The Human Question

Becoming a scientist begins with a long apprenticeship, during which one learns to find answers to questions by formulating experiments, conducting them and then assessing their results.  One also learns to take certain things for granted.  For example, our ability to know the truths of logic and mathematics as well as make the kinds of observations required by the scientific method. But someone might ask, "What about controversial claims regarding human nature that aren't obviously presupposed by scientific praxis, namely, the existence of the soul and human freedom: are these subject to experimental testing (and hence to confirmation or falsification) or are they untestable?  If untestable, is it because they are incoherent, or is it because the evidence of their truth is found through some other method than that of science?" I would answer that the soul and freedom are so interwoven with our ability to seek truth that we can engage in scientific practices only if w...

(still under construction) The Cartesian soul, Daniel Dennett points out, has no physical or temporal thickness.  It is point-like in its unity, instantaneous in its action--and as unreal as any object of geometry. To rebut Descartes' philosophical notion of the soul, Dennett brings up scientific data showing that the act of choosing takes time rather than being instantaneous and that it involves the interaction of many parts of the brain rather than being point-like in its unity. Dennett's way of using this data, however, not only works against Cartesian notions of the soul but also against a common sense holistic regard for the person.  For prior to any scientific investigation of where thought or choice takes place, we tend to think the person as a whole that acts through its parts. (edit here: insert DD's opinion as contradicting common sense) That regard recognizes what Descartes denied: that we are bodily beings in space and time with existence and operations...

More than once, when Aquinas wants to talk about actions that are done by humans but not deliberately, he give us the example of scratching an itchy beard.  Such an action, Aquinas tells us, does not involve the intellect but the imagination.  I am not quite sure of whether he thinks we imagine the itch itself, the relief we'll get from scratching, or both.  But what's clear about his explanation and clearly important for the point I'm about to make is the fact that deliberation is not involved; hence neither is reason; hence the action is not free. Contrapositively, if an action is free, it involves reason and deliberation. Benjamin Libbet's experiment is about someone trying to randomly move his/her hand at one moment rather than another.  Deliberation comes into play inasmuch as the test had to cogitate about whether or not to participate in the experiment; but that sort of deliberation is presumedly not going on at the time of the experiment.  The subjec...

I am just bookmarking a thought for future consideration.  It seems that Wittgensteinians think about learning math as a kind of initiation into a shared practice, while Platonists regard it as our becoming (re)acquainted with a hyperobjective being.  The two can both be correct if the practice and the object can converge in God.  Which is not far afield from what Aquinas has in mind when he speaks of God as the pure Act of Knowing and as perfectly self-aware. This seems pretty cool to me at the moment, which means that I'm likely engaged in very sloppy thinking... must reconsider again after I've slept on it...

That is, the knowledge that it obtains in all possible worlds.  Where does that knowledge come from?  Isn't it godlike?

And isn't that a good thing?

Imagine a much stronger person acting on one who is weaker an smaller.  The two compete with each other when it comes to displaying force.  That is, they counteract each other.  Also, one can note both forces using the same register. Imagine a more knowledgeable person persuading one who less so to act a certain way (e.g., an architect giving plans to a bricklayer).  The one being directed displays desire, as does the director.  Neither display of desire negates the achievements of the other; rather, at least in certain scenarios, the achievements of each one magnify those of the other (the less knowledgeable is able to achieve more than he/she otherwise could and vise versa).  Also, note that one can recognize the two desires and their fulfillments only by using two different registers.  For example, think about an architect telling a bricklayer how to lay bricks by drawing a blueprint: the bricklayer registers whether he/she has laid bricks well by...

http://righteousmind.com/why-i-think-sam-harris-is-wrong-about-morality/

The rules of transformation in Conway's game of life can be understood to model the laws of nature.  But what if we take those rules, not as modeling laws of nature, but as patterns in our observations of nature? In that case, they would not be thought of as describing that all is going on in nature, but as giving us many partial glimpses into natural processes.  It would be as if we were standing in front of a lattice while trying to figure out how something else is moving from behind it.  There is more to nature than what we see. Hmmmn: I don't know what to make of this, but it seems worth pondering further...

Paul Churchland is enthusiastic about the capacity of neural networks to engage in computation, and his enthusiasm bothers Daniel Dennett.  What bothers Dennett is the fact that, while noting that this capacity has been demonstrated, Churchland fails to note that this demonstration itself was done using computers.  Since computers are themselves algorithmic "deep in the engine room" (methinks that's how he put it), it seems to Dennett that, far from showing how networks are capable of doing more than can be done by algorithmic computational machines, this demonstration shows that networking itself can be achieved through algorithms (perhaps he thinks of networks as being weakly emergent). Why is it important to DD that this modeling is rooted in algorithms?  Perhaps it is because talk of the superiority of networks to machines opens the door to systems biology, which in turn would threaten reductionism.   Another reason might be because DD believes computers are ...

Let's suppose we're Herculean engineers fiddling with Conway's game of life.  We are able to construct Conwayesque rational beings.  Could such a being infer or come at least suspect that he/she/it is the product of our engineering?  After all, such a creature "exists" only in virtue of our having constituted filled spaces that function as matter-equivalents and rules of transformation that function as equivalents to the laws of nature.  We do not interact with characters within the game in the same sense that one character interacts with another. If the answer is yes, then it would seem to follow that any a priori agnostic position about existence of a god, God, or demigod within our own lifeworld is thereby excluded.  The the Conwayesque rational animal can infer the existence of the engineer/creator of its respective game, then, inasmuch as the game is an adequate analogy of our own lifeworld, it would seem by analogy that we can do the same as the creature...