Musings of a Bastion Outsider

Why I Celebrate Halloween

2005-10-31T16:34:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention that many here at this college which I must attend do not celebrate Halloween. At all. (Some churches might through a "Harvest Fair" or "Fall Carnival" instead, but never once does the term "Halloween" come up--except perhaps as a subtitle for the above, reading "Halloween Substitute.") I find this to be a grievous error, or at least a you-don't-know-what-you're-missing-out-on sort of mistake. (My roommate informed me earlier today that he'd not been trick-or-treating. Ever.) So I here propose to examine Halloween and some motives for celebrating it or ignoring it, with particular emphasis on my own views (because, after all, I went to the trouble of writing this thing; all the other opinion posts you read will be similar in that anyways, you know).

Halloween is viewed in many different lights, which are primarily powered by the religious worldviews of those examining it. To Druids, pagans, and other similar religions, Halloween (or All Hallow's Eve, or the Night of All Spirits, or whatever one might call it) is a night for especial ritual, contemplation, and other such deeply personal religious behavior, due to the oft-held belief that spirits, natural forces, or what have you are out and accessible in greater measure than on other ordinary fall nights. I can respect that, even though it is not my own belief.
The Catholics, on the other hand, call it All Saints' Day, and use it as a particular commemoration of the panolply of beatified individuals they love to pray to. (It seems a bit polytheistic to me, but I suppose having a veritable Swiss Army knife of erstwhile peoples could ideally come in handy.) Various ceremonies honor the memories of the ponderous qauntity of sainted Catholics, and little children vie for certain roles in the inevitable parade of little ones dressed up (mostly against their will) to resemble these faith-filled individuals of yesteryear.
Many Christians, not caring much for the idea of saints as viewed by the Catholics nor for pagan ritual (they view it as satanic, after all, and that would never do), tend to try to steer their children away from the more easily-captivating portions of the event (especially the more cavity-producing ones, if they at all can), and make it something enjoyable but not in the ways "those heathens" might go about it. Those who give their children more liberty (or have had it wrested from them by the long process of spoiling) might allow their progeny the chance to go trick-or-treating--though sometimes with the proviso that the catchphrase isn't "trick-or-treat" (which sounds so very malicious) but rather "Happy Halloween" (which is innocuous and has a comparable ring to it). The more conservative types, wanting to discourage the holiday altogether, might merely turn off the porchlight and ignore the merry costumed little ones accosting their front doors.
And in between lie the people whose religious beliefs (or lack thereof) don't touch the issue of Halloween much--and so they choose merely by whether or not it appeals to them. I'd envy them if I weren't so similar, but then I've taken the liberty of tying up various ideals into my opinion of the holiday, so it's a bit more complex than merely whether or not I enjoy it or not.

I agree that Halloween has some satanic overtones. Does that condemn the night for any of those who might--heaven forbid--enjoy festivities upon it? I'd say not. I also agree that cavities are bad enough as it is amongst the youth of our nation. Does that make it sensible to bottle up my house and wait for the little fingers jabbing my door bell button to give up and go to the jolly elderly couple next door? Again, I'd say not. (I'd be most likely to turn off the lights, but answer the door if someone rings. Just as sort of a pre-screening or something.)
Yet Halloween is also more to me than happy families taking the wee folk for a round of candy on the neighbors. And it's nothing to do with the drunken parties that people hold, either. To me, Halloween represents individuality, a recognition of the masks we wear, and a time to throw caution to the winds as we ponder ourselves. The costumes we choose are both a statement of our ability to choose and a reflection of the tendency of any given person to hide his or her true nature behind a sanitized facsimile, to ensure good impressions. The candy we give out represents, to me, good will. It symbolizes our standing behind our future generations, and a wish to them that they might be happy. And the mystical standing of the night suggests to me that we should search ourselves with feverish abandon, learning what we can on this metaphysically-connotated eventide of our own puzzling selves. The holiday (some cringe at this term, as they'd never think to honor this with the title of "holy day") is a symbol, really--but aren't they all? Easter is a symbol of Christ's resurrection (or springtime, if you're not a fan of JC), Christmas a symbol of His birth (or season's cheer and goodwill, some might say). Thanksgiving is a symbol of our coming to this fruitful land, and the Fourth of July the lives lost to ensure the freedoms our country is supposed to represent (though whether or not it still does is up for debate). Symbols are what we choose to make of them, and so on Halloween I prefer to make of it something that actually holds meaning to me. I like to use it to embrace the slightly wilder side of myself, even if only for a night, because in the end it's still a part of me. I use it to remind myself of ideals I hold dear--choice, freedom, individuality, good will, hope--and refuse to let its meaning be defined for myself solely by what others have said about it.
That being said, I also enjoy an excuse to go about in a costume and not have to worry about being seen as a weirdo for it. Go figure.

--Me

Plumbing Deep Ecology

2005-02-27T22:28:00.000-08:00

Scattered about the world one will find small pockets of those whom most of the rest of us look at with a certain degree of disdain. These people, self-proclaimed "tree-hugging animal-saving dirt-worshippers" (or so, at least, proclaim their bumper stickers), make a much bigger deal out of the rest of the organisms on this planet than most of the rest of us, and seem to enjoy doing it, too. In fact, the area in which I am in tends to have a higher proportion of them than probably most of the rest of the country. But is there really all that much wrong with them? Let's take a look at deep ecology--a philosophy common among such folk.

Deep ecology is what happens when you take conservation and biology and all those lovely natural sciences and apply them to ethics. In short, it holds the preservation of nature (and no, that doesn't just mean because "humans are animals, too") is the ultimate ethical principle, and that all other ethical tactics are far less relevant (if at all). Instead of being centered on humans and their dealings, like most ethical principles, deep ecology takes something more like a science and makes it a philosophy (a reverse of the usual methodology of philosophies becoming sciences as we understand them more entirely). However, if it had no downfalls, hippies would be ruling the planet, no? (Pardon the slur--it simply sounded amusing.) As an ethical standard, it's fairly harsh (just like nature tends to be--survival of the fittest tends to be the goal out in the wild, after all), and takes away all that lovely anthropocentrism that's a natural part of our daily diet. Hard to grasp effectively, really, because it would logically follow that killing off most of the humans on the planet would be ethical due to the freeing up of natural resources that would occur thereafter.
I wish not to delve so...deeply into this topic. Rather, I'd like to address the fervent environmentalism that deep ecologists (and others) hold. (That may mean you. You know who you are.) The species and resources of this planet are here, I hold, for us to be stewards of. We have an obligation to use these things in a proper manner, but the way we should be handling things probably lies somewhere in between the realm of what we're doing now and the radical burning of logging companies--a practice that, thankfully, has diminished notably of late. We humans are here to stay. "Not for long you won't, if you keep up using Mother Earth like you are now!" they say. Quite possibly so. But this whole place is going to be coming apart soon anyway--courtesy of a little thing called entropy. Inevitable, really. What we *should* be doing, though, is trying to enjoy it while still getting as much mileage as we can out of it. Greenhouse gas control should certainly be more strict--there are indications that it's already screwing up the weather something fierce. Smog? We've far too much of it already. I'd love it if we cut down on it. Forests? Sure, they're great. But toilet paper's gotta come from somewhere. Some trees are going to have to come down once and again. Clear-cutting is bad, I agree, but we must be remembering that we are still going to be using these things. We can certainly be more responsible in doing so, but the key is to be moderate. Radically environmentalist bits make people less inclined to believe the whole conservationist message. By trying to make a point, many demonstrators are overdoing it in a way that is causing far more harm to the cause than good.
As one author I once read put it, we need to save the environment--for man. Cutting off our nose to spite our face won't help us, but perhaps if we restricted the intake of our mouths a bit (extending the metaphor, if you will), we might make a difference. Simply be careful to avoid stomping extra hard on people's tootsies with those Birkenstocks.

Underuseful Utilitarianism

2005-02-26T19:48:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in class, utilitarianism is increasingly common these days, and with it comes an unsettling social trend resulting from the inevitable twists society imposes on (typically more) well-meaning social concepts. Utilitarianism, as the name suggests (if nothing more than that), is the practice of finding the most "useful" actions to perform. Designed to be deeply objective, utilitarianism is based on an unusual system known as the "calculus of felicity" to calculate what actions create the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. (This, in turn, is the method of determining the "useful" actions--they're those actions that render the most prolific and widespread happiness.) In short, if it makes lots o' people real happy and doesn't make as many people as dramatically sad (as opposed to the depth of happiness to those positively affected), it's good.
While there's nothing at all wrong with making people happy--we're not here to despise every moment of existence, after all--strict utilitarianism("Benthamite", after its original proponent Jeremy Bentham) only considers the costs of happiness to other people. No other costs, including solely environmental ones, are factored in, and people certainly aren't omniscient, making it hard to accurately forecast how the people of the future will be affected in their felicity by the chain of events loosed by an action that seemed good when it was made. But, perhaps most importantly, it values the loss of happiness by all people as more or less equal. If you make, say, 3000 people really happy by changing something that ruins or kills 20 people, utilitarianism bids you do it without a second thought.
Implications? Certainly. While one foreseeable application of this is the war in Iraq, I won't touch but lightly on such a dramatically dividing topic. Instead, I'd like to focus on its application to our society. Our social structure isn't as much like a melting pot as it is like a bucket of Lego blocks. We're all posessing of different colors, sizes, and capabilities, and we don't simply meld together, but we can be assembled in ways that do (and don't) work. Our tendency, however, is to bring together all the blocks of any given group and team up against the others in some kind of deluded self-preservation instinct. Then, we count our own respective group(s) to be of more worth when calculating felicity than all other groups, making it nearly impossible for other groups to have much of a determination in whether or not our decision may affect them in a negative manner (and perhaps more profoundly so). Only when the negative effects reach unconscionable levels do we decide that perhaps something should be done. Take, for example, the civil rights movement. It only took us how long to get there? Yet we deemed our felicity as whites to be of more value than the felicity of the thousands of African-Americans who had virtually no felicity at all under our oppressive control. Now, I'm not your typical bleeding heart about the whole matter, but I'm still rather appalled that it could take us--supposedly the "enlightened" ones, after all--so long to catch on. But did we learn anything from it? I can't say that we have. While each group nowadays has less power to wield over any other, we still wage little fights with what capabilities still left to us. It's a vicious, self-potentiating cycle that will not help society better itself directly--only when things get appalling will we again realize that dramatic action needs to be taken by greater numbers of people than just those who noticed well beforehand.

Aesthetic Ethics

2005-02-19T15:54:00.000-08:00

Our talks on ethics in the recent past have been interesting, though not all that necessarily enlightening. So much of this class is about learning the whos and whats of philosophy that we rarely get down to actually applying it in a discussion-based setting. All we have are these blogs, which perhaps no one reads and scarcer few even care about.

I'm guessing you're here because you at least want to hear my thoughts on ethics, even if you don't actually care about them. Alright--you shall be rewarded for that much, at any rate.
We all look at ethics with a curious disdain. It's that set of morals and behavior that everyone wishes they had, but that no one truly has (as much as they might say or behave to the opposite). Yet we spend so much time in pursuit of it--even for those of us who aren't religious. We learned about "divine command" ethics in class this week, which is one of the oldest sets of ethical standards--holding that a deity (or multiple, depending on your religion and/or culture) has laid down the way people should behave, and as such, we are compelled to obey by the supernatural force commanded by said deity(ies). Simple, yes, though also prone to gray areas. But even atheists and agnostics strive to hold to at least some kind of ethical boundaries. And who defines those? They do, naturally--who else? Oh wait--society might. So these individuals, unwilling to surrender their will to a deity of any sort, are likely to bend to society simply because society says so? Iffy.
Ethics these days is a curious blend of doctrines. Most people wouldn't argue that the law provides for suing someone who accidentally harmed you, but would it necessarily be ethical? One could argue that it would depend on the circumstances, but one could also hold that the standards are absolute in dictating that the person who harmed you has an ethical (and usually legal) responsibility to recompense you, so perhaps you are ensuring the flow of ethics by suing them.
I was once enrolled in an etiquette class (against my will). Loaded with stiff formality, it wasn't necessarily the most pleasant of classes (did you know that if your host misuses a piece of silverware, you're supposed to do the same?). Yet at the core of it all resonated a curious statement, quoted from the Etiquetress herself, Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin): "Etiquette, at its simplest, asks you to do the kindest and most sincere thing you can to all the people around you. This is usually what you would like them to do if you were in their place." (I'm paraphrasing here--it's been years, and I can't remember the exact terminology, but indulge me that.) Now etiquette sounds almost like the Golden Rule, which in turn could easily be termed the ultimate ethical standard (from a divine command viewpoint, no less--wasn't Jesus the deliverer of that statement?) Etiquette, however, as practiced, is just as much about impressing your host as it is about being kind and sincere. Could it be that ethics and etiquette, as happening today, are merely to give the aesthetic impression of goodness and virtue, attempting to make others think we're better than we really are? If one has no one to be ethical for besides their own self, what is the point? Wouldn't it often be more conducive (as Thrasymachus so delicately put it) to live for one's own self, ethical standards aside, to ensure the most profitable outcome?
At the core of it all, everyone has to have a reason to be ethical. Otherwise, they're simply fulfilling a goal which has no core, no meaning. It's an exercise in futility, and a curious one at that. But self isn't a good reason--so what are many of these people living (at least somewhat) ethically for?

And, as is so common in philosophy, the answer may not be what matters. The questions are what really count. (However, it would be lying--and thus unethical--to say that I do not wish to know. I welcome peoples' opinion on this matter, who have no major reason for their ethical behavior--or, alternatively, who believe they have an unusual one.)

Choice and Freedom

2005-02-13T14:26:00.000-08:00

Our studies in thought, choice, freedom, determinism, and other matters that govern the actions we make (regardless of their existence or nonexistence) provide some decidedly thought-provoking (determining?) ideas. Now let me have my little soapbox upon which to proclaim my thoughts, and proclaim them I shall.

Thank you. That's much better. As I was saying, all this talk of determinism and indeterminism is rather moot. (Had I said that yet? Hmm...it looks as though not. Well, I was thinking about it, so it's all the same to me...do follow along now, hmm?) While perhaps it sounds rather existentialist of me, what matters is that you make the proper force of will, regardless of whether or not your actions are determined to be the way they are. In doing so, you will be genuine in your actions, instead of simply letting life carry you along willy-nilly, with no regard as to your desires. (I personally hold that we aren't determined, so therefore having will behind your actions means you are both choosing them to occur that way and you are responsible for their execution. But some would argue otherwise.)
Freedom, then, is an extension of our own ability to cause our will to happen (regardless of whether or not it was determined already to happen that way). Someone I know once defined magic as "causing change in the environment in conformity to one's will"--presumably through will and will alone. This would make freedom a "magical" thing. Very nice. So why don't we make some magic in our lives? Choose to be free; bend your will in the direction it should go, and make some change happen in the world.

Along the lines of existentialism--I find it to be quite harmonious with many of my pre-existing beliefs. It often gives voice to quiet thoughts in my heart I had scarcely noticed before. The notion of inauthenticity is particularly intriguing to me--defined by Sartre, inauthenticity (or, "bad faith", a term which is too ambiguous if you ask me) is the practice of only being-in-the-midst-of-the-world instead of being-in-the-world. I can see your confused looks now...it's definition time.
Being-in-the-midst-of-the-world is the lowest level of choice functionality available to ordinary, sane individuals. It's simply being present here, but not necessarily being involved. Being-in-the-world, however, is when you actually "get in to" the roles you have assigned yourself (in a world which you have also defined the meaning of). It's when you go and do as you believe you ought to be doing, instead of simply sitting here amidst the hustle and bustle and hoping nothing bad comes of it. Inauthenticity arises when a person has found his or her personal being-in-the-world but remains in or reverts to simply being-in-the-midst-of-the-world. Portrayed as just generally not cool by Sartre &co., inauthenticity is when you fail to do like Army tells you--when you don't "be all you can be". It makes sense, in a way...every living person has potential (and some dead ones, too, in a weird sort of way), and when they opt for merely being-in-the-midst-of-the-world, some of that potential goes to waste. By being-in-the-world, they are contributing actively and doing all they can.

Random, and sort of rambling? Yes. Yet I felt that I needed to expel those thoughts before they did something overly drastic. Comment if you dare.

Determined to be Undetermined

2005-02-12T19:13:00.000-08:00

Determinism is one of those curious catch-22-esque systems that seems more believable (though not necessarily more reasonable) when you don't believe in it. How, you say? It works something like this: you argue that a system being proposed to be universal does not apply to you. The proponent responds by telling you that that's what you're supposed to think--that everyone has been confused/persuaded/fooled into thinking that they're not part of the system. That the proverbial wool has been pulled over the eyes of society at large, if you will. You then realize that perhaps, yes, you have been fooled. Angered slightly by the very idea at being fooled, you then must either launch a salvo of objective arguments at the idea in defense of your own standpoint (and hope that your counterpart doesn't have countermeasures), put up a wall of forced apathy, or watch as your own belief crumbles away under the force of the other's superior concept. The second of those options happens most often these days--people care not to think about new ideas that are at odds with their own. But the point still stands--the very idea that you might be being fooled by your own will causes people to begin to doubt their own standpoints.

As I typically do in entries such as this, for the benefit of those of you just joining us, I shall now define the topic at hand. Determinism is the concept that all of our actions are caused by outside forces/occurrences, as well as certain forces within ourselves. In short, we have no control over our actions, as they are determined by outside causes (which, in turn, we cannot control). "But wait!" you say. "How can that be so? I choose to do things all the time!" Determinists, especially those of the "soft" grouping, argue that while you may believe your actions were your choice, both the action and your perceived "choice" were determined by other things. Sorry, but thanks for playing.
The inherent concept that must stand in order for determinism to function is that of causality--that one event does not occur unless a previous event and/or series of particular events occur first, forcing or enabling it to happen. This is, in turn, one of the main attack points for those who are more vigorously opposed to determinism. Causality must be proven, and if even one deviation takes place, the causal argument is markedly weakened--and with it, determinism. (This is where indeterminists jump in, brandishing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle like a small boy with a toy sword after devouring a high-sugar, artifically-colored comestible. But that is a can of kippered snacks for another time entirely.)

Curiously enough, Christianity, a major proponent of choosing to do the right thing, is not entirely unconducive to determinism. Pointing to the omniscience and omnipotence of God, determistic Christians will argue something along the following lines: "If God knows everything that's going to happen, and He has all the power in the world to change it, He has decided that things will happen a certain way whether we want it to or not. Therefore, we are all determined by His omniscience, omnipotence, and will to do whatever He wants to happen." This is a tenet of Calvinism and other sects, typically referred to as predestination. Just as forceful, yet, are those who argued that God created us with free will, and thus even though he knows what will happen (or whatever could happen given all the circumstances taking place--which he also knows--and can choose whether to intervene or not at any given time), our choices are still our own. This issue divides people every which-way, even within the same sect, but these people typically don't experience the deep schisms that other disagreements could cause.

And myself? I don't really buy it. Yes, I know, I could be amongst the dissenting ignorants, but I don't really think that I have no choice in what I do. I think too much, and thoughts don't really need much of a provocation. There's too much being proposed by determinists that can't really be proven...that said, I still think that things in the world may influence my decisions--but they don't outright determine them, leaving me no say in the matter. And so, one could say I am determined to not be.

Existentialism and a Dane Named Soren

2005-02-06T20:13:00.000-08:00

Philosophers have always tried to make things we take for granted into things we actually have to apply brain power to in order to make sense out of them. Now, while it may not sound this way from the previous sentence, I approve of these measures. We, as a society, don't think about things nearly enough. But the majority of people don't really appreciate accomplishments of that ilk, so it can be quite a breath of fresh air when a philosopher attempts a different tack.
Soren Kierkegaard, a man who seems more intriguing every time I read about him, was a Dane who attempted to de-think-ify the philosophy of religion. Living for only 41 years in the 19th century, Soren (who actually had one of those curious "o"s with a slash through them, in that delightfully Scandinavian fashion) proposed that religion was defined by its practicers--not its tenets. Read on.

In 1843, a book known as "Fear and Trembling," by one Johannes de Silentio, found its way onto the market. History tells us that Johannes wasn't the writer's real name; rather, a certain Soren Kierkegaard had his hands soiled with its ink. Regardless, Soren (excuse me--de Silentio) had written a book that explained a curious new method of examining religion. Instead of requiring an established church to define everything in clear, 12-point font for all of its followers, he held that religion was rather put together by each individual person. He claimed that you had to take "leaps of faith" for your religion, because trying to make objective arguments in support of your beliefs was not only difficult but also almost always fruitless. He used the situation of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac to form the conclusion that your religion (and thus, any deity of your religion) only has as much power as you assign them, and that as such most sermons become insipid "lemonade-twaddle" (a term which I practically erupt in giggles every time I hear it) due to their impersonality. Each individual had to make his or her own judgments regarding his/her religion, because no other person--in the form of preaching, evangelism, or what have you, could tell the other what simply was and wasn't. (This would eliminate the leaps of faith, and thus the important part of religion.) The only effective/permissible form of sharing would be the subjective bits--the "I felt" and "I believe" parts, as they come from a personal perspective.

Kierkegaard's perspective wins him many critics and admirers alike. Some Christians love him--because it makes their religion bullet-proof by those who seek to disprove God--and others hate him--because it takes out all those nice rational proofs of God's existence that took them so long to make up. Atheists, seeking to persuade others that there is no God, can become irritated at him for taking away their ammunition to persuade theists that they're wrong, but they can at least take comfort in the relative sanctuary that his philosophy provides for them as well. In short, Kierkegaard's philosophy takes all the people trying to poke holes in other people's religions, and segregates them with those nice little elastic partitions--like the ones that are ubiquitous at airport ticket counters--so they can talk to each other about their wonderful personal experiences but remain out of poking range. Kierkegaard does away with "you're wrong" and replaces it with "I believe differently"--a conciliatory motion, perhaps, but not one that many of the more vocally religious people would be wont to pick up.

It should be noted, at this point, that Kierkegaard's perspective has a touch of paradox in it. By saying that people define their own religion by their own emphases and faith, he's suggesting a different perspective for them to take. He's going against his own philosophy by trying to tell other people about it. Think about that for a moment--if religion is truly individual, why is he telling everyone else what to do? It becomes almost comedic at this point, but one could explain this by having him say that it's what he *believes*--a subjective experience. Then he's simply sharing, which becomes permissible under his existentialist view of religion. But it's still entertaining while it lasts.

The Ontological Proof

2005-02-05T17:58:00.000-08:00

You know a topic in philosophy is quite the head-turner when two of the more famous philosophers take smacks at it. Such is the case with the ontological proof for the existence of God. Attempting to prove God with no a posteriori observations whatsoever, the argument is blitheringly clever--though, as with all philosophical arguments, it isn't without its detractors. (Though if it didn't have detractors, it wouldn't be an argument, now would it?) Anselm of Canterbury, a theologian in his own right who died just into the 12th century, executed the first recorded version of this proof. (Mind you, this was during the scholastic age, during which time people were madly proving things left and right--supposedly for the practice. Imagine if that sort of thing started up these days...!)
Yet I digress overmuch. Anselm, in a noble gesture of praise, offered his proof of God of existence to the Lord as a gesture of his admiration. (Though the fact that he recorded it makes it likely he might have been hoping for perhaps just a small bit of recognition for himself, too.) Anselm's original dictation of this proof goes something like this:

Anselm begins by saying that anyone can think of something so good and perfect that nothing is better. Not too hard, really. You could try to think in a similar manner right now, with some degree of success. (Though chances are that you thought of God in doing so...sneaky, eh?) Then Anselm takes a trickier step--he challenges that only thinking of that perfect being means that it isn't perfect. In other words, only thinking of it to exist in your mind means it isn't perfect--it can't be perfect if it doesn't actually exist, because a perfect being needs to exist, or else all of its perfection has no reality to it. (It can't be perfect if it doesn't exist--because only existent things can have qualities to them.)
At this point, Anselm really goes out on a limb. He says that since one can't conceive of a being more perfect than this all-perfect being, the fact that you can conceive of it as entirely perfect means that it must exist (because it ain't perfect if it don't exist). Otherwise, you have an impossible conception (and thus, your brain is messed up. So go away.). And then he ties it all together very nicely with the statement that we define the all-perfect being to be God. Ta-dah! Not only do we have the existent all-perfect being, but--guess what?--it's God!

Our good French friend, René Descartes, decided that he could do one better than ye olde Englishman. His version of the proof was similar, but went a li'l something like this:

We start with the end point of Anselm's argument--that God is defined as that being which is entirely perfect. He then makes the point that it is more perfect to exist than not to. (Again--if something doesn't exist, how can it be perfect? There's nothing there to be perfect, if that's the case.) So then, if we conceive of God (the all-perfect being, of course) at all, we simply must conceive of him as existing (because He's all-perfect, and to exist is more perfect than to not exist. Also, to think of something as non-existent, is self-canceling--it's a dead-end thought, since it's irrational to think about something you already define as not existing. It's like trying to touch something when there's nothing present--a futile gesture.)
Now for the coup de gras: by these points, the statement "God does not exist" becomes an oxymoron--it's a self-contradicting, insensible statement. (Think about it--he's proved God's existence, as He is defined to be perfect, and He must exist because of His all-perfectness--since it's more perfect to exist than not to. Through this, we've made it impossible to think of Him without defining Him to exist.) Ergo, the statement "God exists" simply has to be true.
Wow, anyone?

These arguments have stood up rather well to the test of time--philosophers have bopped it with various rebuttals (including that one horribly argumentative fellow by the name of David Hume), but it takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. Yet what makes these arguments so wonderfully clever and piquant is that they don't call on any physical pieces of evidence. While merely frolicking in the playground of the mind, one can prove that God exists in a manner reminiscent of the "just-add-water" school of culinary arts (no real world observations required). One might argue that the atheist schools are simply jealous that they don't have such a nice rationalist argument for themselves.

Pineal Ponderances

2005-01-30T20:26:00.000-08:00

René Descartes, discoverer of the branch of geometry that bears his name (or at least part of it, anyway), was quite the philosopher in his day. His catchphrase, "I think, therefore I am", continues to be used (and abused) to this day. But Descartes had another interesting idea that people are only rarely cognizant of--he proposed that the mind (or soul, depending on how you look at it) was connected to the body by the pineal gland. Odd, yes? Let's take a look.

The pineal gland is a little tiny blob of tissue, located near the brain stem in the lower portion of the brain--just across the way from the cerebellum. Scientists--perhaps even before Descartes--have long been trying to discern the function of the puny pineal gland, but to no notable avail. One of the current hypotheses is that it helps maintain and adjust the circadian rhythm--the patterns of waking and sleep; another is that it directs the function of the genitalia. Yet no one is quite certain.
Descartes, as previously mentioned, thought that this ambiguous meatwad was the interface between the mind/soul and the body. As mentioned in our textbook, it was likely because no one knew what it did, and therefore he could use it as a convenient support for his argument. (Curiously enough, the book claims he could have used the appendix or tonsils just as easily--but it seems ridiculous that this would happen, since those are commonly removed as a matter of necessity, yet the erstwhile patients continue as before.) But Descartes had breached a topic of certain interest--how *does* the mind/soul communicate with the body? I shall now share some of my personal beliefs on this point (as I'm sure you're all simply dying to hear them).

The brain is, as far as we can tell, a fleshy blob of tissue loaded with neural circuits. And, according to what we can tell of the methodology of this circuitry, most of what goes through our brains circulates in loops. That is, as you learn something, the neural impulses get sent through a little looped circuit of neurons. Yet, from my coursework in the sciences, I have learned that sending electric current through loops generates a magnetic field. And what are neural impulses but biological electricity? Therefore, I think it possible for the circuitry of the brain to be a method of soul-brain communication through minute, focused magnetic fields. The soul would also then have only to generate equally minute magnetic fields (as the reverse principle also holds true) to signal the desired neural impulses--a relatively small thing, compared to other possible avenues. The brain, then, simply becomes an anchor point for the soul, and an interface for sensory data. The soul then becomes the receptacle for memory, dismissing the puzzle of how on Earth our brains can hold so much information by relegating the data to an immaterial repository.
Additionally, it answers the issue of how the mind becomes activated. Up until the embryo has formed enough brain tissue to make up whatever conformation within it that anchors the soul to the brain, it doesn't really have an existence beyond that of simple cellular homeostasis. It becomes a human being once the soul becomes anchored to it. It becomes differentiated from its mother by its own new consciousness.
It also holds up to the question of what happens at death. When the brain dies, it logically loses all of its biological qualities that would hold the soul in place, releasing it to its afterlife (Heaven or hell, I hold, depending on your alliance in life).

You might ask why walking through, say, metal detectors, doesn't light up our brain like a Christmas tree. The theory holds that *minute* and *focused* magnetic fields are required for the brain-soul interface. Blanket ones, with no focus and overmuch power, would have no effect upon the subtlety of the mind-brain connection, maintaining a far too "concrete" energy for something so delicate and ethereal. Why it doesn't cause any problems (that we know of) would be uncertain, though.

Scientists, theologians, and philosophers alike remain puzzled as to the nature of the connection between the soul and body (provided the given individual believes the soul exists--thus excluding materialistic monists). We may never know the answer here on Earth, but it's a question I look forward to asking God some day.

A Thought On Monism

2005-01-28T19:48:00.000-08:00

As the world becomes increasingly dependent on science, the subscribers to the branch of philosophy known as monism continue to multiply as well. Monism, due to its implications, is a bit of a threat to the Christianity I adhere to. Why? Read on and you shall see.

Monism is a branch of ontology, which in turn is one of the major branches of philosophy. Ontology (also known as metaphysics) asks such questions as "What is reality made of?", "Does anything actually exist?", "Is the mind a real entity?", and so on. Monism holds that all of reality--every last bit--is made of only one thing--tangible or otherwise. Materialistic monism holds that all of reality is matter, and there is nothing besides matter that exists. This means that all of the activity in your brain is really just an illusion brought about solely by biochemical processes in your brain that have nothing to do with an extra-body mind or soul. Within materialistic monism, one can find behaviorism--the belief that all actions of the body are simply a part of conditioned behavior, effectively reducing the human body and brain to little more than an organic computer with limbs.
Idealistic monism, on the other hand, claims that all of reality is composed of the interplay of thoughts and concepts interacting with similarly non-material minds. Idealism does away entirely with the notion of physical atoms (and other such horribly small material things), though some say it might accept the idea of atoms as being representative of the ideas that they are truly composed of.

So what do these mean to Christianity? Materialistic monism means that there is nothing outside the fleshy lump known as the brain for any given human. No soul, no "mind"...just the brain. This does not agree with the Christian notion of the soul parting company from the body at death, as materialism says there is no soul to go anywhere. Idealistic monism isn't necessarily a threat, as one such person could easily believe that at death the mind simply journeys out of the ideas that form the Universe and joins the span of ideas known as "Heaven". (Yet idealistic monists would be unlikely to be Christians, as this philosophy holds better to Eastern philosophies of religion--especially reincarnation.) But people of today rarely are idealistic monists, because reality (which they can observe and touch and interact with in a "sensible"--pardon the pun--manner) is typically believed to be made of matter--thus, materialism. They can't, on the other hand, see or feel or experiment on the immaterial mind--only the brain itself (as held by materialists) satsifies this requirement. It also destroys the notion of sin, dictating that all our actions are derived from biochemical processes over which we (because we have no immaterial mind dictating which chemical reactions taking places in our mind) have no control. These two reasons alone set it very much at odds with Christianity. One can only hope that a Renaissance of the mind takes place soon, as people think too little and sense too much of the world today.

The Compromise of Kant

2005-01-23T22:42:00.000-08:00

Every so often--most often in a longer period of time than a shorter one--you encounter a figure who has the capacity to bring together certain parties who are bickering and, at the very least, give them both a sound walloping on their flaws. At best, they can render some kind of reconciliation, but that can be a rare thing indeed when physical war isn't involved.
In the "war" between rationalist and empiricist empistemological camps, one such figure is Immanuel Kant. A rather innovative character with quite an interesting name, Kant formulated his own compromise between some of the concepts of rationalism and empiricism, synthesizing a theory that tied together a number of ideas from both areas. In doing so, he took the risk of being forever labeled as a troublemaker in the land of the debating philosophers for making his own postulations out of two "opposing" sets, but as you may have gathered, his name isn't mud to this day. Let's take a look at some reasonings of this bold figure.

His first issue was to decide that age-old fight between the concept of the "blank slate" mind proposed by the empiricists and the innate ideas imbued into the self by the rationalists. It seemed odd to Kant that newborns would have absolutely nothing in their minds at birth--what would they do with all that sense data that they hadn't had to deal with before? A blank slate holds no logic--how would an empty receptacle process anything? Yet innate ideas also were preposterous to Kant. I imagine it seemed highly illogical that people would somehow know everything, but not know that they knew it. And if that was the case, why on Earth would anyone ever misunderstand anything? If you already knew it, wouldn't it resonate improperly with that correct memory deep in your psyche? And so he proposed the new concept of "innate structures" to help fuse these two ideas into something workable. Kant's innate structures were putatively present in the mind even at birth, and enabled a processing framework for the immense amount of sense data confronting the young human mind at birth (and indeed, throughout life). While the little one didn't "know" any given thing, it knew what to do with the data it received, enabling it to make sense of the senses (please pardon the bad pun).

Kant is discussed only briefly in this chapter following this important synthesis. Yet a "famous dictum" of his that proves rather interesting is included: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." In saying this, he addressed the major thought-experience battle regarding the reasoning of ideas to understand reality. He was saying that rationalists, believing ultimate truths to be found in ideas, would never get anywhere by thinking grand thoughts that had nothing to do with the reality they were living in. Regardless of what one thinks about it, reality, illusion or not, is here to be observed (among other things),
Yet empiricists got a nice drubbing as well--he lashed them for only believing what they see and have experienced, but not really thinking through and about things to gain insight. Empiricists needed to stop and think about their memories to learn what they were seeking; merely observing wouldn't get them anywhere.

Kant's philosophies (at least as listed in this chapter) resonate nicely with what I personally believe. It will be interesting to see how they match up with the remainder of mine as the quarter unfolds and we learn more about him.

Observations on Empiricism

2005-01-23T14:16:00.000-08:00

It is interesting to reflect upon the quasi-empiricist mindset of the common times. Empiricists, for those of you just joining us, is the belief that all true knowledge about the world and reality can only be gained through observation and experience. This presents a very distinct contrast to rationalists, who hold that reasoning and logic tell us about reality and throw out (for the most part) the things we observe--mostly because the senses can be deceived. (This is not to say that empiricists are necessarily unthinking bundles of memory and senses--they simply only use reasoning and such that is grounded in observation, as any other thoughts and processes are simply the flutterings of an idle mind.)
Yet I digress overmuch on semantics. Empiricists supposedly got their start in Aristotle, who rejected the huffle-puffle put forward by Plato regarding the "Forms" and the way reality was supposedly put together with concepts that only provided images based on said concepts. Aristotle supposed, rather, that the very essence of any given object was not in its reflection of a Form or concept but was in the object itself. This was a crucial diversion from the thought-centered ways of the somewhat-rationalistic philosophers of old. Instead of saying that the objects weren't actually real and that we were just perceiving them to exist as a result of the Forms (from outside our senses) interacting with our mind and senses, the objects actually existed and were actually self-contained.
Fast-forward a ways to Locke and Berkeley. John Locke, a physician in Jolly Olde Britain, used the concept of Occam's Razor to help explain why it was likely that we learned everything through experience (rather than somehow simply knowing it already deep inside ourselves--the concept of innate ideas, which I have mentioned in previous posts). Occam's Razor dictates that the simplest explanation to any problem is most likely the correct one, and that making a long-winded explication of a concept is rarely the proper way to go--brevity is key. By Occam's Razor, it makes more sense that people have to actually learn things by experience, instead of simply knowing them somehow and just having to remember them--it's just simpler that way. Rationalism relies on innate ideas rather heavily, so this was practically tantamount to a declaration of war between the philosophical parties.

In the interest of brevity (thank you, Occam's Razor!), I won't bore you with the long and debate-filled history of empiricism. Suffice it to say that through the efforts of vociferous philosophers ancient and not-so-ancient, empiricism was established as the experience-, object-, and observation-based branch of epistemology. That brings me to the point I originally brought up--that we as a culture are largely empiricist. The average person is unlikely to trust any new concepts presented to him or her unless they concur with already-established experiences. Thoughts are of little relevance unless they also concur. We have become a culture defined by the things we've seen and done, and not the logic that we should probably apply more of to the craziness that is common to modern times. Agnosticism and atheism are on the rise, as people become less inclined to believe in a God they cannot experience with their senses--that they can only feel with their heart and think about with their mind.
Think before you do, peoples. We might just make philosophers out of you yet.

Meno's Paradox

2005-01-16T21:22:00.000-08:00

The world of epistemology is intricate and befuddling. Like quantum physics. It explains a lot about what we do know, but there are still a lot of things that we don't know and are left postulating about in the meantime. One such window into this convoluted system can be found in Meno's Paradox. Meno and Socrates, in true Socratic-dialog-esque form, had completed the obligatory first and second portions of their conversation (the methods of which I will not go into, as the Socratic dialogs were very formulaic and can be looked up in almost any Western or world philosophy textbook), and had reached the third portion, in which Socrates and his respondent would agree to search as humble companions for the true knowledge regarding the topic they had been discussing. Meno, however, had an interesting question that deviated from the usual happy ending: How would Socrates (or anyone, really) recognize the answer to the question he was trying to solve, not knowing what it was? How would he recognize something he'd never known? Socrates expertly batted it away with the concept of innate ideas, claiming that the soul was eternal (and thus knew everything), making all "learning" really just remembering. Socrates thus moved on to bigger and better philosophical concepts, leaving Meno with the choice of agreeing with Socrates, or not accepting the concept of innate ideas and thus being left hanging with what is still known as Meno's Paradox.

I think I may yet have solved this paradox--or at least, I have removed the utter paradoxicality of it, reducing it to a similar level with other things epistemological. Under Meno's Paradox, you cannot ever happen across something you do not know and know it for what it is (i.e., the answer to a question). So, all things must then proceed from what you already know, plus perhaps a healthy helping of reasoning. The concept of innate ideas makes the elimination of this paradox all too facile, so let's look at it another way. Suppose you are Louis Pasteur, on the brink of discovering penicillin to be the first antibiotic. (Mind you, this was an entirely accidental happening. The penicillin mold had contaminated, in his mind, the bacteria he had been working with.) You then notice that the bacteria on the petri dish you had been working with had died out around the mold that had somehow gotten into it. Most people would not say at this point, "Oh look! There's penicillin, the world's first antibiotic!"(Though that might be a touch amusing and yet eerily prophetic to behold, should it ever happen in your vicinity.) Instead, one might say, "Oh look! That mold appears to be doing something that's making all that bacteria die! I should test this further and see if I can figure out why!" In so doing, we come to the breaker of the Paradox of Meno: you don't recognize the answer to a problem by what it looks like, but rather by what it does. You test it, and in so doing establish it as the tentative answer. As more information comes along that may support or detract from the original answer, you then are able to alter it as needed. (Indeed, taking pills composed of live penicillin mold might not prove at all helpful to us--but the mold itself seemed, at first, to be the sole reason for the death of the bacteria. It took quite a bit of testing and isolation before scientists figured out what compound was actually responsible for the antibacterial action of that pesky mold in Pasteur's petri dish.)

This, at the very least, unceremoniously dumps us back at the central point of epistemology--can we ever really know anything for certain? Can we know that what we "know" is true, or can even be known? Can we ever claim to understand something when further information may modify it enough to no longer be the same? (Socrates cleverly sidesteps the main blow of this concept by the way, as having innate ideas means you already know all there is to know--you just have to figure out how to remember it--and you don't know what cannot be known, nor will you ever.) But at least Meno can rest in peace, "knowing" that his paradox seems to have been solved, at least to the extent that the classic contortions of epistemology will allow.

Week 1, Post 1 (2?)

2005-01-10T15:48:00.000-08:00

Would it seem reasonable to have a little bit of doubting here? Oh wait--maybe you don't know where I'm coming from on this. We have entered the epistemology chunk of our course. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and the matter of its existence, as part of the larger "science" of philosophy. (True, it's not entirely a science--yet, curiously enough, most sciences actually had their roots in philosophy at one point. But did you know that ontology--usually called metaphysics--is a branch of philosophy?) Such questions as "Can we really know anything for certain?" fall within this category. Unfortunately, there can become a limit to this when you begin considering if it's possible to know whether epistemology exists. Wondering if the study of whether anything can be known is capable of being known makes the brain to perform dizzying spirals that can prove disorienting if kept up for a while.

According to epistemology, for one to truly know something, one must first hold a convinced belief in that putative fact. (This is sensible. Why would you know something that you don't believe is true? You can know that other people hold it to be correct, but since you don't believe it's true, how can you know it? Try spraining your brain on that one.) After that, to know something, the fact must actually be true. (Whether or not you believe something to be a certain way doesn't change the way it actually is--under most circumstances. Some would argue that believing things to be a certain way, regardless of how they actually are, would then somehow change the way they are--but this is usually considered to be conjecture. Regardless, putting the wrong answer on a test will get you a nice red mark, because the instructor discerned that you actually didn't know the answer--perhaps you believed in it, but it's not actually the way things are accepted to be. Though you might try making the teacher attempt to prove their position on the fact in question by epistemological methods, in which case you might bewilder your way into getting credit...) Finally, to know something, it is held that you must be able to prove the rationale for the concept's correctness. This is where things get exceedingly batty. To prove something, you must line up facts that you also claim to "know" in support of the "fact" you're attempting to support. Yet how sure can we be that you or anyone else knows the facts you're using to support this new fact? And if it's actually true, as posed in the second portion, why must you prove it? (Some would argue that this is the major religion-barring portion of epistemology: you can't really prove God's existence empirically, for example, but you can prove it rationally. But then whatever arguments you used to prove it will probably come under scrutiny, invariably being discounted at some point. Regardless, if you can prove that what you're claiming to know is the case, that satisfies the second condition and the third. At which point you're only one faithful step from actually knowing the concept in question. The trick is that if the second part is true, but the argument you use to support it is shaky, you don't know something that you otherwise hold to be true.) In the end, after trying time and again to prove all kinds of things you hold to be correct, you wind up back at the fundamental question of epistemology: "Can we ever know anything for certain?" And by its own principles, one could argue...that we will never know for certain whether we can, or cannot.

Principio

2005-01-10T09:27:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the blog of ages, Musings of a Bastion Outsider. By its URL, you may be capable of discerning the meaning of this pseudo-cryptic smattering of words, but I cannot say if you are capable of this for certain. Founded with the intentions of providing a forum for yours truly of thoughts philosophical (and at the "behest" of my instructor), Musings will wax verbose at times, and at others collapse into a nonsensical stack of letters strewn about like the chaotic thoughts that had a hand in inspiring them.

The author wishes to note that he has a deep regard for the skillful wielding of vocabulary within a properly-executed framework of grammar and punctuation. If you post wonderful comments with clear structure and provoking thought, you may well receive comments that express the gratitude he feels upon reading them. If, however, you choose to ignore the instruction in utilizing the English language that (at the very least) our slightly pitiful system of compulsory education has bludgeoned upon your senseless skull, you may be cut to ribbons by the flying QWERTY gerbils of commentary doom. So if you don't have anything to say right, don't say it at all. You have been warned.

Also, to those who would take philosophy: be prepared to actually think. I once saw a bumper sticker (yes, one of those lovely cultural distillations that we see upon our automobiles from time to time) that reflected a dominant aspect of our culture: "Don't worry what people think--they don't do it very often." Hearing the groans of other people in our class as they attempt to kick-start a brain that has laid dormant for many years, I cannot help but wonder what they have been pretending to learn over the past several years. Philosophy is about the questions that are so mind-boggling, you cannot truly answer them; the answers found in philosophy generally refer more to your own existence than to the topic at hand. If you are prepared to give your mind a workout, philosophy is just right for you. But if you haven't really sat down to have a nice thinking in the past...forever, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. Again--you have been warned.

-Lacto-Ovo Refugee