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A few philosophical questions for you…
August 1, 2013 — xanthippaLately, I have been contemplating some philosophical questions – and I would love some feedback from all of you.
When I was a teenager, I read a story (I don’t know if it was fiction or not, but that is irrelevant to the philosophical questions it poses) about a woman and her children, stranded in the frozen North, far from help and food. The woman resorted to trying to fish with an improvised fishing rod to keep her children from starving – but, the fish would not respond to an un-baited fishing rod. So, she used bits of her own flesh to bait the hook in order to catch the fish to keep her children from starving….
I found that story deeply inspirational and, then and there, I knew I would do no less to ensure the survival of my progeny.
As I read more ‘stuff’, I encountered stories of sons and daughters sacrificing themselves to save their mothers or fathers – and these had infuriated me to no end….and I could not understand the reasons for such depth of rage and revulsion these stories had evoked in me.
It took me years to mature enough to realize that my subconscious reactions were the product of my genetic programming: we are but vessels for our genes and their immortality – through our progeny. Thus, stories of parents’ sacrifices to ensure the survival of their progeny (genetic immortality, if you will) inspired me while stories of children sacrificing themselves for the parents (the reversal of the ‘genetic immortality vector’, if you will) enraged me.
Yet, over the years, I have found that not everyone is as subject to their genetic vector programming (for lack of a better term) as I am – and that in some people’s ideas, it influences the ‘first principles’ they consider ‘core’ or ‘basis’ of their reasoning.
Which, of course, makes peoples’ answers to some ‘classical’ philosophical questions very different: different ‘core’ leads to different ‘weighted values’ and all that.
And that is why I’d like you to indulge in some reflection on your own core values and see how you would answer the following questions:
Question 1:
Say you are stranded somewhere far from help and food – perhaps a plane crash in an inaccessible place – and the only potential food source around is the corpses of other people. Would you cannibalize them in order to survive?
Question 2:
Same situation – but everyone survives. One person, grievously wounded and not likely to survive long enough for rescue to come, volunteers to be killed and eaten. Would you kill them and cannibalize them to survive?
Question 2b: What if the volunteer was perfectly healthy – and others were wounded. Would you kill the healthy volunteer to feed yourself and the injured?
Question 3:
Same situation, again, with everyone surviving. One person is grievously wounded and unconscious (unable to give consent), but is the only one hurt so badly they will not likely survive…yet to wait for their natural death would mean everyone else would starve. Would you kill them and eat them to survive?
Question 3b:
That grievously wounded person (the only person not likely to survive) is conscious but refuses to agree to be killed and eaten – yet everyone else, perfectly healthy and likely to survive, would die unless somebody is killed and eaten now. Do you kill the injured person and eat them, even against their will?
Question 3c:
Same as in 3b – but the deadly wounded person says they don’t want to be eaten… and then succumb to their injuries. Do you eat them to survive?
Question 4:
Same situation, but everyone survives without any major injuries. Starvation knocks on the proverbial doors. Do you draw straws to see who gets killed and eaten first?
Question 5:
Same question, everyone survives – and someone suggests drawing straws to see who gets killed and eaten first. This divides the group into two – those who want to draw straws, take their chances and hope to survive through cannibalism, and those who don’t. So, the first group draws straws, on person is killed and cooked….and, now, some from the other group ask to share in the food, promising to take part in future straw-drawing. Do you share food with them?
Question 6:
What if there are children in the situation: too young to give informed consent. Do you include them in the straw-drawing?
Question 7:
Same situation as Question 5: the group is divided and some choose tp participate in straw drawing, some don’t. Do you share the food with the children of the people who choose not to participate in the draw?
Question 8:
Same situation, all are healty. There are sevral adults, each with a different number of children. Only the adults will participate in the draw, yet everyone will eat. Do you assign the amount of food to be proportional to the number of lots (as in, if there are 5 adults participating, do you divide the food among the 5 families, regardless of the number of children, because the risk was equal 5 ways) or to the number of ‘mouths to be fed’? How would you accoun for the children of the early casulties in subsequent draws?
What does it do to society when you regard other members of it as potential sources of spare parts?
Is that any different than cannibalism?
And does somebody’s ‘volunteering’ to be cannibalized make it morally OK to benefit from it?
CodeSlinger on Combinatorics
June 13, 2013 — xanthippaA couple of days ago, I mentioned to CodeSlinger that one of my sons was doing research in the branch of Mathematics known as ‘Combinatorics‘. His response was not only informative, it was just as passionate as my son gets when he talks about the subject.
So, for your pleasure and elucidation, here is CodeSlinger’s commentary on Combinatorics:
Combinatorics… the art of counting. Hah. Sounds trivial. But it is slowly becoming clear that combinatorics lies at the root of everything.
Everything.
The fundamental equations of physics are symmetrical in time – if we watch a movie of two particles coming in from infinity, bouncing off each other, and proceeding back towards infinity, we have no way to determine whether or not we are watching it backwards. Yet a movie in which a vase falls from the table and shatters on the floor is easily distinguishable from the time-reversed version, in which a myriad of shards come flying together, assemble themselves into a vase, and jump up onto the table!
The difference, of course, is that there are many ways for the shards to be distributed about the floor, but only one way for them to be assembled into a vase. And that difference is the essence of… counting. This leads us to the second law of thermodynamics: entropy increases with time. Or, if you prefer, systems evolve towards states of higher probability. But probability is nothing other than a relative count of possibilities. Counting again.
Without counting, there is no arrow of time.
But it gets better. The whole idea of counting presupposes the existence of things to count. Which requires us to draw distinctions. And indeed, we find that distinction is the fundamental act by which something comes out of nothing. Assuming that a distinction can spontaneously arise out of the void, it will do so – because there are more ways for the void to be cloven than for it to be whole. Counting again.
If we picture a distinction as a boundary in a space – a closed curve in the plane, a closed surface in space, and so on, then we see that the lowest number of dimensions in which a boundary can assume a configuration that cannot shrink to nothing is… three (the simplest such configuration is the trefoil knot). Thus we see hints of how a universe of 3 spatial dimensions and one time dimension can spontaneously arise out of nothing. All because of counting.
Similar considerations explain how this universe comes to contain fundamental particles, and why the have the properties they do. And ultimately, why consciousness is possible. All of human feeling can be reduced to drawing or perceiving distinctions, and all of human thought can be reduced to classifying and counting them.
Thus we have the age-old question of which is more fundamental: mathematics or logic. For centuries men have been trying to derive one from the other. Finally, a little-known genius by the name of George Spencer-Brown settled it by showing that you cannot derive mathematics from logic, and you cannot derive logic from mathematics. But there is a more fundamental system, which he called the Laws of Form, from which you can derive both.
He begins with one primal element, which can be viewed as an entity (a distinction) or an action (drawing a distinction). A boundary can be seen as a way of naming the interior (calling), or as an injunction to cross into the interior (crossing). Having drawn a distinction, we can draw another one, either beside the first (recalling), or around the first (recrossing). On this base he lays down two laws, as follows
The law of calling: recalling is the same as calling.
The law of crossing: recrossing is the same as not crossing.
If we denote a boundary as (), then recalling is ()() and recrossing is (()), and we can write these two laws very succinctly as
()() = ()
(()) =
where the right hand side of the second equation is literally empty, denoting the void.
And from this basis, utterly brilliant in its irreducible simplicity, he derives all of mathematics and symbolic logic:
Spencer-Brown, G, 1969: Laws of Form, London: George Allen & Unwin.
But this is only the beginning of the story. Frederick Parker-Rhodes asked what happens when you repeatedly draw a distinction and get a multitude of identical entities. From this, he developed a calculus of distinct but indistinguishable entities:
Parker-Rhodes, A F, 1981: The Theory of Indistinguishables: A search for explanatory principles below the level of physics, Synthese Library, vol. 150, Springer.
And on that, he constructed what he called the Combinatorial Hierarchy – system whereby the spontaneous emergence of distinctions from the void leads to… the standard model of particle physics. Astounding! Even more astounding, he never published this work! It was finally published for him posthumously by John Amson (see linked pdf):
Parker-Rhodes, A F, & Amson, J C, 1998: Hierarchies of descriptive levels in physical theory. Int’l J. Gen. Syst. 27(1-3):57-80.
The construction he outlines in this paper was implemented as a computer program by H. Pierre Noyes and David McGoveran (again, see linked pdf):
Noyes, H P, & McGoveran, D O, 1989: An essay on discrete foundations for physics. SLAC-PUB-4528.
So when I say that combinatorics lies at the root of everything, I really do mean everything!
It is brilliant!
A contrast between conservative and libertarian views
March 19, 2013 — xanthippaThis is an excellent video that demonstrates some of the big differences between libertarians and conservatives.
Even though I am not a fan of Ann Coulter, I do think she represents the conservative position rather accurately – or, perhaps that is why I am not a fan of Ann Coulter…
The most lucid examination of the gun control issue to date
March 1, 2013 — xanthippaC0nc0rdance is a scientist who often appears on The Magic Sandwich Show, which I sometimes watch. And while I do not agree with all the views expressed on that show, I do like the level and manner at which the discussion occurs.
So, when C0nc0rdance put out a video on the topic of the 2nd Amendment and the whole gun control issue, I expected a well thought out, well supported position.
Having heard C0nc0rdance’s views on individual vs. collective rights, I also expected that his conclusion will not be the same as mine.
I was not disappointed – on either count.
I was, however, surprised how long into the video I agreed with each and every word he said. His conclusion and mine hinge on one very important distinction in how we perceive ‘rights’….
It is my core belief that the only way for a society to function is to recognize the inalienable rights of each and every individual within that society. The very concept of ‘collective rights’ is anathema to our civilization, where all rights derive from the individual. It is therefore not possible for any group to have different rights than those the individuals within that group have….because if it did, then those individuals within these privileged groups would have greater rights than other individuals in society and we would no longer have equality before the law.
In other words, in order to ensure that each citizen is treated equally by the courts and the law, we are limited to only legally recognizing individual rights. This makes any argument based on ‘group rights’ invalid.
Despite this insurmountable difference of opinion in individual vs. collective rights which makes C0nc0rdance arrive at a different conclusion than I, I think his argument is very good and well worth listening to.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 