It is often said that religion gives our lives purpose and meaning that would not otherwise be there, and this is one reason why religious people tend to reject the naturalist explanations of science when science conflicts with (or is perceived to conflict with) their religious beliefs. Often, science is seen by these people as atheistic and non-purposeful.
Now it is worth noting that while science is silent on the existence or not of a deity, science does contradict some specific religious beliefs. For example, Genesis runs fairly against science, if it's taken as the literal Word of God. But religion since it does not rest on a solid evidenced-based foundation, is very flexible, and adherents are able, if they choose, to subtly alter their beliefs to synchronize with the findings of science. Going back to Genesis, an adherent could reinterpret the story to be a metaphor or simplification, for early people would not have understood it if it was more complex and incomprehensible; or, alternately, that it really happened in the way described but everything was made such that it would appear to have formed via naturalistic mechanisms, to test their faiths. But some people choose not to alter their beliefs at all in the face of reality, choosing instead to insist that the other is wrong. We see this often with the Intelligent Design movement, but I'll return to that topic in some other post.
If we had science alone and we were left without religion, some think life would be meaningless. Science can only describe those things that exist in nature, and 'meaning' does not exist in nature, and only exists by virtue of human consciousness; that is, 'meaning' is contained within the mind, not out in the larger world. Thus, science, by definition, doesn't deal with or assign meaning. But the very fact that meaning is created by human consciousness allows any human to fill the void of "meaningless existence" however they choose--even something based upon a current religion, if he or she so chooses, but which does not conflict with the evidence that nature provides. Because ultimately, those who deny reality only deny their selves. Let's hold that thought, though, and explore what meaning and purpose is given by religion.
So religion gives us purpose and meaning. I thought about this, and I realized I didn't really know what purpose this was. On the face of it, the obvious purpose under most religions is to achieve a good afterlife of some sort. This allows us to come to grips with the idea that death is an inevitable part of our lives and the lives of people we love. Sometimes people even use it to rationalize every misfortune in their lives, ascribing it to some grand plan on the part of God, a plan which we cannot ourselves envision but in which every event is progress towards the illusive, vague goal. Okay. But what kind of grand purpose requires so much death and misfortune? Indeed, I wouldn't think God would require anything particular to occur on Earth. After all, most of our earthly problems wouldn't exist if we weren't created in the first place. So then, why create humans? Taking the Judeo-Christian view, it seems like the only reason we were created was to worship God. To me, that's not such a great reason to be around. We certainly weren't created to take care of the rest of creation, when the rest of creation could pretty well take care of itself if we simply went away and since we're doing a pretty poor job of it right now. So we're left with the preparing-for-afterlife purpose. Why have a pre-afterlife, anyway? And the afterlife must be a pretty crowded place by now; and unless the world ends soon, there'll be even more people around. Then why will Armageddon come at any particular time? Is there some critical-soul-number Heaven has to reach?
But I'm going off topic here; the point is, the purpose provided by religion isn't all that impressive, even while it may help us come to terms with mortality. But since religion's purposes aren't all that impressive, and, as I mentioned above, humans are able to create their own meaning, we are not doomed to a meaningless existence if science alone is left to us. We can find meaning in our own worlds without the help of centuries-old philosophers. Are your friends and family no longer your friends and family without religion? Does the community service you take on no longer help anyone because you aren't being watched by God as you do it? Does killing someone suddenly become okay without religion? The answer to all of these is no; nothing that gives our daily lives any meaning does not depend on God. One can even find solace regarding mortality without religion, if one looks for it. Note that I am not actually arguing against religion here; I myself am still an undecided Catholic. What I am demonstrating is that meaning and purpose does not necessarily depend on religion.
There is nothing wrong with an atheistic belief. There also shouldn't be any reason for religions to oppose science, because science merely attempts to describe what actually occurs in nature, which doesn't by definition exclude spirituality or religion; however, science does rightly exclude those beliefs which deny reality, and beliefs running counter to reality are false.
Showing posts with label favorites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label favorites. Show all posts
Friday, December 30, 2005
Thursday, October 20, 2005
An Objective View of Reality
The other day my friend Miki and I got into a debate over whether there is such a thing as an "objective reality." She was telling me about a discussion about altered states of reality in her Antro class.
Example: In order to pass into adulthood, males in a certain Native American tribe went out into the wilderness, in solitude, to fast until they entered an 'altered state of reality' in which they have visions which tells them something about themselves.
Another example: this certain other group of people built granaries, and often people would rest under them for shade. However, termites often eat away at the structures and occasionally the structures would collapse on a person underneath. Despite knowing about the termites, the people still come up with some other reason to satisfy their need of needing meaning in reality, needing to know "why me?".
In both these examples, Miki contends, all that matters is how real the belief is to the believer. Everyone has different beliefs and no one belief is more or less valid than any other as long as the believer finds validity in it. Therefore, everyone experiences "subjective reality," based on each individual's perceptions. In addition, she claimed that science is no more or less valid than any other set of explanations; that is, "starvation-induced hallucination" is as correct as "starving yourself allows you to see a higher plane of existence that can only be detected when you are in that state", just because the latter seems real to that person and that tribe.
If you know me, you won't be suprised to find out that I largely disagreed. To the latter, I responded that what they see isn't telling them anything about a separate, external reality but rather is telling them something entirely about their own internal nature. Put another way, no two people in the same state would agree on what they're seeing; the hallucinations are not real objects on some higher plane of reality. Rather, they're generated by the person's mind even though they are percieved as existing outside the person. Further, psychologists studying phenomenon like this have looked at the brain's activity, and are discovering what happens in a person's brain in one of these alternate states. And with the granaries, what happens is that the termites are busily chewing away at these structures nonstop, and eventually they'll weaken it to a point where it can no longer hold itself up. Since people often rest under these, probability dictates that sometimes the structures will collapse when someone is underneath. Wrong place at the wrong time.
At this point, she replied that while she personally believes that my logic is probably correct, the worldview of science is not any superior to any other worldview and it is entirely possible that some other worldview is more correct than science. Hence, no objective reality.
This cannot possibly be true, and there must be an objective reality in which we all exist. Indeed, we could not possibly exist if there was not an objective reality. Consider color. Look at the trees outside; assuming it isn't fall, the trees are green. Now get a friend and ask what color the trees are, and she will agree that they are green. Two separate people, two separate minds, agree about some property about something that exists external to either mind. Expand this to all other things around you, and you will find that there is a hell of a lot that you both agree about regarding the world around you. Now add a third person, and you will find he also agrees with your observations. Expand this to the entire human population and you will find that almost everyone agrees on almost everything that you previously observed with your one friend. Now I say almost everything and almost everyone because there will be some people who cannot detect the things that other humans can. For instance, some people are color-blind, fully blind, or deaf; obviously they won't agree on things they can't detect in the first place. And further, the things that people disagree on here (remember, we're only talking about physical external environment) are not due to some "alternate reality," but rather are due to some difference in the way they detect the outside environment. While I would agree that, to those people who, for instance, are blind, all that matters to them is what they experience themselves, as that the reality they must navigate in is without light. However, that does not mean they can conclude that there is no such thing as light; they just have no way to detect it. Similarly, just because someone is having some spirtual vision after starving and isolating themselves, doesn't mean that the vision is part of some external reality that someone only in that state can detect. The sheer number of things that so many humans can agree on about the world we live in suggests that there is an objective reality in which we all exist. If there was not such an objective reality, it would be absolutely incredible that any two people could agree on any one thing about the outside world, let alone several billion people agreeing on a near-infinite number of things; even groups of people who have been isolated for a long time from other people can still agree on all of these things. Indeed, it would be suprising that we aren't each our own world.
The central assumption of the science "worldview" is that we all live in an objective reality. If we didn't live in such a single, consistent reality, it should become immediately apparent in the unexplainable inconsistencies in the set of all observations made about one aspect of the world. But this isn't so: we see that things behave very consistently. Science would not exist if this central assumption wasn't true. However, science itself isn't the objective reality. Science is the attempt to describe that objective reality, looking for more consistencies about the external world more obvious than the color of trees. This description of the objective reality is true, on the whole, regardless of anyone's subjective perceptions and beliefs.
My example was gravity: we see that all objects cause all other objects to accelerate toward them in proportion to their masses and the inverse square of the distance between them. Scientists call this phenomenon gravity, and attribute it to a not-entirely-understood phenomenon called the gravitational force. Miki suggested that another worldview might have another reason for why things are that way. At that point, though, the other culture's reason and science's reason are just two names for the same observation. (Until, that is, we find that gravity is related to other things which that culture's explanation doesn't describe.)
My next example was a common plastic cup. We can all agree that it looks like it does, and that it has the shape it does, and science can take atoms and molecules and build them up into such a cup. Miki then said that other cultures may not agree with that. But lets look at a nuclear weapon. Scientists know very well how atomic bombs work, and it depends entirely on the existence of atoms of certain sizes and properties. If I were to detonate an atomic bomb in the village of a culture which doesn't believe in the existance of atoms, their belief wouldn't keep their village from being incinerated and their region from being saturated with lethal levels of radiation in exactly the way our science describes. One's subjective beliefs do not affect the reality they live in. There is an objective, shared reality.
Science however, doesn't depend on human experience and perception for their observations. Science understands that parts of the world are not observable with our limited senses. For example, the light we see by is a select range of frequencies of electromagnetic waves, and color itself is only a result of how our detection apparatus works. Thus science uses nonbiological apparati whose workings we understand very well in the context of the many consistencies science has previously described.
As we all live in the same objective reality, our detection systems all receive the same input from the world. And as we are all humans, our detection systems all function in the same way. Since we all receive the same input, where does the variation come from? Where do our different perceptions arise? The mind. Each one of us has a unique mind which is shaped by numerous factors, including our genes, our prenatal environment and the culture we grow up in, as well as additional experiences we accumulate through our lives. Perception comes from the application of our unique minds to the incoming stimuli from the world. In cognitive psychology, this is called "top-down processing"; that is, we apply our mental structures to the incoming stimuli, which results in perception. Therefore if the stimuli is the same and the perception is different, it arises from our differing mental structures. And if something is in our minds, it's not in the world, regardless of how real something may seem.
Example: In order to pass into adulthood, males in a certain Native American tribe went out into the wilderness, in solitude, to fast until they entered an 'altered state of reality' in which they have visions which tells them something about themselves.
Another example: this certain other group of people built granaries, and often people would rest under them for shade. However, termites often eat away at the structures and occasionally the structures would collapse on a person underneath. Despite knowing about the termites, the people still come up with some other reason to satisfy their need of needing meaning in reality, needing to know "why me?".
In both these examples, Miki contends, all that matters is how real the belief is to the believer. Everyone has different beliefs and no one belief is more or less valid than any other as long as the believer finds validity in it. Therefore, everyone experiences "subjective reality," based on each individual's perceptions. In addition, she claimed that science is no more or less valid than any other set of explanations; that is, "starvation-induced hallucination" is as correct as "starving yourself allows you to see a higher plane of existence that can only be detected when you are in that state", just because the latter seems real to that person and that tribe.
If you know me, you won't be suprised to find out that I largely disagreed. To the latter, I responded that what they see isn't telling them anything about a separate, external reality but rather is telling them something entirely about their own internal nature. Put another way, no two people in the same state would agree on what they're seeing; the hallucinations are not real objects on some higher plane of reality. Rather, they're generated by the person's mind even though they are percieved as existing outside the person. Further, psychologists studying phenomenon like this have looked at the brain's activity, and are discovering what happens in a person's brain in one of these alternate states. And with the granaries, what happens is that the termites are busily chewing away at these structures nonstop, and eventually they'll weaken it to a point where it can no longer hold itself up. Since people often rest under these, probability dictates that sometimes the structures will collapse when someone is underneath. Wrong place at the wrong time.
At this point, she replied that while she personally believes that my logic is probably correct, the worldview of science is not any superior to any other worldview and it is entirely possible that some other worldview is more correct than science. Hence, no objective reality.
This cannot possibly be true, and there must be an objective reality in which we all exist. Indeed, we could not possibly exist if there was not an objective reality. Consider color. Look at the trees outside; assuming it isn't fall, the trees are green. Now get a friend and ask what color the trees are, and she will agree that they are green. Two separate people, two separate minds, agree about some property about something that exists external to either mind. Expand this to all other things around you, and you will find that there is a hell of a lot that you both agree about regarding the world around you. Now add a third person, and you will find he also agrees with your observations. Expand this to the entire human population and you will find that almost everyone agrees on almost everything that you previously observed with your one friend. Now I say almost everything and almost everyone because there will be some people who cannot detect the things that other humans can. For instance, some people are color-blind, fully blind, or deaf; obviously they won't agree on things they can't detect in the first place. And further, the things that people disagree on here (remember, we're only talking about physical external environment) are not due to some "alternate reality," but rather are due to some difference in the way they detect the outside environment. While I would agree that, to those people who, for instance, are blind, all that matters to them is what they experience themselves, as that the reality they must navigate in is without light. However, that does not mean they can conclude that there is no such thing as light; they just have no way to detect it. Similarly, just because someone is having some spirtual vision after starving and isolating themselves, doesn't mean that the vision is part of some external reality that someone only in that state can detect. The sheer number of things that so many humans can agree on about the world we live in suggests that there is an objective reality in which we all exist. If there was not such an objective reality, it would be absolutely incredible that any two people could agree on any one thing about the outside world, let alone several billion people agreeing on a near-infinite number of things; even groups of people who have been isolated for a long time from other people can still agree on all of these things. Indeed, it would be suprising that we aren't each our own world.
The central assumption of the science "worldview" is that we all live in an objective reality. If we didn't live in such a single, consistent reality, it should become immediately apparent in the unexplainable inconsistencies in the set of all observations made about one aspect of the world. But this isn't so: we see that things behave very consistently. Science would not exist if this central assumption wasn't true. However, science itself isn't the objective reality. Science is the attempt to describe that objective reality, looking for more consistencies about the external world more obvious than the color of trees. This description of the objective reality is true, on the whole, regardless of anyone's subjective perceptions and beliefs.
My example was gravity: we see that all objects cause all other objects to accelerate toward them in proportion to their masses and the inverse square of the distance between them. Scientists call this phenomenon gravity, and attribute it to a not-entirely-understood phenomenon called the gravitational force. Miki suggested that another worldview might have another reason for why things are that way. At that point, though, the other culture's reason and science's reason are just two names for the same observation. (Until, that is, we find that gravity is related to other things which that culture's explanation doesn't describe.)
My next example was a common plastic cup. We can all agree that it looks like it does, and that it has the shape it does, and science can take atoms and molecules and build them up into such a cup. Miki then said that other cultures may not agree with that. But lets look at a nuclear weapon. Scientists know very well how atomic bombs work, and it depends entirely on the existence of atoms of certain sizes and properties. If I were to detonate an atomic bomb in the village of a culture which doesn't believe in the existance of atoms, their belief wouldn't keep their village from being incinerated and their region from being saturated with lethal levels of radiation in exactly the way our science describes. One's subjective beliefs do not affect the reality they live in. There is an objective, shared reality.
Science however, doesn't depend on human experience and perception for their observations. Science understands that parts of the world are not observable with our limited senses. For example, the light we see by is a select range of frequencies of electromagnetic waves, and color itself is only a result of how our detection apparatus works. Thus science uses nonbiological apparati whose workings we understand very well in the context of the many consistencies science has previously described.
As we all live in the same objective reality, our detection systems all receive the same input from the world. And as we are all humans, our detection systems all function in the same way. Since we all receive the same input, where does the variation come from? Where do our different perceptions arise? The mind. Each one of us has a unique mind which is shaped by numerous factors, including our genes, our prenatal environment and the culture we grow up in, as well as additional experiences we accumulate through our lives. Perception comes from the application of our unique minds to the incoming stimuli from the world. In cognitive psychology, this is called "top-down processing"; that is, we apply our mental structures to the incoming stimuli, which results in perception. Therefore if the stimuli is the same and the perception is different, it arises from our differing mental structures. And if something is in our minds, it's not in the world, regardless of how real something may seem.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Boston Globe Letter to the Editor Regarding Intelligent Design
The Boston Globe - Intelligent design's doubt: Is evolution the full story?
To the Editor:
In Sunday’s article “Intelligent design’s doubt: Is evolution the full story?” the writer states that “even if it were accepted that evolution had been assisted by some designer, intelligent design cannot say who or what the designer is.” This statement is misleading on its face and is used by intelligent design advocates to attempt to get around the barriers traditional creation stories have had. It is true that it does not say whether the designer is God, Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, or Queztalcoatl, and so does not endorse any specific religion. It may not say who, exactly, the designer is; but when you carry intelligent design out to its logical conclusion, it does declare that some supernatural intelligence exists. One might argue that maybe the designers were aliens; but then how did the aliens become complex enough to have intelligence and manipulate our evolution? No, the only possible designer is some form of God.
Intelligent design basically says using mathematics what creationists have always been saying; specifically, that everything works too perfectly and is too complex to have not been designed. However, there is much evidence that things don’t work all that perfectly; they just work, period. And if things were so perfectly designed, there shouldn’t be any evidence, at all, that the components of these ‘perfect’ mechanisms had any other function in the past. If all life is so perfectly designed, why are we humans imperfect in so many ways?
We must remember that even the simplest bacterium we study today has been evolving for around 3.5 billion years. When animal-like cells developed from bacteria, bacteria had already been around and evolved for 1 billion years. When multicellular organisms first appeared, the animal-like cells had around 1.5 billion years to evolve and diversify prior. In contrast, human civilization has only been around for the last 30,000 years, 0.0008% of the total time life has existed. Science has only been around for maybe the last 300 years, 0.000008% of the total time life has existed. Given the very fast reproductive cycle of single-cell organisms, it’s entirely possible that seemingly irreducibly complex structures could have developed in those inconceivably long periods of time.
At worst, intelligent design would halt research into other ideas of the origins of life; as intelligent design, like all creationist theories, is not falsifiable. At best, intelligent design would have science taught and researched as normal, with the caveat that some kind of God exists. At worst, it interferes with science. At best, it inserts religion into science classes. When it comes down to it, intelligent design is no better or worse than other creationist theories and, like them, it has no valid place in our research labs or our science curriculum.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Bauer
To the Editor:
In Sunday’s article “Intelligent design’s doubt: Is evolution the full story?” the writer states that “even if it were accepted that evolution had been assisted by some designer, intelligent design cannot say who or what the designer is.” This statement is misleading on its face and is used by intelligent design advocates to attempt to get around the barriers traditional creation stories have had. It is true that it does not say whether the designer is God, Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, or Queztalcoatl, and so does not endorse any specific religion. It may not say who, exactly, the designer is; but when you carry intelligent design out to its logical conclusion, it does declare that some supernatural intelligence exists. One might argue that maybe the designers were aliens; but then how did the aliens become complex enough to have intelligence and manipulate our evolution? No, the only possible designer is some form of God.
Intelligent design basically says using mathematics what creationists have always been saying; specifically, that everything works too perfectly and is too complex to have not been designed. However, there is much evidence that things don’t work all that perfectly; they just work, period. And if things were so perfectly designed, there shouldn’t be any evidence, at all, that the components of these ‘perfect’ mechanisms had any other function in the past. If all life is so perfectly designed, why are we humans imperfect in so many ways?
We must remember that even the simplest bacterium we study today has been evolving for around 3.5 billion years. When animal-like cells developed from bacteria, bacteria had already been around and evolved for 1 billion years. When multicellular organisms first appeared, the animal-like cells had around 1.5 billion years to evolve and diversify prior. In contrast, human civilization has only been around for the last 30,000 years, 0.0008% of the total time life has existed. Science has only been around for maybe the last 300 years, 0.000008% of the total time life has existed. Given the very fast reproductive cycle of single-cell organisms, it’s entirely possible that seemingly irreducibly complex structures could have developed in those inconceivably long periods of time.
At worst, intelligent design would halt research into other ideas of the origins of life; as intelligent design, like all creationist theories, is not falsifiable. At best, intelligent design would have science taught and researched as normal, with the caveat that some kind of God exists. At worst, it interferes with science. At best, it inserts religion into science classes. When it comes down to it, intelligent design is no better or worse than other creationist theories and, like them, it has no valid place in our research labs or our science curriculum.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Bauer
Sunday, August 07, 2005
"We are the Counterculture. You will be made an individual. Resistance is futile."
One of my friends was complaining on her blog that the counterculture people she knew were critical of some of the things she did which were 'mainstream', that she wasn't being an individual. I posted a really long comment on her blog, and as she and I both loved my use of metaphor in my description of what was going on, and as I in general was happy with my reply, I thought I'd post it here. Not that many more people see this blog that don't see hers... but we'll ignore that for now. ;-)
Basically what's going on is a "mainstream counterculture", and this same thing is going on in other areas, such as "reverse racism" that is sometimes talked about. The counterculture developed as a reaction to what they saw as bad traits of society; and they're certainly right to do so if they choose. But now the "counterculture" is established and defined, and thus if you aren't completely and totally rebelling against the "mainstream" in every way under your control, you're not "one of them", not an “individual”. The same thing has happened elsewhere. Some black communities are just as racist against whites as whites have been against them and would paint a black who is friends with a white a traitor. Some feminists find a woman who decides to forgo her career to become a housewife to be repulsive. These movements become so entrenched in themselves that they loose sight of their real aim. Their originally diffuse mass starts to coalesce and define itself as a distinctive body and, like a planet forming around a star, you can either be pulled completely by the planet, or completely by the star, but there’s no place for balance, as many may see it. Of course, not everyone, thankfully, falls into an entrenched mindset, but it sounds like many of the people you’ve heard from, the part of the counterculture you’ve interacted with, is part of that mindset, and by doing so they’re really just enforcing a new conformity instead of encouraging people to be their own agents. I think you should be proud, because you’re much more of an individual than anyone suggesting you have to be more like someone else.
Basically what's going on is a "mainstream counterculture", and this same thing is going on in other areas, such as "reverse racism" that is sometimes talked about. The counterculture developed as a reaction to what they saw as bad traits of society; and they're certainly right to do so if they choose. But now the "counterculture" is established and defined, and thus if you aren't completely and totally rebelling against the "mainstream" in every way under your control, you're not "one of them", not an “individual”. The same thing has happened elsewhere. Some black communities are just as racist against whites as whites have been against them and would paint a black who is friends with a white a traitor. Some feminists find a woman who decides to forgo her career to become a housewife to be repulsive. These movements become so entrenched in themselves that they loose sight of their real aim. Their originally diffuse mass starts to coalesce and define itself as a distinctive body and, like a planet forming around a star, you can either be pulled completely by the planet, or completely by the star, but there’s no place for balance, as many may see it. Of course, not everyone, thankfully, falls into an entrenched mindset, but it sounds like many of the people you’ve heard from, the part of the counterculture you’ve interacted with, is part of that mindset, and by doing so they’re really just enforcing a new conformity instead of encouraging people to be their own agents. I think you should be proud, because you’re much more of an individual than anyone suggesting you have to be more like someone else.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Newmarket High School Valedictorian Speech Text
Parents and Families. Faculty and Administration. Friends, and Fellow Graduates.
Tonight, this ceremony marks a transition for our class. We are no longer boys and girls, but young men and young women, now not only responsible for ourselves, but for others as well.
We realize that this Real World we are now crossing into is, although a world of many possibilities, it is still not a utopia.
Corporate executives receive hundreds of millions of dollars to do their jobs, and receive millions more when they are fired. Then you have WorldCom, Tyco, Enron, and other scandals, where the top executives took advantage of their employees by feigning success purely to satisfy their enormous greed. Our country is engaged in a controversial war in foreign lands, and casualties continue to mount. Many politicians spit out half-truths and, sometimes, outright lies to convince others that they are correct.
This, unfortunately, is the forge in which we must shape our futures.
“So what?” some of you may be asking. Corporate executives have always been greedy, wars have always been controversial, and politicians have always been deceptive.
The point is that in entering the Real World, we graduates have the opportunity to make it exponentially better. Our future is the future of our country and our world, because eventually it is our generation who will become the politicians and executives, scientists and writers, trades-people, educators, and parents. From this point on, our thoughts and actions shape not only our own individual lives, but also the world in which we live.
As we blaze our trails through life, we must remember what is most important. And that is that we must stand up for what is right in everything that we do. There is nothing wrong with success, but in our success we must not forget that we are still human, still individuals, inherently equal to each other.
Not all of us will rise to positions of power, but each one of us still can be a catalyst for positive change in our daily lives. Those of us going to college can run for student government, or be involved in campus service organizations. Those of you going into the workforce can run for local offices or help out in the community. And those of you going into the military are already performing one of the highest services you can, placing your lives on the line to defend our country. But most importantly, all of us now have the right to vote, and we should not, must not squander that right.
In a few short minutes we will become official citizens of the Real World. In our lives we must not forget that we have the power to transform our world for the better, and it is our responsibility to use that power. This is our chance to take action, and we have the obligation to do so.
Thank you.
Tonight, this ceremony marks a transition for our class. We are no longer boys and girls, but young men and young women, now not only responsible for ourselves, but for others as well.
We realize that this Real World we are now crossing into is, although a world of many possibilities, it is still not a utopia.
Corporate executives receive hundreds of millions of dollars to do their jobs, and receive millions more when they are fired. Then you have WorldCom, Tyco, Enron, and other scandals, where the top executives took advantage of their employees by feigning success purely to satisfy their enormous greed. Our country is engaged in a controversial war in foreign lands, and casualties continue to mount. Many politicians spit out half-truths and, sometimes, outright lies to convince others that they are correct.
This, unfortunately, is the forge in which we must shape our futures.
“So what?” some of you may be asking. Corporate executives have always been greedy, wars have always been controversial, and politicians have always been deceptive.
The point is that in entering the Real World, we graduates have the opportunity to make it exponentially better. Our future is the future of our country and our world, because eventually it is our generation who will become the politicians and executives, scientists and writers, trades-people, educators, and parents. From this point on, our thoughts and actions shape not only our own individual lives, but also the world in which we live.
As we blaze our trails through life, we must remember what is most important. And that is that we must stand up for what is right in everything that we do. There is nothing wrong with success, but in our success we must not forget that we are still human, still individuals, inherently equal to each other.
Not all of us will rise to positions of power, but each one of us still can be a catalyst for positive change in our daily lives. Those of us going to college can run for student government, or be involved in campus service organizations. Those of you going into the workforce can run for local offices or help out in the community. And those of you going into the military are already performing one of the highest services you can, placing your lives on the line to defend our country. But most importantly, all of us now have the right to vote, and we should not, must not squander that right.
In a few short minutes we will become official citizens of the Real World. In our lives we must not forget that we have the power to transform our world for the better, and it is our responsibility to use that power. This is our chance to take action, and we have the obligation to do so.
Thank you.
Sunday, May 16, 2004
On Consciousness
Over the past few days I've been thinking about the nature of consciousness--yes, I know, very philosophical of me. What started this all was an essay entitled "Artificial Intelligence" by Grant Fjermedal. In this essay, he describes an idea formulated by the respected robot scientist Hans Moravec. This idea was that in the future, we could become immortal by 'uploading' ourselves into a robot. This procedure would theoretically work by scanning the exact makeup and behavior of your mind and automatically writing software code that perfectly emulates this. Once the procedure is complete, your original body is killed, as you now exist in the robot. Supposedly...
The robot brain would contain a functional, completely acurate simulation of your brain contained in software. It would talk like you, walk like you, and otherwise behave exactly like you. Everyone, your family, your best friends, all would declare the robot to be you. But is the robot really you?
Now, we don't know what consciousness really is, or what its source is. How do we perceive the inputs from all of our senses as a single, whole experience? that makes us one distinct individual? Some think that the conscious self--the 'mind'--lies outside the body and is metaphysically connected to the body. Others think consciousness is a direct product of the electrochemical workings inside the brain. If your being lies in the brain itself, then that can't be transferred into the robot. And if your consciousness is outside the body, how do you tell it to attach itself to this robot? When it comes down to it, such a robot would be nothing more than an incredibly accurate simulation of you. And if you were allowed to live after the operation, you wouldn't feel any connection to the robot, and you and the robot would be two obviously separate entities.
More recently, though, I read Timeline by Michael Crichton. In it, a company has developed a technology that transports you between parallel universes by reconstructing you exactly in the other universe at the same time, but your old body is destroyed. It's even mentioned in the book that the person who comes back isn't really the person who left, though for all intents and purposes they're exactly the same... to an outside observer. It occurred to me that this same problem would be encountered in a teleportation device, because the method of transportation destroys you and then reconstructs you. The same would happen if the aforementioned robotic upload actually constructed a new biological brain for you. If perfect, the reconstructed you would seem to be exactly the same as the destroyed you. But can you really consider the reconstructed you the actual continuation of you? Because your own conscious experience would end when your original was destroyed; would your mind transfer to the new body? or would it be oblivion? This all raises very intriguing philosophical and ethical issues; does teleportation cause a real death each time? is the one's mind and behaviors more important that knowing that your friend is still the same flow of consciousness that you knew before? Wouldn't widespread employment of such destroy-and-reproduce technologies lower the importance of individuality? If we can be destroyed, created, and recreated at will, how insignificant do we become? Food for thought.
But there's another idea from this that caught my attention. There are many stories of identical twins being able to finish each other's sentences, and having their own language and shared dreams and knowing when something bad has happened to the other one... If this is true, what causes this? Is it perhaps because the two minds are similar enough that they perhaps blend somewhat? In that case, what might happen if an exact duplicate of you could be made? Would you experience both bodies as one single conscious experience? If that last question was true, and distance has no effect, then and only then could we say that teleportation or the other things I discussed above could be ethically and soundly used.
The robot brain would contain a functional, completely acurate simulation of your brain contained in software. It would talk like you, walk like you, and otherwise behave exactly like you. Everyone, your family, your best friends, all would declare the robot to be you. But is the robot really you?
Now, we don't know what consciousness really is, or what its source is. How do we perceive the inputs from all of our senses as a single, whole experience? that makes us one distinct individual? Some think that the conscious self--the 'mind'--lies outside the body and is metaphysically connected to the body. Others think consciousness is a direct product of the electrochemical workings inside the brain. If your being lies in the brain itself, then that can't be transferred into the robot. And if your consciousness is outside the body, how do you tell it to attach itself to this robot? When it comes down to it, such a robot would be nothing more than an incredibly accurate simulation of you. And if you were allowed to live after the operation, you wouldn't feel any connection to the robot, and you and the robot would be two obviously separate entities.
More recently, though, I read Timeline by Michael Crichton. In it, a company has developed a technology that transports you between parallel universes by reconstructing you exactly in the other universe at the same time, but your old body is destroyed. It's even mentioned in the book that the person who comes back isn't really the person who left, though for all intents and purposes they're exactly the same... to an outside observer. It occurred to me that this same problem would be encountered in a teleportation device, because the method of transportation destroys you and then reconstructs you. The same would happen if the aforementioned robotic upload actually constructed a new biological brain for you. If perfect, the reconstructed you would seem to be exactly the same as the destroyed you. But can you really consider the reconstructed you the actual continuation of you? Because your own conscious experience would end when your original was destroyed; would your mind transfer to the new body? or would it be oblivion? This all raises very intriguing philosophical and ethical issues; does teleportation cause a real death each time? is the one's mind and behaviors more important that knowing that your friend is still the same flow of consciousness that you knew before? Wouldn't widespread employment of such destroy-and-reproduce technologies lower the importance of individuality? If we can be destroyed, created, and recreated at will, how insignificant do we become? Food for thought.
But there's another idea from this that caught my attention. There are many stories of identical twins being able to finish each other's sentences, and having their own language and shared dreams and knowing when something bad has happened to the other one... If this is true, what causes this? Is it perhaps because the two minds are similar enough that they perhaps blend somewhat? In that case, what might happen if an exact duplicate of you could be made? Would you experience both bodies as one single conscious experience? If that last question was true, and distance has no effect, then and only then could we say that teleportation or the other things I discussed above could be ethically and soundly used.
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