Sunday, April 30, 2006

Karas

I saw this and was completely blown away. I know no one reads this blog, but I thought I'd publish this anyway, just incase someone stumbles across this here repository of crap and wants something fun to watch for a few minutes.

I present to you:

Karas.


Tuesday, April 25, 2006

I finally understand why you listened to your music so loud.

It was so that you could drown out the self condemnations.

Yea, I do it too.

--

I seems as though our "re-marked" RS essays came back to college today and, to my genuine shock and surprised, despite the nonplussed demeanour, my grades had not been changed in the least. I still need over 110% on my last two exams to get the A that I need, or I can "retake" the exam I would have otherwise had to sit for this module and then I'd need roughly 70% atleast. Atleast the later is not against the laws of geometry and statistics.

I was telling my dad what had happened on the way home, and, as we were drawing to the close of our journey, he, in all his ineffable and downright outrageously stupid wisdom said, with relaxed confidence, "Well, you obviously didn't give them what they wanted."

I exploded.

I do not think I have been so passionate in all of my life as I was at that point; not entwined with a lover, fighting with my sister, plowing through exam papers, hearing about injustice on the news, experiencing injustice within myself. On the inside I was almost, literally, aflame with rage; my eyes blinded by flickering crimson and sour, piquiant tears; the noise of the radio drowned out by the roaring of blood in my ears and my throat made hoarse, not due to volume, but out of shock and disbelief. I raged for the sake of my whole scholastic career, every waking hour of the past 5 years of my life that culminate in the ink on pieces of lightweight cartridge paper tumbled out of me: I screamed for the fact that I had never deviated from what a school wanted from me all of my life, that I had always performed. I'm not used to failure, and now, at the peak of everything, is not the best time to have to get used to it.

I was out of the car before it had stopped moving, grabbed my bag and walked with determination to stare at the frosted glass of my front door, waiting for my dad to let me in. Entering, he proceeded to make out as though he were the one who came away injured and wished me venomous, sarcasm drenched luck.

"You can stop talking now, if you really want to," I said as I dived for the pantry to console myself with something... something... something that was more refined fat than real food.

"Alright, fine-"

"Good."

"-but I hope you're happy with all of this."

"Yea, exstatic," I replied, stocato, commanding, and went upstairs to drown myself in the melancholic 80s savvy of The Cure.

And here I am.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Proud to be British

Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a Japanese TV. And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything foreign.

Oh, and only in Britain can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance;
only in Britain do supermarkets make sick people walk all the way to the back of the shop to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front;
only in Britain do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a diet coke;
only in Britain do banks leave both doors open and chain the pens to the counters;
only in Britain do we leave cars worth thousands of pounds on the drive and lock our junk and cheap lawn mower in the garage;
only in Britain do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place and
only in Britain are there disabled parking places in front of a skating rink.

Not to mention:

3 Brits die each year testing if a 9v battery works on their tongue, 142 Brits were injured in 1999 by not removing all pins from new shirts, 58 Brits are injured each year by using sharp knives instead of screwdrivers, 31 Brits have died since 1996 by watering their Christmas tree while the fairy lights were plugged in, 19 Brits have died in the last 3 years believing that Christmas decorations were chocolate, British Hospitals reported 4 broken arms last year after cracker pulling accidents, 101 people since 1999 have had broken parts of plastic toys pulled out of the soles of their feet, 18 Brits had serious burns in 2000 trying on a new jumper with a lit cigarette in their mouth, a massive 543 Brits were admitted to A&E in the last two years after opening bottles of beer with their teeth, 5 Brits were injured last year in accidents involving out of control Scalextric cars, and finally, in 2000 eight Brits cracked their skull whilst throwing up into the toilet.

I am proud to be British.

--

In other news:

my life is ending, slowly, one moment at a time, and there is nothing i can do to stop it. But you all knew that already.

Nothing ever happens here. I have nothing to write about! Well, atleast nothing that i feel capable of comitting to the internet. I mean, you guys out there, you crave something interesting, entertaining or atleast mildly confusing to idle your time with.

If you ended up here by accident, I'd leave right now and never look back. Tell your friends to stay away; tell them, "Oh crikey! Don't ever head over to that Joe Beaver fellows blog! It's dire!"

But i really do need to put something more interesting up here. I promise I will as soon as it happens.

Peace out.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The Moral Argument

The Moral Argument

This is a theory which relies greatly on the fact that just about everyone has a sense of moral awareness, involving feelings of right and wrong, and is almost undeniably linked with the conscience.
For a lot of people, the moral argument can be summarised in this quote from Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, and the forth of his Five Ways:
“We experience things that are noble, true and good. These things must take their reality from things that are more noble, true and good. To avoid an infinite regression, we must conclude that there is something that is the most noble, true and good. This is what we call "God".”

Kant

His proof is not so much a proof at all, as he believes it is impossible to prove with any theoretical knowledge that God exists. However, using “practical reason”, that is to say, reasoning involving an a posteriori reflection of the world around us, we can become almost undeniably certain that he is really real.
In brief, it goes:
People are compelled to be as moral as they possibly can, situations permitting.
To attain the “summum bonum” (the highest form of “good”, moral and generally) we must be wholly morally good, and it is necessary we attain this state.
However, we are only obliged to do something if it is entirely possible we can.
We cannot do this by ourselves though, we need some assistance!
Assistance from who?
Assistance from God!
Seeing as we feel obliged to attain this, there must be a God to ensure that we can!

This shiz, you see, is where Kant’s Categorical Imperative comes from. The necessities of duty for duties sake imply a summum bonum as a sense of overwhelming sense of moral obligation. This is neither to give us happiness nor to get closer to God, but “just because”.
He also says that obedience to this ought to relinquish unto us the highest good. Being this, it also happens to contain perfect moral virtue!
He notes that stringent morality is not always rewarded with a happy outcome or reward to the person involved. The highest good, therefore, rewards perfect virtue with perfect happiness.
Hinging on “ought implies can”, the fact that we feel morally obliged to attain the summum bonum means that it must be entirely possible for us to do so.
We cannot do this alone though. In being unable to bring about the highest good in this life, and in order to attain and bring about the “necessary connection” of perfect happiness with perfect moral act and intent we need the help of something which is capable of doing so.
GOD.
But, we cannot do this at all on earth. S’impossible! So, there must be some way we attain it in a future life. As God is the “highest original good”, as dictated by Aquinas, he feels He can give us this! So, God can be assumed to exist.

Freud

Kant’s argument only works if we accept that there is a natural law that guides us morally. Take this away and the idea collapses quite thoroughly.
For Freud, our sense of moral obligation and conscience are both a product of the super ego, a creation of our own to set up restrictions between the ego and ID. The ID is the part of us that wants to rape and murder everyone. The ego represses this. The super ego acts to mediate this and the super ego internalises our violence and etc., and this is the voice of conscience.

More objections

Kant’s view implies moral law is completely apparent and objective, making ethical decisions which may lead to someone’s death are perpetuated by it. That ain’t right, surely?
As well as this, cultural relativism acts to illustrate it’s wrong.
There are other people who believe morals come from man, like Erikson and Fromm, who thinks we act morally as we recognise a sense of value in things we want to protect.
People aim for things which are out of their reach a lot of the time, says Brian Davies.
Just because it necessitates something that can bring about the summum bonum, it doesn’t mean it is our classical God.

H.P. Owen

It is daft to think of a command without a commander to give it! So as is moral law! Either this or they are just fact and require no explanation. As morals are not fact, there must be a law giver!

Newman

Morals = conscience given. Conscience = voice of the divine in everyday life. God = divine. Conscience = God. Morals = God.

Dom Trethowan

Morality is a religious experience. Moral judgements are based around the value of things to us. So people have intrinsic value? God gives it us.
Moral experience is thus an indirect experience of God.

Joseph Butler

He felt the judgements made by our conscience are completely different to any other decision we make, as they are not motivated in the least by the wish for good consequences.
He felt this was irrefutable proof of God, as it means morals are not things that come from us.

More dislikes

Evolutionarily, the idea of “reciprocal altruism” states that we do nice things to other people and act morally in the hope the same is applied to us and people are nice to us in return.
Psychology asks “if morality is the message of God, why is it so inconsistent?” The differentiations from person to person means the conscience cannot be the voice of God, and the belief that is it can be very dangerous! (see: the Yorkshire ripper).
Theories such as situation ethics state that objective moral law is callous, uncaring and lacks compassion for the individual. Surely we must consider the consequences of something to determine its morality?
If the law is truly objective than there is no room for considering consequence, regardless of how dire they may be. Doing so would undermine the system, meaning the law is not our soul duty and it means there is no need for a God in the system at all.
These arguments do not point us to the benevolent, all powerful God of classical theology, but more a law giving God, as described in Exodus.
This existence of a moral God may point to moral law, but moral law does not necessarily point back to a moral God.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

The Teleological Argument

The Teleological Argument

  • Also known as the “design argument”.
  • “Teleos” of which “teleological” is derived from is Greek for “end” or “purpose”.
  • This is an a posteriori argument based upon the apparent order of the universe, concluding that it must have been created lovingly, rather than coming about by chance.
  • It goes, classically, like this:
  • The universe has order, purpose and regularity
  • The complexity of the universe shows evidence of design
  • Such design implies a designer
  • The designer of the universe is God
  • This simply makes a basic assumption that there is order in nature and that everything functions to fulfil a purpose. For example, the perfect adaptation of a body to it’s environment appear to provide sufficient evidence for it’s design.

Design Qua Regularity

  • This argument focuses on the design of the universe from the aspect of order and regularity.
  • Followers of this feel that this regularity shows evidence of a designer, in the same way that a beautiful garden surely shows evidence of a gardener.
  • Order in this is presented in the form of the regular orbital nature of the planets, the shifting of the seasons and possibly the irrefutable laws of physics.
  • This design qua regularity is demonstated in St. Thomas Aquina’s fifth of this Five Ways, “from the governance of things”.
  • He claimed that everything works to some purpose or other and as inanimate objects have no rational powers then they must be directed to this purpose by some external power.
  • He says “the way in which natural bodies act in a regular fashion to accomplish their end provides the evidence for an intelligent being”

Design Qua Purpose

  • Does exactly what it says on the tin! This argues for design from the aspect of purpose, the way in which everything appears to work together to a specific end, in the same way as a watch or a television. If the parts were not fitted in accord with each other than neither of them would work at all! It appears these arrangements occur in nature too.
  • It was developed in the 17th century as a response to Newtonian Mechanics, which gave form to the orbits of the planets etc. in the form of easy to follow rules!
  • Isaac Newton demonstrated that the irrefutable laws of motion and gravity were obeyed not only on earth, but throughout the universe.
  • Many scientists thusly thought that the cosmos was like a grand machine!

William Paley

  • In response to the nastiness that the mechanical analogy posed to the world of theology, Paley put forth the most famous form of the teleological argument, “The Cosmic Watchmaker” in his book Natural Theology.
  • He asks us to imagine walking across a heath and your foot stumbles across a rock. It would be well and good to suppose that that rock simple came to be there by chance, and, for all we know, may have always been there, and it may be quite hard to disprove that!
  • However, if you came across a watch and said the same thing, people would think you addled! In fact, very few people would even dare think anything other than somebody had dropped it. But why isn’t the former response admissible for the watch?
  • Namely, when we inspect the watch we find it complex, and intricate, that it’s parts are framed beautifully and put together for a purpose: namely, that they have been aligned so to create motion and with that motion regulate time so as to point out the hours of the day; and if they had been created in any other shape or alignment then the watch would fail to work, or work ineffectively.
  • The first part of this illustrates design qua purpose, in observing that the parts of the watch had come together for a purpose, and could not conceivably have done so by chance.
  • He analogised that similar things are applicable to the various, magnificent workings of the body:
  • One of the analogies was about the various, complex and immaculate pieces of the eye coming together to form sight in humans.
  • A more confusing one that he put forth was the “lacteal system”:
  • He found it quite amazing that the amount of nipples an animal had seemed to coincide with the number of young it would litter at any one point.
  • The second part focuses on design qua regularity. He argued that the laws of a Newtonian universe, the way in which the planets are coerced by gravity and regulated by it could not have come about by chance. An external agent must impose order and regularity on the world, and this agent must be THE MESSIAH!
  • Arthur Brown argued for the design argument in the 20th century from the point of astronomy and the ozone layer, saying it was too perfect to be true!

Humey, Humey, Humey.

  • He HATED this theory SO hard. In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion he pondered why the universe had to have a beginning.
  • “How can anything that exists from eternity have a cause, since the relation implies a priority in time and in a beginning of existence?”
  • Even if there were evidence of design in the universe, who says it’s God’s? Perhaps a few lesser God’s, an apprentice God who has moved on to something greater, or a whole race of barely God-like creatures.
  • The evidence of flaws in the design, like suffering and death, do not support a beautiful creation or a perfect creator:
  • “This world, for all He knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant diety who afterwards abandoned it.”

  • He is summarised in saying:
  • We do not have sufficient knowledge and experience of the creation of the world to conclude there is only one designer. Like in Terry Pratchett’s “Strata”, where a huge company builds planets with fossils already built in, etc., and then started up and left alone for them to develop life and sentience, etc.
  • To argue the design of the universe in human terms is not an acceptable analogy because God transcends human understanding. If we are to discuss the creation of a “machine”, then, in human terms, machines are often made by many hands, or, in this day, rarely by humans at all.
  • The universe should not be argued as a machine, as that allows us not room to grow and develop. He prefers to think of the universe as a vegetable.

The Epicurean Hypothesis

  • This was put forth by Hume. He says:
  • At the time of creation the universe consisted of particles of random in random motion. The original state of the universe was chaotic but natural forces caused it to develop into an ordered system. In an eternal universe the ordering of things would be inevitable.

Darwinism

  • Darwin, in arguing for natural selection, argues that the process of order is mechanical and an ordered, seemingly designed world can come about through chance and the forces of nature.

The Anthropic Principle

  • This is a recent development of the teleological argument!, claiming that the universe was constructed purely to develop intelligent life. If any of the precise values of any of the forces of nature had changes, then the chance of life forming on earth would have been a lot smaller, or impossible.
  • This denies any claim that a chain of coincidences created human life. The best explanation is the existence of a designer.
  • F R Tennant developed the anthropic principle in his book Philosophical Theology, believing there were three types of natural evidence in the world in favour of a designer:
  • The fact that the world can be analysed analytically
  • The way in which the inorganic world provides necessities for organic life
  • The progress of evolution to emerge human life

  • He thinks it is entirely possible that you can imagine a chaotic universe, in which there are no rules. However, it is evidently not chaotic and was designed in such a way as to evolutionarily produce intelligent life. Tennant was thus lead to believe that human life is either the culmination of God’s plan, or at least the current stage of his plan.
  • Not only this, but the universe appears to be incredibly beautiful on every single level, and this is known as the aesthetic argument. Tennant argues that humans possess the ability to appreciate all of this beauty, but this appreciation is not necessary for us to evolve or survive and is thus evidence of a creator, and is not a result of natural selection.
  • Richard Swinburne agrees with this, claiming that the universe could have just as easily have been chaotic, but it is not! Hence: jesus.
  • He argued from probabilities from here on: what is more probable: chance or design? He felt that the sheer complexity of the universe being made by chance very improbable (however, this implies the creation of a universe as it is right now, rather than a slow creation over billions of year). He concluded saying the God was the simplest explanation.
  • The weak and strong anthropic principles have come about of late.
  • The strong anthropic principle claims that the necessities of human evolution were intrinsic to the big bang and creation of the universe; the whole purpose of design being that human life would evolve on earth.
  • The weak anthropic principle does not claim it inevitable, but just happened to have happened.
  • Supporters argue that design is akin to nature being a big machine which makes other machines! And, like all original machines, needs a designer.

Science FTW!

  • Richard Dawkins, a modern zoologist, argues that life is purely evolutionary, and anything we do that appears to be altruistic or unrelated to basic survival is a product of the little bit of leeway that our genes have, as we are just vessels intended to insure our genetic reproduction. Any beauty we see in nature is personal opinion, and not fact at all, as we cannot wholly agree on what is beautiful anyway!
  • Not all scientists agree with Dawkins and can even accept that the universe was made with God’s help. John Polkinghorne uses anthropic principle to support his belief that chance alone is incapable of explaining our creation and development.
  • “Evolutionary history seems to unfold through the interplay of two contrasting tendencies: “chance” and “necessity”.”
--

Goddamnit I am so tired of this- HOLYSCHITT!

Friday, April 14, 2006

The Cosmological Argument

The Cosmological Argument

  • The cosmological argument hinges on the idea that we live in a contingent universe, one where nothing is its own cause, but is the result of external influence alone.
  • The classical cosmological argument is also known as the first cause argument, as that is what it all revolves around: the first cause.
  • This theory is a posteriori, as all of it is based on personal experience.
    It goes a little like this:

  • Things come into existence because something has caused them to happen.
  • Things are caused to exist but they do not have to exist.
  • There is a chain of causes going back to the beginning of time.
  • Time began with the creation of the universe.
  • There must have been a first cause, which brought the universe into existence
    This first cause must have necessary existence to cause the contingent universe
    God has necessary existence.
  • Therefore God is the first cause of the contingent universe’s existence.

St. Thomas Aquinas

  • In Aquinas’ unfinished work “Summa Theologica”, Aquinas developed his Five Ways; five proofs for the existence of God. The first three of these form the cosmological argument.
    He very much liked the ideas of Aristotle and generally disbelieved the idea that God’s existence is self evident, he thought that the cosmological argument was a proof for God’s existence, but admitted that it is not possible for it to prove that it is the God of “Classical Theism”.
  • “God’s effects… are enough to prove that God exists, even if they may not be enough to help us comprehend what He is.”
  • The three ways that he supported the cosmological argument was arguing from:
  • Motion or change
  • Cause
  • Contingency

Motion

  • This refers to the broadest sense of motion, not just movement in the classical sense of space and time, but also movement in terms of any kind of alteration (be it quantitatively or qualitatively!)
  • He argues that any movement comes about by the application of external force.
  • These movements could not regress infinitely for all time; the must be a “prime mover”, unmoved in itself. This “unmoved mover” is argued to be God.
  • He carries on by saying that external influence is required to alter a things potentiality to its actuality, in the same way that when heat is applied to wood, the wood achieves its potential to become hot and burst into flame.
  • Without something to do this, for it to happen on its own, it’s potential and actual would be apparent all at once!
  • Aquinas considered this daft, as if things were like this all the time then surely wood would already be hot! (I think that’s a little daft. It can easily be argued that things are already their actual and potential in being what they are.)
  • This is where the external influence comes in, which cannot go on indefinitely.

Cause

  • Aquinas observes chains of cause and effect throughout the universe, bringing things into existence and out of it, so on and so on.
  • Aquinas said that nothing can be the cause of itself, otherwise it would have to have existed before it existed, which is logically silly.
  • There must have been a first cause. This, it appears, would have to be God.

Contingency

  • Considering the idea of infinite time, things which are contingent, by definition, cannot exist forever, and thus there must have been a time when nothing existed.
  • If there was a time when there was nothing at all, then why are there things around now? Things cannot just bring themselves into existence.
  • So, the cause of the universe and it’s contingent contents must be external to the universe and must have always existed.
  • There must have been a necessary being to bring everything else into existence.
  • This is argued to be God.

Gottfriend Liebniz &
Sufficient Reason

  • He liked the cosmological argument, believing there had to be a “sufficient reason” for the universe to exist.
  • He dispelled the idea of an infinite universe as he believed there was no satisfactory explanation for it’s existence.

GOD BLESS YOU DAVID HUME!

  • He believes that we are prone to embellishments of the imagination! We make rash judgements between cause and effect! He claims, in fact, that we cannot assume connections between cause and effect at all! Apparently, we see two events, in conjunction, and believe them to be linked by cause and effect, when in reality they are two separate events.
  • This is known as “induction”, and is a terrible offence in logical thinking.
  • Deduction is the preferred, logical method.
  • Hume accuses Aquinas of an inductive leap of logic, starting with familiar concepts and then barrelling onward into things far outside of our understanding.
  • Who is this God fellow anyway? We have no prior experience of God’s and Universes going hand in hand. If, for the whole of your life, you had seen things exist only as pairs then it may be fair to, on seeing one of a pair, be safe in the knowledge that it’s other half is somewhere close by. However, we have never had experience of Universe-God pairings before and thus it is unreasonable to simply assume that this is the case.
  • He also asked why the universe had to have a beginning.
  • “How can anything that exists from eternity have a cause, since that relation implies a priority in time and in a beginning of existence?”
  • Hume goes on to illustrate the fact that we have no direct experience of the creation of universes. As a result, we cannot speak meaningfully about it! He thought thusly that there was not sufficient evidence to prove the cause of the universe, or even that the universe was caused at all.

Kant

  • He believes that cause and event is only applicable to the world of sense experience, being inapplicable to something we have never experienced before.
  • So, it’s a bit daft to try and extend our own experience to things that we do not truly understand and transcend what we already know.
  • As God is believed to be causal and outside of space and time, any real inferences we make about him ultimately fall flat on their face.

Anthony Kenny

  • In his book “The Five Ways”, Kenny tells us that Aquinas principles overlook the very apparent fact that sentient creatures are quite capable of self propelled movement. He goes on to say that Newtonian Mechanics, and in particular, Newton’s first law of motion disproves this, as inertia constitutes a form of self motion, brought about by a bodies previous motions. Not to mention that objects are quite capable of moving without external influence, as an applied force only causes an acceleration on a mass. A mass remains at rest without a force being applied, or in a uniform state of motion.
  • Philosophers have pointed out that “movement” as meant by Aquinas, however, actually means any change of state whatsoever, not necessarily spatio-temporal movement.

We like science

  • Originally, the steady state theory was used scientifically to disprove the cosmological argument. This argues that “the universe is a huge, self-regulating, self-sustaining mechanism, with the capacity to self-organise ad infinitum” (Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint).
  • This has been dropped, of late, to make way for the Big Bang Theory.
  • This supports that the universe had a beginning and is used by everyone to prove or disprove the cosmological argument!
  • The Big Bang shows us that the universe had a beginning as well as a development of a regularity and structure quite early on in its life. The debate rests on whether the cause of the big bang was natural or divine

--

My doctor says if I don't stop doing this I'll be dead before August!

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Ontology

I'm doing some DIGITAL revision for my RS course. The first unit was all done on paper, unfortunately, so you're having none of that, no siree-bob!

But you can have most of the unit 2 stuff; the philosophy stuff atleast, maybe not the ethics.

Anyway, here is the core version of the ontological argument as put forth by Anselm and Descartes, with rebutals from Gaunillo of Marmoutier, Immanuel Kant, Bertrand Russell, Normal Malcolm and a whole host of friends!

--

The Ontological Argument

This comes in two main forms, as put forth by St. Anselm of Canterbury and René Descartes! Both of these are a priori inductive arguments!

Anselm

  • Anselm created this argument as a stopgap between traditional Christian theology and Muslim and Aristotlean theories which were being brought to Europe.
  • Anselm was purported to express God as “that which nothing greater can be conceived” (from Proslogion 2).
  • Anselm tells us that even atheists must have a definition of God (possibly that stated above) in order to express their dismissal of him.
  • He concludes this by saying, therefore, that God exists in the noggin.

  • However, if God is “that which nothing greater can be conceived”, then God must exist in reality as it is argued that existence in actuality is greater than existence in potential. We are told to consider that we have been given a large some of money; surely it is better if the money were actually given to us in real life?
  • He goes on to tell us that this is not enough, as it simply puts God in the same category as every extant being in the universe (like humans, trees, automobiles and toffee bon bons, as well as toffee bon bon milkshakes.) He goes on to prove that God is necessary, which in this instance goes on to illustrate that he can never be conceived to not exist.
  • It is conceivable that something exists which cannot be thought not to exist
    God has to be this if he is “that which nothing greater can be conceived”, as surely it is greater to have always existed than to have been brought from non-existence to existence.
  • A retort was supplied in Anselm’s lifetime by Gaunilo of Marmoutier, a Spanish monk, who created the reply “In Behalf of the Fool”.
  • He argued, using similar ideas, that there, somewhere, is a perfect island! If someone were to suggest it and you were to contemplate it’s existence then its existence must be real. He went on to say that anyone who would believe that is a numpty.
  • However, Anselm never makes associations “of things of a like nature” to God.
    Even if Gaunilo had asked us to contemplate an island “of which nothing greater can be conceived” the argument still poses no threat. A material thing such as that can always be improved upon somewhere, making it “more perfect”- they have no “instrinsic maximum”.
  • Norman Malcolm goes on to develop “Proslogion 3” (written by Anselm originally, and something that Malcolm feels lacks the fault of having existence as a predicate [a quality which something has or lacks]) in which he states that if God does exist then his existence is necessary, but if he does not then his existence is completely impossible, as, to be existent from non-existence then he would have to be created some how, and thus a limited being, and thus not God by our definition.

Descartes

  • Descartes argues that God is a “supremely perfect being”.
    Descartes goes on to say that we can conclude that God must exist, as existence is a predicate of a perfect being, in the same way that having 3 sides is the predicate of a triangle.
  • We do not need complex logical proofs to prove that a triangle has 3 sides, that’s just the way it is! In the same way, God just exists, as a predicate does not require external empirical proof.
  • He came at it from another way too! He argued that a supremely perfect being must have necessary existence, as necessary existence is a predicate of perfection. So, there is a necessary perfect being.

KANT DON’T LIKE IT! OH NOES!

  • He argues that existence is not a quality that something has, it is merely a statement that it is apparent in 4-dimensional space. He likens this to the idea of the triangle, claiming that if you dismiss the idea of the triangle then you dismiss the idea of three sides, and thus there is no contradiction, and DESCARTES LOSES!
  • He also argues that saying “something exists” doesn’t tell us anything about that thing at all really, neither adding nor subtracted from what that thing is!
  • A predicate, we are told, must give us information about a thing.
  • So, existence may be a necessary part of a supremely perfect being, but it is not a predicate for it to exist in reality.
  • Bertrand Russell develops this with an analogy about cows and unicorns!
  • Imagine a cow and imagine a unicorn. If we say that a unicorn exists and a cow does not, it does not really tell us anything about the attributes of the things in discussion.

Hume

  • He says that we cannot take an idea, apply pure logic to it and reach a conclusion that is based purely in the observable universe. This holds weight as most of human existence is based on these ideals.
  • He also came to the same conclusions as Kant, that existence is not a predicate.
  • He actually went on to say that contemplating God as “in the mind” and “in reality” are exactly the same thing. Placing this with his first objection, we can argue that we are simply “thinking about God”, not proving and grounds for his existence.

Frege

  • Argues that there are different kinds of predicates: first and second order ones! First order ones tells us about the nature of the thing, and second order ones are concerned with concepts surrounding the things. To say “horses are brown” is a first order predicate”, “there are lots of horses” is a second order predicate.

Russell (some more!)

  • He thinks Anselm uses the word “exist” incorrectly. If it were to be as Anselm uses it then it could be used to syllogisms to prove lots of stilly things! For example, Consider that “very above average people” exist: Batman was a “very above average person”, it could be said; ergo, Batman is real.
  • He says that the term “exist” refers to the idea of a thing, not the property of a thing. In saying that a unicorn does not exist simply means “nothing exists by which we would refer to as a unicorn”.
  • He also says that, in describing something, your intention is to describe it. To say it exists is just an extension of that intention.
  • So, if we consider God to be that which nothing greater can be conceived, we intend that he is the totality of our perceived reality and then some! This can be extended! If any idea can be said to exist, then “that which nothing greater can be conceived” must exist as it is the totality of all ideas.
  • This supports the idea that God is the totality of things and that which nothing greater can be conceived, but does not give him existence in reality.

Brian Davies

  • He argues, in accord with Frege, that existence is a second order predicate, but necessity is a first order one! So, we are presented with “God is necessary, therefore God is”
    However, if we were to say that “a unicorn is a horse with a horn and magical properties. Therefore there must be a unicorn” it would be laughed at! As if it were conceivable that a unicorn existed in order to have that horn.
  • He goes on to mark a difference between the uses of “is”, one in which it is used to define things, another in which it expresses a realisation, or actuality.
  • So, there is a real difference in saying “God is this, this and this” and “God actually IS”.

    Ultimately, ontology pisses me off, as people get hung up semantics too much.

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And that's ontology!

WEEEEEEEEEE!

Friday, April 07, 2006

A blog? O RLY? (YA, RLY).

- Today is a good day I think for PARTYING DOWN.
- I disagree!

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I agree with his disagreement! Today is not a good day for PARTYING DOWN. Now wai.

In the past couple of hours I have have pretty groovy notes on the whole of the Unit 1 Philosophy or Religion, for my RS course. That was only really 3 topics, but the whole of it is sprawled over 4 sides of A3 paper. I find this daunting, especially as I only have 4 pieces of paper! This means the entirety of the rest of my revision activities have to be crushed onto the remaining four sides.

BUT THAT DOES NOT REALLY MATTER.

Today really is a good day for PARTYING DOWN, because it is holiday time now!

I have atleast 20 million birthdays to go to, some dancing to do, too much work and a trip to Bristol for kinky sex and absurd drunkeness.

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In other news: I had a dream where my life was a guro hentai comic; a little black, a little white and all horrifying.

I am so screwed up.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

You might have guessed from the title of this blog that I've just finished watching a certain piece of anime, and you'd be right.

Ghost in the Shell 2 has been heralded as one of the most magnificent pieces of anime to see the world's shores in a very, very long time. I can tell you, right now, that this is a lie. GITS 2 is not a beautiful film, nor is it a great film, nor seminal, nor even passable good, in my opinion. Far from beautiful, in fact, I would call the most part of this film utterly grotesque, and not "beautifully grotesque" in the way that anime tends to be. I admit that the stomach churning mutilations and hints of sexual frustation, inadequacy and pedophilia spread across the whole of Neon Genesis Evangelion was portedly beatific, and could be seen as nothing but, but terror without respite to grace and form can never, ever be desirable.

"Innocence" is a term that belies the world weariness that is required to fully appreciate this piece. The amounts of degredation and long cultivated understanding to comprehend any of it is far beyond me. Even for those with experience of the world far beyond my own, atleast i summise, would be left mumbling in confusion, contorting their faces to vaguely resemble the waves of visual nausea that propel themselves along your optic nerves.

The questions it raises are uncomfortable as well, it cannot be denied. The main theme is the understanding of what it is to be human, something you don't earnestly figure out until well over half way into the film. The major part of the first half is setting up a rather loose story and then failing to follow it in the least. The most part of the film concerns itself with showing of the (poor) interaction between 3-dimensional set pieces and the 2-dimensional cast; either that or watching the bust of Batou, of the protagonists, sway slowly as he walks through a series of backdrops. I swear to God, atleast half an hour of this goddamned film was just Batou's head and shoulders, getting further away from a wall, maybe moving past a shelf or lampost and moving into and out of overhead lighting. I would have imagined that the nigh-on legendary Shirow Masamune could have mustered up a little more funding for his tour de force, his mythical magnum opus, but no, he had to go and spend the money on collectable urban vinyl figures to place around his computer room in comical positions. Well done Mr. Masamune, well done.

But anyway, concerning the theme: what is it to be human? I have always thought that if you can make an identical replica of a "thing", that does everything the original does in more or less the same way, then, in essence atleast, you have made a second "thing". Maybe it's a loose cross between the ideas of Schopenhauer and Socrates, with no real worldly relevance, or none that i can correlate, but I feel the idea holds merit. So, if we make a robot that does everything a human can do (and more), is it not still a human? Homo Machina? Is not a child just an inferior human? Do we not call it still human?

At the same time, it addresses the fear that humans feel at machines, at science as a whole, to breaking down nature into something quantifiable and then rebuilding it. In the same way that people were replaced in the industrial revolution, the fear that was felt at them is replicated throughout the film. Ultimately it leaves us questioning our use, our place in life and whether, if existence is so simple, is it worthwhile?

It's all a little heavy for a saturday night.

So, to refer you to the works of Todd Park Mohr and his coedifying of all that is great and good in the world of philosophy, I would like to tell you about a discussion had between the Buddha (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong!) and someone with a great yearning for knowledge.

One day, at a sermon of sorts, a man in confusion and inquiry asked the Buddha, "Oh Buddha, please, enlighten me! What is the meaning of life?" To which the Buddha merely presented the man with a flower and walked away.