The CyberPhilosopher

About 7 months ago I listened to an interview on Point of Inquiry with Peter Singer.  The effect on my life from that single interview was as immediate and drastic as any other single interaction (one way or bi-directionally) that I can think of.After listening, I decided to give up eating most meat.   This was not intented to be a sudden and complete change, as I have a wife and child to also consider and did not want to throw their diet into complete dis-array.  Nutrition was also a concern for my son since I had not yet done the research about having a complete diet for a growing child (iron is a potential issue for example).  My wife however supported me in my decision completely, and while they occasionally will eat meat, our home cooked meals are meatless and me-friendly.But why you ask?  What caused me to give up eating the main food product that I have LOVED for my entire life?  A simple thing: Ethics.   The logic goes as follows:  we choose to extend moral and ethical treatment towards individuals/things for a reason.  While ethics may have evolved in a social contract fashion, that is not where it is now (ask yourself, what obligation in a contact sense do you have to a baby that is not yours or a adult that is mentally a veg.).   We extend moral and ethical treatment beyond our ingroups and therefore beyond the likely chances of return.When I at least evaluated the qualifications that I use to extend ethical treatment (or considerations at the least) to a thing,  I found that it did not make sense for me to limit that treatment to humans.    Bad treatment of an animal is in most cases as bad as doing it for a human when looked at existentially.And here is the biggest piece in this structure of a meatless diet for ethical reasons: I don’t need to eat meat.   I know of many people that don’t eat Veal because the treatment of the animals is cruel.  They can take this moral high-ground because veal is not a requirement for their diet, and so they see the cruel treatment in its aquisition as unnecessary and below the ethical horizon of humanity.    But consistancy and common sense would lead anyone that has this position to a much more meatless diet because treatment of animals as ends, without consideration for their natural drives, is similarly cruel, and completely unnecessary for most Americans who can get substanially better nutrition from eating vegetarian diets (as well as reduce a large number of potential medical issues).Now, the disclaimer.  I have not gone all the way yet.  I’m working on it, and hoping too do this, however I still limit myself to eating seafood (minus squid).  I look at this as nutritional, and a way to make the diet easier on my family.   I believe myself to be inconsistant at this point, but making progress towards a more ethical morel position.

Last night at the bar, Ultimate Fighting Championship was on and like many other I was unable to look away while one person allowed themselves to be voluntarily beaten senseless by another person while somewhere between hundreds of thousands and millions of people watched him.

This prompted one of my co-workers to say how that sort of thing should not be allowed in a free society.  I asked what he meant, and he went on to explain how this appeals to the basest of things in the human mind and in fact it is just two animals fighting each other rather than anything resembling what it is that we prize as human nature.

Now, I immediately disagreed with him, but I have to admit I understand the mentality.  Where I disagreed with him is that it shouldn’t be allowed; I agreed that it plays out to the basest of human emotions.

Here is the thing, they are 2 individuals that get a thrill out of this and want to do it.  They are not slaves in roman times that are being forced to fight for others pleasures; they are in it because they want to be in it.  I truly wonder about the mental health and stability of these types of individuals (I am not saying they are dangerous or anything, simply that I can’t conceive of what would allow them to do it!).  Plus, since its a given that there are people are in society, its better to give them an outlet for those urges that’s within the framework of society.

The next question is what it means that we watch it.   Now this somewhat plays into the general bias I have against sports in general, but watching it is in a similar vain as above.  We are civilized animals; we are the rulers of our planet and we got here because we had certain tendencies.  Those tendencies just happen to include a non-aversion to war against the ‘other’.  We see a manifestation of this every day as we see political parties point the finger at each other, when we see nationalistic pride over-ride individual rights, and we see it when people rally around a sports team that happens to loosely relate to a geographical location where someone lives or used to live.   In this latter case it is common to see a person ‘hate’ another team or even city.  

I think this type of aggression is a healthy outlet for a need for that type of behavior.  Those that don’t like sports perhaps have less of that type of tendency (or maybe they just always got picked last for teams and are still resentful) while individuals with this tendency have the opportunity to express it in generally non-harmful ways.  The behavior generally (not always) extends to a ‘team’ which is really a non-existent entity so that people can dis-associate their hatred of say ‘City X’s Baseball team’ from ‘City X’ itself.

There is an article on MSNBC click here  describing how France has decided not to make an individual a citizen due to their beliefs.  In this case, the individual is a Muslim woman and the belief is her submissiveness to her husband.

This raises alot of interesting questions, not the least of which is what right does the state have to accept or deny someone based on their religious or social beliefs.    But, on reading the article, it does not appear that they are asking her to leave, nor are they otherwise limiting her in any way.  All they are doing is saying that your belief is not compatible with our beliefs of the equal rights of men and women.

But how far can you take this?  How far should it be taken?  A legal scholar says in the article, ‘If you follow that to its logical conclusion, it means that women whose partners beat them are also not worthy of being French’ (Lochak).  But, maybe this is ok?   In fact, while I believe anyone should be allowed to come to the USA and stay here assuming they do not break real laws (personally, I think the USA should have it in the legal system that an immigrant can stay as long as they have a Job, but that does not mean they are a citizen.. This would legalize people, encourage them to be traceable, and maintain the principles on the Statue of Liberty), if you break a Law, maybe you should loose your citizenship under certain circumstances.  Now, I would say that someone who beats their spouse is not worthy of being an American, but maybe I’m not either for some other reason in someone’s mind.   But there are generally different rules for being kicked out of a group than being let into it.   You can be disowned by a family if your really bad or they are really petty, but being adapted by a family is a completely different animal.

So maybe its not that bad that a society refuse complete membership based on principles.  If an immigrant came to the USA and proudly stated that they believe not all men are created equal, and whites are superior to everyone else, I’d be very much against granting them Citizenship, while would be willing to let them stay so long as they did nothing illegal (they can have their opinion, and I want them to be able to say it out loud so that we know who to watch closer, and if they do something illegal, pounce).  It is like saying to a Christian church that you want to be a member, but disagreeing that Jesus ever existed. 

There very well may be some bigotry involved in the case in France, but the reality of it is they are rejecting the application based on a social belief and not based on their religion.  True, their social belief is rooted in their religious belief, but lets face it, a great deal of what everyone believes is. 

Kant’s conception of the Categorical Imperative is, as he puts it, ‘The categorical imperative would be that which represented an action as necessary of itself without reference to another end, i.e. as objectively necessary’. On the other side, a hypothetical imperative represents practical necessity or things that are directed towards a goal or desire. Kant acknowledges that any given circumstance is arguable hypothetical and not categorical, when he writes ‘but it is rather to be feared that all those which seem to be categorical may yet be at bottom hypothetical,’ and goes on to describe a situation where someone does not lie for fear of the results, and not the duty itself. To resolve this, and save the categorical, he says ‘There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: Act only on that maxim where by thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’. Because hypothetical imperatives revolve around practical situations, these would relate more around social institutions, laws, and customs.

On one level, the Categorical Imperative sounds like a rational translation of the ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, but being based on a rational conception of duty, it has some implications. First, the foundation does not come from a duty imposed by a creator, but instead by the fact of nature. Acting a certain way is not the result of a desire but necessity of action. The first example where he describes taking your own life points to this direction, the actions dictated have nothing to do with the desire the individual feels, but from the understanding that if all living beings took their own life instead of using the emotional state to compel life to improve itself this would be contrary to nature. Kant is begging the question in this example that there is a necessary action in this scenario, but assuming that nature does derive from his maximum, his conclusion may be accurate.

Other examples may be better suited, such as paying taxes to a government you support and live under. If a person supports their governments actions they implicitly acknowledge and agree with the nature of that organization If they then avoid paying taxes into the system it is in contradiction with their ‘buy-in’ to the system. In fact if everyone avoided paying taxes the government could not function. This example is different from the suicide example because the individual has made an investment into the system they choose to support, where the question of suicide is not one of conscious decision to support a system.

The categorical imperative is applicable to any system today, when you look at the nature of that system and attempt to stay consistent with it. The consequences of deviating from those duties (individually hypothetical) generally result in the destruction of the system (perhaps just from their perspective) or expulsion from it (if a person lies, there credibility is damaged and their statements are no longer taken at face value, when a person does not pay taxes they go to jail and do not participate in society).

I just recently finished reading Michael Shermer’s latests book, ‘The Mind of the Market’. I started it about two months ago (ok, in my own defense, I generally read at least 3 books at one time and I have a 19 month old child, so lets not blame this on the book). I mention this time range because it may be somewhat responsible for my overall impression of the book.

I was, well, interested yet underwhelmed. The book has a lot of interesting things in, ranging from insights and reflections of human evolutionary psychology to economic theory. But while its an interesting read, and you are bound to learn something from it, I just didn’t feel that the stated purpose of the book, that a free market economy is best suited for us based on our psychological tendencies, was strongly supported.

Now, I do mean that I didn’t feel it was strongly supported, not that he didn’t make lots of statements that can lead someone who already believes (as I do) to feel that this is the right and best way. I didn’t see anything in the book that was contradictory either. Again, it just didn’t feel very convincing to me, and as much as I wish it was the book it set out to be, I didn’t feel like I could send this to my friend who recently told me how much he supports an incremental income tax, despite the fact that he makes a lot of money. When Shermer writes about how conservatives give more money to charity, even when adjusted for income, than liberals who believe that government should support people that are down, I think he makes great points, but it doesn’t completely come together.

Perhaps the issue is that he is talking to a popular audience, and puts a lot in the book, so he does not get overly philosophical or deep in any of the topics. Or, as I have already confessed, perhaps its just I read it over too long a period and just like watching 5 mins a day of a horror movie or drama, I missed a certain flow that is required for the point.

Overall, I rate this book about a 7. I would still recommend it to someone, but it will not change their world view.

I have been reading “Mind of the Market” by Michael Shermer and he discusses two different Psychology experiments that have been conducted that show how much environment and situation can have an effect on our actions, i.e. if we behave what we would consider in a good way or a bad way.

The first experiment is the Stanford Prison Experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment ). Can I just say, this is wacky.  Many, like myself, who are not psychologist most likely got their first exposure to this study after the situation happened at Abu Ghraib.  What it showed is that people, who by all indications were normal, non-masocistic or sadistic, individuals, after being put into a system, became a product of that system.  Ok, that is at least my simplification of the results, but the end result is that the normal individuals that become guards became the kind of people you hate in movies, and the people that became prisoners became the type of people you feel sorry for in movies (dispite knowing they are in prison for some reason).

The second study, the Milgram Experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) showed the different situations also affected how we act.  In this experiment individuals were told to press a button that would inflict a lethal charge to a person (of course, it was fake, but the person didn’t realize that).  When asked to do it outright, most people refused (only 1.2% were willing to).  However, when asked to gradually increase, 60% were willing to.   This study makes me think about slippery slope arguements in a new light. 

It made me think about how rules, rational or not, are important for life, lest we get swept up in the moment.  Now, this is a place where I guess religion fits perfect.  A religion sets down straight rules which slip only a long period of time.  It made me wonder if fanatical morality is the only true morality?  Now, I dont mean being a fanatic, that has its on issues.  What I mean is having a clear set of “do’s” and “don’ts” that are understood and actions validated against with the recognition that any failure to enforce them just moves you away from them in a very real fashion by changing the system you live in. 

I think a substitute for religion is fine here too; rational law, secular humanism, a philosophical systesm in general can all do the same thing if used properly and we understand the consequences.   Note I wrote Consequences.  Thats the most important piece in my mind.  If we adhear to our system because we want to go to ‘heaven’ then we can justify breaking it in order to go to heaven (think suicide bombers).  But if we have our system in order to have an orderly society and a consistent individual, then any break in the system is a failure.

1. What is Spinoza’s method?

I would have to describe Spinoza’s method of philosophy as reason and rationality on steroids. Spinoza recognized the wholeness of the human intellect (reason, will, and passions) and instead of attempting to subjugate the passions to Reason, he instead incorporates them and says that it is the understanding of our passions which is required. Russell quotes him as saying, “He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his emotions, loves God, and so much the more as he more understands himself and his emotions” . Strauss goes further to describe Spinoza as believing that “Man’s right is identical with his power, and his power is limited by his passion”.

Spinoza develops the view that we live in a deterministic universe, as manifestations of the perfect substance, i.e. God, which I will return to. As such, we can not use reason to change what we are, but only to better understand what we are. He follows a method similar to Euclid, and based entirely on the faculties of Reason. Russell points out that that his Ethics his method leads to conclusions “incompatible with modern logic and with scientific method”. This is because Spinoza relies entirely, as much as he can, on his definitions and Axioms, and then the propositions that he can develop from them, without reference to the reality of the world. While I agree with Russells’, conclusion, I think Spinoza would respond by pointing to his description of how prejudices are developed and point to the mind instead of the external world we perceive with it.

What is the relation of God to nature in the philosophy of Spinoza?

Unlike my opinion that Descartes most likely did believe in a God of sorts, I believe that Spinoza, if alive today, would be a strict atheist and in fact was one in his own day. For Spinoza, the use of the word God is similar to Einstein’s use of God in his writings, both believing that their is no personal, anthropomorphic god, but instead the Nature of the Universe.

For Spinoza, God is analogous to the primary substance of the universe from which all other things are manifest. He logically moves from propositions such that “Two Substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another” (prop 2) and “If two things have nothing in common with one another, one cannot be the cause of the other” to show that all things must be part of the same infinite substance. Russell points out that this is a philosophy similar to Parmenides.

The consequences of this are profound. For Spinoza, there is not Mind and Body and God, but simply the one substance which we experience in limited attributes and modifications (modes). This further means that God’s nature is ‘natura naturans’, or conceived only through itself, while we and all things we experience and see are ‘natura naturata’, or following from the NECESSITY of Gods’s nature. Spinoza goes even further to point out that God does not have free will (Prop. 32, corol 1) and to this effect, nor do we.

If you were to do a word/replace on Spinoza’s texts, and replace every instance of God with a word such as Nature or Physical Law, I believe you would have a text that would sit very well with most empirical determinists.

Why did Spinoza take this route? Strauss points out that Spinoza was more than willing to use Religion in order to shape the minds to more correct systems of thought. So while he used Scripture in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus to create a bridge between what he believed and what the people believed, he (in my opinion) use the word God in his Ethics in order to attempt to convey his beliefs in such a way as to meet those who he knew would disagree with him, if not anywhere near half way as the repercussions of his system are obvious, a portion of the way in between.

I sometimes hear people talk about science being someones religion; a point which I generally am quick to disagree with and pounce on, but I recently decided to give it further consideration.

First, we must determine what we mean by science and what we mean by religion. In both definitions, we will no doubt find much disagreement and, in the end, any conclusions will only be as valuable as our understanding and agreement to the propositions taken as truth (of course, this is no different than any other topic under discussion).

A complete definition of science and religion can take up chapters in books and still not be complete, so I’ll assume some high level idea for now. First, Religion is a system of belief which provides a foundation of morality and value judgments. Religion also must contain a supernatural component, or not be Naturalistic (empirical) in its doctrine. Science, is a system of understand which limits itself to natural phenomena, and imposes the conditions that any theory must be both testable and falsifiable. Religion does not require that all the beliefs be falsifiable as science does.

So, who cares? Well, I’ll come back to that.

I will admit that there are individuals, certain scientists, that make a religion out of a scientific belief. This occurs not when they say that they believe in a theory, but when evidence continues to mount that the theory is incorrect and they refuse to acknowledge it. I want to stress here that at this point, a scientist is NOT PRACISING SCIENCE! They have, instead, grasped onto a ontological belief system that has shown itself, based on all evidence, to not exist in the naturalistic system, despite their insistence that it does.

But why accept a naturalistic belief system to begin with? I mean, I love evolution, I agree with it, evidence from everything I have read and studied supports it completely. I know that there is actually not a single hole in the theory. But, why should I, or anyone else care? That is the question that I think is far more important then trying to convince someone that the world is more than 6000 years old.

Lets take as fact, for only a second if you are of a different opinion than myself, that Evolution is correct, and that live has been evolving for as far back as live has been. Why doesn’t everyone accept it and move on? I think the answer can be found the philosophical idea of evolution itself.

True, our primate brain is not designed to understand certain grand ideas and themes, but this isn’t a failing, its just that there has not been a real need to understand it. In fact, for the vast majority of people on this planet there is still no need to understand it. As amazed as I am when I read some strange thing about Quantum Physics or a wacky implication of Special Relativity, I tell these things to members of my family and get strange looks. That knowledge, for most people, means nothing.

Now, Physics has had positive effects on society, and there are tools that we have that we could not have without the understanding now have if these disciplines didn’t exist. But Evolution gives us nothing but a factual understanding about our past, at least at first glance.

If I learn something, and it gives me joy, than that is a good thing. But if it doesn’t help me to do better in life and spread my genes, or my families (extended families meaning Human count here) then they are of interest, but no impact. Physics may destroy us, but also may save us. Biology and Medicine are similar. Evolutionary Biology is mind candy.

I know people that point to Evolution and Science as their new narrative, or replacement for religion. I think that this is both foolish and inaccurate (unsurprisingly they have not really changed their morals or values or even actions from what they had when they were theists). Its inaccurate because science is descriptive, not proscriptive. Science describes the facts of the universe and how it is, not how things aught to be. They are living the Is-Aught fallacy.

Now, our values may be a product of evolution, but evolution only describes how they got here, not where they, or we should go. There may be a framework that is in our psyche which evolutionary changes shaped, and in fact provided us with a better chance of surviving, but that framework is here now and understanding where it came from 100,000 years ago and beyond does not help us address the individual questions of life.

Lets take an example. Game Theory shows that a strategy of cooperation with individuals leads to a better chance of winning than a selfish strategy. Furthermore, when rules of who the cooperation should be with (people that have not screwed you over in the past verses people who have) we find the apparent best consistent strategy that one can follow. Well, this is just plain common sense. I wonder if anyone has ever heard this and went, “Oh, really? Wow.. I would have thought that being a jerk all the time and looking out for number 1 would have worked better in a society where people talk”. My point is that is is clear why we have this mentality, it works. But we can understand what to do without going so far as to look at evolution principles.

But there is a very good reason to look at science, and things like Evolutionary Theory (theory in the scientific sense, not the popular sense). It is to filter out bad ideas.

5000 years ago, thinking that a God would be angry with you if you ate of the rotting flesh that had been out in the open for 5 days because that is for the Insects to eat would be a good survival instinct. It provides a rule for you to live by and provides a way of informing others in your group of the things not to do (we tend to want to hear a reason to the question why before we will take heed). But when factual evidence presents itself, in contradiction to a belief system, that new information describes better the world we live in. It may do nothing to indicate how we should act, but it can give better ideas of how we should not act. The theory of Evolution allows us to filter out false beliefs and challenges us to come up with new ones.

I don’t believe in a God, but I see no issue at all with people that do. There is nothing in science that makes a god an impossibility, so if someone feels the belief gives their life meaning, not only do I think its fine, it may be fulfilling some purpose which is why we have evolved into creatures that do have such beliefs.

But if your beliefs are in contradiction to the facts, then they are potentially dangerous as they are not based in reality. And believing in just facts can be potentially dangerous as well!. I’ll write about that later.

“Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing. There you’ve got our point of view. Not that we believe that God exists, but we think that the problem of His existence is not the issue. In this sense existentialism is optimistic, a doctrine of action, and it is plain dishonesty for Christians to make no distinction between their own despair and ours and then to call us despairing.”  - Sartre, Jean Paul

When looking at an argument, one of the first things you want to do is determine if an argument is Deductive or Inductive. Most of the arguments we make from day to day are actually inductive arguments, but they tent to have a fair amount of deductive sub-arguments in them as well as wording to try to make it appear as tho the argument is itself Deductive.Why? Because one of the differences between an Inductive argument and a Deductive one is that if the argument is deductive and all the premises are true, then it is is impossible that the conclusion is false. The flip side to this is that if an argument is inductive and all the premises are true, it is simply highly likely that the conclusion is true (or improbable that the conclusion is false).

There are other commonly discussed definitions of Deductive or Inductive (for example, is the argument moving from particular to general or general to particular?). These definitions tend to be problematic as examples can be given that would appear to defy the conventions.

An example of a Deductive argument:

If my car has gas and is not broken, it will be able to run.

My car has gas and is not broken.

Therefore, it will be able to run.

The first two statements are premises, the final statement is the conclusion. Note that the conclusion is essentially defined in the premises. Because of this, deductive arguments are often arguments of rules such as those in Mathematics or arguments from Definitions. The truth is in the known facts, it is just being brought to the surface.

An example of a Deductive argument that is from Definition would be:

Bob is a bachelor.

Therefore Bob is not married.

The conclusion follows from the premise because the fact that a bachelor is defined as being an unmarried man.

An example of a Inductive argument would be:

I have seen many birds.

All birds I have seen can fly.

Therefore, all birds can fly.

This conclusion is actually false, as we know that that there are birds that can not fly. However the premises are all true. It would be the case that this statement was probable if we did not know of any birds that could not fly. It would be definitively true if birds were defined as being able to fly (however it be a deductive argument at this point).