tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74080180555431263112024-02-07T18:59:36.347+00:00The Intrepid Mind"The unexamined life is not worth living"Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-89667793881884545942011-02-08T17:36:00.000+00:002011-02-08T17:36:40.627+00:00New home at http://laymanphilosopher.blogspot.com<br>This website is moving to <a href="http://laymanphilosopher.blogspot.com">http://laymanphilosopher.blogspot.com</a><br />
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No more updates are going to be made to this one, all new content is going there along with some redone old posts.<br />
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I'll see you there!<br />
<br>Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-18264217911540673642010-05-21T23:39:00.000+01:002010-05-21T23:39:07.589+01:00Faith VS Reason<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju-FBAx3FpFfAnC75JmvZqq815xjW-Q4UFZDV106ppsIsOpg-dJxpyXVtJxWTSU95jOKBNdRX3UP_rx34zYLviRv5Af3p11nmLjHEZEYMTkzOq4fEZlq2-Ql7ksp4I0g98bHUEmv71JSI/s1600/faithreason.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju-FBAx3FpFfAnC75JmvZqq815xjW-Q4UFZDV106ppsIsOpg-dJxpyXVtJxWTSU95jOKBNdRX3UP_rx34zYLviRv5Af3p11nmLjHEZEYMTkzOq4fEZlq2-Ql7ksp4I0g98bHUEmv71JSI/s1600/faithreason.jpg" /></a></div>Many would say that belief in God is something you accept by faith, not through reason but is that dichotomy meaningful at all? <br />
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What is a belief that is accepted by faith alone? Either it's a belief without real reasons behind it or its a belief whose reasons are of a different kind than one that is grounded on reason. <br />
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The first hypothesis seems obviously false. In order for someone to believe anything to be true, one must have reasons to do so. Believing that something is true without any reason is a logical impossibility since the effect (belief) would have no cause. Of course, we might argue about the weight of those reasons but we're calling them reasons nonetheless.<br />
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So, what about the 2nd hypothesis, can the reasons of a belief grounded on faith be of a different kind than those of a belief grounded on reason? Let's think of some examples and comparisons:<br />
<ol><li>If Bill believes in God because of some subjective personal experience of His presence, would his belief be based on faith? Not necessarily. It is subjective experience that warrants most of our most basic beliefs and I see no reason why that one in particular should be dismissed as a belief devoid of reason. This could be analogous to the belief in the outside world, we are reasonable in having that belief if there's no stronger reason to deny it. In this case, although Bill would not be able to show God's existence to others, he could still be said to know of God's existence in such a way.<br />
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</li>
<li>If Bill believes in God because his parents told him that God exists, then his belief would simply be based on fallacious arguments which doesn't seem to be a fair reason to label his belief as being grounded in faith. His belief is grounded in reasons that may not hold against other contradictory reasons but that's what arguments are for.<br />
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</li>
<li>Another case, and probably the most targeted by this distinction, is the case where Bill believes in God because he really wants that belief to be true. You could say that this belief isn't grounded on reason but it would be more accurate to say that this is not a belief at all. Wishful thinking is distinct from belief, one is wanting something to be true, the other is considering it likely to be true so, in this case, Bill doesn't actually believe that God exists, he merely wishes that to be true.<br />
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</li>
<li>Then there's the case in the opposite end of the spectrum. The belief in God's existence can come from objective arguments, much in the same way most of our other beliefs originate. Many people in the past, in natural theology, have put forth arguments to support that belief and although we might disagree on the weight of those arguments, the fact is that a belief that forms through such means is surely a belief grounded on reason.</li>
</ol>Note that although the belief in God seems the central theme in this article, I'm merely using that belief in particular because it's within it that the distinction between faith and reason is invoked the most. The point is that the distinction doesn't seem to have a concrete meaning and usually causes confusion, it's probably used the most as a shortcut to mean something that should probably be articulated differently.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-61322773448049880692010-02-19T22:17:00.001+00:002010-02-22T12:28:19.489+00:00Is morality objective or subjective? (2/2)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidq7dwdX3G1pu-4n-yFP3ueHjZuvUMK-hgW0AGsAoorh8qE_mX4CwbU61cJE_l8sU3Vx0daI2fCusBximp1B1WjtHy44yj68jqmmZBdaE06K_lTTKfOHhc23Ar0_d1A5Y4SoRW4P4dZtk/s1600-h/ethics-sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidq7dwdX3G1pu-4n-yFP3ueHjZuvUMK-hgW0AGsAoorh8qE_mX4CwbU61cJE_l8sU3Vx0daI2fCusBximp1B1WjtHy44yj68jqmmZBdaE06K_lTTKfOHhc23Ar0_d1A5Y4SoRW4P4dZtk/s320/ethics-sign.jpg" /></a>Traditionally people have looked at morality as an objective reality since that's what it appears to be at first sight. With no other consideration and looking at it in isolation, does it feel any less objective than the existence of the physical world? <br />
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The way we usually speak, shows this. We constantly claim things to be right or wrong, as if those are facts about the world that we come to know about through our conscience. We could swear that such facts are true and that they transcend us and bind us, but shouldn't we demand evidence for the existence of such things or is our intuition enough?<br />
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<b>Is our intuition enough?</b><br />
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I don't think there are any other reasons to think that morality is objective apart from our intuition, but is that a good reason alone? Our intuition has been shown to be a great aid in survival but it just wasn't meant to be used as an arbiter of truth. It has been shown to be wrong many times in the past. <br />
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It's also something that should not be ignored automatically though, if there's no way to confirm or deny our intuition then we would be reasonable in presuming it to be true. However, that's a very weak assumption that shouldn't be held against a conclusion that follows from your world-view. So is there anything else supporting an objective morality besides our intuition?<br />
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<b><i>Stealing is wrong because it's unfair. Torture is wrong because it causes pain and suffering. These are objective grounds for moral judgment.</i></b><br />
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An objection that can be raised is that we can use reason instead of just our conscience, to determine the moral course of action. If we could, then our judgments of moral action would become objective: <br />
<ul><li>For example, we can act in accordance with a general principle that specifies that whatever maximizes happiness and reduces suffering to most people is the moral action. For example, torture might be morally justified, even at a risk of torturing innocents, if thousands of lives are at stake; lying may be the right thing to do to someone to avoid needless suffering (imagine a woman in the last moments of her life and you just receive the news that her son was killed).<br />
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</li>
<li>Or maybe we could argue that moral action stems from a number of duties that must be followed regardless of the consequences. In this case, telling the truth may always be the moral action, regardless of the amount of suffering it provokes. Honoring your promises and commitments may be the right thing to do even if it will lead to negative consequences for yourself or for others.</li>
</ul>Indeed, this puts moral judgment in the objective corner but note that the question was not whether moral action can be judged objectively, as we've seen before, it certainly can if we adopt an objective moral system. The question is instead "what is morality?", not what we can make it out to be. Because, if an objective moral system is adopted for the sake of objectivity, then it's only objective by convention and not by nature. Appealing to such a system as an objective foundation for morality only adds an explanatory layer that would itself require an explanation and would face the exact same problems as the thing it tries to explain.<br />
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In other words, if you ground your moral action in the moral system of your choice, where do you ground the moral system itself?<br />
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<b>On the other hand...</b><br />
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It seems to me that intuition is indeed the only thing supporting objective moral value but as I said before, it may be enough for us to reasonably have that belief if there's no reason to deny it. So, is there any reason to deny it?<br />
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<b>Grounding objective moral value in the natural world.</b><br />
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One good reason is that natural sciences can't seem to provide warrant for that belief, which has traditionally led to positing the existence of objective moral value in a supernatural world instead. On the other hand, it's trivial for science to root a subjective morality in the natural world so, if our world-view doesn't account for the existence of a supernatural world, then I can't see where this objective morality would reside.<br />
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<b>The keyword "ought".</b><br />
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Moral judgments refer to a comparison between what a thing is and what a thing ought to be, as if there is a state that we're aiming for and that we try to approximate. For morality to be objective, reality needs to encompass both what is and what ought to be. However, statements about what ought to be are never properly justified when they're made and the reason why they're never justified is probably because they are impossible to justify which points to a subjective nature of such claims as I explain below.<br />
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<b>Can you prove that torture is wrong?</b><br />
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There's one thing that all subjective phenomena have in common, it's the impossibility to prove or show them to another person. Imagine a painting that you find beautiful, now what if I don't like it, how could you show me that I'm wrong and that the picture is truly beautiful? The same could be said about taste, I love chocolate but I know there must be someone out there who doesn't. How could I prove that I'm right when I defend that chocolate is indeed, delicious?<br />
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I couldn't prove neither of both claims, in fact, I couldn't even argue for them in a meaningful manner and that's because it doesn't make sense to talk about subjective phenomena as if they're objective features of the world. Since these things depend on the subjects, putting them in sentences as if they depend on the objects will lead to contradictions. For example, <i><b>"chocolate is delicious"</b></i> can't be true nor false because deliciousness is not a property of the chocolate. Of course that, in our everyday language, we use such statements but we usually mean something else than the literal meaning, like <i><b>"I find chocolate delicious"</b></i> or <i><b>"the majority of people finds chocolate delicious"</b></i>, which are valid statements because they relate to the subjects instead.<br />
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I think there's a strong parallelism between our observations of ethics and these subjective phenomena but to show that, let's try to prove a moral claim. How could you prove that torturing someone for fun is wrong? You could argue that it is wrong because it causes needless suffering but then, why is causing needless suffering wrong? Maybe because that's the best moral principle among all the alternatives... but "best" in what respect exactly? What criteria can be used to judge how "good" a moral system is and to differentiate between them? Who chose that specific criteria and why that criteria and not any other?<br />
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If we don't stop too soon in our search for answers, I believe that we'll find it impossible to arrive to an objective answer, it's almost as if we're asking the wrong question, as if the statement about what ought to be is invalid and doesn't even make sense to be asked. This is a very consistent result with other subjective phenomena. <br />
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<b>To sum it up...</b><br />
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I must admit that this isn't definitive proof of a subjective morality. In order for that to happen, we'd need to conclude that the impossibility to arrive to an answer is in fact of a metaphysical kind, as opposed to a physical impossibility. For example, it may be impossible to know the color of a dinosaur's skin but this is merely a physical impossibility. The information is gone in the past but the question is still valid, it still makes sense to be asked. A metaphysical impossibility would be for me to show you the beauty of a painting. I can only show you the painting itself and maybe some reasons for you to appreciate it but I can't show you its beauty because the nature of what beauty is doesn't allow it to be shown.<br />
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Even though I believe that this impossibility is indeed, of a metaphysical kind, I can't see a way to climb that very last step using deductive reasoning, but even though we can't arrive at an answer with absolute certainty, I believe that we can arrive at what I think is the overwhelmingly most likely answer to this question. So, based on the assumption of a <b>naturalistic world-view</b>, <b>the lack of arguments for the case of objective moral value</b>, <b>the inability to ground what ought to be in reality</b>, <b>the ease of explaining subjective morality in reality</b> and <b>the analogy with other subjective phenomena</b>, I believe that we would be much more reasonable to presume morality to be subjective.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-61351837898089349942009-12-29T21:25:00.000+00:002009-12-29T21:25:32.863+00:00Is morality objective or subjective? (1/2)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidq7dwdX3G1pu-4n-yFP3ueHjZuvUMK-hgW0AGsAoorh8qE_mX4CwbU61cJE_l8sU3Vx0daI2fCusBximp1B1WjtHy44yj68jqmmZBdaE06K_lTTKfOHhc23Ar0_d1A5Y4SoRW4P4dZtk/s1600-h/ethics-sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidq7dwdX3G1pu-4n-yFP3ueHjZuvUMK-hgW0AGsAoorh8qE_mX4CwbU61cJE_l8sU3Vx0daI2fCusBximp1B1WjtHy44yj68jqmmZBdaE06K_lTTKfOHhc23Ar0_d1A5Y4SoRW4P4dZtk/s320/ethics-sign.jpg" /></a>We have gone to the moon, we have cloned animals and we have even discovered the inner building blocks of protons... yet, the nature of ethics continues to elude us.<br />
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What is the nature of ethics anyway? Is it something that we discover about the world or is it something that we attribute to the world? Before we can answer this question, we must understand it, so what does it even mean to label anything as subjective or objective?<br />
<ul><li>Let's take a spoon, for example. Its shape depends only on itself and not on any subject that perceives it. This is because what we're calling shape is only a function of how the spoon's molecules are arranged in space and, as far as we know, their arrangement doesn't change depending on who's perceiving it. Hence shape is a property of the object and is therefore objective. <br />
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</li>
<li>As for a subjective perception, we could use beauty as an obvious example. Beauty is a property that does not seem to resides in the object itself, it seems to be only a feeling, the result of the experience of perceiving the shape and/or colors of an object. We could also use the less obvious but easier example of color. It's less obvious because each color correlate with an objective feature of the world (namely, the wavelength of the photons that reach our eyes) but the experience of redness is subjective because it doesn't follow from the photons themselves, it's only a mapping in our minds between the wavelength of the photon and the actual experience of color that surfaces into consciousness.</li>
</ul>Now, in order to answer the question in the title of this post we must deal with one major obstacle that always arises in this discussion:<br />
<ul><li>The usual arguments that I see being used are arguments of the type: <i>"Western moral standards are different than eastern moral standards, which is just one example that proves the subjective nature of morality"</i> or <i>"Don't you think that at least some things, like murder and rape, are truly wrong regardless of the time and place?"</i>. This is the most common obstacle that is usually stumbled upon, it's this misunderstanding that an answer can be found by observing moral variability in the world. <br />
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Let's go back to the spoon example. We can all disagree about its actual shape (due to perspective/optical illusion/faulty vision or any other cause) and that wouldn't automatically mean that its shape is actually a subjective property that we're attributing to the spoon. Because of what we know about the world, we know that shape depends on the object, not the subject, even when different subjects see different shapes. So variability doesn't entail subjectivity, but can the lack of variability entail objectivity? Let's imagine that suddenly, all people that dislike the taste of chocolate die. Everyone would find chocolate delicious but that would do nothing to establish the nature of that property as being dependent on the object. Also, we can all agree that the sunrise is beautiful and that doesn't necessarily mean that the sunrise is intrinsically beautiful, independently from the subject that experiences it. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", right? <br />
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So, as you can see, observing the amount of variability of one thing isn't very useful in finding its nature. I believe that the question can't be answered by observing the thing we're testing alone, in isolation from its context, it's in examining how it fits within our world-view that we can find an answer.</li>
</ul>So back to ethics! Is morality discovered by us in the actions of persons? If it's "discovered", then it's an objective feature of the world and we merely have a capacity to perceive it and make sense of it; Or is it attributed by us to the world? In which case, morality is within us, dependent on the subjects that actively attribute properties of rightness and wrongness to actions and is therefore, subjective.<br />
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Now you're probably wondering how can we possibly answer such a question after I claimed that the answer will come ultimately from what your world-view allows and how morality fits in it. It's probably impossible to arrive at an answer without a prior agreement on an underlying world-view but I believe we can reach a conclusion for a naturalist world-view at least. Part 2 will be up shortly, I'll edit this paragraph to point to it but for now, I hope I've been able to clarify what the question means and to make sense of it.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-27615579325617019602009-10-24T14:10:00.000+01:002009-10-24T14:10:39.108+01:00Can robots ever feel pain?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH6eO_T5ui6OL1fCjPeFVXZYUOaAaxvu4xct8pp4jDWkq1W55i15tZhgRNuKFjWFZVVhHYYvH20AXbI9qiT5ezaG6hVlkzEZd2ctZArZPCDNDEn_H806UNQVrjSuikZu-K0SwntvD5emo/s1600-h/robots1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH6eO_T5ui6OL1fCjPeFVXZYUOaAaxvu4xct8pp4jDWkq1W55i15tZhgRNuKFjWFZVVhHYYvH20AXbI9qiT5ezaG6hVlkzEZd2ctZArZPCDNDEn_H806UNQVrjSuikZu-K0SwntvD5emo/s320/robots1.jpg" /></a></div>Can robots ever feel pain? Can they ever love or experience sadness? These things are not possible today but they might be possible in the future if they're only a matter of technical engineering. So the question in this article is: are they only a matter of technical engineering?<br />
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There is an explanatory gap between the subjective sensations in our minds and the objective nature of the physical reality but is that gap merely physical in nature or is there an actual metaphysical difference between them? In other words, is that a difference only in degree or in their very nature?<br />
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The fact that there is even a problem here seem to elude most people, it's hard to realize what it is and even harder to explain it. There is this default position that consciousness is, in principle, knowable and explainable in the framework of modern neurology and that there are no reasons to think otherwise. <br />
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So are there good reasons to think otherwise? I'll try to show them by using robots as an example.<br />
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<b>Building the robot.</b><br />
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For this to work we need to establish an assumption. Let's presume that everything that makes up a human being can (in principle only) be constructed in a robot. I think this is the default position and it basically means that, if we're just chemistry, then there's no reason why the same chemical principles can't apply in a robot. Where there's a group of nerve cells transmitting electrical signals, there can be an electrical wire. Where there's muscle there can be a small engine. Where there is skin there can be an organic compound that behaves like skin. <br />
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This is obviously an over-simplification but the actual materials and techniques are not important for the purpose of this article. The only important thing to presume is that each part we choose for our robot will maintain the same behavior as the human counterpart.<br />
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<b>Building the feeling of pain.</b><br />
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Now let's say that we build this robot in a way that will enable it to experience pain. <br />
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Beneath the surface of a robot's skin there are pressure sensors. When pressure increases beyond a certain threshold, where further pressure could be threatening, the sensor (nerve) emits an electrical signal through a set of wires (nervous system) that are connected to a central processing unit (the brain). When the signal reaches that CPU, a procedure is fired so that the head and eyes track the source location of the signal to get more information, at the same time another procedure is fired that emits a laud noise and another procedure is fired to attempt to withdraw the arm away from the source of the pressure. <br />
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So by hammering the finger of that poor robot, the robot would turn it's head to you, scream and then withdraw the arm away from you. <br />
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<b>The result.</b><br />
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Let's presume that all of this was so perfectly simulated that you could not distinguish between the behavior of that robot and a human being's behavior. The result is that we have just succeeded in simulating pain! <br />
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Or have we? <br />
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The truth is that we've only succeeded in simulating the behavior of pain but not the feeling of pain and it's important to distinguish both. Is that robot experiencing the feeling of pain? Not at all. Would it be immoral to torture that robot only because it behaves as if it was feeling pain? Now what if we threaten the robot to hammer his finger again, could we program it to feel fear? Again, it doesn't seem possible. Sure, he could have the logical pathways to recognize potential danger and avoid it by running away from it. It could effectively SEEM as if it was feeling fear but it still wouldn't be experiencing the feeling of fear.<br />
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<b>The gap.</b><br />
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In a way, those sensations can be said not to exist at all in physical reality and they don't seem to logically follow from it. Would it be impossible for life to have developed into creatures like that robot? Creatures that, through the course of evolution by natural selection, have acquired the necessary programming to survive and replicate, while behaving as we behave, yet being devoid of subjective sensations? Is there a difference between us and that description of those robots if we're just biological machinery anyway? There's no difference in behavior but you'll probably recognize that the robot of our little thought experiment is not a person since it doesn't feel anything. <br />
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So what would it take for the robot to feel? There just doesn't seem to be a way since all we can construct are behaviors and not feelings. The problem is that what we feel is in the subjective realm of our mind and not on an objective physical reality, it's surely correlated with it but it's still unexplained by it and more importantly, it's seemingly unexplainable by it alone, which is what I mean by there being a difference in the nature of those things and that would entail that the assumption we started out with is probably wrong. <br />
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As a final note, this is one of those subjects that defy our language. It's so difficult to find the words to express this problem, but if the article was unclear, maybe its main concepts can be better understood by reading this other article: <a href="http://theintrepidmind.blogspot.com/2009/05/metaphysics-of-color.html">The metaphysics of color</a>, which distinguishes the subjectiveness of our feelings from the objective phenomena that it relates to, in the world, using color as an example.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-39448226655791137792009-09-10T22:09:00.002+01:002009-09-10T22:09:48.985+01:00Selfishness as the source of empathy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI6iChKPPqBWXWPxogwQEZiF8vhreW_7pvVAlu8QPRUSPqe_q0N5u0YtJgtwrSRjYa3mnt8IAGkmWAmIrUStfL4uF9jN3R1GDuGT8D8n7C-asruBg28A1RpoNfb2Qja2H_vSKa_pm7a_Y/s1600-h/empathy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI6iChKPPqBWXWPxogwQEZiF8vhreW_7pvVAlu8QPRUSPqe_q0N5u0YtJgtwrSRjYa3mnt8IAGkmWAmIrUStfL4uF9jN3R1GDuGT8D8n7C-asruBg28A1RpoNfb2Qja2H_vSKa_pm7a_Y/s400/empathy.jpg" /></a></div>Imagine yourself serving a client in some shop. The client is blind and asks you to take out the amount of money from his wallet for the items he purchased. You'll realize that you could take whatever you want but you'll probably feel aversion to the idea. You recognize the vulnerability that that person is feeling and you'll want to help him, be nice to him and be a positive influence in his life. You'll probably feel the same desire to help if you see someone crying or being subject to great physical pain.<br />
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This sensibility seems to be fairly common, at least in the example before, but seems to extend into multiple degrees of variability. From physical pain to emotional pain, from friends to complete strangers, from humans to other animals, and the higher we go, the less agreement there is. <br />
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<b>The challenges.</b><br />
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Explaining empathy towards other animals have been a challenge since there doesn't seem to be any evolutionary purpose is such a feeling, quite the contrary, our nature should encourage the killing of baby seals if we must, in order to survive. So if this isn't part of our nature, is it mere convention? Are we taught that torturing cats for fun is wrong? That mustn't be right, if you find the torture of animals for fun aversive, it's probably not because you can be caught doing it and therefore, it's something much deeper than simply the result of a breach of some conventioned command. <br />
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Even on lower levels, the explanation seems very incomplete. We can attribute a Darwinian general purpose to account for empathy towards relatives and friends but not towards unrelated persons that cannot reciprocate.<br />
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We can argue that all of these levels of what I described are actually different things in their nature and therefore, don't require the same explanation. I disagree. I argue that we can explain all of these things as different aspects of the same thing and even though, on the lowest levels, said consequences might be advantageous for our survival, I'd say that generally, these are accidental and the result of a completely separate phenomenon.<br />
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<b>So what is it? </b><br />
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I believe this is a spin-off of a skill that humans can take to these extremes. It's easy to imagine why properly understanding the needs, wants and feelings of another human is essential for our own survival so we honed the skill that allows us to do just that over the course of our evolution.<br />
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Now wouldn't it be almost unbelievable how fast and effortlessly one can know about our own state of mind given how complex creatures we are? We do this all the time that we observe someone and we don't even know we're doing it! Well, it would be unbelievable, unless we took a shortcut from all those calculations.<br />
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What we're really doing is that we're putting ourselves in another's shoes, almost literally. A quick way to know what someone is feeling is doing this exercise: "what would I feel if I was in that situation?". This might not be very accurate because it will translate into what YOU would feel. When we know a person well enough we might go further than this and think about what we'd feel if we WERE that person under that situation, but given that we don't have access to anyone else's minds to experience how different they really are, we can't possibly know how accurate we really are. One thing is certain though, this is the most accurate we can possibly get.<br />
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<b>The link between selfishness and empathy.</b><br />
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We've explained how we know but we haven't explained why we care. The reason we care is a direct consequence of the method we use to know what that person is feeling. We're putting ourselves in another's shoes and essentially feeling what we'd feel under such circumstances, so if we know by feeling, we automatically care for what we're feeling ourselves. What you're actually feeling, by imagining someone's fingernails being forced out of one's fingers, is a simulation on yourself of what that would probably feel like and it's the discomfort of that self-inflicted pain that prompts us into action.<br />
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I believe this can explain even the highest levels of empathy that I've described, namely towards other animals. By mastering this skill, we can also apply it to know what other animals are feeling. Of course, this can be terribly fallacious since we don't know what it is like to be a dog, yet, we'll make the exercise of being a dog under such situation which can result in something that is very far from what a dog actually feels like. Any parent might also apply their own emotional knowledge of what it is like to have a baby when observing a baby seal being killed.<br />
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<b>Explaining variability.</b><br />
<br />
Lack of sensibility may then be explained <i>a priori</i>, by some neurological fault in this skill, or it can be explained <i>a posteriori</i>, with the absence of some necessary personal experiences to properly examine people's feelings. We can observe this with children, we all know how cruel they can be and I'd say that's related with a still undeveloped skill and lack of the necessary experience to understand the whole human emotional spectrum.<br />
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<b>Wrapping it up</b><br />
<br />
This is why I'm using the word selfishness to explain empathy. Not with the negative connotation it has and not even in the same way it's usually used, since this selfishness is based on the cause of an action and not on the consequence, which is how it's usually used. To wrap it up, we feel empathy and act on it to avoid the feelings on ourselves that mirror what we anticipate to be the feelings of another. It's because it hurts when we see someone suffering, it's because we feel like crying when we see someone crying, it's because we feel vulnerable when we see someone vulnerable, it's because we want to stop the pain we're feeling ourselves that prompts us so powerfully to help.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-5598019308236873192009-08-17T12:29:00.001+01:002009-09-22T11:06:52.628+01:00Laughter, Humor, Sexual Attraction (3/3)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLB84UtvYB5u8QKDUMdxCyiNZyKuQdigeUeVg4pAweLDKvemL6310mhhLM6yWr_We79uIydUcshoIOkBvTPSBxAfIntcXpi_7ySCMq-bt0uWZIdEemcMsXdT7doTVIqEvopwJieTBOyLA/s1600-h/improvallstars47.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLB84UtvYB5u8QKDUMdxCyiNZyKuQdigeUeVg4pAweLDKvemL6310mhhLM6yWr_We79uIydUcshoIOkBvTPSBxAfIntcXpi_7ySCMq-bt0uWZIdEemcMsXdT7doTVIqEvopwJieTBOyLA/s320/improvallstars47.jpg" /></a></div>The real reason behind establishing the concepts of laughter and humor (<a href="http://theintrepidmind.blogspot.com/2009/08/laughter-humor-sexual-attraction-part.html">part 1</a> and <a href="http://theintrepidmind.blogspot.com/2009/08/laughter-humor-sexual-attraction-23.html">part 2</a> of this series), was to end up at an attempt to connect all the dots, framing these questions within the context of man's biological evolution. They don't seem to fit anywhere but can they -not- have a purpose? Maybe they're just some odd product from an over-evolved brain or maybe their existence was more important in our evolutionary paths than we give them credit for. In exploring the later possibility, they can be seen as an evolutionary driving force, responsible for pushing our intelligence up to modern man standards.<br />
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In a recent study, women were asked to choose the most sexually appealing men according to their written introductions. Some introductions have been carefully crafted to be funny while others were not. Not surprisingly, women chose the funniest ones. Not surprisingly because we all know that women prefer men with a sense of humor, I'm not even sure why there's a study about it in the first place.<br />
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Now, can it be, that we have evolved our selection criteria to use a person's sense of humor as a sign of intelligence (broadly speaking)? There are a couple of points here. First, we must ask if the development of intelligence is a meaningful advantage in competing and surviving. That seems obvious, our species is a living proof of that. The second point is, can humor provide a generally meaningful correlation with cognitive capacity? If we agree with the way we described humor in <a href="http://theintrepidmind.blogspot.com/2009/08/laughter-humor-sexual-attraction-23.html">part 2</a> of this series, then I'd say that humor seems very closely related with the kind of intelligence that would be useful in the chaotic, unpredictable world where the primitive man lived in.<br />
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But even if we agree that humor relates to our cognitive ability to quickly recognize logical patterns and sudden anomalies in them, it still couldn't be used as a selection method if the information of a successful recognition of humor wasn't available to anyone else other oneself, so that's where laughter comes in. So if we agree that laughter is used in this context to broadcast that recognition (<a href="http://theintrepidmind.blogspot.com/2009/08/laughter-humor-sexual-attraction-part.html">part 1</a>), then both can suddenly provide a working new possible selection criteria for a potential mate. Now if humor provides some useful measure of intelligence, the importance of humor as a selection criteria in women could have evolved in parallel and risen progressively as the actual consequences of the development of intelligence in man got more and more relevant.<br />
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The existence of this new selection criteria and the importance it has are very consistent with what seems to have been a dramatic shift in the strategic history of our evolution. Brains have always evolved, with or without humor, but never have they evolved in such a furious pace as is observable in the path that ultimately led to the Homo Sapiens. In comparison with our closest evolutionary branches, we are the most fragile, weak, devoid of any natural weapons like big teeth or claws; yet we're incredibly more intelligent. What drove us in such an unorthodox path? This would also help to explain the fact that humor is still observably a primary selection criteria, overshadowing physical dominance much of the time. However, any consideration about any selection criteria today should be taken with a pinch of salt since we risk mixing a natural animal criteria with many layers of culture and civilization.<br />
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In conclusion, I'd like to say that this is not just the case that the pieces fit here, it's also the case that they don't seem to fit very well anywhere else on the board. If we look at ourselves in light of our animal nature, if we think about the primitive roots that gave rise to these things, then humor is a very odd and special thing that either has a very odd and special explanation or else it must fit some sort of evolutionary purpose as the one suggested here. Maybe humor is not just some weird biological spin-off of our big brains and maybe it's more than a consequence of that, maybe it's a big part of the cause itself.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-15975555375842406442009-08-06T12:54:00.001+01:002009-09-11T11:27:59.929+01:00Laughter, Humor, Sexual Attraction (2/3)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijfK4-kmqhikdTRARYqxU9m70tq4y7RaQXRTbovePUd1aFqvL0tyOoHPeYj8CTGG0pKm0NUMM7ohO6BUltAvkwLjyLobNwGnDxpo_zkLTCod5IZWJddDJ2GFghhFhvCrEQawrw238y0ZY/s1600-h/improvallstars5_887.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijfK4-kmqhikdTRARYqxU9m70tq4y7RaQXRTbovePUd1aFqvL0tyOoHPeYj8CTGG0pKm0NUMM7ohO6BUltAvkwLjyLobNwGnDxpo_zkLTCod5IZWJddDJ2GFghhFhvCrEQawrw238y0ZY/s320/improvallstars5_887.jpg" /></a></div>What is humor? I know, that's kind of an unusual question, one that can be handled from many different angles. As we've seen in <a href="http://theintrepidmind.blogspot.com/2009/08/laughter-humor-sexual-attraction-part.html">Part 1</a> of this series, although humor provokes laughter, not everything that provokes laughter is humor. In my perspective, something contains humor when there is a sudden recognition of something unusual or unexpected in a logical pattern. A sudden anomaly in that pattern, a twist that surprises the subject.<br />
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This unifies different aspects of humor like:<br />
<ul><li>Someone disappearing from a child's field of view and then reappearing again (peekaboo) when the child doesn't expect things to exist if they're not perceived.</li>
<li>A clown whose behavior is unusual.</li>
<li>A complicated political joke in a stand up comedy act, that establishes a background and provides some twist in a punchline.</li>
<li>Even something as simple as a photo. The sight of Santa Claus riding an Arley Davidson might be funny. Whether you start by recognizing Santa or the bike, the next thing you recognize is totally unexpected, even contradictory, it doesn't fit.</li>
</ul>Note that the argument is not that you'll find everything that fits this criteria truly funny. The argument is that, even though a joke that I might present as an example might not be that funny after all, we'll probably still agree that it IS a joke and that it objectively contains humor. The subjectivity of our judgments about the degree to which something is funny is not the focus of this article so regardless of any exceptions or nuances that a complete definition would probably have, in it's core, humor can be defined as a sudden recognition of an anomaly in a logical pattern.<br />
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How does laughter fit in then? In this context, laughter seems to have the role of broadcasting our recognition of something funny to other persons.<br />
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Ironically, this seems surprisingly simple and banal for a description of something apparently so special and complex, but as anyone might ask at this point... Why did such an odd thing ever came into being? What's the reason and purpose behind the development of humor? Where does it fit in the framework of man's biological evolution? Why would natural selection favor men with a sense of humor?<br />
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More on <a href="http://theintrepidmind.blogspot.com/2009/08/laughter-humor-sexual-attraction-33.html">Part 3/3</a>.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-61601242323193839222009-08-02T14:37:00.004+01:002009-08-17T12:14:51.520+01:00Laughter, Humor, Sexual Attraction (1/3)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_3zRASUPQPVbcFa97xS3ce-4ToNGSuzUOSpTLku_XQejCnj9QJtRhTcxt83vYAtiGZ8PqJ0QBc5g8qa0sF2KNxaWWcmbGVdLnCRGEC0B8xaH8jXZGIJ3f6yraw82k8DtmLIi4vXhyphenhyphenpII/s1600-h/l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_3zRASUPQPVbcFa97xS3ce-4ToNGSuzUOSpTLku_XQejCnj9QJtRhTcxt83vYAtiGZ8PqJ0QBc5g8qa0sF2KNxaWWcmbGVdLnCRGEC0B8xaH8jXZGIJ3f6yraw82k8DtmLIi4vXhyphenhyphenpII/s320/l.jpg" /></a></div>Ever wondered why we laugh? Not why just as in, what are the things that make us laugh, but why as in, why did laughter ever came into being? This urge to laugh when someone falls off a chair seems to separate us from other animals and doesn't seem to serve any purpose at all. This is rather odd in a world of living things that evolved and optimized over billions of years, where everything in them has a purpose. Well, not everything, an appendix was never very useful to me other than in letting me know the inside of an operation's room, but is laughter just like the appendix? Just some weird spin-off of biological evolution? But even if it was, that would mean that it had a purpose once. So if we have it now, it's because for some reason, natural selection favored primitive men that laughed, so what is that reason?<br />
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We should start by attempting to describe what is this thing that we're talking about. What is laughter? We could describe it as the contraction of certain muscles in the face and as the vocalization in a set of patterns that are easily recognized as laughter. Now, although there's something truly unique related with laughter, laughter by itself doesn't seem to be anything that special and unique at all. The mechanism is imprinted in our genes and it can be seen in other animals too so the physiological mechanisms for the human's laugh isn't new; we also share many of the causes that trigger such a reaction, like joy, excitement and some forms of physical contact like tickling.<br />
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This is demonstrated by studies with other great apes and even in rats - yes, apparently some "science" was done that involved tickling rats. Now you might say that their laughter is very different than our own which still makes our "haha" special. Indeed our recognition of laughter in other species doesn't happen but isn't that what you would expect when there's no evolutionary pressure for us to do so? Regardless of any slight differences on the pattern of vocalizations and the exact muscles that are used, the underlying mechanism itself seems to be the same which makes laughter much more common and banal than we'd think.<br />
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So what's it's purpose? Laughter seems to be only one in a number of means of communication typically present in animals of a very social nature. Just like the movement of a dog's tail as a reaction to inner states of mind can be seen as an evolutionary advantage by improving communication between dogs. For an animal without a formal language like the one that developed on our civilization, the presence of <i>a priori</i> means of communication is absolutely necessary for any social creature to be social.<br />
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Laughter seems to fit this framework nicely but still, we can't help but think that there must be something genuinely unique in laughter. This is because we tend to associate laughter with humor and it's at humor that the line is drawn. Laughter, in this context, seems to have the role of broadcasting the recognition of humor.<br />
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More on humor on <a href="http://theintrepidmind.blogspot.com/2009/08/laughter-humor-sexual-attraction-23.html">part 2</a> of this 3 part series...Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-55945740438163219552009-06-27T00:13:00.000+01:002009-06-27T00:13:04.233+01:00Metaphysics of color<a href="http://www.andybrain.com/sciencelab/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/color-bars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://www.andybrain.com/sciencelab/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/color-bars.jpg" width="200" /></a>How would you describe red to a blind person? How would you describe color? We can't do it! I came to the conclusion that there is no such thing in reality as a color, but how can this be? Surely we see them, red is very much real to me but how can I possibly describe red to a blind person? Is there something that is like to see red? How could I describe such radical differences between red and green?<br />
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So colors are not properties of the objects we see, they're our subjective sensation of them. They're not an objective feature of the world, the real world doesn't have colors. So how can we imagine reality without colors? It's also no use of trying to imagine it in just black and white, or shades of gray, because those are also subjective constructs in our minds. So what's left then? Nothing, it's a paradox attempting to visualize something without color.<br />
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We know this for a long time but I don't think we ever stop to think about the amazing conclusions that follow. We think we see reality but we basically just walk around in a construct of reality that our mind puts together so that we can survive. It's like a quote I heard from John Medina (a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant - check out his book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Rules-Principles-Surviving-Thriving/dp/0979777747/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242065623&sr=8-1">Brain Rules</a>) "Our brain isn't interested in reality, it's interested in surviving".<br />
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Now you might say, we know much about colors, we even make tv screens and monitors that generate them in real time. The problem is that we're not really generating the color itself, we're just making thousands of little dots that emit photons in a given wavelength, the actual color that we're seeing is generated only inside of our brains.<br />
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An alien might argue that grass is actually pink and he wouldn't be wrong about it. We would all only need to agree that objectively, grass reflects light in a given wavelength to which the human brain assigns the green color and a pink color in an alien's brain. It's false that grass IS green, or that green is a property of grass. Not that there would be any way of any of us to show the other what are the actual colors we're seeing... I mean, what if the alien sees the grass as pink but calls green to pink? How would any of us explain the other what is the color that we're seeing if that color is not an objective "thing" that can be described? We would say that the grass is green and they would say the same thing but we would be really be seeing different things without ever realizing that.<br />
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Of course, the alien might pick up a pink brush and say that green is of that color, then we'd know that they're seeing grass as pink, no matter how they call pink, but imagine that aliens see a brand new color in the infrared part of the spectrum. It's a new color that we don't see and is different from all the colors we know of. How would an alien possibly describe such a thing to us? We can't even imagine what a "new" color could be. In the same way, it would be impossible to describe a color to an alien that doesn't see it, just like the blind person in the beginning.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-10223243801342133462009-05-05T11:10:00.002+01:002011-03-08T17:43:09.258+00:00Star Trek transporters and Consciousness<div style="background-color: #783f04; text-align: center;">This post has been modified and reposted in our new home<br />
<b><a href="http://laymanphilosopher.blogspot.com/">http://laymanphilosopher.blogspot.com</a></b><br />
Any comments, post them there.</div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr6KyIT8jbk40XRhTl9QeiuPwCp1UOcWs2R860L5W-1y1Mgw-v1_OgPvVovC8fNNHfcUiJHp1Nxmjmt15FRapQQyTehAyA5rPTM0g0Biq6ahPPQxS54ph2i82prOeAd3UEl0NO05adYAY/s1600-h/beam+me+down.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr6KyIT8jbk40XRhTl9QeiuPwCp1UOcWs2R860L5W-1y1Mgw-v1_OgPvVovC8fNNHfcUiJHp1Nxmjmt15FRapQQyTehAyA5rPTM0g0Biq6ahPPQxS54ph2i82prOeAd3UEl0NO05adYAY/s200/beam+me+down.jpg" /></a>The Star Trek transporter is supposed to dematerialize a person, beaming the energy to a remote location and then materializing a person again but wouldn't that kill the person in the origin and assemble a new person with the same identity in the destination? Of course that, for the person on the destination, he would still be the same person. Memory would provide him with the illusion of a continuum but for the mind that was active before the process, there would be no destination. It would be shut down as the physical structure that sustains it is shredded into pure energy and then an exact replica would be set up with the same set of particles.<br />
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As a kid, I imagined a way to assemble a transportation system like this but instead of sending the energy of a dematerialized person, it would scan all the particles in our body, send that information to another place, then it would assemble the physical structure of our body while the original was destroyed. Assuming that all of the components of the mind (like memory and personality) are preserved in the brain's physical structure, this would actually work! People would remember getting into a machine and then appearing somewhere else instantly and carrying on with their lives. There would be no practical problems with this so if I ask you if the person that was transported is still the same person you might say yes, but now let's imagine this with a twist.<br />
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What if the original set of particles (you) was not destroyed. Now you have two you's, one that never left the starting location and another in the destination. Now it becomes obvious that they're not the same person, they might have the same identification in that society but they're two persons, not one and the same. If I put myself on the shoes of the person that arrived at the destination, I would have no idea that there was another me somewhere else. I wouldn't feel his pain, I wouldn't see what he's seeing and I wouldn't experience his thoughts. It would be a third party for me, a different person that just happens to have the same memories, personality and body up to a certain point in time. It would be a clone, a replica, not me. Could I say that I "am" that other person? So now the answer seems no, contrary to the other example above, but wouldn't this mean that in the other example, where the original is destroyed, that you (the original) would die and simply cease to exist? And that a whole new person would come into existence thinking that it has always existed? Wouldn't everyone keep dying in the transporter without anyone ever noticing?<br />
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Now is the fact that the person on the destination is set up with the same particles make any difference? The first is still destroyed and a new person is assembled as in the first example. Unless what "you" are is really that exact set of particles but in that case how would we deal with the fact that the particles in our bodies are constantly being recycled. From time to time, we can be sure that no single particle in our bodies are the same so wouldn't this mean that we're not the same person? Is timing the difference? So if I change them gradually it's still me but if I change them too fast it's not me? What sense would that make?Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-26924805934011225452009-04-29T19:07:00.005+01:002009-05-05T11:05:35.308+01:00Spiders and the "Yuk factor"YUK! That can mean many things including "there's a spider in my hair!" but what exactly IS that feeling?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUHsmPiuFfoiRLVUk8krcrZc_E40UX4vfh-q9uqgFMXdNJ-omXOQOegWey8LCyRCmQW1Y65a_B8FCi6XluSeuUvpykjBZDsu3LJ5SOuwf7-ds0ES0gYpd9_1CiSfk1LanRC2KV935Sqvs/s1600-h/spider_web-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUHsmPiuFfoiRLVUk8krcrZc_E40UX4vfh-q9uqgFMXdNJ-omXOQOegWey8LCyRCmQW1Y65a_B8FCi6XluSeuUvpykjBZDsu3LJ5SOuwf7-ds0ES0gYpd9_1CiSfk1LanRC2KV935Sqvs/s200/spider_web-1.jpg" /></a>I started thinking about this when I was typing some text at work and a spider fell off the roof and landed right in front of me. I wouldn't even have noticed the spider if not for the sound it made as gravity forced it to collide head-first with my desk, so that must have hurt!<br />
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When I looked down and realized that there was a spider looking at my arm as if it was a suitable surface to climb on to, I immediately moved back (there's a reason why these chairs have wheels!) turned pale and prepared to run away screaming like a little girl... of course I didn't do that, I just acted as if it didn't bother me at all because as we all know, real men aren't afraid of spiders!<br />
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Now, although people's reactions differ, what they feel is usually quite similar. Whether we're talking about spiders, centipedes, cockroaches or caterpillars, people "Yuk" to pretty much the same stuff.<br />
<div></div><br />
But let's keep with the spider theme! So what is this discomfort that urges us to avoid such a tiny little creature? There are two questions here, what and why. What exactly am I reacting to in a spider and what purpose does such a feeling serve, and it's the first that popped up in my mind during this spider incident.<br />
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So what is that visual stimulae that makes us "yuk"? I'll be claiming that it's not really the aspect or shape of the spider, but rather what we anticipate is the experience of directly interacting with it. I got this idea from the great psychologist James Gibson (1979), he made this claim that our perception evolved for action and he introduced this concept of affordances. What this means in practice is that when we see a chair, we are not just seeing the angles, the materials, the colors, and so on. We're mainly seeing that the chair allows us to sit on it, or to fend off an attacker with it, or to stand on it to change a light bulb. So our visual perception of this object is not just it's brute graphical representation, it's actually much more about what you can do with it (or what it can do to you) than about how good it looks.<br />
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I found this idea very interesting and I've realized that most of this "yuk factor" regarding bugs isn't caused specifically by their shape/colors as we'd intuitively say, but instead it's caused by our overall perception of them which includes an anticipation of all possible direct interactions with such a creature, like the thought of having one crawling on your skin, the thought of having one in your mouth and all sorts of possible kinds of contact that would be highly undesirable.<br />
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This makes sense and relates very well with my personal experiences with spiders. If it was just about it's shape then all I had to do was to close my eyes but we know that's not true. Our awareness of it's presence nearby will still urge us to do something and make sure no direct contact is possible (ruthlessly taking it's life usually does the trick).<br />
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So if you think that the spider is an ugly creature that should be kept at distance, know that the problem is within yourself, not in the poor little spider! Strictly aesthetically speaking, a spider can be regarded as having a geometrically and functionally very beautiful body plan... right?Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-44356545441710335532009-04-18T23:28:00.003+01:002009-12-29T14:35:51.412+00:00EVOLV: ecosystem and biological evolution simulationThis is a personal attempt at developing a computer simulation of an ecosystem that can be both entertaining and truthful to reality. There is much still to do, more info at <a href="http://smig.netii.net/evolv/">http://smig.netii.net/evolv/</a><br />
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<embed autoplay="false" height="505" loop="false" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://smig.netii.net/evolv/evolv-v2-devel.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" /embed>Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-78026865821039914682009-03-26T22:11:00.000+00:002009-04-21T12:31:19.557+01:00Why can Free Will be neither true nor false?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiG6oOrhX-fEhE3vctvq1v2xiJwqtSrl6DjHW0jRR5EhCrE7D1o8F9IONVXHFiEazAZRe7icv96OZQdlIJI1U-6osTeofxAK3zE4nJ2WFMkGK3D-XXS7rM2gJFuKX0KW10b_2YWtXsv64/s1600-h/chains_broad_link_ships_anchor.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320950037549476802" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiG6oOrhX-fEhE3vctvq1v2xiJwqtSrl6DjHW0jRR5EhCrE7D1o8F9IONVXHFiEazAZRe7icv96OZQdlIJI1U-6osTeofxAK3zE4nJ2WFMkGK3D-XXS7rM2gJFuKX0KW10b_2YWtXsv64/s200/chains_broad_link_ships_anchor.jpg" border="0" /></a>Free Will is one of those things we all like to argue about but no one really knows exactly what it's actually supposed to be. I keep hearing these arguments of people defending free will as true for no apparent reason, after rejecting dualism (the idea of an immaterial self). This is starting to be a very popular stance but I don't get it, is there any possible logical meaning in that position?<br /><br />People always seem to miss the first step when making up their minds. In order to question if my will is free I must first identify what it is that it's supposed to be free from. Free from my irrationality? Free from the laws of physics? Free from God?<br /><br />The question usually comes up related with the laws of physics but in such a perspective, this is only the problem of dualism in disguise. <br /><br />However, what I've been seeing is that free will ends up being used solely to describe unpredictability, which seems like an odd and insignificant description for a concept that involves freedom and a will. This seems to be in response to "causal determinism" that claims that all of our actions should be predictable by using the laws of physics. Why? Because of:<br /><ol><li>The success of brain science in explaining processes of the mind with chemical processes in the physical brain.<br /></li><li>The success of classical mechanics in predicting with amazing precision the future behavior of any macroscopic body. </li></ol><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Of course, this just begs the question:</span> if all physical reality can potentially be described in mathematical formulas and if our mind is part of that physical reality, then everything, even our own thoughts and decisions, are bound to one inescapable mathematical solution. In this view we're just part of an equation and what we call free will is simply an illusion of control.<br /><br />This view seems to cause a great deal of discomfort in people so they attempt to defend free will with one of two arguments:<br /><ol><li>There is an intrinsic randomness in the physical reality as the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle describes.<br /></li><li>The mind (or parts of it) is separate from the physical brain. This is called dualism.</li></ol><div align="left">The second alternative bypasses physical laws completely and it leaves plenty of room for the unknown as justification of the freedom of our will. My problem is with the meaning of free will after rejecting this one so let's skip it.<br /><br />What about the first attempt? What it means is that, the study of the smallest things (protons, electrons, neutrons) introduced this notion that some things can't be known with certainty, that part of the information gathered can only be known as a set of probabilities. To understand this argument, it's important to understand that the uncertainty isn't attributed to our ignorance or incompetence in gathering that information but rather to an actual randomness in the way the physical world works. So if what underlies reality is a set of probabilities, we could safely say that our future isn't pre-determined but does it even matter?<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">If determinism is rejected does it follow that free will is true?</span> It does if all Free Will means is unpredictability but much more is clearly implied with those two words. I believe that people got so caught up using this expression to fight determinism that the expression ended up losing all of it's meaning except the very negation of determinism. In such view, we could claim that a piece of machinery built to only do random actions is actually imbued with free will. If that's what we're describing as free will, what's the point of using those words to describe it instead of random-will or unpredictable-will, which would be much more accurate.<br /><br />But the whole absurdity of the subject is much more evident much earlier if we put some thought into the kind of statements people usually make about this. What does it even mean for a non-dualist to say that “I” am in control of my destiny? What am “I” exactly? If we're just biological machinery that operate according to physical laws, what are we supposed to be free from? If free will is the idea that our will is not determined by the physical forces that describe how particles interact, then it doesn't even matter if there's randomness in those laws, our thoughts will be determined by those laws either way and not by "me" in that implied immaterial sense.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSGfuFfOUHxrYlKPm8s74L62F0s7htbve3aRGdv4-AZe7h0diP1dqe7__4tJGIySR_ez4NfOb3fthyphenhyphenbF-rryqHv2EeL9wDa0gXeVbkEA8G_CTZelTxxOWjX6h6Bme1T4Ow_r-qfDzO84E/s1600-h/neuronsmademedoit.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320231295540211858" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 228px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSGfuFfOUHxrYlKPm8s74L62F0s7htbve3aRGdv4-AZe7h0diP1dqe7__4tJGIySR_ez4NfOb3fthyphenhyphenbF-rryqHv2EeL9wDa0gXeVbkEA8G_CTZelTxxOWjX6h6Bme1T4Ow_r-qfDzO84E/s320/neuronsmademedoit.jpg" border="0" /></a>To illustrate this, take for example a book called <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">“Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?”</span> (notice again the immaterial usage of the word "me") again attacking dualism while claiming free will to be true at the same time. Now ignore it's content and notice the title, it seems to be a caricature of a materialist/deterministic claim but what does it even mean to ask if your neurons make YOU do it? What's YOU if not the result of YOUR neurons activity in such view? If "you" are your neurons then how can "them" make "you" do it? In such extreme, the discussion of free will after rejecting dualism starts to sound as if you're really asking if you're free from yourself, exposing the complete absurdity of the subject in this context.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">So why do people insist in defending free will? </span>I have no idea but in the end, I believe that this is one of those very popular expressions that just kept hanging around in a naturalist vocabulary without any good reason to.</div>Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-71745051180198866842009-02-04T10:33:00.001+00:002011-03-07T02:57:55.363+00:00Capitalism VS Socialism. A biological approach...<div style="background-color: #783f04; text-align: center;">This post has been modified and reposted in our new home<br />
<b><a href="http://laymanphilosopher.blogspot.com/">http://laymanphilosopher.blogspot.com</a></b><br />
Any comments, post them there.</div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirHneeYGAOItCDEEJ1Y_qqaG-NsG0M3IR4NCDbY6hcxWWyJKe59hgHkHcp0RjnRGHFPR69aL7uqXLoogvzmVfnK-yGPsTsD4jqHm_NcPwPmACNjgyfFpqsXqJqkVpbESv8dwjw6DWkeaU/s1600-h/01-Karl_Marx-Adam_Smith.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320950758765823602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirHneeYGAOItCDEEJ1Y_qqaG-NsG0M3IR4NCDbY6hcxWWyJKe59hgHkHcp0RjnRGHFPR69aL7uqXLoogvzmVfnK-yGPsTsD4jqHm_NcPwPmACNjgyfFpqsXqJqkVpbESv8dwjw6DWkeaU/s200/01-Karl_Marx-Adam_Smith.jpg" style="float: right; height: 124px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 200px;" /></a> The internet is full of articles about Capitalism and Socialism on an economic and social perspectives. I propose a different angle on the subject, a biological aproach to capitalism and socialism.<br />
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First of all, I'll be talking about these two vast concepts very loosely. By Capitalism and Socialism, I'm merely referring to the most general ideas that distinguishes both extremes.<br />
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I never cared much about the subject until I studied communism at school. I think that anyone that studies Karl Marx and all ideologies around that time will inevitably fall in love with them. It just sounds perfect! But is it perfect?<br />
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I think the problem is with the question that people keep asking "what is the best system?", instead of "what is the best system for us?".<br />
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So what is it? Let's get back to roots for a moment.<br />
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I think that there's a strong parallelism between these opposing extremes and the way animals behave naturally. There are animals we would consider collectivists, like ants/bees, and animals we would consider individualists, like all others I can remember. I'm drawing the line on what animals usually prioritize. Some generally prioritize the community above their own individual survival, others generally prioritize individual survival above anything else.<br />
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The parallelism is in the sense that, if socialism is associated with the idea of working for the common good, not owning the result of your labor and being given only what you need (either you earned it or not), then I'd compare that with a collectivist animal behavior. If capitalism is associated with competition with other individuals to get a bigger share of the pie, meaning someone else will end up getting less of it eventually, I'd compare that to an individualistic animal behavior.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">So my view is that capitalism is more natural to humans because humans are individualistic animals by nature which is the word I'm using to describe animals that prioritize self-preservation over community preservation.</span> I believe that attempting to organize ourselves in a collectivist way would perpetuate a constant fight inside each element, between it's own nature and a force from a system directly opposing it. I'm not arguing over which is best, I'm simply saying that one is natural to us while the other opposes that nature and that there is an intrinsic value in adopting a system that is most natural to us.<br />
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Now, I'm not including humans in the individualistic animal category only because of observation. I'm basing myself on the criteria required to make that distinction. It's not completely true that some animals prioritize self preservation while others prioritize community preservation, the distinction is something deeper and what we're observing is only a reflection of that true priority and that is genes. It's genes who are really fighting for survival and for that, the strategy of their preservation depends on how those genes are distributed among the population.<br />
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An ant will promptly commit suicide on the burning sands of the desert in order to find food for the colony and a bee will leave it's sting in a bear tearing the bee's abdomen apart as a result, not because they're altruistic animals but because all the ants and bees in the colony share the same genes. Altruistic behavior in other animals (like us) is usually connected to their relatives again, explaining the underlying gene survival priority, so the actual drives that are hardwired in each animal are simply a reflection of the strategy used to preserve it's genetic information.<br />
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So although the best system can be disputed, I believe that it's clear that one is biologically natural to us while the other opposes that nature.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-12615459520789265992009-01-25T21:37:00.000+00:002009-04-23T12:53:02.418+01:00Why is there something instead of just nothing?Why do I exist? Why does the stuff that light and the planets are made of, exist at all and why not nothing instead? There is no scientific way of answering this question and it might never will be, in any case, can we reach any conclusion at all? I think we can.<br /><br />The problem always comes down to an infinite regression. Why does the universe exist? If we could answer that with something else's existence, then why would that something else exist? The alternatives would be accepting that things might not always need a cause for their existence or that something can be self-caused, so to avoid that, people have come up with infinity as a final answer.<br /><br />There is this story in Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time", about a lecture on astronomy done by a famous scientist. At the end, an old lady in the back got up and said "What you have told us is rubbish! The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise!". The scientist smiled and asked "So what is the tortoise standing on?" and the lady replied "You're very clever, young man, very clever but it's turtles all the way down!"<br /><br />This story pretty much sums up the various beliefs that attempt to avoid the causal problem with an extension of causes to actual infinity. The problem is that the existence of something from infinity wouldn't provide sufficient reason for it's existence, instead of just nothing. Suppose that a series of turtles exist eternally. Would that explain why they exist? It could explain why each one of them exists, if they depend on each other to exist, but it wouldn't explain why the whole infinite set of turtles exist.<br /><br />I believe that whatever the answer is, it can't be logically satisfying. If something exists, it means that either something came into being from nothing without a cause, or that something exists eternally without any reason to. If we could trace all existence through it's dependencies to some primary being, without any other being capable of justifying it's existence other than itself, then that being would have needed to bootstrap itself into being, from nothing. I think that the only truly logical scenario is the one where nothing at all exists... and that, we already know is false.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408018055543126311.post-65122821366642979292009-01-16T14:21:00.000+00:002009-04-29T17:27:55.513+01:00Ever wondered "why you are you"?I did. Why am I me? Why am I this person in particular? From billions of people in the world, from all the locations in the planet, I'm this one person in this one place in this one world. Consciousness and the self are very popular issues among philosophers and for good reasons, there is what is called an "explanatory gap" between the objectiveness of the physical brain and the subjectiveness of the mind. Also, no one really knows what we're referring to when referring to ourselves.<br /><br />While attempting to discuss this with other people in the past, I discovered how incredibly hard it is to express this problem in words. Words fail miserably to the point where you get the feeling that you're asking the wrong question. Luckily, I believe that this thought has crossed everyone's mind at one point or another, and there lies my hope!<br /><br />But what does it even mean to question why am I me? Does that question even make sense? If "I" and "me" describe the same concept, then it would be the same as asking why a toaster is a toaster. But our minds don't deal with these two questions in the same way, we actually attribute a different meaning to "I" from the one we attribute to "me" because of their relationship in the sentence.<br /><br />The very way that we perceive the question hints to an innate notion of an immaterial self, what people got used to calling a soul, which would be something different from the particles in our body and the construct of our mind. Do we really think of us as something more than our physical selves?<br /><br />So what am I? Am I my body? If I take out one limb I'll still be me so where do we draw the line? What if I take my brain and put it in someone else's body? Is that not me? I think you'll agree that it is still me, only with a different body! So although we identify each other by our bodies, what I really am is something else. Maybe what I really identify as being myself is this consciousness that I'm experiencing right now. Now notice the previous statement, is consciousness something that is experienced by someone? In that case, I'm still not the consciousness, I'm referring to something else.<br /><br />So if I'm something that is experiencing the subjective events in my mind, how can we even articulate what we really are? We're a substance that is the owner of the mental states? Thoughts can't be impersonal, they have to be owned by someone so we're not our thoughts, we're their owner. But how could we ever identify what we are apart from everything that physically makes us what we are?<br /><br />Or are we just the bundle of all the mental states in my mind? Is there even an alternative to this? But if there isn't, how can my mental states change while I remain the same person? Is there a threshold of how much you can change before you're someone else? What if you suffer some brain injury that causes you to lose most memory and change your personality? Are you the same person or a new person? Are you suddenly not to blame or praise for everything you've done because that was another person?<br /><br />Ok, so all of this was just meant to identify the self, and we stumble on so many problems that the original question that I presented becomes almost impossible to discuss. <br /><br />Why am I me? I believe the best way to put this question is like this: "Why am I not no one at all?" It's hard to understand that, while self-consciousness may be just an advanced chemical reaction, I'm "taking a side" and experiencing this one. I mean, although it doesn't seem logical to use words in this manner since "someone" had to be me, there's something to the fact that life doesn't go on and on impersonally, just like a computer simulation or any other impersonal chemical reaction. There's something to the fact that I'm me.<br /><br />I thought about this a few times in my life and I've arrived to different conclusions each time. I've never been able to explain what I mean by this very effectively because I believe that the language we use makes it almost impossible to address it without sounding too absurd but I think that seriously questioning why I am me or "why am I not no one at all?" can, by itself, expose these thoughts which I think everyone must have had once or twice.Smighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09154430980898809228noreply@blogger.com2