Think.

Originality Mystified

2011-06-01T01:18:00.000-07:00

"Something Borrowed" is a brilliant essay penned by Malcolm Gladwell, which I only came across yesterday evening in a crowded cafeteria over a cup of iced coffee. I call it brilliant because since I read it I could not stop thinking about the concept of originality. The essay discusses issues of plagiarism and intellectual copyright, all interesting stuff, but one phrase at the end of the essay triggered my train of thought: "chains of influence and evolution".

This phrase captures the notion that all of our thoughts, ideas and creations are influenced and inspired by thoughts, ideas and creations that we have been exposed to at some point in our lives. True that we have never been able to prove the notion of causality, that things are caused by other things, but empirical experience seems to suggest that there is a causal progression in the way humans behave for the most part. Yet, we define the word original as "a primary form or type from which varieties are derived". It seems to me that everything we think of, design, create, invent is a derivative - there is a causal chain leading to it. There seem to be no 'primary forms'. Does that mean that axiomatically nothing can really be called original?

The one exception to the nothing-is-axiomatically-original notion would be the first idea I should suppose, because that truly was a first. So that implies that there is a "God-idea" from which all other ideas are derived. So what was the first idea we ever had?

[Vocabulary] The Gettier Problem

2010-06-30T21:54:00.000-07:00

The traditional defintion of knowledge as Justified True Belief (JTB) met its refutation at the hands of Edmund Gettier in 1963. Today there are multiple cases that classify as Gettier; over time the Gettier Problem has come to stand for a particular brand of arguments that expose weaknesses in the JTB definition of Knowledge. However, Gettier himself proposed a single two-part case, part I of which will be outlined here.

Smith and Jones are both applying for the same job. Smith has been informed by the management that Jones will be hired. He also has empirical evidence that Jones has exactly ten coins in his pocket. Therefore, he believes that the person with ten coins in his pocket will be hired. The justification for Smith's belief seems reasonable too. According to the JTB definition of knowledge, the only element left to examine is the truth.

In reality, the person with ten coins in his pocket does get hired. So the belief itself concurs with what eventually happens; it is a true belief. But, it turns out that while waiting for the result, one coin fell out of Jones' pocket. Unbeknownst to Smith, he himself had ten coins in his pocket to begin with too, and just so happens that none of them fell out. Smith got the job. Smith was the guy with ten coins in his pocket who got the job.

Smith's belief undoubtedly classifies as JTB. However, Jones was the one who was to be hired in Smith's mind concurrently. With that in mind, it can't really be said that Smith "knew" who was going to get the job, can it? Therefore, we see that every justified true belief is not knowledge. A question - is all knowledge justfied true belief though?

What is Knowledge? - Part I: Definition

2010-06-30T03:05:00.000-07:00

Epistemology is the branch of Philosophy that deals with the nature and construction of Knowledge. Theories of Knowledge, which comprise the field of epistemology, attempt to uncover the meaning of this term that we use almost in an offhand manner in day to day conversations. “I knew you were going to say that!” is the common response to an expected answer. Of course we all know that the Sun will rise tomorrow. The question really is what does it mean to know something? And what is knowledge?

Knowledge as Justified True Belief (JTB)
The definition of Knowledge that has survived most successfully in my opinion is that of Knowledge as Justified True Belief. There are three conditions for anything then to classify as knowledge. Firstly, I must believe it. Secondly it must be true. Lastly, I must be able to justify my belief. There are major problems with this definition from my perspective. Deciding on whether something is true or not attains a high degree of subjectivity in certain regions of knowledge construction and getting beyond the belief stage is difficult. An example would be deciding whether there is too much salt in a dish or a greenish-blue colour is really green or blue. You would need to establish stringent and specific standards so as to objectively define a truth, such as concentration of salt and the wavelength of light reflected in the above two cases. These axiomatic standards are arbitrary for the most part and would only serve to complicate our body of knowledge if we set out to define standards in order to be able to answer every subjective question.

The second major problem with knowledge as JTB is deciding on what justification counts as sufficient. Justification in society very often comes in a historical context – this is how it has been happening over years, so this is how it will happen now/tomorrow. This mode of argumentation is not airtight. One black swan and the claim that all swans are white falls flat. Inductive justifications are not black and white, but shades of grey – probabilistic. Another famous justification – because he said so. Even if he has college degrees and experience to back his claim, he can still be wrong. It is a fallacious appeal to authority (despite its prevalence in society). So what degree (pun unintended) of justification counts as enough? Another arbitrary standard to answer the question?

Lets say we define our standards and now adopt the definition of knowledge as JTB. The problem is that it still fails as an airtight classification of knowledge/Knowledge (a capital K denotes absolute Knowledge and a lowercase k every other kind). How? Two words – Gettier Problem.

A Defintion of Knowledge?
A few of us over millenia have tried to define knowledge. It is possibly an indication of the difficulty of this endeavour that most of us presume to know what it is. If Socrates were alive and went on a journey across the world asking every person for a workable definition, I can say with reasonable conviction that he would find not one answer he could not decimate. Given that, I don't suppose to be able to come up with a satisfactory definition. In fact, I do not think that one definition of knowledge is possible. Knowledge is like ice cream, and there's more than one flavour of that around; in fact, I counted 53 flavours in Ben and Jerry's ice cream tub selection alone. Why do I say that? Substantiation for that claim in Part II after looking at the nature of knowledge...

(Then again I can I really claim to know there are 53 flavours there? Not really. I believe there are 53 commercially available flavours of Ben and Jerry's ice cream tubs because that's what I counted on the website - only as accurate as my math and their representation.)

Artistic Interpretation - Part I

2010-06-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

Coffee? Art? Both? Neither? Demon Eyes? Face Mask? Flower? Random lines of foam in coffee?

The recent claims regarding hidden anatomical meaning in Michangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel lead to questions regarding the interpretation of artistic creations.

Is it possible to interpret a work of art in a fashion identical to its intended meaning?

Do we over-analyse art and extrapolate meanings unintended by its creator?

Is there even a “correct” interpretation for artistic creations, a “Truth” of sorts?

This two-part written creation explores all of these issues. The argument put forth here is that artistic creations have two primary types of truths – the truth of the creator and the truths of the interpreters. It is further suggested that these truths are non-identical and “the interpretation” of artistic creations propounded in society is actually a consensus knowledge approach imbibing elements of both types of truths. A comparison of the two categories of truth is also incorporated.

---------

Scientific theories claiming that the human mind searches for patterns in everything it perceives have been on the table for decades. Daily experience provides compelling evidence for their veracity; every fifth person walking down the street looks like someone familiar; science itself is based on the premise that the workings of the world follow certain basic laws – a premise that often leads to theories with more exceptions that followers, as those who have studied science in depth will have experienced. If one is to accept the theory that human beings are inclined to see continuity and familiarity in perceived data, then it can be extrapolated to the perception and interpretation of artistic creations. If this line of thought is accepted, then this would certainly predispose us to see patterns that are non-existent or unintended in works of art. The question it raises is whether such artistic interpretation detracts from “the truth” or adds more dimensions to it.

The key difference between generic epistemological explorations and artistic interpretations is that art is a human creation while most epistemological endeavours focus on objects not created by humans, such as the universe (if indeed they have a creator at all). Given this crucial difference, the argument put forth here would be that there is categorically no absolute truth with regards to these creations – there is the truth of the creator and the truths of interpreters. This argument in no way alludes to the existence of an overarching absolute truth for non-human creations; it merely says that there is no such truth for artistic creations.

The Truth of the Creator. Every work of art means something specific to its creator – it is an expression of his thoughts, emotions, opinions and/or perspective. When we interpret (the truths of the interpreters) Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” or Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” we seem to assume that we are trying to reach the meaning intended by the artist. I would, however, argue that it is not possible to see anything in the same light as another person – and the same logic applies for uncovering intended meaning in works of art.

So why is it not possible to see something in exactly the same light as another person? Firstly, we all base our knowledge on belief systems comprised not only of assumptions but also of experiences. Evoking Kuhnian paradigms would suggest that every person has a different set of assumptions and therefore looks at things in a unique light. That doesn’t seem like the most convincing argument, however. So consider that belief systems and paradigms evolve with experience. Not many would dispute that no two people have exactly identical experiences. Therefore, even if you start with the same set of assumptions, the eventual paradigm can differ. As Bertrand Russell expressed in his “The Problems of Philosophy”, the table kept in the centre of a room will appear slightly different to each observer, depending upon the position of the observer and the angle of light reflecting off the table. It is the same object being observed, but the process of observation results in an image unique to each observer. In the same manner, the object here is the work of art and the image is the interpretation formulated by the observer. The question is whether the object is superior to the image – or is the image equally “true”?

In the Bertrand Russell example the distinction between object and image is not all that obscure, making argumentation for or against superiority of the object far more substantive. When it comes to artistic interpretation, however, the question has a lot of subtle layers, not necessarily visible at first glance. The table in this case would be the work of art or the creation itself. The problem arises because while we all know what a table is and ought to be, we cannot really claim the same certitude for an artistic creation. Does the essence of the existence of the piece contain the “truth of the creator”? Or is the work simply a vehicle, much like words are in the process of communication – they mean whatever we want them to mean? The answer to this issue weighs heavily in the comparison of the truth of the creator and the truths of the interpreters.

[Vocabulary] Thomas Kuhn, Paradigms and the Notion of Epistemological Progress

2010-06-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

A Collective Paradigm

[Allegations of philosophyxiation being intellectually elitist have prompted this series which is intended to explain the vocabulary used here – a dictionary for the language of philosophyxiation.]

---

As all students of philosophy will tell you, an oft recited story is that of the epistemological underpinnings of the philosophy of the renowned French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes. Descartes came to the conclusion that all the things he thought he knew were in reality epistemologically suspect. Therefore, the only way to get to true knowledge was to throw everything he thought he knew out the window and start afresh. This is the story that leads to the famous “cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), but that is irrelevant in this context. The reason for recounting this story is the implicit recognition of the fact that we do not construct knowledge within a vacuum. As Descartes realised, it is simply not possible to formulate anything epistemologically significant without making a few assumptions. This realisation is the basis of Thomas Kuhn’s idea of paradigms.

Paradigm Shifts

A paradigm is essentially the set of assumptions within which we construct knowledge. It is the “box” within which we live. That is not to say that it is static or singular. Every piece of knowledge we construct within our individual paradigm is based on some of the assumptions of the paradigm – like many small boxes within the larger box. In his “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Kuhn argues that revolutions in Science occur when one or more of the assumptions constituting the paradigm are falsified, instigating the adoption of a new paradigm in lieu of the falsified paradigm. These paradigm shifts seem to be indicative of epistemological progress from Kuhn’s point of view. An example of such a paradigm shift would be the validation of the Copernican model which falsified the assumption that the Earth was the centre of the Solar System.

The above is a simplified and brief interpretation of Thomas Kuhn’s view of progress in epistemology. While his ideas of paradigms and paradigm shifts appear to be insightful and applicable, his claim of paradigm shifts as progress is problematic. This is because the comparison of paradigms with regards to accuracy is only possible if that comparison is carried out in a vacuum. Since we cannot, by Kuhn’s own admission, reach that intellectual vacuum, we cannot “know” whether the new paradigm brings us any closer to “the truth” than the one it replaced. And that is already assuming paradigms have a hierarchy and that correspondent Knowledge exists. So paradigm shifts and revolutions in thought can at best be regarded as change; claiming that they represent progress involves a number of assumptions that do not hold up very well under close scrutiny.

---

Disclaimer – All the ideas presented here are personal interpretations of the ideas of certain philosophers, as opposed to THE ideas of said philosophers.

Who Am I. Really.

2010-04-02T01:08:00.000-07:00

Identity.

Who you are.

What defines you.

A quest for some. A stupid question for others. And always a tool for those who are aware of its power. Identity takes many forms – pride, honour, patriotism – and in every form it has brought people together and pushed them apart since time immemorial. I would argue that it is really identity and the feeling of inclusion and exclusion that it creates that gives strongholds like religion their power. If this argument were to hold water, this one word would probably be responsible for the largest share of bloodshed caused by a single motivating factor. Quite a thought.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant divided qualities into two primary classes – qualities things inherently possess and qualities we ascribe to things. The inherent qualities comprise the things in themselves, or “das ding an sich”. We then superpose certain qualities on objects (and people by extension); these superposed qualities are subjective in nature according to Kant. It can then be postulated that the perceived differences in the identity of things are due to this second layer of subjective ascriptions.

According to Kantian theories, there is this fundamental identity things possess. Of course the question of how we can distinguish these traits from any subjective additions, if at all, still remains.

Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy is characterized by his idea of a paradigm. A paradigm is a set of assumptions within which we view the world and construct all of our knowledge (knowledge as opposed to Knowledge). Revolutions in epistemology (in any field essentially) occur due to a changing of paradigms. Therefore paradigms aren’t fixed. However, they are not easily modified either. A paradigmatic upheaval has serious implications as all knowledge constructed within the previous paradigm has to be re-assessed, and discarded if it does not comply with the new set of assumptions. It is an idea that applies well when applied to figures like Albert Einstein who could not accept the quantum revolution despite having instigated new paradigmatic eras themselves.

So Kuhn’s paradigms make it impossible for there to be an unbiased anything. Assumptions are bias. The absence of assumptions is also the absence of any kind of knowledge. For even the simplest forms of deductive knowledge, assumptions are necessary. If this is now superposed with the two-layer Kantian identity idea, the first layer is something we can never get to. It would require an unbiased view, which Kuhn says we cannot have.

The wider implication of this is that while there is a dichotomy between ‘actual’ and perceived as regards identity, actual has no real practical meaning. Who you are or a thing is actually is a pointless question because you cannot know. It’s like asking what a quantum object is like in the absence of the observer- it could be nothing, everything, something entirely different – you just will never know. Practically all identity there is, is perceived.

It might seem logically consistent to conclude that you are what you think you are. However, it isn’t entirely accurate the way I see it. That conclusion would presuppose a certain freedom to formulate an independent opinion of anything. Shakespeare pointed out centuries ago (via Julius Caesar) that we see ourselves through other people’s eyes. Our perceptions are a product of society and by extension so are we, to a very large extent. If Robinson Crusoe claimed after years of solitary living that he was who he thought he was, it wouldn’t still be believable because again the freedom to form an independent perception was absent. Survival was his motivation as well as his compulsion.

There is an apparent pointlessness in trying to see things in black and white when wearing rose coloured glasses. And there is that same pointlessness in trying to search for what something really is or who you really are. The way I see it, while you don’t have the freedom to define yourself in any which way you desire, you still have a very large say. The challenge is to not choose to do or not do things because of something or someone, but to do them regardless of what something or someone wants you to do. Because it is really in the absence of external influences that you can find/define your identity.

The Evil Demon Hypothesis

2009-06-12T03:11:00.000-07:00

The Evil Demon Hypothesis was put forth by the reknowned French mathematician and philosopher, Rene Descartes. To me, it marks the beginning of the popularity of conspiracy theories that are so very pervasive these days. The Evil Demon Hypothesis Postualtes the idea of an evil demon presiding over the universe. This demon is sadistic and loves manipulating this universe for his own amusement. We then, are his toys. Kids play with lego and hotwheels, he plays with stars, galaxies and human beings. Makes a perfect conspiracy theory, doesn't it?

Looking deeper, this hypothesis is another manifestation of the very human need to imagine a certain someone "in charge" of everything. The evil demon can be viewed as a sadistic and imperfect version of the concept of God, although the evil demon didn't necessarily create the universe. We can't seem to come up with a hypothesis that claims that the universe and everything in it is because of an interplay between energies and equilibria. There has to be, someone good or bad at the helm guiding our destinies- be it the three fates spinning their thread or the evil demon causing you to stub your toe at the door for his personal amusement.

This hypothesis is well used by the Wachowski brothers in the Matrix Trilogy. Here the architect represents the evil demon who maniplates the matrix and everything in it and outside of it for his own gain and amusement. While the movies were certainly enjoyable, i think that it would be refreshing tp believe that nothing conspires against our existence. Although admitedly it would be a good excuse to give your teacher or boss to explain your unfinished work!

Perfect Equilibrium

2009-06-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

Perfection has almost always been the goal of all endeavours undertaken by us as individuals and as a society. The concept of a Utopia or Paradise is the image of this driving force we hold dear and propagate from one generation to the next. It pervades our lives, our thought and consequently our literature, right from Plato's Republic over two millenia ago. Yet to me this ultimate goal is something so undeserving; PERFECTION IS FLAWED.

I will argue that perfection as a concept is flawed. It is lacking. Perfection does not deserve to be an ultimate goal; perfection should be an ideal, something never to be reached. This is because achieveing perfection is like reaching equilibrium. Systems at equilibrium lack a driving force to move in any direction. They are static for eternity. They say eternity is the worst hell there could be and to me its easy to understand why. If the universe were ever to reach equilibrium there would be nothing left- nothing to inspire awe and nothing which could feel the awe that the universe today inspires. Perfection, just like this equilibrium lacks a force for movement, and vitally for betterment.

It can be argued that perfection cannot be improved upon, so force for betterment isn't needed. I would argue that standing in the same place can never be all there could be. Achieving perfection would imply there would be nothing to do, nothing to dream of, nothing to strive for. What meaning would there then be in life? Why would anyone living in paradise want to get out of bed in the morning. Life would become an endless cycle of the same routine day after day until you'd wish it would either change or end. Death is a vital instrument in assigning meaning to out lives, and so is the impetus to strive for things we aspire to achieve.

Without the impetus to move life would be hell. Just an opinion, all of it, of course. Perfection is an ideal we should strive for because it does provide the driving force, the impetus. But its not a goal to be realised. Perfection is the worst thing that could happen. Yet its like the fuel you pour in your gas tank. Ironic, isn't it? But life so often is!

My nine-year old cousin yelled at me a few days ago claiming I was so wrong to not believe in God because I refused out of respect for myself and for the opinions of those who believe to enter a temple. I wished I could explain to her that her perfect God was something that could never be the ultimate level of anything, of existence, of virtue... Her Perfect God to me was deeply flawed... I wouldn't imagine a perfect being would have created a universe at all, let alone create a universe obviously riddled with imperction and forces; perfection lacks forces, movement, motion. All I could say was- don't impose your opinions on me. Theists are always so combative; so much for mutual respect for opinions i guess.

Perception

2009-03-13T03:13:00.001-07:00

KI was very central in redefining who I am. As I was thinking back on that in light of today's eerily accurate horoscope, I remembered my essays :)

Rushing them in just before the deadline, waking up suddenly with an idea on how to go about a certain essay, researching to get a broad perspective on the topic... I miss all that...

Perception was my first ever full-blown philosophy essay. Its special to me because of that and because I got the highest for the essay... :D

PERCEPTION AS A TOOL FOR ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE

For the rationalists, like René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, the main source and final test of knowledge was deductive reasoning based on self-evident principles, or axioms. For the empiricists, beginning with the English philosophers Francis Bacon and John Locke, the main source and final test of knowledge was sense perception. In exploring perception as a tool for acquiring knowledge and the extent to which it is accurate we are actually in a way attempting to determine the validity and accuracy of empirical knowledge.

To understand whether perception can contribute to knowledge construction we first need to define perception and understand the elements involved in perception. One of the definitions that have been provided for perception is as follows: “Perception is the process by which organisms interpret and organize information received by the sense organs”. Through this we can interpret that the accuracy and reliability of conclusions drawn via perception depends on two factors- the accuracy of the sense data and the interpretation of this data by our mind.

The word that casts doubt on the conclusions that we arrive at via perception is ‘illusion’. Illusions are common in normal perception and are natural consequences of the way our sensory systems work. An illusion can be thought of as something that causes us to deviate from reality. Illusions can be classified into two main types- those with a physical cause and cognitive illusions due to misapplication of knowledge. Although the causes differ considerably these illusions still can produce the same distortions and this makes them difficult to classify.

The Muller-Lyer illusion, the Ponzo illusion, the Zollner illusion, the Ames room are just a few of the many examples that show how our senses can be deceived. The stick that appears bent underwater but is actually just a trick of light is probably one of the most widely used examples to illustrate and discuss illusions. If our senses can be deceived and our thought process influenced then how can we trust what we perceive?

Thus, illusions can be hard to justify and overcome and that makes trusting any knowledge gained through analysis of sensory data suspect.

Another problem which arises with perception is that perception is a causal process and causation takes time. Which means that at the time when perceptual processing is complete, the properties of perceived objects may be distinct from those possessed by the object when it was first seen by us. In extreme cases the object perceived may not even exist any longer. An example of the extreme case is the scenario when we perceive a star in the sky to exist when actually at that instant in time it may have ceased to exist or become a supernova. This is due to the enormous amount of time it takes light to travel the distance from the star to our eye.

However this aspect has a solution which is “One should reject the assumption that the object of perception has to exist at the moment we become perceptually aware of that object.” What we see is then to some extent the past.

These are the two main issues that challenge the empirical point of view in my opinion. Then what alternatives do we have to further our quest for knowledge. If we apply the principle of charity and completely reject the empiricist viewpoint what tools can we use to acquire knowledge?

Rationalists believe that all knowledge can be gained through reason and logic and that exact knowledge does exist and can be gained. Though there is a lot that we can learn purely through reason and logic, if we reject all empiricist data we will have no foundation to build on. If we cannot establish 'first principles' or certain unquestionable assumptions we cannot build any knowledge. We won't know where to begin and we wouldn’t be able to establish anything at all. This situation would be the same as one created by a skeptic, one where absolutely nothing is certain and one where the only thing you can 'Know' is that you don't 'Know' anything at all.

Thus, if we reject perception as a tool totally, we may never be able to gain any kind of knowledge through pure logical analysis. Immanuel Kant tried to solve this problem by fusing elements of empiricism with those of rationalsim. He distinguished three kinds of knowledge: analytical a priori, which is exact and certain but uninformative, because it makes clear only what is contained in definitions; synthetic a posteriori, which conveys information about the world learned from experience, but is subject to the errors of the senses; and synthetic a priori, which is discovered by pure intuition and is both exact and certain, for it expresses the necessary conditions that the mind imposes on all objects of experience. Mathematics and philosophy, according to Kant, provide this last.

Perception may not be a very accurate tool to gain knowledge but it is an important tool. Without perception we would never be able to gain any sort of knowledge of the external world. It is perception which provides the bridge between the physical world and our mental realm. In fact, scientific inquiry is heavily dependent on perception and sense data. This is because the principles of science always seek to explain observed phenomena.

We do realise the importance of perception in knowledge construction. That is why we seek to develop sensory systems in artificial intelligence. The very fact that we believe that sensory inputs and their analysis are vital for the development of artificial intelligence indiactaes that we do understand and appreciate the importance and contribution of perception to knowledge construction.

Conclusion: Perception lies at the root of all our empirical knowledge. We may have acquired much of what we know about the world through testimony, but originally such knowledge relies on the world having been perceived by others or ourselves using our five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Perception, then, is of great epistemological importance.

THE PRESENT

2009-03-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

Time in embedded in the very essence of our lives. Even our languages have evolved to take into account the pervasiveness of time. There is an extensive vocabulary to include past, present and future in our communication. Of course, we assume the arrow of time to be unidirectional. Until the black swan proves otherwise, thats acceptable. Theories say certain antiparticles are particles moving backward in time, but until they're proven (and they're far from that yet) we can assume what came before is the past and what will come after is the future. So the present then is the now, or is it?

If you're standing outside in the garden one fine morning and looking at the beautiful sunflower turning its face to the sun, you'd call it your present. But how is it the "now"? It takes eight minutes for light from the sun to reach the Earth. Some more time for it to be reflected off the said sunflower and reach your eyes. And then it takes your eyes time to send the optical signal to your brain, some time yet again for your brain to sort it out and tell you its a sunflower you're looking at. By the time all this is done, the sunflower in your brain is the sunflower as it was a split second ago. Is that still a "now"?

Okay, that was probably a bit mild. Lets take it to a whole new level. Say its a clear cloudless night. You have a telescope (lets just imagine you do for now) and you're looking up at the billions upon billions of stars sprinkled through the night sky. Light from the stars takes anywhere from 4 light years to billions of light years to reach us here at Earth. So we see the star as it was those many years ago. In some cases the star that you see now could have become a white dwarf or exploded as a brilliant super nova people on Earth could maybe admire how many ever years later (if we don't become extinct due to global warming or nuclear explosions or something of the sort). It could even be a black hole if it was massive enough initially! The star you see "now", isn't really the star "now" is it?

THE PRESENT. Such a pervasive concept. "What are you doing now?" - common question right! Honestly, i don't even know what now is! The absolute concept of the present is this indistinguishable mass of various "pasts", so how is it not a part of time gone by? Because you see it now? But since when did the world revolve around one person?

The logical solution would then be that there is no "THE present". There is your present and there is my present, which could consist of "current" perceptions. There "current" perceptions could then correspond to events or objects temporally separated in the "physical world". Not that this solves all the issues. For one, its a slippery slope leading to fallacious justifications for relative knowledge. I'm not saying knowledge is something concrete, i'm just saying its problematic to accept the notion of all knowledge as relative.

And then there's the part where the "now" changes all the time. Even if change is the only constant, something that is now now is no longer now now because some finite amount of time has passed making the now now different from now then. (Inducing brain-numbness is just another hobby of mine, fyi) The entire part when the present is balanced on such a thin and rapidly shifting line just adds to the ambiguity (or maybe the ambiguity is only in my head?).

Its surprising to me, that after all the centuries and thinkers gone by, there isn't one explanation of the all to common and widely employed concept of "the present". A present=a gift, that's the only uncomplicated definition i'm aware of!

(IR)Rationalization

2009-03-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking of a good enough topic to start off philosophyxiation. Today when i read another blog i stumbled upon, it struck me. I'm a diehard cynic when it comes to things that are associated with "consensus". Consensus knowledge strikes me as a very irrational definition of knowledge, if knowledge can be irrational at all! So in keeping with the cynical tradition the first topic will be God. A large percentage of people think Philo is all about God and religion. When I go to bookstores the Philo section is filled with religious books. Imagine passing off faith for knowledge; It's preposterous.

Defining God-

The term God here refers to the supernatural creator and perhaps overseer of the universe/universes (for proponents of the Multiverse theory). God needn't represent, a being; The concept simply represents a higher power.

How to Prove God Exists...

I] The Cosmological Argument

Thomas Aquinas' Argument for 'A First Sustaining Cause':

1 A contingent being exists.

2 There is a cause for the existence of the contingent being

3 Said cause lies outside the contingent being

4 The cause can take the form of other contingent beings or a non-contingent being

5 But contingent beings alone cannot provide an adequate causal account of the existence of all contingent beings

6 This necesitates the existence of a contingent being, ie, God.

II] The Ontological Argument

(ontological arguments are a priori, ie, they stem from largely non-empirical sources)

This argument comes in numerous versions but in essence it says something like:

A supremely perfect being who lacks existence, wouldn't really be supremely perfect. Since, the idea of God is "perfect", God has to exist (Descartes' 5th Meditation).

III] The Teleological Argument

Popularly known as the argument from design. This argument represents God as the intelligent designer who has designed the universe we inhabit. The basic argument is that the degree of complexity we see in the universe could not have been arrived at coincidentally. There is a purpose and creator behind all that we see around us and that creator is what the idea of "God" represents. (Coincidentally, the multiverse theory that came up earlier is something of a "scientific solution" to the intelligent design question...)

The three arguments mentioned above are the three mainstream arguments for the existence of God. Of course the world we inhabit is rarely simple, and these arguments are a few of many that exist and even these arguments themselves have varied versions and interpretations.

All the arguments seen above have flaws that would be obvious to most. These flaws would probably be the subject of another post. For now, I'd like to meander to the end of tis post by defining the epistemological stances on the issue of the existence of God. (Just in case- epistemology=the study of the nature and construction of knowledge. Its one of the 5 major divisions of philosophy and clearly my favourite:) )

>Theism- The belief that God exists and that the existence of God can be proven

>Atheism- The denial of the existence of God along with the belief that the non-existence of God can be proven.

>Agnosticism- A neutral stance. Agnostics believe that a concrete epistemological proof for the existence or non-existence of God is not possible. Although as Richard Dawkins rightly pointed out in "The God Delusion", it isn't really possible to stand right on the very thin line. We agnostics are either theist-agnostics or atheist-agnostics.

With all the socially cultivated paradigms that are all around, this topic always makes for the most colourful discussions... Not always a good thing if, like me, you've found black to be your one colour...