDMu9MdNRPUIZ1VQ912xqMPvsJss2tmzAvVb9ynjTE2mayjpe10pCHM/s0/logo+Pi+%25281%2529.png" /></a></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><hr style="text-align: center;" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span>'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be</span></i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span>neither will they become what they might appear to become.'</span></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: arvo; font-size: 16px;"><hr /></b></div><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"> </span></b></span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span><span><b><span>Posted by Martin Cohen<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span></b></span></span></span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span> </span></b></span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGMK09sKka_z1w1K5uADYIz0u8K5GXv97rAaRtbwt7EqrtJchagx9m-m1U36z4jGAtU2FW2uC1qnASQoSW-kqY9vytHk-HSnCu4oTPpSPJUgPvx92kc97afKFLr_TifaeTbB0qOFCQQtSco0ASMjlCxwr3B0EJf5h_DdAYCgKCMXYPBGB_NOP28angvw/s1348/photo-1596573513513-d56b3999ac38.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1348" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGMK09sKka_z1w1K5uADYIz0u8K5GXv97rAaRtbwt7EqrtJchagx9m-m1U36z4jGAtU2FW2uC1qnASQoSW-kqY9vytHk-HSnCu4oTPpSPJUgPvx92kc97afKFLr_TifaeTbB0qOFCQQtSco0ASMjlCxwr3B0EJf5h_DdAYCgKCMXYPBGB_NOP28angvw/w268-h400/photo-1596573513513-d56b3999ac38.webp" width="268" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Shanty Town</i> </span></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></div><span style="font-size: x-large;">OK,</span> I said that the next Picture Post should be from Ukraine, where there are so many scenes of urban destruction, yet destruction is not only sadder than dilapidation, it is also somehow less interesting. Destruction tells a story of random violence, or the impersonal power of nature gone mad, but it is not a human story. This image, however, is a tale of human ingenuity and perseverance.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">There's a kind of aesthetic too, in the parallel and vertical lines - as if drawn by a rather slapdash artist. Likewise, the rust gives the steel sheets an interest beyond their actual purpose, which would surely be just to keep the rain out.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">That people live like this is really rather a terrible indictment of a world in which there is enough wealth for everyone, if it could be shared out, but to me this house is also testament to something more positive: a specially human mix of enthusiasm and tenacity.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><hr /><br /><p></p>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-78463625090434067942023-01-24T18:30:00.000+00:002023-01-24T18:30:48.183+00:00‘Brain in a Vat’: A Thought Experiment<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; margin: 0in;"><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo0wcl7EXsjl2w9_fTM63AC_prI6YrffuP_2fcA7YHcUOYiqK4Pp1B0CYH4MTmB4Q4_0Kh7Hu8xoLXvBt3s7klJfId6KjuLiWJxnzD4BxCw2DKDTQnOHRhlFtszfMdjnR3ot7fTm73n-hBx7pez_-JJXpg95d0W2ReQMMBmwXQPIxlpXNUOSY1fREhOw/s1052/800px-Brainthatwouldntdie_film_poster.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1052" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo0wcl7EXsjl2w9_fTM63AC_prI6YrffuP_2fcA7YHcUOYiqK4Pp1B0CYH4MTmB4Q4_0Kh7Hu8xoLXvBt3s7klJfId6KjuLiWJxnzD4BxCw2DKDTQnOHRhlFtszfMdjnR3ot7fTm73n-hBx7pez_-JJXpg95d0W2ReQMMBmwXQPIxlpXNUOSY1fREhOw/s320/800px-Brainthatwouldntdie_film_poster.jpg" width="243" /></a></b></div><b><br />By Keith Tidman<br /><br /></b><span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span>et’s hypothesise that someone’s brain has been removed from the body and immersed in a vat of fluids essential for keeping the brain not only alive and healthy but functioning normally — as if it is still in a human skull sustained by other bodily organs.<b><br /></b><br />A version of this thought experiment was laid out by René Descartes in 1641 in the <i>Meditations on First Philosophy</i>, as part of inquiring whether sensory impressions are delusions. An investigation that ultimately led to his celebrated conclusion, ‘<i>Cogito, ergo sum</i>’ (‘I think, therefore I am’). Fast-forward to American philosopher Gilbert Harman, who modernised the what-if experiment in 1973. Harman’s update included introducing the idea of a vat (in place of the allegorical device of information being fed to someone by an ‘evil demon’, originally conceived by Descartes) in order to acknowledge the contemporary influences of neuroscience in understanding the brain and mind.<br /><br />In this thought experiment, a brain separated from its body and sustained in a vat of chemicals is assumed to possess consciousness — that is, the neuronal correlates of perception, experience, awareness, wonderment, cognition, abstraction, and higher-order thought — with its nerve endings attached by wires to a quantum computer and a sophisticated program. Scientists feed the disembodied brain with electrical signals, identical to those that people are familiar with receiving during the process of interacting through the senses with a notional external world. Hooked up in this manner, the brain (mind) in the vat therefore does not physically interact with what we otherwise perceive as a material world. Conceptualizations of a physical world — fed to the brain via computer prompts and mimicking such encounters — suffice for the awareness of experience.<br /><br />The aim of this what-if experiment is to test questions not about science or even ‘Matrix’-like science fiction, but about epistemology — queries such as what do we know, how do we know it, with what certainty do we know it, and why does what we know matter? Specifically, issues to do with scepticism, truth, mind, interpretation, belief, and reality-versus-illusion — influenced by the lack of irrefutable evidence that we are <i>not</i>, in fact, brains in vats. We might regard these notions as solipsistic, where the mind believes nothing (no mental state) exists beyond what it alone experiences and thinks it knows.<br /><br />In the brain-in-a-vat scenario, the mind cannot differentiate between experiences of things and events in the physical, external world and those virtual experiences electrically prompted by the scientists who programmed the computer. Yet, since the brain is in all ways experiencing a reality, whether or not illusionary, then even in the absence of a body the mind bears the complement of higher-order qualities required to be a person, invested with full-on human-level consciousness. <i>To the brain suspended in a vat and to the brain housed in a skull sitting atop a body, the mental life experienced is presumed to be the same.</i><br /><br />But my question, then, is this: Is either reality — that for which the computer provides evidence and that for which external things and events provide evidence — more convincing (more real, that is) than the other? After all, are not both experiences of, say, a blue sky with puffy clouds qualitatively and notionally the same: whereby both realities are the product of impulses, even if the sources and paths of the impulses differ?<br /><br />If the experiences are qualitatively the same, the philosophical sceptic might maintain that much about the external world that we surmise is true, like the briskness of a winter morning or the aroma of fresh-baked bread, is in fact hard to nail down. The reason being that in the case of a brain in a vat, the evidence of a reality provided by scientists is assumed to resemble that provided by a material external world, yet result in a different interpretation of someone’s experiences. We might wonder how many descriptions there are of how the conceptualized world corresponds to what we ambitiously call ultimate reality.<br /><br />So, for example, the <i>sceptical</i> hypothesis asserts that if we are unsure about not being a brain in a vat, then we cannot disregard the possibility that all our propositions (alleged knowledge) about the outside physical world would not hold up to scrutiny. This argument can be expressed by the following syllogism:<i><br /><br />1. If I know any proposition of external things and events, then I know that I am not a brain in a vat;</i><div><i><br /></i><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; margin: 0in;"><i>2. I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat;<br /><br />3. Therefore, I do not know any proposition of external things and events about the external world.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; margin: 0in;"><br />Further, given that a brain in a vat and a brain in a skull would receive identical stimuli — and that the latter are the only means either brain is able to relate to its surroundings — then neither brain can determine if it is the one bathed in a vat or the one embodied in a skull. Neither mind can be sure of the soundness of what it thinks it knows, even knowledge of a world of supposed mind-independent things and events. This is the case, even though computer-generated impulses realistically substitute for not directly interacting bodily with a material external world. So, for instance, when a brain in a vat believes that ‘wind is blowing’, there is no wind — no rushing movement of air molecules — but rather the computer-coded, mental simulation of wind. That is, replication of the qualitative state of physical reality.<br /><br /><span>I would argue that the world experienced by the brain in a vat is not fictitious or unauthentic, but rather is as real to the disembodied brain and mind as the external, physical world is to the embodied brain. Both brains fashion valid representations of truth. I therefore propose that each brain is ‘sufficient’ to qualify as a person: where, notably, the brains’ housing (vat or skull) and signal pathways (digital or sensory) do not matter.</span><br /><br /> </p></div>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-21557970583227860302023-01-09T01:00:00.144+00:002023-01-09T01:00:00.218+00:00The Philosophy of Science<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicyD_1R6dhZdA8quFM_scob3rXllyjskvGO60u5_vXqxafsusdyTzfgrJ3bVl9B_2d6N-vrR8SKwzaB4OxfNnAABf5jXE4TUT9A3Dq3qM8_F9oVzJLgvNmpMT_B2F3PdxqTC15kqJWQs0EugHP8iAzz929vVy5szvQa8iVq2azis_yy7tAbTLs-uzlJg/s899/1919_eclipse_positive.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicyD_1R6dhZdA8quFM_scob3rXllyjskvGO60u5_vXqxafsusdyTzfgrJ3bVl9B_2d6N-vrR8SKwzaB4OxfNnAABf5jXE4TUT9A3Dq3qM8_F9oVzJLgvNmpMT_B2F3PdxqTC15kqJWQs0EugHP8iAzz929vVy5szvQa8iVq2azis_yy7tAbTLs-uzlJg/s320/1919_eclipse_positive.jpeg" width="249" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br />The solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, forced a rethink of fundamental laws of physics</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><b><div><b><br /></b></div>By Keith Tidman</b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span>cience aims at uncovering what is true. And it is equipped with all the tools — natural laws, methods, technologies, mathematics — that it needs to succeed. Indeed, in many ways, science works exquisitely. But does science ever actually<i> arrive</i> at reality? Or is science, despite its persuasiveness, paradoxically consigned to forever wending closer to its goal, yet not quite arriving — as theories are either amended to fit new findings, or they have to be replaced outright?<br /><br />It is the case that science relies on observation — especially measurement. Observation confirms and grounds the validity of contending models of reality, empowering critical analysis to probe the details. The role of analysis is to scrutinise a theory’s scaffolding, to better visualise the coherent whole, broadening and deepening what is understood of the natural world. To these aims, science, at its best, has a knack for abiding by the ‘laws of parsimony’ of Occam’s razor — describing complexity as simply as possible, with the fewest suppositions to get the job done. <br /><br />To be clear, other fields attempt this self-scrutiny and rigour, too, in one manner or another, as they fuel humanity’s flame of creative discovery and invention. They include history, languages, aesthetics, rhetoric, ethics, anthropology, law, religion, and of course philosophy, among others. But just as these fields are unique in their mission (oriented in the present) and their vision (oriented in the future), so is science — the latter heralding a physical world thought to be rational.<br /><br />Accordingly, in science, theories should agree with evidence-informed, objective observations. Results should be replicated every time that tests and observations are run, confirming predictions.<span style="color: #ffa400;"> </span><span>This bottom-up process is driven by what is called inductive reasoning: where a general principle — a conclusion, like an explanatory theory — is derived from multiple observations in which a pattern is discerned. An example of inductive reasoning at its best is Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states that for every action (force) there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is a law that has worked unfailingly in uncountable instances.</span><br /><span style="color: #01ffff;"><br /></span>But such successes do not eliminate inductive reasoning’s sliver of vulnerability. Karl Popper, the 20th-century Austrian-British philosopher of science, considered all scientific knowledge to be provisional. He illustrated his point with the example of a person who, having seen only white swans, concludes all swans are white. However, the person later discovers a black swan, an event conclusively rebutting the universality of white swans. Of course, abandoning this latter principle has little consequence. But what if an exception to Newton’s universal law governing action and reaction were to appear, instead?<br /><br />Perhaps, as Popper suggests, truth, scientific and otherwise, should therefore only ever be parsed as partial or incomplete, where hypotheses offer different truth-values. Our striving for unconditional truth being a task in the making. This is of particular relevance in complex areas: like the nature of being and existence (<i>ontology</i>); or of universal concepts, transcendental ideas, metaphysics, and the fundamentals of what we think we know and understand (<i>epistemology</i>). (Areas also known to attempt to reveal the truth of <i>unobserved</i> things.) <br /><br />And so, Popper introduced a new test of truth: ‘falsifiability’. That is, all scientific assertions should be subjected to the test of being proven false — the opposite of seeking confirmation. Einstein, too, was more interested in whether experiments <i>disagreed</i> with his bold conjectures, as such experiments would render his theories invalid — rather than merely provide further evidence for them.<br /><br />Nonetheless, as human nature would have it, Einstein was jubilant when his prediction that massive objects bend light was confirmed by astronomical observations of light passing close to the sun during the total solar eclipse of 1919, the observation thereby requiring revision of Newton’s formulation of the laws of gravity.<br /><br />Testability is also central to another aspect of epistemology. That is, to draw a line between true science — whose predictions are subject to rigorous falsification and thus potential disproof — and pseudoscience — seen as speculative, untestable predictions relying on uncontested dogma. Pseudoscience balances precariously, depending as it does on adopters’ fickle belief-commitment rather than on rigorous tests and critical analyses.<div><br /></div><div>On the plus side, if theories are <i>not</i> successfully falsified despite earnest efforts to do so, the claims may have a greater chance of turning out true. Well, at least until new information surfaces to force change to a model. Or, until ingenious thought experiments and insights lead to the sweeping replacement of a theory. Or, until investigation explains how to merge models formerly considered defyingly unalike, yet valid in their respective domains. An example of this last point is the case of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which have remained irreconcilable in describing reality (in matters ranging from spacetime to gravity), despite physicists’ attempts. <div><br /><span>As to the wholesale switching out of scientific theories, it may appear compelling to make the switch, based on accumulated new findings or the sense that the old theory has major fault lines, suggesting it has run its useful course. </span>The 20th-century American philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, was influential in this regard, coining the formative expression ‘paradigm shift’. The shift occurs when a new scientific theory replaces its problem-ridden predecessor, based on a consensus among scientists that the new theory (paradigm) better describes the world, offering a ‘revolutionarily’ different understanding that requires a shift in fundamental concepts.</div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">Among the great paradigm shifts of history are Copernicus</span>’<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">s sun-centered (heliocentric) model of planet rotation, replacing Ptolemy</span>’<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">s Earth-centered model. Another was Charles Darwin</span>’<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">s theory of natural selection as key to the biological sciences, informing the origins and evolution of species. Additionally, Einstein</span>’<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">s theories of relativity ushered in major changes to Newton<span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">’</span>s understanding of the physical universe. Also significant was recognition that plate tectonics explain large-scale geologic change. Significant, too, was development by Neils Bohr and others of quantum mechanics, replacing classical mechanics at microscopic scales. The story of paradigm shifts is long and continues.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span>Science’s progress in unveiling the universe’s mysteries entails dynamic processes: One is the <i>enduring</i> <i>sustainability</i> of theories, seemingly etched in stone, that hold up under unsparing tests of verification and falsification. Another is </span>implementation of <i>amendments </i>as contrary findings chip away at the efficacy of models. But then another is the <i>revolutionarily replacement of scientific models</i> as legacy theories become frail and fail. Reasons for belief in the methods of positivism. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br />In 1960, the physicist Eugene Wigner wrote what became a famous paper in philosophy and other circles, coining the evocative expression <i>unreasonable effectiveness</i>. This was in reference to the role of mathematics in the natural sciences, but he could well have been speaking of the role of science itself in acquiring understanding of the world.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p></div></div>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-86992604827209492402022-12-26T03:00:00.019+00:002022-12-26T03:00:00.253+00:00Picture Post #41 The Aesthetics of Destruction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEejfiQ6qVOJDYHYpId_ro2oqntMS5VpR4-TGmlsEYb8HfrrWn4B1krwnJHCdjmPxnwD5BOYEMV0AiYP0ZjCZnmDMu9MdNRPUIZ1VQ912xqMPvsJss2tmzAvVb9ynjTE2mayjpe10pCHM/s315/logo+Pi+%25281%2529.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEejfiQ6qVOJDYHYpId_ro2oqntMS5VpR4-TGmlsEYb8HfrrWn4B1krwnJHCdjmPxnwD5BOYEMV0AiYP0ZjCZnmDMu9MdNRPUIZ1VQ912xqMPvsJss2tmzAvVb9ynjTE2mayjpe10pCHM/s0/logo+Pi+%25281%2529.png" /></a></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><hr style="text-align: center;" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span>'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be</span></i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span>neither will they become what they might appear to become.'</span></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: arvo; font-size: 16px;"><hr /></b></div><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"> </span></b></span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span><span><b><span>Posted by Martin Cohen<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span></b></span></span></span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span> </span></b></span></p><p style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge8y0fBBKnxOTDfCZCtst-qv5G2zQS5pnNy-Qhkz7uEj_M9MxhhR3TZB6huU1cVIqXJAsJh5RJgnpT8y6GgPHje1lAvIrxNu9D72xwR7lJmKOMw-8TNA5aOsOPRzBOa2VgdzXdgnHEUTTn_ScD3cfLo9z2V3tDz7djtF8isFNWt01D4_hZm7a2L2G09w/s750/Herald%20Weekly%20image%20of%20store%20in%20Fukushima.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge8y0fBBKnxOTDfCZCtst-qv5G2zQS5pnNy-Qhkz7uEj_M9MxhhR3TZB6huU1cVIqXJAsJh5RJgnpT8y6GgPHje1lAvIrxNu9D72xwR7lJmKOMw-8TNA5aOsOPRzBOa2VgdzXdgnHEUTTn_ScD3cfLo9z2V3tDz7djtF8isFNWt01D4_hZm7a2L2G09w/w400-h400/Herald%20Weekly%20image%20of%20store%20in%20Fukushima.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Herald Weekly</i> image of a store in Fukushima sometime after the nuclear reactor there partially exploded. </span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></div><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span> think the next Picture Post should be from Ukraine, where there are so many scenes of urban destruction that are at once both tragic and appalling – yet also somehow (like this scene) somehow rather calming. These are postcards from a post-apocalyptic future, words of chaos that humanity can only briefly put off.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But about this scene, in particular, which has the quality of a paper seascape, the waves created by the numerous documents and papers thrown onto the floor. Or, writing just after Christmas, it might remind some people of the detritus left after an extravagant present–giving ceremony where the parcels and wrapping paper are all that remain. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It is not on a huge scale, this destruction, we could imagine being tasked with cleaning it up. But it’s not the kind of mess that we come across every day either.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><hr /><br /><p></p>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-16516264382192963662022-12-12T01:00:00.122+00:002022-12-12T01:00:00.248+00:00Determinism and Accountability<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR17pMsAiWv6icWhIECcd8dXty_bbB_rvILElNKAacv8NYBsS7F9t0yWZi2CQ32BxdRFtn8hG9OhJ-rUSdOMFAGJFVOuHdRgy9CqC2iP4DjK5QAb7sKdqxGKdv4VmSQvgGcKIwdx8O5LVUZxAuQK8YV40T4pH4og6cDR-bTj-iQv4yvSfmb3SeWE6LYQ/s1200/dominos.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Dominos falling" border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR17pMsAiWv6icWhIECcd8dXty_bbB_rvILElNKAacv8NYBsS7F9t0yWZi2CQ32BxdRFtn8hG9OhJ-rUSdOMFAGJFVOuHdRgy9CqC2iP4DjK5QAb7sKdqxGKdv4VmSQvgGcKIwdx8O5LVUZxAuQK8YV40T4pH4og6cDR-bTj-iQv4yvSfmb3SeWE6LYQ/w400-h225/dominos.jpeg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><br />By Keith Tidman</b><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">P</span>eople assume that <i>free will</i> and moral responsibility are mutually and inextricably interwoven. That is, the default belief tends to be that people make decisions and act on them freely. O</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">n</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> the grounds of that conviction, society condemns and punishes, or lauds and rewards, people on the basis</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> of their actions’ supposed morality. It’s how accountability for behaviour intersects with matters like retributive and distributive justice. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">But what if decisions and actions are already decided – predetermined? Such that if an event has transpired, it is impossible it could not have happened. Might society still need to parse people’s deeds on the basis of some arbitrary construct — a community’s self-prescribed code of right and wrong — in order for society to function in an orderly fashion?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">With the objective, then, of preserving social orderliness, all the while holding people responsible, doesn’t society have no option but to submit to at least the <i>pretense</i> of free will? Where even that pretense is itself predetermined. That is, to make-believe — for the sake of convenience, pragmatic expediency, and the evasion of disorder — that people enjoy unfettered decisions, choices, and deeds.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Okay, so far I’ve summarised what free will means by way of libertarian agency in choosing and behaving in particular ways, with the presumption, however faulty, that people could have acted otherwise. But what about its counterpoint, <i>determinism</i>: especially what in academic circles is often referred to as ‘hard determinism’, where determinism and freedom unreservedly conflict (called <i>incompatibilism</i>)?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">According to determinism, for example, acting benevolently rather than selfishly (or the reverse) may be no more the exercise of unconstrained free agency than naturally having brunette hair or 20/20 vision. We may not really be ‘free’ to decide which job candidate to hire, which book to read, which model car to buy, which investment to make, which country to visit — or which political candidate to vote for.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Rather, the argument states that all decisions and deeds are predicated on the laws of nature, which inform, describe, and animate the stuff of our universe. The proposition is that <span>people’s choices and actions are shaped (are predetermined) by all that has happened over the course of the cosmos’s entire lifespan. </span>The basis is an unremitting regress of successive causes and outcomes recursively branching and branching in incalculable directions, nonstop. A <i>causal</i> determinism, sourced all the way back to the beginning of the universe.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">That is, decisions and deeds inescapably result from a timeless accretion of precedents. The tumbling buildup, over far-ranging generations, of influences: like culture, genetic makeup, experiences, parenting, evolution, intelligence, identity, emotions, disposition, surroundings. As well as, every bit crucially, what naturally occurred throughout the entirety of history and prehistory.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Such factors, among others, have powerful, compelling influences, canceling out moral agency —<b> </b>our ability to make choices based on our sense of right and wrong. After all, in the deterministic model, the events that occurred as antecedents of current and future events did so necessarily. Indeed, we might imagine that if fissures were ever to show up in determinism’s cause-and-effect procession of happenings, the laws of nature and of human behaviour would pitch toward systemic failure — the undoing of events’ inevitability. We thus justify judging and punishing people who behave antisocially, on grounds induced by predetermination, where there is only one possible course of events.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">If, however, because of the absence of free agency and volitional intent, people cannot be regarded as morally accountable, ought they be held responsible anyway, subject to legal or other kinds of sanction? To go through the motions — despite determinism dangling menacingly over systems of criminal justice everywhere. And similarly, ought people be lauded and rewarded for things deemed to have been done right? With implications for assigned guilt, sin, and evil, and other verdicts pertinent to actions freely chosen.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">One answer to the two preceding questions about responsibility has been ‘yes’, on the basis of a belief system referred to as <i>compatibilism</i>. This asserts that free will and determinism can compatibly coexist. But this is a challenging — arguably impossible — needle to thread, short of arbitrarily warping definitions, assumptions, and preconceived conditions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span>My position goes in a different, even simpler, direction from compatibilism. It is that accountability is necessitated by society having to prescribe ethical norms, no matter how contrived — and attempt to force human behaviour to fit those engineered norms — in order to avoid society alternatively sinking into chaos</span>. In this manner, society learns, perhaps kicking and screaming, to cope with a deterministic world — a world where people cannot act otherwise than they do, and events are inevitable.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span>It’s difficult for us to shake intuitively favouring free will, despite its illusory nature</span>. </span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">People </span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">feel</i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> as if in control; they zealously <i>covet</i> being in control; they <i>recoil</i> unsettlingly at the prospect of not being in control. Fundamentally, they sense that personal agency and volitional intent define humanity. They can’t easily discard the pretense that only freely willed actions meet the criterion of warranting tribute, on the one hand, or fault, on the other. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">But even if they’re not in control, and determinism routed free will from the start, society must behave otherwise: it must hold people responsible, both to deter and punish — censure — and to reward — validate — decisions and actions <i>as if </i>free choice had indeed sparked them. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-3233494419351462542022-11-28T01:00:00.002+00:002022-11-28T01:00:00.212+00:00Aquarius Wins the World Cup - Again<p><b><br /></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAhq6Cr17WlmZJEhs7y_2mZ8LKMhewFgfVoJtV5ZN_g-thfLL90-fT6eZjNC3FU-qi0F07AXdpNWSrTcUhE63GQOL-qisGyMCbW10T6rRDnxrHWNjZl99xodLjz17u4IH5x1z9E-rLZVANZbefg_VkLwiu_L7uA6TuGCsbA7Jy3LK83CWoWad9rjBiHA/s320/starmap.jpeg" width="320" /></div><b><p><b><br /></b></p>By Martin Cohen</b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>he FIFA World Cup 2022 has started and <a href="https://apostagolos.com/librianos-em-baixa-confira-os-signos-mais-presentes-na-copa-do-mundo-2022/" target="_blank">Apostagolos.com</a> has returned to the ancient philosophical question of whether the heavens really do govern human affairs by conducting a study of the astrological profiles of the world’s top football players (tracing all the way back to the first tournament in 1930).<br /><br />The results of their analysis seem to defy statistical explanation. Starting off with the remarkable fact that: <br /><blockquote> • <i>Aquarius</i> is by far the most common star sign amongst the historical squad players - 840 past players have been an <i>Aquarius</i>. This curious link between the game and the sign has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/may/18/research.highereducation" target="_blank">noted</a> before, with astrologers hazarding that it might be something due to the symbolism of Aquarius. Specifically, that of an individual separating from the crowd and being different, while at the same time linking to everyone on an equal, humanitarian level. Aquarian’s are supposed to produce unexpected flourishes too - the two traits seeming ideally suited to the game of football which combines teamwork with that goal-scoring moment.<br /><br /> • Second finding is that <i>Pisces</i>, with 835 players, is the second most common star sign. Astrologers, being literal folk at heart, usually predict Pisceans will seek watery sports, but there is an aspect to Pisces that makes them valuable in a soccer team, which is their selflessness. Pisceans are also creative and make strategic plays that others can convert into goals ..<br /><br /> • <i>Capricorn</i> is the third most common stars sign - 769 past squad players were Capricorns, a sign associated with being good team players.<br /><br /> • On the other hand, <i>Sagittarius</i> is the least common star sign amongst the players - with ‘only’ 649 squad players to their credit. Why might that be? Maybe because traditionally the Archer loves to feel free and resist rules. Football, unique for its yellow cards and referees, ain’t their game.</blockquote> What about this year’s tournament, though? Again, Aquarius is the most common star sign in 2022 - 95 squad players are an Aquarians. Pisces with 85 players is the second most common star sign but now Gemini is the third most common stars sign - 81 current players are heavenly twins. And Libra is the least common star sign amongst the players with only 53 players being a Libra from the 2022 group.<div><br /><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>ALL WORLD CUPS DATA</p><p><i>Number of players / </i><i>Star Sign<span> </span></i></p><p>840 Aquarius<span> </span></p><p>835 Pisces<span> </span></p><p>769 Capricorn<span> </span></p><p>749 Aries<span> </span></p><p>726 Taurus<span> </span></p><p>722 Virgo<span> </span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></p><p>697 Gemini<span> </span></p><p>695 Cancer<span> </span></p><p>693 Scorpio<span> </span></p><p>685 Libra<span> </span></p><p>683 Leo<span> </span></p><p>649 Sagittarius<span> </span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>World Cup Players have been analyzed since 1930 until this year’s tournament </i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Where Date of Birth wasn’t available, the player was omitted from the analysis</i></span></p><p> </p><div><br /></div></div>docmartincohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07116346310852077070noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3377207056551352546.post-3848738602200367922022-11-07T02:00:00.232+00:002022-11-12T10:40:19.298+00:00Free Will, the ‘Block Universe’, and Eternalism<p><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b></b></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhzIVVul9YNXnxGhlZaN9Viw0jcUfYaooBcdZslK7vPoVsMvmOgg1FXYy_CfkPxVvRnObn0LQF3CGs1XZoe4Lj5blRDjzsT3wRV1nIW_i8ZMpgDlpF8YTpotdd4LcJOHJRBQG6lU90QEWt4oNsT3Zhyf78qUxmfx478kvxNHiQIAjcjii6yo1nAQZ8Fw/s960/Photographing-Traffic-Trails.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="960" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhzIVVul9YNXnxGhlZaN9Viw0jcUfYaooBcdZslK7vPoVsMvmOgg1FXYy_CfkPxVvRnObn0LQF3CGs1XZoe4Lj5blRDjzsT3wRV1nIW_i8ZMpgDlpF8YTpotdd4LcJOHJRBQG6lU90QEWt4oNsT3Zhyf78qUxmfx478kvxNHiQIAjcjii6yo1nAQZ8Fw/w400-h284/Photographing-Traffic-Trails.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i></i></span><blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i></i></span><blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i></i></span><blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>In this image, the light trail left by traffic illustrates an idea central to the growing block universe theory of time, that the past, present, and future coexist. </i></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><b><br />By Keith Tidman</b></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">he </span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">block universe</i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> is already filled with every event that ever happens. It is where what are traditionally dubbed the past, present, and future exist simultaneously, not as classically flowing linearly from one to the other. As such, these three distinct aspects to time, which by definition exclude the notion of tense, are equally real. None is in any way advantaged over the others.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The orthodox model of a ‘block universe’ describes a four-dimensional universe, resembling a cube, which merges the three dimensions of space and one of time, along the lines that Albert Einstein theorised in his special relativity.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Might this tell us something about the possibility of free will in such a universe? Before we try to answer, let’s explore more particulars about the block universe itself.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">If observed from outside, the block would appear to hold all of space and time. The spacetime coordinates of someone’s birth and death — and every occurrence bracketed in between — accordingly exist concurrently somewhere within the block. The occurrences are inalterably and forever in the block. This portrayal of foreverness is sometimes referred to as ‘eternalism’, defined as a complete history of all possible events.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Conventionally, the block is considered static. But maybe it’s not. What if, for example, what we ordinarily call ‘time’ is better called <i>change</i>? After all, the second law of thermodynamics tells us that the state of entropy of the entire universe — meaning the presence of disorder — will always result in a net increase. It never decreases. Until, that is, the universe ultimately ends. Demonstrating how change, as in the case of entropy, moves inexorably in one direction. The inevitability of such change has a special place for humankind, as reality transforms.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Entropy is thus consummate change, on a cosmic scale, which is how the <i>illusion</i> of something we call ‘the arrow of time’ manifests itself in our conscious minds. As such, change, not time, is what is truly fundamental in nature. <i>Change</i> defines our world. Which, in turn, means that what the block universe comprises is necessarily dynamical and fluid, rather than frozen and still. By extension, the block universe challenges the concept of eternalism.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">This also means that cause and effect exist (as do correlation and effect) as fundamental features of a universe in which ‘becoming’, in the form of change, is rooted. Despite past, present, and future coexisting within the block universe, c<span>auses still necessarily precede and can never follow the effects of what appears as relentless change. Such change serves, in place of illusory time, as one axis matched up with three-dimensional space. The traditional picture of the block universe comprising nondynamical events would contradict the role of cause in making things happen.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">So, let’s return to the issue of free will within the block universe.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 164, 0);">First off, t</span>he block universe has typically been described as deterministic. That is, if every event within the universe happens simultaneously according to the precise space and time coordinates the model calls for, then everything has been inescapably preordained, or predetermined. It all just <i>is</i>. Free will in such a situation becomes every bit as much an illusion as time.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">But there’s a caveat pushing back against that last point. In the absence of freewill, humans would resemble automatons. We would be contraption-like assemblages of parts that move but lack agency, and would be devoid of meaningful identity and true humanity. We, and events, could be seen as two-dimensional set pieces on a stage, deterministically scripted. With no stage direction or audience — and worse, no meaning. Some might proclaim that our sense of autonomy is yet another illusion, along with time. But I believe, given our species’ active role within this dynamical cosmos, that reality is otherwise.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Further, determinism would take us off the hook of accountability and consequences. Fate, bubbling up from the capriciousness of nature’s supposed mechanistic forces, would situate us in a world stripped of responsibility. A world in which our lives are pointlessly set to automatic. Where the distinction between good and evil becomes fuzzy. In this world, ethical norms are arbitrary and fickle — a mere stage prop, giving the appearance of consequences to actions.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">And yet, the blueprint above replacing the concept of time with that of change puts free will back into play, allowing a universe in which our conscious minds freely make decisions and behave accordingly. Or, at least, seemingly so. <span>In particular, for there to be events at the space-change coordinates of the block universe, there must be something capable of driving (causing) change. </span>The events aren’t simply fated. That ‘something’ can only be choice associated with truly libertarian free will.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">There’s one other aspect to free will that should be mentioned. Given that motion within the three-dimensional space of the block universe can occur, <span>not only the <i>what</i> but also the <i>where</i> of events can be changed. Again, agency is required to freely choose. </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">It’s like shuffling cards: the cards remain the same, but their ‘coordinates’ (location) change.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In refutation of determinism, the nature of change as described above allows that what decisions we make and actions we take within the block universe are expressions of libertarian free will. Our choices become new threads woven through the block universe’s fabric — threads that prove dissoluble, however, through the ceaselessness of change.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #ffa400; font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></p>Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05120485893579137602noreply@blogger.com4