Philosophy 101E

How to stop worrying and love the Internet

by Douglas Adams

Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back - like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust - of course you can’t, it’s just people talking - but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV - a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’.

Robots Inherit Human Minds

by Hans Moravac, who also appeared in the movie Love Machine screened last week.

Our first tools, sticks and stones, were very different from ourselves. But many tools now resemble us, in function or form, and they are beginning to have minds. A loose parallel with our own evolution suggests how they may develop in future. Computerless industrial machinery exhibits the behavioral flexibility of single-celled organisms. Today’s best computer-controlled robots are like the simpler invertebrates. A thousand-fold increase in computer power in this decade should make possible machines with reptile-like sensory and motor competence. Growing computer power over the next half century will allow robots that learn like mammals, model their world like primates and eventually reason like humans. Depending on your point of view, humanity will then have produced a worthy successor, or transcended inherited limitations and transformed itself into something quite new. No longer limited by the slow pace of human learning and even slower biological evolution, intelligent machinery will conduct its affairs on an ever faster, ever smaller scale, until coarse physical nature has been converted to fine-grained purposeful thought.

I made the point today that we are embodied on the internet. I hadn’t planned to discuss this, so my response was a bit scattered (stream of consciousness, heh). Let me try to make it a bit clearer:

We are embodied on the internet. Technology doesn’t simply extend our capacities, but it also changes the kinds of environments in which we act. This in turn changes the kinds of actions that are required for engaging in those environments. Sometimes this results in actions that are very different from the kinds of behaviors we make while engaging nature, but that doesn’t make them any less engaged actions.

It is harder for Dreyfus to make his arguments about technology stick now days, because the technology we use today is literally engaging our bodies in ways it never could before. Take a look at any video on YouTube that shows people using the Wii. These people are clearly engaged with their whole bodies.

But there is a sense in which the Wii example is too easy and superficial. I think it is better to think of the skill required to navigate any complicated website or program. Think about people who use Photoshop, or Final Cut, or any other big, complicated program. It is impossible to doubt that there is a learned skill involved in using this kind of software. It is something that requires practice and training; its the kind of thing that some people are better at than others. But Dreyfus’ argument is that skills are acquired through the use of the body. If he’s right, then we must be embodied when we are using these programs.

Or think about all the social rules and norms involved in interacting with any online community- your favorite message boards; Facebook; MySpace; Wikipedia; this blog. These are all very complicated social environments. We all have some sense of what is appropriate for these environments, and what is inappropriate, and how to behave. Some people do it better than others. MySpace is full of social cues- music, backgrounds, images, links, friends, etc. MySpace is just like a fashion accessory to your online identity.

If these places on the Internet are really environments that take skill to navigate, then you must conclude that we are embodied on the internet. If that’s the case, then the Internet doesn’t pose a threat to our humanity. At most it poses a threat to our current understanding of ourselves and our environment, because in a real sense it changes what we are, and what we interact with. But that doesn’t undermine our humanity; it reaffirms it.

Facebook and MySpace users aren’t examples of people who despise the body, or who think that the body is obsolete. They are people who desperately want to integrate these new possibilities and forms of expression into their lives. They are people who want to make their online identity real and meaningful and relevant. They are people who are trying to find a stable social environment, not just as an abstract mind or identity, but as a real person.

     When I first heard that we were going to have to read a book about how humans are cyborgs, I immediately thought that this was going to be a book that I would hate reading.  Men as machines is something that just does not appeal to me, and I thought that reading about it would be boring.  However, after reading the first chapter of Natural-Born Cyborgs, I found myself completely agreeing with Clark.  I think what made me agree with Clark was the way he used wording in his book.  He doesn’t simply say that men are machines, rather what Clark argues is that technology constitutes “”a cascade of mindware upgrades”: cognitive upheavals in which the effective architecture of the human mind is altered and transformed”.  What makes us cyborgs is the fact that our use of technology has become so crucial in our lives that it has changed the way our brains function and made it harder to distinguish what is human intelligence from what is human intelligence aided by technological tools. 

     Clark gives the cell phone as an example of how we have become cyborgs.  He discusses how we all get so wrapped up in text messaging and talking on the phone with others that we often seem to be leading divided lives.  On the one hand, we are in the space that we are physically occupying, but on the other hand, our minds are with the people that we are talking to.  I know that when I am talking to someone on the phone, my mind gets completely wrapped up in that conversation that I sometimes lose sight of where I actually am.  The same thing happens when I am texting with someone.  Physically I may be in class, but mentally I am with that person and focused on whatever it is that we are talking about.  Another way that I think my cell phone has become a part of me is just the fact that when I don’t have it with me or within my reach, I feel as if a part of me is missing.  I never feel comfortable when I don’t have my phone because I feel as though any communication that I have with the world has been totally cut off.  In reality this is not the case, but I rely on my phone so much to communicate with others that I feel as if it is my only means of communication with the world.

     The cell phone is one example among many that Clark gives, but I think it is the one that stands out the most and that almost all of us can probably relate to.  I doubt that I am the only one that feels lost without a cell phone and that relies on it for so many parts of my life.  I think that with all of the advancements in technology that have happened and are happening at this very moment, it is almost inevitable for us to become so integrated with it.  We have become one with technology in so many ways that we can no longer really doubt that we are what Clark refers to as natural-born cyborgs. 

Clark quotes Kevin Warwick in chapter 1 of “Natural Born Cyborgs” as saying: “I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it’s something we have the power to change.

This is a very interesting, though slightly pessimistic view of humanity. My first reaction was to question what was so wrong with humanity that we would rather change that fact and be cyborgs, which is implicated as clearly better. As I read on however, I discovered that Clark’s as well as Warwick’s opinion of cyborgs and our gradual and inevitable morph into them really depends on definition. As Clark acknowledges, his cat with a chip imbedded under his skin may not be considered “as much” of a cyborg as someone with a special hearing aid that connects directly to the brain stem. I will admit that I am much more willing to accept the positives of nonbiological devices improving humanity and turing us into cyborgs if they go deeper into the realm of “humanity.” The examples Clark uses to explain the extensive use of these nonbiological devices, pacemakers, chips, hearing aids, nerve implants, and more, demonstrate that the argument can be made just as easily for the other side as it can for Clark’s. I think this is important to realize as you are reading.

Also, as clark says, “We resonate with terror, excitement, or both to the idea of ever-deeper neural and bodily implants in part because we sense some rough-and-ready correlation between depth-of-interface and such transformative potentials”

I agree with this statement. It seems to me that he is saying that the grander the fix provided by the nonbiological device and the deeper it delves into what we see as the essences of humanity, the more likely we are to accept it. Clearly, the idea that those essences are fixable through human ‘technology’ will not sit easily with most at first because we are very set in our “belief that there is something absolutey special about the cognitive machinery that happense to be housed within the primitive bioinsulation of skin and skull.” However I agree with Clark in the fact that they may not be a valid belief, and is really one we should shy away from because we have proved time and time again that we can create certain technology that really does improve even that deepest sense of humanity: the brain. If we can manipulate the brain using nonbiological devices, I think Clark’s ideas of humans as natural born cyborgs are entirely feasible; it really depends on definition, and I think we, as humans, match that which Clark provides.

I’ve been thinking about the last part of class today where we discussed Heidegger and how he thinks about caring in both humans and in machines.  Heidegger believes that the reason we humans care about things is because we know that we will one day die.  Death presents the limit of care because it is in terms of care that we understand things.  Daniel also discussed authenticity vs. non-authenticity, where authenticity is when we live in terms of death and what we do matters, and non-authenticity is when we live only to pass time and don’t care about what we are doing.  Hopefully, I understood all of these concepts correctly so that what I talk about next will make sense.
In terms of humans and caring, I do believe that it is what sets us apart from all other beings.  I agree with Heidegger that we care about things because we know that one day we are going to die.  If we knew that we were going to live forever, then our choices wouldn’t really matter because we’d be unable to understand that our decisions and how we live our lives truly make a difference.  Take, for example, marriage.  I want to get married young because I’d like to start a family and live that part of my life while still young.  I know that I’m going to die one day, and I want to enjoy it as much as I can.  On the other hand, if I knew that I was not going to die, marriage probably would not matter as much because I’d know that when I got married wouldn’t make a difference.  It would be less important to me because time would not be an issue.  Knowing that we’re going to die makes us live authentically and makes everything in our lives mean so much more.  Although I do think that sometimes we can get caught up in living our lives on a day to day basis and simply going through the motions of being alive, I feel that ultimately we realize that we are not guaranteed our lives and that makes us live in terms of death as Heidegger believed.  I think it’s that notion of not having all the time in the world that makes the difference.
Heidegger also believed that in order to say that machines have the ability to care you need to talk about them dying. When we learned this in class it took me back to our discussions about machines not being able to be like humans.  Obviously machines cannot die in the same way that we can so they cannot care like we do.  According to Heidegger’s earlier concept, they do not and cannot care because they will never die and can’t understand anything in terms of death.  Machines can’t live authentically.  In the comments I’ve made to posts about this issue of machines and caring, I always talked about how machines will never have this ability to care and that is what sets us apart from them.  I think that Heidegger’s ideas strengthen the arguments that Haugeland made about how machines can never understand anything because they don’t have to capacity to care about anything. 
 

Here are links to most of the videos I showed tonight. Its a little much to embed all these videos, so I’m just linking them. Feel free to post any comments you have on any of these videos, or link to others you find interesting.

Music Videos
Bjork - All is full of love
Bjork - Bachelorette
Bjork - Hyperballad (we didn’t watch this one, but its worth seeing)
U.N.K.L.E - Rabbit in your headlights
Daft Punk - Technologic
Aphex Twin - Rubber Johnny
Aphex Twin - Monkey Drummer

Robot Videos
Big Dog
Robot Chair
Film Making Robot (Some additional commentary)
You can see lots more robot stuff on my website.

Misc
Interactive Display
Stelarc (This is referenced in Clark’s book)

Since the “movie screening” tonight (in quotes because it was loosely a movie screening and more of a jumble of interesting and pertaining videos) is the freshest thing in my mind, I decided to write about that even though many people weren’t there.

First, the thought of art and the videos was intriguing. Not just the first video about the robot video making art, but also the Camera video. I said it in the room, but I’m going to say it again; if a robot made the video the way he thinks is good, then there could be a robot that is shown the same pictures that would think the video was great. That would actually make an interesting experiment if it would react positively to the video. Just like how twins are brought up the same way and they are different people, would two same machines “grow up” to be different? If they are learning from the pictures they are looking at and studying, like students, would they develop different “thoughts” and ideas of what is being presented to them. That is almost the idea of how nature reveals itself to us and we make perceptions of what our understanding is. I was thinking about how to relate this to another topic and I was thinking it is like phobias. People interact with objects once and if it is bad, then they can be scared of that object forever just due to the first understanding.

Next, I was thinking about the old man, the camera, and death. We talked about how the camera captures the death of the moment and how we don’t think that is a good way to think about things. Looking back on today’s lecture, I completely understand why the old man thinks about the death and not the positives of the moment being captured to share forever. Because death is the ultimate conclusion and that man is closer to his time of death (at least more likely to be closer), he is demonstrating his authenticity and realizing death is adamant so he is relating it to other objects like the moment and the camera. I think once he thought about the kids using the camera after it is pretty much obsolete, made the guy happy to think that after his death people will still “use” him, such as in stories.

Well, the movies were all interesting and they actually had me thinking about other videos about technology. So I searched YouTube and I found one funny video that I just want to share because it talks about the dangers of technology. Yes, it is Gary Busey and he is crazy, but I think it is funny and he is thinking about the dangers of using technology for our own purposes.

See that image above? That’s right, it’s two robotic Bjorks making out with each other. Sure, it’s sensual…kind of, but there’s definitely something unnatural about it. The act of kissing and fondling is usually an act performed by two humans. So why does it look so silly when robots do it?

Sex is usually accompanied by at least two of the three following emotions: lust, love, and desire. These are very human characteristics that would be difficult for a machine to learn, even with a neural network. Seeing this type of relationship between two machines is difficult for us because emotion is the one thing that we all thought would separate humans from robots.

An androids, a robot with a humanoid form, is an attempt to make a machine with as many human qualities with possible. The video portrayed an attempt to make an android with qualities that separate man and machine. The emotions in the two androids were heavily contrasted by the use of machines that were far less complex than they were. These assembly line robots worked efficiently and precisely, as fine tuned instruments should. But they gave off a cold, sterile, and uncaring feel as they meticulously worked to finish up the android.

This definitely redefined the what the words “robot” and “machine” mean to me. A machine is no more than a a tool, something to be used by someone. A robot, however, has a certain degree of independence and can work on it’s own. The music video portrayed a distant future, one where robots are capable of some level of compassion. The video shows the two androids going through the motions of compassion and erotic love, but I do not think that androids, no matter how realistic, will ever feel exactly what we as humans feel.

Some of the recent conversation going on in class is particularly interesting. I like more of this material on technology because I feel that I, like most people, naturally have such a deeper connection with technology. I don’t know about most other people but I’m slightly misguided on who exactly to believe when we talk about Gehlen and Heidegger’s ideas. For me I think that both men have points that I could make myself believe more. I find the broad sense that Gehlen uses ‘’culture” in to speak about how it’s about the habits or traditions or even the signs and symbols we keep define our culture. In class Daniel used the example of the highway system and how/why it works. Our road system is relatively pretty safe and predictable because we have all chosen to adopt a particular symbol system that we abide by. Our system allows people to travel even though the person driving in the next lane has a different destination, a different way of life and may be nothing like you at all, but it’s funny to see how for some seconds on the highway that we pass somebody we are able to peacefully coexist. From this cultural definition and examples like this, Gehlen touches on technology and goes to say that technology is created to help make up for he deficiencies of man. It’s crazy to think how right he actually is. We build everything around us to enhance our lives and ourselves, we built planes because we weren’t meant to naturally fly. The interesting part is that technology will never cease to progress and man will continue to build to make our lives easier. I personally believe in the pursuit of technology but I also think that as more and more is created we as people are moved to become lazier. For example, the TV allows us to connect with the world without leaving our house, the remote lets us flip channels without leaving the couch. In some ways I feel that technology is helping us to become lazier than we need to be. On the other hand, technology is obviously revolutionizing our world in the field of medicine for example and constantly finding remedies and cures for the diseases that we cannot fight off ourselves (because we are deficient.) Heidegger on the other hand has a very simple point with a lot of other text around it. Heidegger it seems, believe that technology will hide the truth of the real world. For example Daniel mentioned in class that humans use the technology we have to exploit the resources of our environment for our use. Heidegger would say that doing this only helps hide what nature really is from us. While I agree with the statement to some degree I, I almost feel like he is suggesting that we stop our production of technology. It seems as if he would rather us move back to a more simple stone age like time. Though a thought, I believe our society is much to immersed in the advancement of technology to ever move backwards.

This post is just initial thoughts and impressions from the first couple chapters of Natural-Born Cyborgs. When I purchased the book I was assumed the focus was on electronic gadgets implanted into the body, such as pace-makers, cochlear implants, muscle stimulators/relaxors. He actually makes it his point NOT to talk about such things.

Clark spends the first two sections talking about how humans were cyborgs way before we ever had a pacemaker installed to regulate heart beats. The incorporation of technology into ours bodies does not have to be as concrete implanting something battery operated using surgery. Clark says that everytime we interface with any form of technology, that is the same as the well-imagined cyborg presented in sci-fi movies. Using a computer, writing down notes using a pen and paper, driving a car- all examples of cybernetic incorporations. This ability to interface with an infinite amount of different technologies is also what makes us different than the rest of the animal kingdom. The only exceptions would be the use of primitive tools by some mammals, but I think the degree of difference between using a stick to gather ants and using a cars with thousands of moving parts and electrical circuits obviously still separates us from animal tool-users. It is an interesting take on technology. But after thinkking about it, it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch. Technology doesn’t have to be inside our skin to be integrated in our lives. Clark makes this point using cel phones as an example. It has become such a dominant part of everyday life. Many people keep it on there person at all times. Some have a bluetooth headset in their ear at all times. There is a slang term in Finland that refers to the cell phone as an “arm extension.” I would have to agree that many forms of technology are becoming so “everyday” that it would be hard to argue that they are not a part of us.

I’m going to try something new here. As we go through new subjects, I’m going to post an open thread on the topic. This is for people who have questions or comments on a subject, but not enough to write a full post, and are waiting around for someone else to post on the topic so they could comment on it. Hopefully this helps the discussion move along, and hopefully it also prepares you a bit more for the final.

So use these open threads to leave any question or comment you have on the topic. It doesn’t even have to be a full comment- if you were unclear about something in lecture, just ask, and I’ll try to respond.

I’ll get the discussion going with some quotes from the text and some questions:

If by technique we understand the capacities and means whereby man puts nature into his own service, by identifying nature’s properties and laws in order to exploit them and to control their interaction, clearly technique, in this highly general sense, is part and parcel of man’s very essence. It truely mirrors man– like man himself it is clever, it represents something intrinsically improbable, it bears a complex and twisted relationship to nature

[…]

Like man, [technique] is inventive, resourceful, life-fostering and at the same time life-destroying, involved with primeval nature in a complex relationship. Technique constitutes, as does man himself, nature artificelle.

[…]

Scientific research employs ever-new technical devices; nature is forced open through technique. The scientist much reach an understanding with the technician, for each problem is defined by the not-yet-available equipment required to solve it. Advances in theoretical physics, for instance, depend no less upon electronic computers than upon the brains of physicists.

[…]

The fascination with automatisms is a prerational, transpractical impulse, which previously, for millennia, found expression in magic– the technique of things and processes beyond our senses– and has more recently found its full realization in clocks, engines, and all manner of rotating mechanisms. Whoever considers from a psychological viewpoint the magic which cars exercise upon today’s young, cannot doubt that the interests appealed to lie deeper than those of a rational and practical nature. If this seems improbable, one should consider the fact that a machine’s automatism exercises a fascination entirely independent of its practical uses, a fascination that might well be best embodied in a perpetual motion machine whose only goal and activity would consist in forever reproducing the same circular motion. None of the innumerable individuals who over the centuries have grappled with the insoluble problem of perpetual motion, did so in view of any practical effect. Instead, they were all fascinated by the singular appeal of a machine that runs itself, a clock that winds itself. Such an appeal is not merely intellectual in nature, but has deeper sources.

Gehlen, following Nietzsche, claims that man is underdetermined by nature. Can we make sense of the claim that nature left man deficient in comparison to other animals?

Is technology fundamental to man’s essence? Does technology mirror man’s ‘twisted’ relationship with nature?

As human beings, we are separated from in animals because we are underdetermined in nature. We have no little niche in the natural world in which we were designed to live in. That is why we were given to ability to use tools and create things.

I believe that we’ve made evolution come to a grinding halt. Instead of being like every other organism on the face of the earth and changing to better fit into our environment, we humans are the only ones who change our environment to better suit our needs. Our dependence on technology in this way will cause us to remain homo sapiens for years to come. All the modern day conveniences that come with technology make things extremely easy for us.

While these conveniences are currently improving our general quality of life, it is also crippling us in the long run. Without evolution, we can not genetically change to improve. We have drugs and treatments for almost all types of ailments, so genetically fatal diseases cannot be weeded out in evolution. Someday, we will run out of raw material and natural resources. Humans will no longer be able to depend on technology. Basically, we’d have to play evolutionary catch-up or we’d be screwed.

Tonight we screened David Cronenberg’s Camera, and had an interesting discussion of the differences between this portrayal of photography and the way film is presented in Waking Life. For those that missed the video, you can watch it here:

It is worthwhile to think about how the Actor relates to the camera, and whether or not this constitutes anthropomorphism, especially as he describes the ‘obsolescence and death’ the camera has to deal with. An interesting contrast with this short is Wes Anderson’s Ikea commercial from a few years back:

I’d be very happy if someone wrote a post discussing Camera (hint hint).

As we learned in class today, a turning machine can imitate a formal system with three parts: storage, a control unit, and an indicator unit. From our example in class, ones and zeros are the identifiable positions. In a computer science class I took, ones and zeros translate to yes and no, respectively. To design programs in a computer, complex queries are asked and are answered by yes or no. The complexity of the queries is what allows for a more intricate answer. Therefore, an imitation, where a turning machine can simulate an analog with a digital system, is done so through ones and zeros. My question is, with all the ‘grey areas’ in analog thinking, how might a yes or no answer truly imitate a formal system on an abstract level? Is it done through the questioning? The questions must therefore be leading questions to allow a simple yes or no answer to imitate such a complex idea.

My point here is the idea of imitation through leading questions and such simplicity seems cheap. I hate the idea of simulating something as beautiful as originality and inspiration with ones and zeros. To bring this idea further if a human being is considered a formal system, and formal systems may be imitated by turning machines, we as individuals may be simulated through digital systems. Relevance, in fact, is the only requirement standing in the way of computers’ capability of imitating all things, including us. Someone pointed out in class that computers have come so far already in technology, that it is only a matter of time before the hindrance of relevance is too overcome. When I step back from the definitions and the understanding of this vocabulary of the cognitive thinker, I wonder how we got here. How did technology become so complex that it began taking away from the complexity of our own minds? How did we allow a machine to begin to imitate the things we pride ourselves on being capable of doing. The ability to have thought is what sets us apart from animals, Descartes would say. What will set us apart from computers if they are capable of relevance, the fact that computers come to the same end product as us through ones and zeros?

I would like to expand on the question that Daniel asked in class last week:  is it possible to “raze everything to the ground” and start over on the beliefs you’ve previously had?  While some argue that one cannot doubt everything they have ever believed, I believe it is possible.  Daniel made a point that when Descartes referred to doubt; he meant that you are holding your beliefs in suspension while you explore other ways of thinking about them. 

Take the fact that everyone used to think the world was flat.  That was what people believed and took to be true.  Then, we discovered that the world is not flat but round.  Another example is whether the earth is the center of the universe (Ptolemic System) or whether the sun is the center of the universe (Copernicus).  After the Ptolemic System was proven wrong, we came to believe the latter.  How did we come to such a conclusion?  We did not do it by continuing to go along with what everyone else believed.   The truth was only discovered because someone dared to doubt everyone else’s beliefs and think about the situation and how to go about finding the truth in a new way. 

Anytime we make a new discovery or find out something that contradicts a previous belief, we do it by holding our previous beliefs in suspension to give ourselves an unbiased point of view.  Where would we be today if everyone still believed that the earth was flat or that illnesses could not be cured?  Imagine our world if someone had not dared to find a way to make man fly.  If everyone still believed that African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities were inferior, we would likely still be in segregated classrooms.  Fields such as law and science are dependent on the fact that someone will come along one day and call into question that field’s beliefs.  Think about all of these examples and about how different our world would be if that one person had not doubted everyone else’s beliefs.

Doubt can be found in Allegory of the Cave.  When the man was brought out of the darkness of the cave, he began to see things in a new light.  He saw that not everything was how he had originally thought it to be.  He started over on everything he had believed and through his new experiences, began to understand how things were outside of the cave.  When he returned to the cave, he understood both aspects of life (inside and outside the cave) and had a thorough understanding of how things truly were.

This brings me to our other discussion about what it means to have knowledge and if it can even be achieved.  The possibility that one is wrong will always exist, at least in me, because I believe there is no real truth but rather various aspects of it.  In discussion, we were told that we needed to use our minds and reason in order to truly learn because there is no truth to be discovered just by looking.  I take this to mean that by using our minds, we doubt others’ beliefs in order to discover our own truth.  How else are you going to learn the truth if you do not doubt at least some of the aspects that make up what everyone else takes to be true?  Anytime someone is skeptical about an idea, he is a living example of Descartes’ method of doubt.

Doubt will always exist because we cannot survive on what others tell us is true.  In some way or another, people are going to doubt today’s truths because if that did not happen then how else would we advance as a society?  How else did we get to where we are today?  In Meditation two, Descartes states “What then will be true?  Perhaps just the single fact that nothing is certain.”  In my eyes, this is why we need doubt and why it will always exist. 

So… after reading both “The Allegory of the Cave”, and now, Descartes’ first two meditations, it seems to me as if one of the overwhelming themes is a distrust and disapproval of the senses in pursuit of an almighty “truth”.  Now, I definitely am not an expert of philosophy, and, like Socrates, I realize that I don’t know all of the answers – but the messages of ‘finding the truth’ and what you have to do to “know this truth” seem like a dominantly pessimistic way to view life.
The general stance I saw in the “The Allegory of the Cave” was basically a juxtaposition of the “two” ways of life:
a)     either the common life of being chained in a cave of darkness and shadows, and therefore, ignorance . . . or
b)     the rare life of “goodness”: of light and knowledge and being an esteemed philosopher/leader.
The overall feeling of Descartes’ first two meditations seemed to be along a similar line of thought.  Everything he had previously believed, everything he had experienced, everything he was taught, and any definition that he had ever held – they were all “doubtful” at this point in his life.  And the only way to “establish anything firm and lasting in the sciences” was to “raze everything to the ground”.  So basically, he felt as if he was living in Plato’s cave of ignorance and deception: a world where nothing was ‘true’, and he needed to discard all of his previous experiences and thoughts to be exposed to the ‘light of truth’.
So, what is the grander point of these arguments? Why do these guys feel as if they (and the mass of society) are stuck in a rut of ignorance?  In my opinion, the overall tone of these writings is exceptionally downcast, especially with regards the idea that humanity is lost unless they strive for something ‘better’ than what they experience.  But who is to say that ‘knowing the truth’ necessarily is a ‘better’ or ‘truer’ way of life?  Is the “truth” the same for everyone, or does it differ based on who you are and what you are trying to find?  Isn’t the definition of ‘truth’ a human concept – and doesn’t it differ between individuals?  According to dictionary.com, truth can be anything from: “conformity with fact or reality”, to “actuality or actual existence”, to an “ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience”, to “agreement with a standard or original”.  These definitions can cover a lot of ground.
In my limited understanding, the way you judge what is true, or wise, or sensible is through your experiences. (oh gasp!)  Let me expand: for the people stuck in the cave, their experiences of life are no less ‘real’ than those in the light— they are just different and narrower.  Once the guy gets dragged into the light, his experiences change, and therefore, so does his personal definition of what is true.  He was not deceived when he was in the cave- he was experiencing all of the opportunities that were currently available to him.  His experiences in the light just expanded his idea of what is real. It is necessary that our definitions mature with us, but we have to grow into them.
I guess I am having trouble grasping the philosophical idea that there is one specific, unchanging “truth” to all facets of life . . .

Since people are starting to sign up and use the site, I’ll start my regular schedule of posting. I always like to start with this:

From Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

The whole movie is worth watching, and I may very well screen it at some later date if there is interest. But the Dawn of Man sequence is just plain awesome. Comments on the clip are appreciated.

Just a quick reminder: remember to select categories to label your posts for easy searching! If you don’t know how, read this again.