The Evil Demon Hypothesis

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

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

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

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

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...