Hebetude

–noun
the state of being dull; lethargy.

~~~~~~~

Our discussions in class today were centered around Christianity and Jesus’ message. A lot of the dialogue helped to prune images of the Bible as a constant message (which few of us seemed to believe), and iron out Christian ideals. Throughout the entire discussion, though, and perhaps because it would have shifted focus too drastically, never once was the possibility of God’s nonexistence brought to the table.

Our discussion assumed that God existed. In the course of the Q&A, this was not necessary, as the question regarding Christian ethics/Jesus’ message and how they were applied to modern Christian. However, I feel it an absolutely necessary topic of discussion not only for the issues presented in class, but for human nature. Most certainly, our natures would vary incredibly with or without the hand of God.

We all seemed in relative agreement that at least occasionally the Bible was not an authoritative source of truth. Objections were levied as to who wrote the book, how we can trust the accuracy of such an old document, and the many places in which it contradicts itself. But on a larger level, what proof do we have beyond this document (as we’ve already questions the supposed proofs within it) to believe there is a God?

Indeed, a critical or scientific analysis of the world reveals no proof or need for a God. Many places that God was thought to be and many things he was thought to control have been explained through a rational lens. It would seem, in no uncertain terms, that the advancement of rational thinking has produced less and less proofs for God.

While I will probably at some point individually parse them, the ideas of Hell, micromanagement, miracles, supernatural phenomenon, personal revelation and natural proofs for God all fall flat under rational scrutiny. The only place left for God is to be the cause behind the effect of the universe—in other words, the hand that sprung the Big Bang. And even in this instance, though it is certain that there was a cause for that effect, it is not clear or reasonable to assume that that effect was God.

Some might question the veracity of a scientific way of thinking—in fact, this is probably the most common complaint against such clear evidence. But as I suspect (and hope) we will discuss in class, there seems no train of thought more suited to the endeavor of truth. For us to place our trust in faith, we are allowing truth to devolve into something wholly dependent on personal interpretation, a lack of conclusive evidence, and the imagination. It seems to me that truth emerges from demanding of oneself a reason to believe, and that a lack thereof is not virtue.

To round this up, I think instead of discussing details about the Bible, it would be more conducive to question the whole thing, and while we’re at it, the existence of God.

I am already suspecting, however, that there will be no small divergence of opinion. This is my eighth philosophy seminar at MCLA, and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered one like ours before.

Evanescent

ev-uh-NES-unt, adjective
Liable to vanish or pass away like vapor; fleeting.

~~~~~~~

I often wonder why so many people I meet are attracted to or in many cases fully immersed in the idea that all of knowledge is subjective, that seeking truth is futile, and that those who claim to have it are pretentious and wrong. At first I thought it merely intellectual lethargy, but I think it goes deeper.

As explained in the previous post, it is easy to make the leap from a diversity of stupid opinions (our world is full of them, else we would not be arguing so often) to a doubtfulness about the existence of truth. It might even seem that humans on average are incapable of grasping some of the universe's greater truths, and in some respect, they are. I do not hesitate to claim we are at a very low tier in the wealth of potential knowledge--examining the bounds beyond the Earth alone can humble one into silence and even despondency.

But to me, the wealth of unknown is no criteria for forgoing explanation of it. If anything, the amount left to be known in the universe is exciting--imagine how boring the universe (and our intellectual lives) would be if there was nothing left to find. Similarly, I would be a very despondent person myself if I didn't believe that there is WAY more objective truth existing in the world than subjective truths that really do depend on the observer.

I suppose my conclusion is that the advances of science and even merely curious minds have produced startling correct observations about humans and the universe in the very short time humans have been on this planet, and researching (if only on wikipedia!) this information is a great boon to confidence about human potential and human reason in general. Reading many of the blogs, it seems to me a general infection of doubtfulness proliferates--I felt exactly the same when approaching philosophy, and occasionally, I feel the same now. But I hope very much that this mindset will not remain by the end of the course, or else we are in for 15 weeks of people shrugging and defending prefabricated points of view.

Not that I will be innocent of the same for the course of the semester (I have already occasionally noticed instinctual, rather than reasonable defense), but I too will strive for an open mind, and retain my understanding that truth does exist, and that we'll be able to find it even in the ludicrously wide bounds of human nature.

Subjectivism

–noun

1. Epistemology. the doctrine that all knowledge is limited to experiences by the self, and that transcendent knowledge is impossible.

(Ethical half of dictionary.com's definition of subjectivism excluding for irrelevance.)

~~~~~~~

The world is organized in a certain way. One’s initial inclination, in many cases, is to deny such a premise—the incredible perplexity of the world paired with a great diversity of opinion creates a sense of dubiousness about the human ability to reason. I know in my own experiences that frustration seizes the forefront when treading the wide range of possible explanations for any given phenomena. But does this impression rob us of the ability to find truth? And if so, in what areas?

Firstly, we can begin with an easy one, the natural world. Remember the desk (Sink counter? Ledge? I don’t know, whatever that thing is, you know what I’m talking about) Professor Johnson stands behind during class? There is little doubt to be had about its existence. We all see it, we can all mutually agree on its presence even if our perception of it varies (and variations will be minor—we aren’t doing anything but identifying its existence), and we can generally agree, as it exists among us and we can perform tests to ensure this, that it exists.

Is it so much of a jump to apply such a method to the natural world? It is obvious what I’m getting at now, the rub is science. While the word has a vast assortment of connotations by now, critical analysis (which here implies consideration for evidence, a recognition and discard of unsupported intuitions and careful consideration for facets) has perhaps less. When we perceive something in the natural world, we can first determine its existence, then its function, relation and components as part of our investigative analysis. I find it almost impossible to deny that there are a wide range of truths discovered and confirmed through this demanding critical analysis.

I am suggesting that science and its component of critical analysis acknowledges the ridiculously broad range of opinions in the world, and across centuries has bettered itself in the interest of finding the truth—by determining a set of criteria (evidence, testing, reason) that can whittle down the false. We all know an idiotic opinion when we hear one, and we can train ourselves to recognize even more.

This is no esoteric endeavor, either, as we are all imbued with such a tendency For example: you hear someone has transferred to another school from a person who is not always informed. You are initial skeptical due to this person’s dubious information, and then later, you see the aforementioned person in the quad. You hypothesize intuitively that they have not transferred, and by then asking them, and being told this is not the case, have confirmed your hypothesis as truth.

Blah blah blah, I am still not feeling that I am sufficiently clear. True, the natural world is an appealing target for this scientific approach, but what about the subjects we were discussing in class, the reason I am prattling in the first place? Instead of going with my natural inclination right now and listing what I think, I am only going to suggest that during the class, we try and transpose the access to truths that critical/scientific thinking provides about the natural world onto the subjects at hand.

We may very well find, as scientists did when trying to unearth the natural world, that the diversity of opinion is inevitable, but is incapable of rendering truth subjective. Is it so hard to believe, considering that so many things in the universe can be whittled down to one accurate fact, that the same can be found among more contentious topics? Certainly the mutating aspect of human nature will play a role, but I have never found a question rendered impossible to resolve by too many false answers, only questions that have yet to receive a correct answer. Without critical analysis, the shrug and the “who can say” approach will get tedious quickly. I look forward to seeing what truths (whatever they are) we can derive.

And I apologize to anyone I interrupted in class. It is an unfortunate tendency of mine and I hope I did not offend; my eagerness precedes me too often.

Brummagem

\BRUHM-uh-juhm\, adjective:

Cheap and showy, tawdry; also, spurious, counterfeit.

~~~~~~~

It's almost time to dust off the journal and start anew, this time exploring the nature of human nature. As humans are a part of nature, is their nature natural or exceeding the natural, as its portents explicate the species as a whole? Surely what drives our actions is a derivation of natural instincts amalgamated with culture and sapience, but it may very well be that human nature as it pertains to the entire species is too broad a classification to warrant conclusive analysis. Pari passu these concerns, human nature itself shifts and ebbs with the flow of time, but perhaps there is also a persistent core, a set of facets that one can definitively classify as human nature, and I suspect this will be the focus of the course.

Looking forward to what part of the aforementioned is foolish being proved wrong.

--Derek

Halcyon

\HAL-see-uhn\, noun:
1. A kingfisher.
2. A mythical bird, identified with the kingfisher, that was fabled to nest at sea about the time of the winter solstice and to calm the waves during incubation.

adjective:
1. Calm; quiet; peaceful; undisturbed; happy; as, "deep, halcyon repose."
2. Marked by peace and prosperity; as, "halcyon years."

~~~~~~~

Part III of III

This experiment is not constructed to show how little Descartes could get from spray painting his apple barrel “infallible apples” and tossing all the fallible ones out, it is constructed to cause sympathy for a creature capable only of thinking to itself for an eternity. To be so alone, suspending judgment not for humility of knowledge, but for want of and inability to access it, is a tragedy worthy of plays. This experiment proves how lucky we are even to have fallible tools.

The cogito would scoff, however, if it were given tools bound to mislead, as many skeptics would suggest they do. We cannot accept a toolbox full of instruments ill-suited to our task. In this case, despite, I hold no doubt whatsoever that the cogito would leap (metaphor) wholeheartedly at the chance to play with tools that might show it anything at all outside itself, even with the hefty provision that it will be subject to constant and likely failure to ascertain the truth. This lot—the cogito’s acceptance of sensory input despite severe consequences for truth, is very much worse than our actual state of affairs.

We have a fallible interface. What is filtered through the senses must be processed by the mind, which even from birth is prefigured to accept information in a responsive way—and without reflection, those responses will harm our access to knowledge. Throughout our lives we construct vast networks of semiologies to accompany natural responses, further detaching ourselves from possible, sober, objective truths. The combination of the senses and the mind, without training and the invocation of reason will inevitably produce conclusions far off the mark of knowledge.

Yet the cogito will accept the proposal of the senses. It is a clever creature, and it knows a bargain when it can see one—it hastily deduces from these provisions that even with the enormous amount of blundering that could occur from perception to knowledge, knowledge is possible. It knows this because it has spent its pathetic life both imagining and doubting—and its own separation from the truth rests with input. In fact, its tragedy is not in the lack of infallible truths, but in the lack of input. Like a blooming flower, it soars from the boredom of its abject (albeit infallible-truth populated) existence, in courage, with fearful but definite excitement, into a realm of fallible perception.

This is where we find ourselves. As much as we would like to deduce the eternal truths of the universe by criterions and introspection alone, it is incredibly impossible. Our brains are powerful enough both to imagine worlds that do not exist, and destroy reflections of ones that do. The newly-perceptive cogito does not enter the world a credulous thing (albeit overwhelmingly enraptured), but neither does it enter the world subject to solipsistic doubt—not only to preserve this new and wonderful world as an existing entity, but because all of its new senses suggest that it has no sensible reason to doubt some kind of objective reality, and much more. Given input, its tragedy becomes fuel for curiosity, and the real pursuit of knowledge begins.

We ought not reflect or depend on floating cogitos to save our ability to know. We ought reflect on them to cherish our ability to sense in the first place—and while we may (and should) be dubious of the correctness of what these senses tell us, self-reflection (as the cogito well knows) is the key to seeking knowledge. Our friend the cogito becomes a master of its newly formed senses, analyzing each one carefully and the many ways in which they can go wrong. Where there is reason to doubt, it does, and where not, it enjoys the comfort of reason paired with input—which can, with fallible humility, discover knowledge enough to fill planets with barrels exempt from Descartes stamp of approval. Input is as much as gift as reason.

Fustian

\FUHS-chuhn\, noun:
1. A kind of coarse twilled cotton or cotton and linen stuff, including corduroy, velveteen, etc.
2. An inflated style of writing or speech; pompous or pretentious language.

~~~~~~~

Part II of III

Decades later, as seconds seem infinite in the void, the creature begins to notice time passing, in the form of thoughts that occurred before the present moment, and thoughts (of whatever content) that will likely occur after the present moment. It is here that the creature makes a home run, the clever thing that it is—it deduces from the existence of change within its own mind the concept of time, though here only used as an organizing function to separate the current thoughts from the past thoughts.

Now with some concept of time, as established by the passage of thoughts through its consciousness, the cogito has any number of ways to establish the next conclusion. For the sake of argument, we will narrow it down—it notices the distinctness of “then” and “now” as different entities. It seeks to streamline its mind when thinking of thoughts that occurred in both arenas, and therefore constructs a referent for when a thought has occurred in both categories. It calls this the number 2—entailing that this particular thought was found in both the 1. past and the 2. present. It has an epiphany, and realizes this referent can be used elsewhere…in many places…everywhere!

Soon enough the cogito is doing small calculations and deducing mathematical formulas. Its self-esteem is rising like a hot air balloon—I must be the smartest cogito in the universe, it thinks. But wait, it wonders…I am me. Could there be more of me? Even less certain, could there be more like me?

The cogito rests on this notion for millennia, and makes no headway. Back to eternal truths, it thinks, I will find no proof or even evidence to support my extra-me cogitos. It gets lonely. It wishes it had someone to talk to.

One night (here defined as when the cogito sleeps—body or not, it needs rest), it has a very odd dream, where it is being spoken to in a very wise thought that informs it of supernatural existence, that it is not alone. It awakens and quickly realizes it was a dream, having had them (but dissimilar ones) before. However, the ideas has infiltrated—who and what was this thought, and how could it have come from nowhere?

It tries to deduce the existence of a cogito far smarter than it, with knowledge it has absolutely no access to, and yet will speak to it and solve the greatest of mysteries. Comforting, this notion is. Yet try as it might, it can produce no evidence for believing the contents of its dream entail existence—surely, this dream cogito’s manner was odd and seemingly foreign, but on rumination the floating cogito realizes this portrait is what its imagination has been conjuring for weeks as a cure for loneliness, and many of the things it said reflected its own insecurities. This is a rather elaborate example, but the bottom line is that the cogito, the diligent creature it is, must reject the superior cogito on the grounds that imagination does not suffice.

Yet if it loses imagination as evidence, it thinks, it will have lost any further stepping stones to knowledge. If it has been taught one thing, hanging in the metaphorical darkness, it is that infallible knowledge is hard to come by, and imagination, paired with logic, is the culmination and extent of its capabilities. Simple cases like the existing self, time and math (the latter two conjoined) are provable by thought alone—but beyond that, imagination is only a safari through a pitch black wilderness at night, revealing nothing, hope it might. Depressed, our cogito friend floats on, wishing for a friend, and knowing it will never know one.

Amalgam

\uh-MAL-guhm\, noun:
1. An alloy of mercury with another metal or metals; used especially (with silver) as a dental filling.
2. A mixture or compound of different things.

~~~~~~~
A paper from Hume and the Skeptics exploring sensory input. Part I of III

Imagine a world of nothing. What springs to mind is likely a void with endless blackness—but even this is too much. Absolutely nothing. No colors, smells, objects or sounds whatsoever. When Descartes emptied his barrel of apples, this is what remained. For the sake of curious exploration, let us build a world in it.

Firstly, it must be mentioned that something exists, and while we cannot be sure of it, it can. This thing that exists we will call the floating cogito. It has all the properties of our sapient minds, the ability to mentally explore, imagine, problem-solve and especially, self-reflect. What it cannot do is hear, see, smell, feel or taste; but at the very least, it can think. Here we are generous in granting its capacities for the sake of argument, as were this creature real, having no input whatsoever would cripple its mental abilities to unimaginable handicap. Instead, we imagine this floating cogito to be much like ourselves when alone and ruminating; thoughtful, curious and logical, it seeks knowledge.

Being disconnected from what normally leads humans astray might be more a blessing than a curse for the creature (here I am fairly certain only very hard-nosed skeptics might agree), as fallible experience is not on its list of options. Instead, it floats in the void seeking knowledge. First, its self-reflection demands knowledge of its existence, and proving this theorem does not take long. Being the clever creature that it is, without any experience at all, it convinces itself of its own existence—beyond all doubt. Every moment it spends thinking about its thought, it knows it exists.