Roger Farnworth - Determinism & Free Will (C101/6) : Your example of which side of the college tower to walk around being dependent upon which side has the sun shining on it and which side has the wind blowing on it is practically an equation: There are some variables, set them between these operators, turn the handle, there is the answer. Such is logic. It has the logician say everything I do is determined by the world. Come, gird up thy loins, join me by leaps and bounds in the place you would not go, in the equation. Be a random factor generator amongst the variables, from the tower and stretching for ever, on the one side a ten foot wall, on the other a ten foot ditch. Play as any random operator of your desire, the wall falls down tomorrow. As handle turn at your own speed, the ditch ran dry yesterday. Let thy left hand be the great null operator and thy right the random answer generator. There, mon ami, the random variable has become the random answer to an equation that is not there. Space-time is now yours, may the choice be with you.
Frank Luger - Psychology As A Pursuit of Happiness (C101/13): You seem to be saying the study of the mind was once concerned with seeking a condition that used to be thought of as intellectual joy, but has found that condition actually to be what one might call chemical satisfaction, and from that psychology has come to deny there is happiness in the higher sense and promulgate there is only pleasure in the lower sense. You appear also to suggest there is something irretrievably unpleasant about such a situation. Assuming all that about correct I would suggest the following.
Over the years the psychology crate has opened and uttered forth many branches. As extremes we have psychological warfare, which is worked upon the civilian and the military of both sides so as to give at least the practising side some temporary advantage, and, clinical psychiatry, which these days is applied to both the medical and the social services and to the patient and their family, and intended to give at least the patient and their family some temporary relief. That I would argue similar for the swathe of psychology branches between these extremes is obvious, so I will pass over that. The point is that now there is not one psychology but many psychologies and each of them has many attributes by way of observations, theories, applications, tools and methods. So, surely it is unlikely there is nothing anywhere in psychology concerned with someone trying to achieve some happiness.
Look at happiness. An animal is very complex, so, at any given moment, it can be in any of many possible states. In some of those states it will feel happy, and in each one it will do so in a way peculiar to both the concerned state and the particular information that put the animal in that state. What that means is the crate marked happiness has also been opened and found to contain many kinds of happinesses; countless varieties that, like cheese and wine, arise from many different sunlit pastures and vineyards so that each holds a quite different flavour. And the crux here is that it takes information of some kind to put an animal in what you would probably call a pleasure state, and that in such a state the animal also produces information, and all that even when the information is privy to the animal alone.
Thus, on mice and men. It is all very well to claim the mouse seeks repeated pleasure from repeated electrical stimulation, practically saying it wants the shock to get the jolt. But what we know is that the nervous system truly discerns an electrical stimulus as a piece of real information. So, when the nervous system of the mouse demands the stimulus, what is the information that the creature is really seeking. You say it is only a pleasure. I say it is a happiness. As example: When the mouse trips the circuit it hears the squeak of God, and it only goes tap-tap with the switch because the poor beastie is trying to commune but you keep cutting it off.
In summary. We now have many psychologies, all experimenting, and there is a problem only if some psychologist is daft enough to assume the depth of their field has been explored and ends in chemistry. Of course it does not. The question is still there as to how come some particular conceptual happiness cause element associated with its relatively mobile but not wobbly carrying packet can elicit a particular operation by a group of fairly fixed but not immovable chemical packets to have them produce some particular conceptual happiness effect element associated with its relatively mobile but not wobbly carrying packet. And especially in regard to how is it that happiness logic embedded in a concept can interrelate with embedded chemical interaction rules. When psycho-chemistry comes along with the answer to that then psychology will have the other half of its subject area, so it can come barrelling back up into the land of sweetness and light with the news that the pleasures are simply measurable physical manifestations of corresponding immeasurable conceptual happinesses, and that our joys rest not in just one operation of a particular group of particles but in the multitude of ways all sorts of concept-chemical combinations work. It is only a matter of time, and very likely not much time at that.
Neil McAllister - Comments (C101/24): Seek out the lives of Caruso and Rosa Ponselle, especially their childhood, then work down to the rest. I read you generally to say: The great apes know what to do with the fruit and leave the little ones to practice with the peel. I can't see that civilisation would run better if it were the other way around.
Existence: How does the I in the classic I perceive I therefore I and its many standard developments know it is infinitesimally small. An interesting situation develops if the I is infinitely large.
Limiting Conditions: Some say there is the natural and the supernatural, so I include the latter. Giving, on earth and in heaven (universally); that which is walked upon (minerals), that which lives (vegetables), that which feels (animals), and that which thinks (intellectuals). Questions that arise are; (a) would it be possible for a form that we would say is not alive to develop from the "mineral" or "vegetable" so as to feel and think, and, (b) might any form we know of, or suppose from (a), evolve so as to be able to perform some activity higher than thought, and what would that activity be
In regard to the above. With (a): Robots are obvious in regard to mineral development, but maybe something different is possible. Also, but perhaps less obvious, is the point that if a vegetable came to establishing feedback in its capillary system it would have just about everything it needed to create fluid logic gates inside itself and become a fluid computer: A fluid computer was used to model the economy at one time, and they are used in places where other systems are unacceptable for some reason, where, for example, an electric spark might be dangerous. Otherwise, question (a) bears on what is meant by such words as life and seed. If we say life is that which arises from a seed then we must widen the definition of what is meant by seed to cover whatever clones and angels spring from. But if we do that then any android or robot would by definition be alive if its core part is made by another machine. Might we be heading towards having to accept type one, two and three seed and life forms, and can we say they will not have, after adjusting for their capabilities, equal rights and responsibilities. Question (b) then concerns the peculiarity that earth and heaven (the greater universe) look to provide exactly the necessary for what seems to be the highest activity that can be undertaken by any form, which activity I have suggested is thought. In the above I am taking "feel" to include instinct and "think" to include bliss. Please do by all means swap or substitute terms as you may wish, adjusting the rest to suite. Essentially it comes down to whether a non-human form could hope, perhaps even expect, to achieve a state of bliss, and whether there is a state beyond bliss that anything at all might seek to rise to. And the entire problem comes from whether an entity that reaches out to create a universe might need to be in a form that is neither alive nor dead and in a state above bliss.
How Wrong We Are: One rule of our moral code is that if it would do no harm we are obliged to allow and assist any other living thing to develop as it may. This means that when we cut down a tree to make some item we are being quite immoral. Not only are we ending the life we understand to be the individual property of that tree, we are even removing the prospect that the tree might fall and decompose for its material to become incorporated into another tree. You must all straightway chop up your furniture very fine and dig the resulting mash into the ground.
Advice To The Good Citizen: One may seek out problems and deal with them. One may seek out problems and report them. One may deal with problems that come to one's attention. One may report problems that come to one's attention. One may shut one's eyes. These five possibilities are all case dependant. In application to a case consider all of them and, for each, first work out to what extent what one cares about will be covered, then work out to what extent what one cares about will be exposed. Then calculate the differences. Those will show you what you must do. Note: It is crucial not to let any of the first four difference come out positive or the fifth come out negative, except when you want them to. As an exercise this guidance can be applied to the furniture disposal problem above.
The Implication Of Energy In A Vacuum: Lesser universe is in greater universe until it is in free void. The universe and the void are both real. The real can not be unreal. Therefore, the universe and the void are both eternal. But, since lesser void is in greater void until it is in infinite void, the void is infinite. And, whilst the universe can change its form, the void has nothing to change, so, the void is eternally infinite. With the void being eternally infinite, the void is an eternally closed system containing an eternally fixed amount of universe. Therefore the universe is an eternally closed system. Conclusion: There was no other possibility than infinite emptiness containing the precise amount of universe that it does. Here universe means our universe and any others there might be, and includes space if you consider it to be a form of energy.
The Dover Question: Since a cliff is a vertical discontinuity is it possible that the bluebird is a kind of angel?
Software: The rate at which obviously different word-processing and spreadsheet software packages appear on the scene seems to have lessened of late. Possibly what these packages offer has now come fairly close to satisfying every requirement that people have of them. Many new programs covering speciality sports and hobbies are still being advertised though, Mary King's equestrian simulator and Charlie Dimmock's water garden designer as examples. If we say this indicates non specialist utility software has been largely dealt with in about twenty five years, and assume special interest software is half through a similar period, that would take us up to somewhere between 2010 and 2015. However, for practical purposes virtual reality has just begun. So, giving that field another twenty five years or so to cover most of its likely ground, then, short of any quite new and surprising wide interest area arising, it would look as though pretty much all the potential for software likely to be of interest to industry, commerce and the family will be realised by about 2025. By then we should be in a position to at least know whether or not a truly living and intelligent machine is possible. Quite possibly we might even already then have the first. If so, then, being extremely quick, such machines are likely to work through their own revolution in perhaps as little as five years, possibly in course dealing with all the major problems we have such difficulties with. What this means is that except for whatever surprises come from natural catastrophes and space exploration, anyone born today has a near certain chance of actually experiencing what one might call "future life" as it is likely to be for indefinite millennia to come. And for those of other ages today, the 25 year olds will probably see 75% of it, 50 year olds perhaps half, and 75 year olds possibly 25%.
What we can already see is that future life will be a double sided world, where software acts on detector-activator systems that act on things and information. And, from cradle to grave, the detector-activator and software environment around plants, animals and humans will shield them from the software and activator-detector environment around machines. EG: The human may take part in virtual reality but may not actually ride on the fifty ton piston, whilst the robot will not take part in virtual reality but will ride the machine. In this way the human will be trained and enabled to undertake what experiences a human can, whilst a robot will be trained and enabled to undertake what experiences a robot can. It should all be great fun for both hominoid and machine. Stretch your imagination, get a ticket to the Robot Olympics, it will be held every four days. Look how far and how high the robots jump, do you see those up their still in orbit. Marvel at what they do with shot and javelin, their record is the Moon. At the 100 meters stand well back, plug your ears and do not blink, they can stand 500g and cross the line at fifteen times the speed of sound, they start in Athens and their skid marks finish in Rome!
Clinical Muddle: The April 26 2000 edition of Nursing Standard carries an article in which it is pointed out that because the National Health Service, patients and the rest of the world include many interacting amplifying systems, the theories of chaos and complexity can probably be applied widely in health related fields. In philosophy this may affect many questions that address duty of care problems, and it may well spill over into other areas: See below.
Discovery, Invention, Substance and Style: Discover = To uncover a thing to show its substance and style. Invent = To create a thing to show its substance and style. Substance = The root of a thing. Style = The form and decoration of a thing. Law: We choose its substance, shape its form and decide its decoration. It allows a degree of complexity and chaos. Morality: Could it be that morality is simply law that is too horrible to enact because it would deny complexity and prevent chaos.
Albert Dean