The Virtualization of Experience

by Jan Dichter

Recent thoughts on social media reminded me of a phrase I heard for the first time recently, which I suspect we will probably hear again – ‘digital natives,’ meaning the increasing fraction of young people who, like many of my fellow undergrads, cannot remember a world without ubiquitous cell phones and Internet access. This was in an NPR news item about the decline of the bookcase, by the way. It seems that furniture companies are making fewer of them, and redesigning them for what people are more likely to use them for now: holding DVDs and electronics. At what point does a bookcase stop being a bookcase?

And what does it mean to be ‘native’ to the placelessness of telecommunications? People are learning to socialize – making friends, falling in love, ‘growing up’ – in a virtual space we tend to think of as somehow overlaid on the actual world. It’s often struck me lately how ads for phone and Internet service typically feature an intense, emotional depiction of ‘togetherness’ across distance. We are supposed to feel like Skyping with someone half a world away ‘is just as good as’ being in the same room with them: in other words, being separate is the same as being together.

Of course we can all be grateful to not be entirely disconnected from those we care about, and sometimes that’s very valuable; then again, it’s not like people were ‘entirely disconnected’ in the age of landlines and letters (or before). Actually being somewhere, with someone, meant more because it required more planning, purpose, and above all,presence. Increasingly, the potential to always be virtually together devalues actuallybeing there together. The possibility of communication makes a reality of isolation more tolerable, and consequently, more normal – an isolation seldom more palpable than while waiting for the phone to ring, or for the newsfeed to ‘update.’

Not only space, but time disappears too as the instantaneous simultaneity of ‘real time feeds’ collapses all moments into a kind of static equivalency, in an eternal present. It seems like only yesterday it often took 10 or more minutes to connect to AOL via dial-up; today our peers often become frustrated to the point of fury at a few seconds’ delay downloading some triviality or other onto their smartphones. The other odd thing about the phrase ‘digital natives’ is not only that there is nowhere to be native to, spatially, in the ‘networked world,’ but that this seems to be clearly a generational designation: only the young are ‘native’ to the ‘digital age.’ We are speaking of a time, not a place, yet any sense of temporality is missing from this term, or the perspective it apparently expresses.

Facebook, meanwhile, has gone from ‘walls’ to ‘timelines,’ flattening a biography into an automatically generated gallery of data. This is actually the model behind the increasing number of sites where we are not actually being sold something, but are being sold as viewers of advertising; “we” in this case refers, of course, to collections of data circulating through distant corporate servers. Experience is annihilated when it is turned into information; there is really no kinder way to put it. It’s not just that we are being tracked in this way, but are constantly conditioned to think like this in order to make it easier for consumers themselves to carry out the kind of market research advertisers once paid top dollar for.

Upon visiting any of a multitude of sites, or registering for various kinds of services, we are asked any number of questions about our lives and interests, as if by a sensitive and caring friend. Are we looking for someone to date? What kinds of art, music, film and literature do we enjoy? Where do we stand on politics and religion? Many people apparently receive these overtures as flattery; their opinion matters and now they have the chance to share it with the world!

The “news feeds” run constantly, like a news ‘ticker’ keeping track of changes in stock prices, ready to relay anything at all. The ability to say something instantly to a potentially oceanic audience attaches easily enough to our egos that it dizzily becomes thecompulsion to say something. When someone comments back, we are reassured that we have a real social life (despite all evidence to the contrary) because we produce enough meaning to capture someone’s attention. Hence the explosion of blogs, Tweets, Facebook ‘timelines’ and so on delivering an unfettered torrent of trivial gossip, uninformed rants and embarrassing confessions – all quite useless except for the egos of those who emit them, the simulacra of community engendered with other digital “selves,” and of course the only-slightly-less-virtual speculative economies of advertisers and site owners who profit off this diffuse production of incessant discourse.

So this is why it is not only a question of me and my subjective individual existence, and whether I can abstain from the distractions of the digital environment to find some kind of ‘authenticity,’ but of the fact we have such an environment, the uncanny valley peopled by the digital natives. What we think of as our individual and social existence is shaped by an order of the world that hides behind terms like ‘information technology,’ ‘the Internet,’ the ‘new economy,’ that includes the massive deployment of devices that capture and circulate information as much as the sense of alienation we can’t seem to slake by socializing through them.

The bottom line of this world and its truths is that sociality and commodity have become identical, with only the most tenuous formal connections to “real life” that is becoming increasingly virtual anyway. A proxy form of social life transpires in this marketplace of information and identity, brightly-lit and always open for business, its every moment recorded and marketable. Hollowed-out experience reveals its form to be that of an ideal commodity, that can be anything to anyone because it is nothing itself, and it increasingly recreates our social relations as mutual absences. But the world of our shared presences awaits us patiently, if only we can put down our phones long enough to really be there.

Cause & Effect Divorce!

by Anna Marton

In a shocking turn of events, Cause & Effect divorce.  "It started so small," Cause sobbed.  "Some people started wondering if we really belonged together.  We had defenders, though.  A lot of people said that you never see Cause without Effect."  Cause smiled sadly.  "Those were the good days."  She stopped smiling.  "Then that philosopher came along!"  Cause is referring to the Empiricist Hume, who argued that there was no rational reason that there was a necessary connexion between Cause & Effect. "Our defenders had nothing to say to that," Cause sniffled.  "Oh, people still believe in us at times, but it wasn't enough to keep Effect with me."  Cause says that she will go along without Effect always at her side, but says it will be lonelier.  Effect could not be reached for comment.

11/16/2012 Honesty and Society

by Tyler Molander

I aim to talk about a personal philosophy of mine, which is that: honesty is the best way to go through life. I also aim to explain why being honest or dishonest significantly effects how society functions. I will do this by giving my theories of how humans process the world around them and how they can take honest, genuine actions. I will explore that being honest to yourself and others is obviously the most genuine action that you can take. With this, that taking an honest action is an expression of "who you are", and a dishonest action is NOT an expression "who you are". With this, I will explore my ideas about concepts of "identity" and why I think "identity" is meaningless. We may ask ourselves a few questions...


What is our "identity"?


Why does our "identity" matter?


How do we express our honest selves if we do not understand our "identity"?


What IS a honest action?


Why is dishonesty so detrimental to society?


Why does society have so many "problems" and how are they "solved"?


I aim to end the discussion with everyone attempting to be as honest as possible to each other. I aim to have a discussion where everyone can be equally allowed to be honest with whatever is truly on their minds following the mission of this club, which is to attempt to provide a nurturing environment. With this, each person has to try to remember to first be honest with THEMSELVES and then with each other. Before this discussion, I aim to explain how this can be done with virtually no negative results. That negativity ("blacks are bad") as well as positivity ('whites are good") are both merely constructions of the mind; which lead not to negative results, rather dishonesty.

11/9/2012 Philosophy of Magic: Chaos, Ceremony, and Practicality

by Ashley Hartzler 

(on behalf of herself and the other SPIRALS members to lead this discussion)

Our talk focuses on the approach of magicians through out the various schools of magic, the differences between those schools, and the thought behind their methods. We'll start by focusing on the major laws of magic and how they apply to the various schools. We'll then analyze ceremonial magic by using an evocation ritual as an example and see how the laws apply to it. Using ceremonial magic as a base, we will compare practical and chaos magic to it and hold discussion through out the entirety of the talk.

***

A video of the meeting on 11/9/2012 can be found here.

11/2/2012 Responses to the Absurd

by Benny Mattis

Have you ever stepped back from what you were doing, stepped back from your day-to-day life, and wondered Why?  Have you ever found yourself at a loss for answers to this question?  Maybe you've come to the conclusion that your life is...absurd?

The Absurd is the manifestation of a tension between aspiration and reality; we take our lives seriously enough, but they may seem quixotic or downright futile when gazed upon by an outside observer.  Importantly, an outside observer is not even necessary for this effect, as we are more than capable of recognizing the absurdity of our own lives--for example, when you ask yourself "why" and find yourself at a loss.

Some philosophers think that the absurd is something to be avoided, some think it is something to be embraced, and some think it is simply another fact of life.  One's response to the absurd indubitably affects the way they view themselves and others, which in turn affects their actions.  This week, we will be examining two popular and influential responses to the absurd: that of Albert Camus, and that of Thomas Nagel.

Camus sees the absurd as a conflict between man (in the broadest sense), who has hopes, dreams, & aspirations, and the world, which is totally alien to man, ultimately incomprehensible, and indifferent to his survival.  Thus, the absurdity arises in man's attempts to find order or meaning in a meaningless world.  Nagel, on the other hand, sees the absurd as an internal conflict between two of man's own perspectives on himself--the perspective which takes life seriously, and the "backwards step" to a view on which such seriousness appears "gratuitous" in the face of its ultimate insignificance.  Which of these writers are more accurate in their account of the absurd as a phenomena?  Which of their responses are most effective in reconciling people with their absurd existences?  These are the things we will be discussing on Friday.

---

A video of the meeting held on 11/2/2012 can be found here.  There were various responses to Camus' and Nagel's respective responses to the absurd.  A few of us agreed with Nagel's description of Camus' response as overly "dramatic."  A few people agreed with Nathan in dismissing the absurd as a "first world problem" that results primarily from a disconnect from the suffering of one's neighbors.  There were also doubts about the verity of the premise that life is, in fact, absurd.  Overall, the majority of those who attended on 11/2/2012 tended to sympathize with Nagel's conception of the absurd, as Camus seemed to be self-defeating, both in making claims about a supposedly unknowable world, and in failing to appreciate the absurdity of revolt itself.

10/26/2012 The Preservation of Culture

by Sissy Nunez

Should languages and civilizations be preserved after most of the people of said culture are imprisoned or dead?

So, we first look at the most extreme example for a benefit.

Rome.  The most concreted faction that gave the undoubtedly the most advancements from almost all cultures,spanning from western civilization, across the ocean again, and back to Islam as far as advancements in invention, medicine, language, and public works go.

Before the sacking of Rome in 410 A.D., Romans had access to running hot and cold water, sanitation that had kept disease more minimalized,and medicine that allowed people to keep living productive lives after serious infection,possible brain trauma,amputation,etc.  The people also had public works like roads and aqueducts, as well as a public system of welfare.

Latin could be easily translated to Greek at the time to help with the language barrier, as implied through the great Library of Alexandria.  The loss of this civilization set us back over a thousand years in terms of the things I mentioned--invention, science & medicine.  The rudimentary observations made by Galen, the surgeon to Marcus Aurelius in the second century and a father to medicine through his works, although largely lost (which is why we should preserve), were still implemented until a reignition of interest in the 16 century, which led us to research his implications and thus led to the expansion of modern medicine.  The loss of sanitation and public works aided the spread of plagues and the deterioration of cultures in general in large expanses.  

The collapse of rome also aids in loss; the unification of language throughout many countries at the same time, with the perpetuation of empires like Rome to flourish at the cost of other civilizations, destroys other cultures and languages--the Gauls, Picts and Celts, to name a few.  Only recently, 2000 years later, is Ireland trying harder than ever to revive Gaelic.  Many of the rituals, practices,and cultures of these people are seen as pagan or new age, and for the most part not taken as seriously as, say, Christianity, as a direct result as the flourish of the Roman Empire and its conquering different countries and dissolving their countries and cultures for the good of Rome.

10/19/2012 The Birth of Tragedy

by Melanie Muller

Deemed by his later self “wildly enthusiastic,” “badly written, clumsy, and embarrassing,” Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy represents his attempt to explain the contradictory elements of Greek tragedy and an exploration of human psychology through an interpretation of the classical past. He argues that tragedy represents a hybrid of two competing artistic impulses, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. He argues both impulses arise from a human need to shield itself from the knowledge of suffering and a conviction that:

“The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.”

The Apollonian mindset takes its name from the Greek god of reason and prophecy. Nietzsche argues that it expresses itself artistically as sculpture and man’s “inner fantasy world.” It is characterized by “calm,” “freedom from wilder impulses,” “restraint” and “beauty.” He describes it as an assertion of “principium individuationis” or the principle of individuality, and its expressions in art are a glorification of this principle. The Apollonian artist creates a perfected semblance of reality; Nietzsche considers any dreamer who creates such perfected images in his mind an Apollonian artist. He argues that those who continually surround themselves with Apollonian images are “compelled to feel this semblance to be that which it is not,” something which will become the empirical reality.

A Dionysian mindset, Nietzsche argues, results when a “break down of the principium individuationis” occurs. The Dionysian is named for the Greek god of wine and associated with excess, a sense of becoming one with nature (thus losing individuality), and an intoxicated state of mind. It is expressed artistically through music and dance. Having recognized the pain of existence, the Dionysian loses themself in intoxication and oneness with nature, perversely taking pleasure from pain. As expressed in Nietzsche’s overblown language:

“Excess revealed itself as the truth; contradiction, bliss born of pain, spoke of itself from out of the heart of nature.”

In this week’s meeting we will discuss these ideas, how Nietzsche uses them to formulate a theory concerning the birth and death of Greek tragedy, and possible implications of the theory.

10/12/2012 Ethics and Historiography: A Semilocal Application

by Nathan Turowsky

Today we will investigate the difference between utilitarian hedonism and deontological systems of morals, in the context of the question ‘Are there some things that can be done to a small group that are so awful that it is better to let a larger group live in very poor conditions, and if so, why?’

Around the turn of the twentieth century there were concerns that the city of Boston and its environs were soon to run out of potable water, a problem both for still-obvious reasons and for, at that time, cholera-related ones. Obviously this was a problem that needed to be fixed, and to this end the options were to conduct an extensive overhaul of the area’s water mains and sewer systems (which were filled with leaks, redundancies, and dead ends) and cut back on consumption—which would have caused Boston’s and by extension New England’s and the North Atlantic’s economy to suffer—or to build a reservoir somewhere where fewer people lived. Eventually in the 1920s it was decided that the Swift River Valley, an area in Western Massachusetts that was home to four incorporated towns and about twenty-five hundred fulltime residents as well as travelers on the at that time marginally important train line between Athol and Springfield, ought to be dammed at its outlets to create a reservoir which would essentially replace the eastern end of Hampshire County on the Massachusetts map.

The project did not go smoothly, and involved, as any such project would have to, dispossessing those twenty-five hundred people, destroying four communities (the psychological trauma that this inflicted on the former inhabitants of Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, and Dana has not been the subject of much formal study but looms large in Western Massachusetts culture), moving about eight thousand graves, and indirectly wrecking the rural economies of much of the surrounding area. The Quabbin Reservoir took about seven years to fill, after which it began to provide most of Boston’s water, assuaging the crisis for the foreseeable future, especially as the city’s population began to contract starting in the 1950s.

Opinions on the creation of the Quabbin tend to divide sharply along two lines: Whether or not one is aware of the circumstances behind it, and whether one is from Eastern or Western Massachusetts. The justification for the project was and is at its core utilitarian: It is more good for half a million people to have access to safe drinking water, without the economic costs of spending time doing an overhaul of the distribution system, than it is bad for a few thousands of people to be relocated to different parts of rural Western Massachusetts. The opposition to the project, insofar as it was not entirely emotive and based on the preferences of those who lived in the Swift River Valley to continue to do so, was and is at its core deontological: It is wrong to forcibly relocate inconvenient populations, indeed it has since 1949 been against the Geneva Conventions, and if the Quabbin were being constructed nowadays with the state government behaving the same as it did then the Massachusetts General Court would in fact be guilty of a crime against humanity. There is no easy answer here. Orders of magnitude more people were helped by the project than were harmed by it, and whether one would rather be forced to move away from one’s home against one’s will or be unable to find clean drinking water is obviously subjective since these are both horrible things to wish on anyone.

What to do? What do we value, and what do we believe? If you were a Massachusetts resident in the 1920s or 1930s, what would you have done? Can the importance of the Swift River Valley in Western Massachusetts culture and the exercise of remembrance (there was a conscious decision on the part of the people at the Swfit River Valley Historical Society to continually recreate an eternal 1938 rather than evoke a kinetic timespan) even, possibly, redeem the destruction, making it the source of a deontological good relating to memory as well as a utilitarian good relating to bodily health? Might the very fact of the valley’s destruction have in some sense made it eternal? Let’s use the fate of Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, and Dana to explore how we feel about larger issues of the needs of the many, the fundamental rights of the no-matter-how-many, civic responsibility, and civic and cultural memory.

***

At the meeting we discussed the topic as intended. Nathan gave us the historical background and basic questions; Nathan's visiting mother Lisa explained what eminent domain is and the controversy over what constitutes 'just compensation'. There was an extensive large group discussion and a somewhat shorter than usual small group discussion, and the club was split about evenly on the subject of whether or not the Commonwealth was theoretically justified (most agreed that it was not justified in behaving as it actually did). After the meeting, we had dinner at Worcester and then went to Orchard Hill to straightway partially disperse and/or do nothing in particular in the Grayson lounge.

10/5/2012 Cognitive Biases

gathered from Wikipedia by Brandon Taylor

A cognitive bias describes a replicable pattern in perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Cognitive biases are the result of distortions in the human mind that always lead to the same pattern of poor judgment, often triggered by a particular situation.

Broader Concepts
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision-making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision.

Cognitive dissonance is the term used in modern psychology to describe the state of holding two or more conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously. In a state of dissonance, people may sometimes feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment.[1] The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements.

Adaptive bias is the idea that the human brain has evolved to reason adaptively, rather than truthfully or even rationally, and that cognitive bias may have evolved as a mechanism to reduce the overall cost of cognitive errors as opposed to merely reducing the number of cognitive errors, when faced with making a decision under conditions of uncertainty.

The salience (also called saliency) of an item – be it an object, a person, a pixel, etc. – is the state or quality by which it stands out relative to its neighbors. Saliency detection is considered to be a key attentional mechanism that facilitates learning and survival by enabling organisms to focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the most pertinent subset of the available sensory data.

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that uses the ease with which examples come to mind to make judgments about the probability of events. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that "if you can think of it, it must be important."

In sociology and social psychology, impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event; they do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction.

Specific Cognitive Biases
Bandwagon effect – the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same.

Confirmation bias – the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Fundamental attribution error – the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior.

Dunning–Kruger effect—an effect in which incompetent people fail to realize they are incompetent because they lack the skill to distinguish between competence and incompetence.

Status quo bias is a cognitive bias; an irrational preference for the current state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss.

Hyperbolic discounting – the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, where the tendency increases the closer to the present both payoffs are.

Anchoring – the tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on a past reference or on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (also called "insufficient adjustment").

Outcome bias – the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Ultimate attribution error – similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.

Halo effect – the tendency for a person's positive or negative traits to "spill over" from one area of their personality to another in others' perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype).[59]

Optimism bias – the tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes

Conservatism (Bayesian) – the tendency to belief update insufficiently but predictably as a result of new evidence (estimates of conditional probabilities are conservative)

Loss aversion – "the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it".

Questions

Do you agree that with the suggested cognitive biases above?

Are cognitive biases nature or nurture?

Can you match broader concepts with specific cognitive biases?

To what extent do cognitive biases and logical fallacies overlap?

Can you find specific examples of how one of the cognitive biases or general concepts above relates to your everyday life?

Does the existence of cognitive biases have any epistemological implications?

9/29/2012 Christian Atheism and Radical Theology

by Benny Mattis

In 1882, with the publication of his book The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche declared the death of God through the words of a character called "The madman."  The death in question was not the literal death of a being who was once alive, but rather the shrinking ability of foundational belief systems to help people make sense of the world they live in.  The Enlightenment showed us the various discoveries to be found by asking, "Why?"  However, when unmitigated skepticism undermines foundational belief systems without providing acceptable alternatives, a nihilistic sense of meaninglessness may take hold.

It may seem that when everything is questionable, nothing is sacred.  However, it is the case that, especially following the Enlightenment, everything is indeed questionable, regardless of whether one personally resolves to question everything or anything.  But don't humans need the sacred?  Isn't nihilism a problem that ought to be solved?  Those who answer "yes" to this question have come up with various responses, which include merely negating meaninglessness ("meaninglessness itself is meaningless, therefore it doesn't matter that life is meaningless!"), positing a "hidden meaning" ("things may look terrible and chaotic at first glance, but from a God's-eye view everything is just fine"), and attempting to return to a pre-skeptical state (taking foundational beliefs back, and keeping them "on faith").  But there is a group of theologians who are trying to find religious symbolism in meaninglessness itself--these include the proponents of what is called "Death of God theology," which will be the topic of discussion this week.

***

On 9/29/2012, the discussion of Christian Atheism went as planned.  We discussed an excerpt from Slavoj Zizek's Only a Suffering God Can Save Us.  Discussion questions included:

-Is it possible to be both a Christian and an Atheist?

This question garnered varied responses from people of different backgrounds--some said that the word "Christian" implies a specific set of beliefs about the supernatural, whereas others suggested that, as it sufficiently resembled traditional Christian culture, Christian Atheism could well be considered as such.

-Is any system of beliefs capable of justifying itself?

This question was not discussed as much as the others, but Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem was brought up as evidence against this possibility.

-Does Zizek succeed in finding meaning in meaninglessness?

Because of Zizek's dependence on religious imagery, some of us concluded that the inspirational power of his ideas are somewhat confined to ex-Christians.  A more critical view suggested that Zizek is actually worsening the nihilism that results from a death of God--if God is suffering, as opposed to just us humans, then things may seem to be even more truly hopeless than before.  A more analytic perspective offered the notion that this question--as well as the question of the "meaning of life"--is essentially meaningless itself, i.e. nonsensical.

-What is it that belief and value systems derive motivational power from?

Responses to this question included an evolutionary-biological explanation (beliefs hold people together, which helps them survive) as well as the idea that motivational power is produced primarily by vigorous and charismatic religious leaders.

Despite the rain, a decent turnout showed up to the meeting this week.  We concluded with an announcement that ideas for future discussions should be brought to Quimby.  The meeting was followed by dinner at Worcester Dining Commons and several rounds of "Cards Against Humanity" afterwards.

9/21/2012 Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

by Kyle VanderWerf

This week's Philosophy Club topic is Ludwig Wittgenstein's theories, specifically those found in Philosophical Investigations. In this book, he tries to answer various philosophical questions by examining how human language works. He focuses on language because he believes it's the only tool we currently have to answer philosophical questions, so looking at how it functions can lead to all kinds of insights. At philosophy club, we'll discuss, evaluate, and criticize how he uses his philosophy of language to consider the question, “Is the color red that I see the same as the color red that you see?”

First, consider two construction workers, A and B, who have a very simple language. When A says “slab!” B hands a slab over to A, when A says “brick!” B hands over a brick, and so on. The combination of the words of the language that are used, and the actions that accompany them, are what Wittgenstein terms a “language-game.”

Wittgenstein argues that all languages are fundamentally similar to the construction worker language. That is, the purpose of a language is to influence how people act. All languages serve an accompanying “language-game.” A word doesn't have any meaning outside of the context of the rules of action that are associated with it in a given language-game. So how do you learn what words mean? Other people teach you using whatever methods work to get you to act correctly according to the rules of the language-game.

So for a word or phrase to have any meaning in a language, it must correspond to rules for action that people can empirically evaluate. In other words, people have to be able to tell you if you're using a word incorrectly. For example, if I took my cat out for a walk, and told my friends I was walking my dog, they could observe my pet to determine that it's a cat and not a dog, giving them justification to tell me I'm using the word “dog” incorrectly.

Let us now look at the word “qualia.” According to many philosophers, this word refers to raw feelings or sensations, aka subjective experiences. For example, the sensation of pain, and the experience of seeing the color red, are both qualia. Let's just examine pain for a moment. Most people in pain exhibit outward symptoms, such as crying or yelling. However, if the inner sensation of pain always corresponds to these symptoms, then the word may as well just refer to the symptoms themselves, since the rules for action are the same in either case. The sensation of pain itself is irrelevant to the language-game, so you can't refer to it directly with words. Furthermore, if someone in pain exhibits no symptoms, and acts the same as they would without being in pain, a word for their feeling would be meaningless, as it would have no rules for action; it would be impossible for someone else to tell if they were using the word correctly.

Thus, the word “qualia” in the English language is either meaningless, or it simply refers to the effects of raw feelings/sensations, and not the feelings/sensations themselves. In fact, Wittgenstein argues that constructing words in a language that actually refer to subjective experiences is impossible. It is therefore impossible to answer the question, “Is the color red that I see the same as the color red that you see?” with the tools we currently have, namely language-games.

9/14/2012 The Non-Bullshit Life

by Tyler Blevins

Hey guys, just going to outline what happened in class to prompt this question and I will give the complete response I gave to submit to the teacher. Hopefully we can expand on that.

The concept of a bullshit life came from a TV show clip where a man is going to a date, but he gets attacked by a homeless man. The homeless man run at him, misses him, keeps running into the street due to momentum, and a car hits him and he dies. The man goes to his date and goes on a monologue about how our lives can be erased at any second, and therefore, all human action is “bullshit.” Our teacher challenged us to come up with answers to “What isn’t a bullshit life?” The answer I gave is below:

I have thought about this question during a few intellectual discussions with some of my colleagues, and I believe I have come up with a satisfactory answer, at least in my own life. I will attempt to explain my position in this essay.

The Romans had the deity Hilaritas, who was the goddess of good nature and humor. This was also an extension of the Greek concept of Hilarita, which simply acknowledged the inevitability of death for all human beings, and that the passage of time would lead to the collapse of all things that humans have ever built, dreamed, and thought. While this immediately may seem pessimistic and nihilistic on the surface, if analyzed, this can lead to the realization that all worrying is ineffective and without merit. In effect, this philosophy can eliminate all worry because all causes of human worry will eventually be nonexistent in the grand scheme of things. This allows for an upsurge in humor in the largest case of dramatic irony possible so that the person experiencing this realization finds humor in everything in existence and is able to communicate that quality to others that want it. This, I think, is one of the greatest ways for a person to find legitimate meaning in life: finding humor in this great game of life and transferring that good nature to others.

My own personal philosophy of what gives my life meaning is to be as happy and compassionate as possible to everyone I come into contact with. I always try to help anyone whenever I can and going the extra mile all the time, and I get great joy out of doing that. I suppose I could measure the success of this principle by considering how many people will show up at my funeral and what they will have to say about me after I am gone. Yet despite all of this, I try to remain as humble as possible, yet I realize that even that statement pumps up my sense of self-worth. In essence, I suppose one could say I try to be as happy and helpful as possible.

To close, I wish to use Horace Mann’s statement: “We should be ashamed to die until we have made our mark upon humanity.” I think that statement adds tremendously to clarity in what we should be striving for in our day-to-day lives. This, in essence, wraps up my philosophy on this subject based on what I currently know. I plan to read Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” at some point very soon, so I may have more to say on it later. But for now, this encompasses my position, as flawed or as solid it may be.

In essence, I think a non-bullshit life consists of leaving a mark on humanity that transcends your own death. I will expand on this more in the club, and I hope we can get a good discussion going from this. Cheers!

9/7/2012 Theses on the Philosophy of History

by Nathan Turowsky

Walter Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, born in Berlin in 1892. He is a seminal figure in socialist theory, continental philosophy, and modern theology, known for his synthesis of German idealism, Marxism, and mystical Judaism. A committed socialist in the general sense, his relationship was the orthodox Marxist-Leninist thinkers and governments of his time was complex and fraught, and he ended his life opposing both Soviet-style state socialism and the liberal left of the Western countries; he died in a seaside town in Spain in 1940 attempting to flee Europe after the fall of Paris (his adopted home), either by his own hand or that of a Stalinist sleeper agent in his traveling party.

Benjamin was interested in how a society could regain an appreciation of religion and myth after losing it and was the founder of inverse theology, a type of religious thought distinguished by the twin recognitions that religion is or was a humanizing influence in the development of civilization and that the modern secularization process is probably not reversible. Over the course of his short lifetime he became convinced that the way back to religion, myths, and gods was through aesthetics, but remained unsure of how this would be accomplished.

‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ is Benjamin’s last work, written in Paris shortly before its fall. In it, Benjamin eviscerates the notion of ‘progress’ and attempts to dissolve Marxist theory back into the mystical interests that he believes preceded it over the course of twenty numbered paragraphs, some of them with epigraphs from other thinkers and artists, some without. The tradition of critical theory is in part predicated upon the opinion that Benjamin was more or less successful at this and the question of where one ought to go from there.

***

On Friday, September 7, the plenary Philosophy Club reconvened after a summer of sporadic and sparsely attended "meetings". First Kyle and Melanie led us in an icebreaker activity in which different tables were given different rules for a card game, then the attendees, who included about ten or a dozen new prospective members, were told to mix up their table placements between rounds and forbidden from talking to each other. As an experiment in nonverbal communication and in communication from different basic assumptions, this was interesting, because it demonstrated that some of us preferred to fall back upon established or common lexicons when it became too difficult to agree upon or negotiate a new one, with many members electing to determine "winners" by rock-paper-scissors (a piece of knowledge and cultural capital that we all held in common) rather than by actually trying to play the game.

Next, Nathan led a reading of paragraphs IX and XVI and Addenda A and B from Walter Benjamin's 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'. Points of interest included what Benjamin means by 'progress' and his general reticence to define his terms. Arguments over whether or not Benjamin had any actual point and a discussion of Nathan's attempt to draw attention to the unfortunate sexist undertones of XVI by having Melanie and Annie read it ensued. After the reading, the club split into two groups, one of which Doug, a new member, helped lead to the conclusion, using paragraph I and connecting it with the Addenda, that Benjamin here is taking a leap back into theology, which he (Benjamin) views as an underpinning or precursor to Marxist historical materialism rather than a necessarily competing viewpoint. The other group had a conversation about feminism stemming from the questions over Nathan's choices in emphasizing the genderedness of Benjamin's prose, and several members floated ideas for next week.

(Intellectual) Property is Theft!

by Benny Mattis

If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery?  and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once.  No extended argument would be required...Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!,  without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?
-Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property?

Propertarian and "right-libertarian" philosophy is generally based on one or both of two important principles.  The first of these, the principle of self-ownership, is the idea that an individual person has exclusive rights of control over their own body and the product of their labor.  John Locke, widely considered the father of classical liberalism and an undeniable influence in the American Revolution, is often credited with formalizing this theory of property.  He explains in his Second Treaty on Civil Government: "As much as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property."  Of course, there are multiple interpretations as to what what constitutes "improving" and "using the product," but the general ideas of self-ownership, and ownership of the fruits of one's labor, were and are incredibly important for any discussion of what property laws ought to be based on.

The second principle often employed in capitalist rhetoric, the principle of non-aggression, condemns all initiation of force or fraud against the person or property of another, even if such force is deemed "for the greater good."  From these two principles come the right-libertarian condemnation of the state, which is funded through taxation (i.e., the initiation of force against private citizens).  Usually, these principles go hand in hand--ownership is secured through the prevention of aggression/theft, and the prevention of aggression/theft in turn is justified through the principle of self-ownership.

However, patents (and copyrights) pose a problem for property.

Intellectual property introduces a contradiction into the nice interplay between the non-aggression principle and the principle of self-ownership, because it can only be secured through the initiation of force and the flagrant violation of physical property rights.  Think about the Apple-Samsung situation: viewed through the lens of physical property rights, Samsung has done nothing in aggression against Apple.  Apple, on the other hand, is violating Samsung's property rights by dictating how they can use their property ("don't cut your plastic in this special shape," etc.) as well as stealing from them outright. On the other hand, viewed through the lens of intellectual property, Samsung has violated Apple's self-ownership; ownership implies exclusivity to Apple.  Yet, this self-ownership can only be secured through coercive state intervention and forced re-distribution of Samsung's resources.  We have two types of property--physical and intellectual--that cannot coexist.

***

In An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, David Hume considers whether property would be necessary or even justifiable in a world where material scarcity were not a problem:

It seems clear that in such a happy state every other social virtue would flourish and be increased tenfold; but the cautious, jealous virtue of justice would never once have been dreamed of.  What point would there be in dividing up goods, when everyone already has more than enough?  Why institute property when there can't possibly be any harm in not doing so?  Why call this object 'mine' when just by stretching out my hand I could get another one that is like it and equally valuable?  In this state of affairs, justice would be totally useless; it would be an idle ceremonial, having no place in the list of virtues.

This seems to be the case with intellectual property; since it can be copied and re-copied indefinitely, "dividing up" information is an "idle ceremonial."

There is, however, a component of IP that cannot be shared through copying, and that is authorship.  Radiohead, one of my favorite bands, released their album In Rainbows for free on the internet, and information-copying made it available to everyone; Radiohead's authorship of the songs, however, could never be shared in such a way.  On the contrary, if everyone claimed authorship of the album, not even Radiohead would get the benefits of authorship (fame, pay for performances, etc.); sharing information multiplies wealth, but attempting to share a claim to authorship only renders such a title meaningless.  Sometimes, the claim to authorship ought to be meaningless; this might be the case with a community-driven project where nobody really put in any more work than anyone else.  But it is clear that, for better or worse, authorship is not unaffected by scarcity in the same way that authored information is.

This is why I think that intellectual property should be not abolished, but separated from physical property.  I think a sort of property dualism is appropriate:  physical property (a phone) traded with physical property (money), and intellectual property (a "stolen" design) traded with intellectual property (an acknowledgment on Samsung's part that they did, in fact, use Apple's ideas in their technology).  Likewise, intellectual theft (attempting to claim authorship of In Rainbows) might be punished through intellectual restitution (a public announcement that I am, in fact, a fraud, and that Radiohead are the true authors of the album).

"But wait!" cry the defenders of IP.  "That design took physical resources to make!"  But this objection misses the point: the design may have taken physical resources to discover, but, in using the design, other people are not in any way taking more physical resources than what has already been spent.  Thom Yorke, in writing songs for Radiohead, keeps the fruits of all the physical labor he put into writing his songs, including the neurological make-up that results from musical practice and songwriting. This physical and neurological being, as opposed to the information instantiated in it, is what required the consumption of physical resources to construct.

Of course, the value of this physical and neurological being is not to be underestimated or dismissed with a "You didn't build that."  A musical mind is necessary to understand, remix, and create music, and there is nothing wrong with paying an artist to use their talents in different ways (public performance, commissions, etc.).  This applies to all artists, including the professional engineers and researchers at Apple Inc.

There Is Such A Thing as an Ethical Suspension of the Teleological

by Benny Mattis

Johannes de Silentio, a pseudonymous personality of Søren Kierkegaard, explores in Fear and Trembling the ethical problems raised by Abraham's binding of Isaac as described in Genesis chapter 22.  He does this "in order to see what a tremendous paradox faith is, a paradox which is capable of transforming a murder into a holy act well-pleasing to God...which no thought can master, because faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off" (55).  And while "this paradox cannot be mediated" or understood through reason (58), de Silentio nonetheless praises Abraham as an admirable servant of the Judeo-Christian god.

A Climactic Paradox

But how can a man be considered admirable for his attempt to slaughter his own son?  As de Silentio notes, 

The ethical as such is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which may be expressed from another point of view by saying that it applies every instant.  Whenever the individual after he has entered the universal feels an impulse to assert himself as the particular, he is in temptation, and he can labor himself out of this only by abandoning himself as the particular in the universal (56).

Surely, Abraham was in violation of the ethical-universal in his act of attempted filicide, and de Silentio agrees.  Why, then, does Abraham deserve any respect or admiration?  de Silentio suggests that Abraham's predicament was an instance of the "teleological suspension of the ethical."  In such a suspension of the "universal" ethical, Abraham's duty to God is set over and against the ethical injunction to love his son; the ethical actually becomes a temptation that Abraham must overcome in order to fulfill his duty to God.  "Faith is precisely this paradox," explains de Silentio,

That the individual as the particular is higher than the universal, is justified over against it, is not subordinate but superior...it is the particular individual who, after he has been subordinated as the particular to the universal, now through the universal becomes the individual who as the particular is superior to the universal. (57)

 De Silentio realizes that, observed rationally, a teleological suspension of the ethical is no different from an egotistical suspension of the ethical, i.e. sin.  After all, such a rational appraisal of one's actions can only be performed "by virtue of the universal," which is precisely what must be transcended in order for Abraham to fulfill his duty (57).  Yet it is the very courage to supersede the ethical, and to overcome his love for Isaac, that makes Abraham a "Knight of Faith" in de Silentio's eyes.  Abraham does not bind Isaac with reason, but in total unquestioning faith.

Will the Real Paragon Please Stand Up?

The knight of faith is to be viewed in contrast with other types of hero, one being the "tragic hero" who also supersedes an aspect of the universal, but only through a greater appeal to the universal.  One example of the tragic hero is the mythological figure of Agamemnon, the king who was told that he had to sacrifice his daughter for the greater good.  Unlike Abraham, Agamemnon is understood and sympathized with in his difficult decision to sacrifice his daughter; it is, after all, for the greater good of the country.

Abraham, on the other hand, is not justified even by an appeal to the "greater good;" in attempting to slaughter Isaac, he is in fact taking the entire promised nation of Israel in his hands ("Descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky"-Genesis 26:4 NIV).  Abraham's knowledge of these descendants make the sacrifice of Isaac tantamount to genocide; viewed through the lens of the ethical-universal, Abraham is committing an unjustifiable sin with which no rational person would sympathize.

Thus, the path of the knight of faith is an isolated one, overwhelmingly alienating in its absurdity:  

The tragic hero gives up the certain for the still more certain, and the eye of the beholder rests upon him confidently.  But he who gives up the universal in order to grasp something still higher which is not the universal--what is he doing?...The tragic hero has need of tears and claims them, and where is the envious eye so barren that it could not weep with Agamemnon; but where is the man with a soul so bewildered that he would have the presumption to weep for Abraham? (61)

Agamemnon's predicament suddenly seems trivial compared to that of Abraham, a true knight of faith and a hero of Judeo-Christian myth.  But how does this heroism relate to a Christian in the twenty-first century?

The Knight of Love

To ask of Abraham's relation to the Christian is to ask of Abraham's relation to Christ, which has generally been overshadowed by the similarities between Christ and Isaac--both were sons, both were to be sacrificed, both stories historically involve the concept of substitution, etc.  But what if there is an even more important relationship with Abraham, the so-called knight of faith?  Upon comparing the two, it seems like Jesus's life could be seen as a fulfillment of Abraham's knighthood--a fulfillment, as that of the Law, that is so extreme that it may appear in many ways to be an abolition.

This apparent abolition is evident in the movement of incarnation: Abraham "through the universal becomes the individual who as the particular is superior to the universal," whereas Jesus, through the incarnation, becomes the deity who as the particular is subject to the universal.  Abraham may "give up the universal in order to grasp something still higher which is not the universal," but Christ gives up that higher "something" for the mere universal!  Is this not even more absurd than Abraham's transgression?  Agamemnon may give up the universal for the more universal, and Abraham may give up the universal totally for a sacred Absolute, but Christ gives up the Absolute--divine bliss in direct union with God Himself--for love of the universal, the ethical, and the incarnate--even an incarnate that does not return his love, abandoning him to die on a cross.  In this way, Christ is even more of an absurd hero than Abraham--a fulfillment, even.

In fact, this fulfillment makes it clear just how much of a tragic hero (rather than a knight of faith) Abraham actually was.  Agamemnon had comfort in the reasonable universal when he went to kill his daughter; Abraham may not have had comfort in the universal, but he still had comfort in God.  The tragic hero sacrifices their child for the nation and God, and Abraham sacrifices child and nation for a relationship with God--Christ, the true knight, gives up his immediate relationship with God ("My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?") for the salvation of all nations and their children--even when they themselves condemn him to death on a cross.  He does this not out of "fear and trembling," but out of love (the core of the ethical-universal) for its own sake.

It appears that there are actually two types of knight of faith:  the Knight of Fear (Abraham) and the Knight of Love (Jesus).  The knight of love is the fulfillment of the knight of fear, virtuous by virtue of the absurd and alienated from the absolute through an absolute dedication to the ethical.

Indefinite Suspension

Christ's absolute dedication to the ethical is not limited to the movement of incarnation; it is, in fact, an over-arching theme of the Gospel.  Consider, for example, the teleological role of a messianic warrior-king, expected to bring perfect justice and liberation for oppressed Jews: 

He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four corners of the earth...They will swoop down the slopes of Philistia to the west; together they will plunder the people to the east.  They will lay hands on Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites will be subject to them. (Isaiah 11:12-14 NIV)

With verses like these, the expectations of a warrior-king messiah--popular in the time of Christ--are hardly surprising.  Surely, if anyone's teleological role conflicted and superseded their ethical obligations, it would be a messiah chosen to carry out divine justice:

The Lord is angry with all nations; his wrath is upon all their armies.  He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter.  Their slain will be thrown out, their dead bodies will send up a stench; the mountains will be soaked with their blood...For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of retribution, to uphold Zion's cause. (Isaiah 34:2-8 NIV)

Yet Jesus does not carry out this murderous retribution!  Such a year of judgment would, in fact, also end up destroying the corrupt Pharisaic priesthood of Zion itself, finally completing Abraham's initial sacrifice of Isaac.  No, Christ does not sacrifice the nations through a teleological suspension of the ethical, but rather saves the nations himself through an ethical suspension of the teleological.  

This is, I think, what the true calling of the story of Abraham is for the Christian: that one ought not to stop at Abraham's tragic heroism in a teleological suspension of the ethical, but to go even further than Abraham in faith, choosing ethics even over a duty to God, in an ethical suspension of the teleological.  But are there any knights of love who follow this imperative today?  They may be found in the most unexpected of places...

Profanity - A Perfectly Ethical Adjustment to Living With a Criminal Sacred

"If I was told to do what all monotheists are told to do, and admire the man who said, 'Yes, I'll gut my kid to show my love of God,' I'd say, 'No, fuck you.'"

In these words, immortalized in one of many anti-theistic YouTube videos, Christopher Hitchens expresses his opinion on Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac.  Hitchens likely meant for this statement to demonstrate his moral superiority over "all monotheists," but in light of the ethical suspension of the teleological, it would seem that his response is actually profoundly Christian.  Is this not similar to the response of Jesus to the teleological option of global retribution?  Christ's message of forgiveness and and love is, in effect, a big middle finger to the fetishization of divinely commanded murder.

Which brings us to a second aspect of the Knight of Love made apparent in the lives of many an antagonistic atheist:  like Jesus, they do good out of love for the good itself, rather than fear of divine retribution.  In the film "Collision," wherein Hitchens and pastor Douglas Wilson debate on whether Christianity is good for the world, Wilson informs Hitchens that "You have a very fine house, with no foundation...It's just sand under there.  I want to know not what you denounce, but why you denounce it."  Douglas here misses a key message of Christianity: the good is good regardless of whether it appeals to one's natural biological drives.  The good is justification for itself; there is no need for a "why" that appeals to more base desires.  In fact, the pursuit of virtue usually entails a good deal of suffering--as Christian philosopher Brian Glenney remarks in an interview with Gordon College's Tartan, Christianity "Does violence to the self, more violence than suicide."

The thoughtful atheist, however, is not surprised in the least at this message, and yet many of them strive to do good anyway.  Consider Penn Jillette's address to the freethinkers at Reason Rally 2012: "We are doing good because it's good, and we are doing right because it's right, and not for reward or punishment...If you are doing something for reward or punishment, you do not have morality."  Once again, it seems that many an atheist are more Christian than Johannes de Silentio.

The Godly Godless:  Chickens or Eggs?

In an article entitled "Atheists for Jesus," outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins suggests that Jesus "Was a theist because, in his time, everybody was."  This may seem like supreme blasphemy, but we have seen that atheists can, in many ways, be even more Christian than their theistic counterparts.  Or is it the other way around--are Christians actually more atheistic than the atheists, since the New Testament is so forward in acknowledging the suffering of a good life?  In any case, there are curious connections between these philosophies, many of which have been explored by Christian Atheists such as Thomas J.J. Altizer, Paul van Buren, and Slavoj Žižek.

Returning to the topic of Kierkegaard's work, it seems to be incomplete in its narrow focus on Abraham's particularity.  Kierkegaard was fascinated with the life of religious enthusiasm; his preoccupation with the religious, however, may have obscured the more irreligious aspects of Christianity.  Nonetheless, these facets remain at least as crucial to the attainment of spiritual well-being and the full affirmation of an ethical life.  

Sources

The Holy Bible, New International Version.  Ed. Barker, Kenneth L.  Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.  Print.

Kierkegaard, Søren.  "Fear and Trembling."  Existentialism: Basic Writings.  Guignon, Charles, and Derk Pereboom, eds.  Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001.  Print.

Christopher Hitchens on the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac

Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson - Collision of Lives

The Chalk Smoker: Dr. Brian Glenney

Penn Jillette Reason Rally Address 2012

Atheists for Jesus

Superstitious Selfishness

by Benny Mattis

Religious apologists often think themselves clever paraphrasing Dostoevsky:  "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted."  They claim that, without God, there must not be any ethical standards higher than one's own held preferences.  In this view, the only theories of morality available to the atheist can collectively be referred to here as "egoism," because in practice they all look the same:  "I do what I want, when I want to."  The altruistic New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, and friends) are often presented as philosophically naïve, because they never got the memo that "Altruistic morality depends on God's existence, gosh darn it!"  They are often contrasted to the "Real Atheist" (TM), who becomes their own god, unconstrained by petty morality.

The aforementioned religious apologists often subscribe to something called Divine Command Theory, which says that an action is moral just because it is commanded by God or immoral just because God forbids it.  This theory is self-defeating, as Russ Shafer-Landau explains in The Fundamentals of Ethics with the "Euthyphro Argument":

1. Either God has reasons for his commands, or God lacks reasons for His commands.
2. If God lacks reasons for His commands, then God's commands are arbitrary--and that renders God imperfect, undermining His moral authority.
3. If God has reasons that support His commands, then these reasons, rather than the divine commands, are what make actions right or wrong--thereby refuting Divine Command Theory.
4. Therefore, either God is imperfect, or the Divine Command Theory is false.
5. God is not imperfect.
6. Therefore, Divine Command Theory is false. (63-64)

The arbitrariness of divine laws under Divine Command Theory reveals that it is, in fact, just as amoral as Real Atheism.  As Shafer-Landau notes, "If there is nothing intrinsically wrong [i.e., wrong independent of divine condemnation] with rape or theft, then God could just as well have required that we do such things.  He could have forbidden that we be generous or thoughtful.  But this makes a mockery of morality, and of our view of God as morally perfect" (64).  Of course, there are stories of God actually commanding such things, and the New Atheists don't hesitate to mock, but that's a different issue.  The point is that Divine Command Theory is at its heart as nihilistic as the egoism of Max Stirner.

In fact, I think it's also appropriate to say that the Real Atheist's egoism is as religious as the faith of a Divine Command Theorist.  The Real Atheist, in fact, is not an atheist at all, but a polytheist: each ego in their view is a moral law-maker, as opposed to a law-taker, and so each individual is their own god.  Moreover, the Real Atheist's extolled "self" is an undefinable and undetectable point of subjectivity, much like the god worshipped by Divine Command theorists.  The Real Atheist is not godless; he is his own god.  It is, in fact, the New Atheists who go all the way, claiming that nothing--not even their own egos--is above the laws of nature and morality.

Source

Shafer-Landau, Russ.  The Fundamentals of Ethics.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.  Print.

A Crappy Post

by Benny Mattis

"What is of the meaning of life?"  Various groups will have their own answers to this question, many of which are locked in seemingly eternal conflict with each other.  An equally important question, however, is "What is meaninglessness?"  I have some thoughts on the subject, but it will help to explore some themes in existentialism beforehand.  As Brandy Burfield understood when I took her course on these topics last semester, this is best done by watching an episode or two of South Park.

The Other

In the episode entitled "You're Getting Old," Stan celebrates his tenth birthday, and one of his friends give him a "Tween Wave" CD as a birthday gift.  Stan's birthday joy, however, is abruptly cut off by his mother, Sharon, who who forbids him from listening to it because it "Sounds like crap."  Stan is frustrated by this maternal censorship, which continues even through his new age of double digits.

Sharon here plays the part of what Jean-Paul Sartre calls "the Other."  Stan sees himself as a free individual who understands the coolness of Tween Wave, whereas Sharon's gaze reduces his personality to an object and his music to excrement.  He cannot ignore this judgmental perspective once it enters his awareness, and the conflict between Sharon's view and his own self-perception (from the moment before she interrupted him) is manifested in his defensive response: "Mom, I'm ten years old now!"  The objectifying gaze of the Other, and its tension with one's own experience of freedom and responsibility, leads Sartre to hint in No Exit that "Hell is other people," and in Being and Nothingness to write that "My original fall is the existence of the Other" (352).

The Death of God

Despite the fact that he and his friends are forbidden to listen to Tween Wave, Stan takes out his iPod at night and sneaks a listen while his mother isn't looking.  Expecting to hear some new beats from his favorite genre, however, he is confronted with an aural assault of farting sounds.  It literally sounds like crap.

Stan goes to the doctor to see what's wrong with his tastes.  The doctor diagnoses him with "A condition called 'being a cynical asshole.'"  "You see, Stan, as you get older, things that you used to like start looking and sounding like shit, and things that seemed shitty as a child don't seem as shitty," explains Stan's pediatrician.  "With you, somehow the wires have gotten crossed, and everything looks and sounds like shit to you."  

Thus, Stan is confronted with what Nietzsche called the "Death of God."  The death of God is not the literal death of a living being per se, but the cessation of a value-system's contemporary relevance and inspirational power: "What are these churches anymore, then, if they aren't the crypts and catacombs of God?" (The Gay Science 142).  The difference between mere change of tastes and the death of God is that a mere change of tastes is usually dependent on a wider framework of values that remain intact; Stan might have found a new genre, for example, that just made Tween Wave sound shitty by comparison.  The death of God is the destruction of that very framework itself; Stan doesn't just think Tween Wave is shittier than some other music he found, but he has entirely lost his whole system of differentiation, and the value of everything is reduced to that of fecal matter.  Stan seems to be overwhelmed by nihilism.

The Absurd

Throughout the rest of the episode and into the next one, Stan becomes depressed.  "I just want everything to go back to the way it was," he confesses to Mr. Mackey.  "When all the things that made you laugh just make you sick, how do you go on when nothing makes you happy?"  He eventually becomes acquainted with the Secret Society of Cynics, who explain that "The world around us actually has completely turned to shit, but aliens are putting out a brain wave that keeps most people seeing a false reality...Or robots from the future, whatever."  Despite the Society's enthusiasm, Stan continues to experience a tension between a desire for meaning and the inability to find it--this tension is the absurd.

The absurd isn't just the lack of experience of meaning; it is the experience of a lack of meaning, i.e. meaninglessness.  Albert Camus elaborates in The Myth of Sisyphus:

This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said.  But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.  The absurd depends as much on man as on the world...It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together.  (21)

The absurd is the sense of futility, of meaninglessness, when one finds oneself unable to find an ultimate meaning or all-encompassing purpose authenticating one's daily routine:  "Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm" (12).  Upon viewing one's own life in the light (or darkness, rather) of the absurd, a failure to decipher ultimate meaning can make everything seem like shit.

Yo Dawg, I Heard You Like Negations...

The doctor may have said that there's no cure for "Being a Cynical Asshole," but Stan nonetheless finds a way out of his rut.  When he nearly gets killed on a mission for the Secret Society of Cynics, he tells them that they are "Full of shit."  Stan realizes that, yes, he may not be interested in the things he used to be interested in, but now he can start finding new friends and hobbies.  "For the first time in a long time," concludes Stan, "I'm really excited."

So, in the end, Stan escapes cynicism by becoming cynical about cynicism itself.  In a Hegelian dialectic, Stan can only find meaning by passing fully through its opposite:  general shittiness loses its shittiness when it is itself realized to be nothing but shit.  This is somewhat reminiscent of Thomas Nagel's response to the absurd: "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn't matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair" (727).  As it turns out, neither the Secret Society of Cynics with their dramatic missions nor Stan with his plague of despair were truly living in nihilism--they were just basing their lives on a practically religious philosophy of insignificance that would inevitably negate itself in the end.

The Abyss

In fact, I don't believe that anyone in the episode was a true nihilist.  Stan was incapable of making any practical value judgments, but he still wanted to be happy as before; he had found meaning, albeit entirely negative, in the loss of his former interests.  The Secret Society of Cynics was in the opposite situation:  They also were incapable of making any practical value judgments, but they were determined to make everyone else see like they do.  They were only worshipping the empty space left open by the absence of their preceding frameworks of evaluation.  

If "Hell is other people," then it seems to follow that the Other, as a judge, in some way plays the part of God.  But if "the absurd is sin without God," this suggests that the absurd can best be thought of as a gaze without the Other.  It is the invasive experience of a universal negation that would negate itself were it ever carried to its fulfillment in the mind of a thinking person.  So, as Nietzsche noted in aphorism 146 of Beyond Good and Evil, "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."  Meaninglessness is the gaze returned by that abyss stumbled upon in a dissatisfied search for clarity and ultimate purpose.

Sources

"Ass Burgers."  South Park Studios.  Viacom, 5 October 2011.  Web.  3 July 2012.  <http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e08-ass-burgers>

Camus, Albert.  The Myth of Sisyphus.  New York: Vintage, 1955.  Print.

Nagel, Thomas.  "The Absurd."  The Journal of Philosophy 68.20 (21 October 1971): 716-727.  JSTOR.  Web.  5 July 2012.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm.  Beyond Good and Evil.  Public Domain.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm.  "The Gay Science."  Existentialism: Basic Writings.  Guignon, Charles, and Derk Pereboom, eds.  Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001.  Print.

Sartre, Jean-Paul.  "No Exit."  VTheatre.  Theatre UAF, 2007.  Web.  3 July 2012.  <http://vtheatre.net/script/doc/sartre.html>

Sartre, Jean-Paul.  "Being and Nothingness."  Existentialism: Basic Writings.  Guignon, Charles, and Derk Pereboom, eds.  Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001.  Print.

"You're Getting Old."  South Park Studios.  Viacom, 8 June 2011.  Web.  3 July 2012.   <http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e07-youre-getting-old>

A Maze of Mirrors

by Benny Mattis

I recently watched a TED talk about mirror neurons, newly discovered brain cells that "reflect" the brain activity of other people.  When a particular action is performed, a specific corresponding neural firing pattern is, unsurprisingly, consistently conjoined with the performance of that action.  There is a subset of these activated neurons, called the mirror neurons, that is also activated when someone else is seen performing the action in question.  So, if "firing pattern X" is the activity observed in my brain when I open a door, a part of that pattern will also show up when I'm watching someone else open a door.  Upon observing me performing the action, roughly the same cluster of mirror neurons will be excited in their own brain, as well.

I think a good example of how these neurons presumably work is found in competitive rowing.  Crew is one sport that cannot be taught in books; the proper movements feel unnatural at first, and must be synchronized with everyone else in the boat.  How does this happen?  There are coaches, who definitely play an important role in noticing the shortcomings of each and every team member's technique--after all, mistakes that would be unnoticeable to an uneducated observer could make a noticeable impact over the course of a six-kilometer race.  But how do they point out flaws in technique?  Words usually aren't very useful, so they set the novice rowers in a place where they can view the varsity team.  When a novice is doing something incorrectly, they point to a varsity rower and say "See the way Jim is keeping his back at an angle?  Do that."  By seeing Jim's correct technique in action, the novice learns more than they ever could from mere language or still pictures.

Is this extra learning capacity the result of mirror neurons?  That's certainly a possibility.  In fact, Vilayanur Ramachandran suggests in the TED talk that these specific cells may have enabled us to accelerate the proliferation of tool use, shelter-building skills, language, and other technical knowledge for the last few hundred thousand years.   The idea is basically that mirror neurons turned us into evolutionary X-Men, building our civilization through technological (in the broadest sense of the word) leaps and bounds rather than slow hereditary adaptations.  If this is true, the ability to imitate others is a pillar of our modern industrial civilization.

Enter Isak Gerson.  In January of 2012, the then 19-year-old Swedish student succeeded in gaining official recognition from the Swedish government for the Missionary Church of Kopimism, a "religion" built around the practice of file-sharing.  The principles of Kopimism are posted on the Church's website:

-All knowledge to all

-The search for knowledge is sacred

-The circulation of knowledge is sacred

-The act of copying is sacred

In an interview with New Scientist, Gerson discloses that the Kopimists "worship the value of information by copying it."  Questioned about a Kopimist belief in the afterlife, Gerson responded: "Information doesn't really have a life, but I guess it can be forgotten, but as long as it is copied it won't be."

The apolitical aspects of Kopimism may seem like ad-hoc justifications for an organized illegal file-sharing culture, but I actually find in them a reflection of my own worldview.  My mother, for example, often says that you should be kind to others, follow the golden rule, etc. because others may end up imitating you, beginning a chain reaction of negativity.  Everyone is copying everyone else, and from this arises a sort of crude community-wide karmic reaction to nastiness.  To me, at least, this seems like one of the best ways to convince a hedonist to follow the golden rule.  A Kopimist basis for morality, perhaps?

Even eternal life is granted in some way through the communication of thoughts between people--as V proclaims in V for Vendetta (Warner Bros., 2005), "Ideas are bulletproof."  People looking for immortality usually don't care much about the fact that their matter and energy can't be destroyed--they want their phenomenal experience, what it is like to be them, to escape that very embodiment of mass and energy, even when it can no longer pump oxygen to the brain.  But what is language but the very transfer of this mental content?  Singularitarians like Ray Kurzweil want us to upload our souls into computers for eternal life, but the extent to which language actually communicates ideas is the extent to which we've already achieved this futuristic goal.  Who can listen to a particularly moving love song without feeling what it was like for the songwriter?  How can we even speak of "love" without communicating a complex mixture of feelings to the listener?  Of course, language isn't perfect, and this truth isn't likely to sate Kurzweil's appetite for immortality.  But there is more to earthly immortality than just a conscious memory of the dead; their habits and ideas, uploaded and preserved through spoken language and mirror neurons, could very well prolong the survival of what it was like to be them.

One must always be careful when mixing science with religion, and I suspect all this talk about immortality and karma sounds like a desperate pseudoscientific attempt at the resuscitation of dead gods.  Clearly, these things aren't the same as supernatural immortality or karma as found in popular Christianity or Buddhism, but they are facts about reality that do have similar consequences as--and grounds for analogy with--those religious concepts.  The importance of mirror neurons is that they show how these duplications of phenomenal information might transcend, and likely precede, the requirements of shared language or even shared species.